Join us as we dive into the "what if instead" concept with Megan Kallman, discussing climate crisis action, family planning, and shifting narratives for systemic change.
Guest: Dr. Meghan Elizabeth Kallman, PhD, Rhode Island State Senator and Associate Professor, School for Global Inclusion and Social Development UMASS Boston
On Twitter | https://x.com/MeghanEKallman
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghan-kallman-6030a3229/
Website | https://meghankallman.com/
Hosts:
Alejandro Juárez Crawford
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford
Miriam Plavin-Masterman
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
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Episode Introduction
In this episode, the we explore the importance of engaging in difficult conversations with people who hold different beliefs. The conversation highlights the necessity of building bridges and finding common ground to nurture a culture of understanding and justice.
Additionally, the episode touches on the intersection of reproductive rights and climate change, discussing the impact of climate change on public health and the need for comprehensive solutions. The role of technology in facilitating conversations and learning is also discussed, with an emphasis on its potential to connect people and provide access to information.
Tune in to get insights on how we can collectively address the climate crisis and create a more just and sustainable future.
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Resources
The Conceivable Future: Planning Families and Taking Action in the Age of Climate Change (Book): https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538179697/The-Conceivable-Future-Planning-Families-and-Taking-Action-in-the-Age-of-Climate-Change
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For more podcast stories from What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman, visit: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford and https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
Beyond "The Conceivable Future": Reimagining Our Climate Narrative | A conversation with Dr Meghan Elizabeth Kallman | What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:01.938)
Mim, as I am looking at my screen here, I'm seeing this little picture of me wearing a very stained apron. It has, I think, the brand of an Italian restaurant in New Jersey, one of these giveaway aprons, right? And it got me thinking, maybe we need to brand our show. Maybe we need to be wearing aprons during these, right? Because it's what if instead, and...look, if we can't figure out what to do about the climate emergency, at least we can say, ah, you know, let me not make the enchiladas the way my bisabuela did. Let me put the cheese wrap, the tortilla de cheese, right? That's a what if instead kind of. .
Mim Plavin-Masterman (00:48.023)
It kind of is, although I feel like the aprons, it's going to go too far. We're going to get memed in all kinds of bad ways – like here's the show here's us at an apron like next to the Eiffel Tower or I don't know it just seems like it could go horribly wrong.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:54.958)
That's right, Amelie or something like that. So we don't want to be cooking up a new future. You think it's too much. I mean, there are food science companies, right? Consumer product boardrooms, right? I think the whole discussion is just hours about whether you should wrap the this and the that. We have an investor who says that at beverage companies, a new flavor is considered extremely innovative. I think our guest today is gonna make us think beyond the new flavor. So let’s get going. We have a very exciting guest today.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (01:32.821)
We do, and she is definitely more than just a new flavor. So she is an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She is a state senator for the great state of Rhode Island. She is the founder of a nonprofit. I mean, she's just amazing. Her name is Meghan Kallman, and we're very grateful to have her here today. So thank you for joining us, Meghan.
Meghan Kallman (01:56.967)
Thank you so much for having me.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (01:59.286)
So good to have you. I'm Alejandro Crawford, the one with the blue. My co-host, Mim Plavin-Masterman, is the one with the green. And we're on a mission to make experiments of your own feel as normal as watching videos on the phone. Welcome to What If Instead, the podcast. Meghan, I admit that I, early this morning, before I had basic motor functions, I was dipping into two of your books, both of which are on exciting and very different topics. And in the introduction to your most recent title with Josephine Ferrorelli, I read this line that really struck me relative to everything we're trying to do with these conversations. And it said, we know that the climate crisis is an emergency, but many of us experience a disconnect between
what we know, it's serious, cue Morrissey's song, right? What we feel, an ambient sense of dread, and what we can do about it, we wish we knew. This really made me think, partly because I've been listening to this book by Avash Javanbhakt, the brain scientist, talking about how each of those questions is processed by a distinct part of our brain, some parts of which we share more with other mammals. So it really made me think, because we're obsessed with this idea here of the urgency of what we're facing, whether it's climate or another challenge, and the agency of creating experiments to do something about it, you really made me think, wait a minute, there are these multiple impulses at play. So can you talk to us a little bit about those and how they relate to the urgency and the agency?
Meghan Kallman (03:54.511)
Yeah, absolutely. That actually, you picked up one of the paragraphs in that book, in that introduction, that I actually really like for the same reason. Because I think when feelings get big, and for most people who are on the younger side, feelings about climate change are huge. You can't go through a day without being pelted by terrible news about all sorts of systems collapse, imminent systems collapse based on environmental collapse.
And that's a lot to take in at once. And so what we often will see in activists and non-activists alike, right, is this sort of like scrambled experience of like panic, panic which is not the place from which we either get our best agency or the most sort of effective strategy. Right? So in that book, we really make an argument for separating those things out, right? We all know the climate crisis is bad. We actually don't argue for.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (04:38.966)
Yeah.
Meghan Kallman (04:50.267)
spending a ton of time down rabbit holes, reading frightening climate news. Like we need people need to know the contours. We need to know what we're up against. But more information often does not lead to more agency. What often leads more agency sort of taking stock about of what your feelings are. And then also finding a place to plug in meaningfully at whatever sort of scale or environment or opportunity is a good fit for your skills.
And so we're certainly not advocating that people should stop feeling things about the climate crisis. That's not realistic. But what we are saying is that if we make space for our feelings, we then will often find that we also have more space for action. And we have more space for coming together to create meaningful connections with others who are also interested in action, you know, and seeking out the bigger levers that change our political and economic system in a way that creates a more sustainable future for everybody.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (05:50.606)
Mim, I would love to try to relate this to some of the research you do about distinct cultures that lead people to innovate or make change and how that relates to those around them. But before we do, can we zero in on this idea of panic that you mentioned, Meghan? I'll never forget, I grew up in an age of heightened fear of nuclear war, which maybe we're in that age again, we just don't think about it that much. And I'll never forget. I had a cassette tape with what back in the 19th century we called auto-reverse. One side of the cassette would play, it was very exciting, you had auto-reverse, and then you didn't have to get out and turn it over, it would go to the next side. It was a Beatles tape, probably some bootleg I had copied from someone. It turned over minutes after the first side had played, and it opened with the song Back in the USSR, which opens with this plane landing. I had the volume onAlejandro Juárez Crawford inappropriately loud. And I'll never forget in my room in upper Manhattan, right, what we used to call Manhattan Valley, hearing that plane landing and being convinced that the bombs were dropping, being convinced that the Luft balloons were coming and looking out my window to see the nuclear weapons, right? And the fear I felt in that moment was a very right now, right here fear. But what I wish we could get into is our brains are very bad at processing fears that aren't right now, right here. And yet that's exactly the space you're studying, isn't it, Meghan? Can you talk to us about what brings the climate crisis to us in the way my silly story about the tape brought nuclear disaster to me, and how does that relate to this question of agency in your experience and in your work?
Meghan Kallman (07:45.711)
Yes, absolutely. And I will say that I come at this from an organizing perspective, not a brain science perspective, but there's a ton of resonance between what you're describing and what we find. We started writing - we actually started the organizing project that eventually created or produced this book like 10 years ago. And what was happening at the time is that rafts and rafts of young people were thinking about, can I have a child? Should I have a child? How do I parent my kid? Should I have another kid? We were all at like 20s, early 30s. And this question of what the climate crisis, the rapidly accelerating climate crisis meant for family planning was really weighing down on us. But it was, at the time, caricatured and mocked as fringes by the mainstream press.
And since that time, research has demonstrated that these concerns transcend, class, they transcend race or they cross class and race. Everybody, if you love a kid, or if you love anybody of the next generation, you are worried about what that future entails. So I met my co-author actually at a social connection. We were like at a concert together that one of our friends was performing at. She kind of grabbed us both by the elbow and was like, you guys are climate people, you should talk. So we did.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (09:01.29)
Wait, so going to a concert is called a social connection now? I gotta get with this. So I'm gonna see you at a social connection. Go on.
Meghan Kallman (09:01.846)
Yeah, yeah, well, it wasn't an activist connection. It wasn't an activist connection. Neither of us set out that night to like change the course of our lives, but that's what happened. So I met Josie, and we started talking in this very sort of like intimate way about what the climate crisis means for our families, for the question of children, of how to, you know,
And it was very intimate, very quickly, like, you know, first three minutes, which is kind of kind of odd for someone that you don't know. But, you know, the next weekend, she got back on the bus. She was living in New York at the time, came back up to Providence. We sort of hammered out the framework for what became the organization Conceivable Future. And it's based on a really simple principle. We get people together in a room and we say, how is climate change affecting your vision of the future and your vision of your family? We ask an open ended question.
And boy, once we did that, the floodgates just like burst. And so we had a turnout that, you know, people had been fretting, panicking privately about this, but there was no like staying comfortable, functional shared space with which to talk about it or in which to talk about it. And so for the first couple of years,, that's basically all we did. We sort of loosely modeled ourselves on these consciousness raising house parties that have a very secular feminism, but the idea was always to make a series of open questions. Never ever scold or finger wag or tell people what they should or shouldn't do, just to get people in a room and say, so how does this feel for you? What does it make you think about? And so that was our organizing model for quite some time. But because we camped out in this intersection of climate and reproduction, we rapidly learned that it was just freighted with all of these histories about which at the time we were very uneducated and had to quickly get educated. The first was the population control movement, and I'm gonna talk for a long time about that. The very heavy, heavy legacies of racism and classism that intersect whenever people start treating parenthood as anything but a given.
And so we, again, we got like a very outsized, an outsized dose of press very early on because, you know, it was either titillating or scandalous or something like that. We were very sort of politically misunderstood, you know, there was all these sort of sensationalistic articles about like people are choosing not to have babies because of climate change, which is true for some people, but it's certainly not true for everybody in our groups and who came to our conversations. And so the...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (11:34.082)
Hmm.
Meghan Kallman (11:48.371)
process over the course of the last 10 years has been to really develop a framework about how about thinking about these things. And ultimately the conclusion that we come to, we call this the impossible question. Should I have a kid, more kids, fewer kids? There's no right answer to a question that is impossible. The only right answer is we got to make a world safer for everybody. You're not storing us on a test on this question or anything like that. Not at all. It's an impossible question. And I think that people's incredulity about, wait, you're not telling us what to do sort of dispeaks the really stunted place we've been in around not just climate, but around.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (12:14.19)
So you're not scoring us on a test on this question or anything like that.
Meghan Kallman (12:17.967)
Not at all. It's an impossible question. And I think that people's incredulity about, wait, you're not telling us what to do, sort of bespeaks the really sort of stunted place we've been in around not just climate, but around family and just like a lot of finger wagging for a lot of people. And we can, you know, again, we can get into why that is, but the, you know, sort of the thing about the model that really set us apart was like, we're not trying to tell anyone anyway. We're trying to make space for the full range of human experiences. And then see what that tells us about the lives that we're living, about the political and economic systems we're living in, and where we need to strengthen those so that whatever children exist in the world, have a better shot at. Yeah.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (13:03.741)
So as I'm listening to you talk, there's a therapeutic aspect that I'm hearing from just even having these discussions. Like when you talked about making space for people to have the feelings and then give them the space to process- Like you basically gave them a space to process all these unprocessed feelings about climate change to then think, okay, now how do we, how do we take action or make decisions? I mean, was that intentional? That sort of therapeutic piece?
Meghan Kallman (13:30.663)
Sort of. I don't think we were prepared for the range of experiences that people were going to bring or for how badly they needed space like this. Because again, there was no framework really in the climate movement that was constructed here. And people who had experiences within the climate movement were also carrying these weird legacies of population control. And I want to take a kind of quick detour about what's wrong with that thinking, because I really think it's worth saying out loud. For a long time, institutions of international development embraced this idea that somehow the poor cause their own poverty by having too many babies. We could trace the roots back a very long time. There's a couple of very serious flaws in this argument, but I want to say that the argument was promulgated and these ideas were propagated by very powerful institutions for a very long time period of time, including all of the institutions of international development. But there's a few things that are wrong with it. One is that population and consumption are not the same thing. And so if everyone in the world consumed the way middle class Americans consumed, we would need another 4.5 to 6 Earth's worth of resources to make that happen. And if everyone in the world consumed the way the top 20,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (14:28.226)
Mm.
Meghan Kallman (14:53.591)
billionaires in the world's consumed, you need another 782, I think, Earth's worth of stuff. The question of population and as it relates to consumption, population is correlated with climate harm only to the extent that it's also based on consumption. My point is that we ought to be looking at the institutions that foster and foment overconsumption and all the waste that's built into the economic system. So that's one. Two.
The question of population and as it relates to consumption, population is correlated with climate harm only to the extent that it's also based on consumption. My point is that we ought to be looking at the institutions that foster overconsumption and all the waste that's built into the economic system. So that's one. Two, the legacies of sexism, racism, classes, and those intersecting legacies within the population movement should make any one of us suspect about embracing any of those ideas or suspicious about embracing any of those ideas. As recently as 2017, a judge in California was offering to shave time off of people's sentences, prison sentences for undergoing voluntary sterilizations. There are all sorts of problems with how this idea has been implemented.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (15:42.346)
Oh my goodness.
Meghan Kallman (15:50.359)
And third, arguments about population just point the finger at the wrong place, right? When we were doing a book talk in New York a couple of weeks ago, there was some guy, he raised his hand, and he was like, well, but won't more population make bigger cities and bigger cities are climate damaging? And I had the opportunity to trot out an example from my home state of Rhode Island, which is the most beloved place to me. And also, we have a real problem with parking lots. We have, I don't know. If not most per capita, but like some of the highest percent.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (16:19.32)
This is like a no offense, but it's beloved, but our parking lots. Go ahead.
Meghan Kallman (16:23.811)
Our parking lots are terrible, right? And the point is we have too many parking lots. The city is not zoned to encourage density. So again, we could fit plenty more comfortable, safe, affordable, green, spacious housing if we chose to prioritize transit systems that minimize parking lots, right? So it's not, again, it's not that population, Rhode Island's population has actually been shrinking. We were worried that we were going to lose a congressional representative because our population was getting smaller. So again, the question is why is it so easy to try to force mostly women, but women and birthing people, to have more or fewer babies in service of some crazy ideology than it is to look at the systems from parking and zoning to banking that make the world so unsafe and that they give this massive amount of waste. So that was my population detour.
Because again, because...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (17:14.666)
Well, that detour gives us a very clear answer, which allows us to just close the conversation here because we've solved all the problems, which is we need to find 782 Earths in the next 18 months, I think, so per quarter. No, I'm just kidding. So even if we don't, yeah, we're good, right? Thank you. This is Megan Kallman, author of Conceivable Future. So seriously, I wanted to... You articulated this amazing question when you were first talking about these gatherings that you convened: How is climate change affecting your vision of the future and your vision of your family? did I get that right ?
Meghan Kallman (17:50.349)
I mean, sometimes you are affecting your reproductive life, it's the same idea. Right, right. What strikes me about that question is really two things. One, you're bringing this abstraction of climate change, right, which isn't an abstraction if you're facing wildfire or, you know, the rivers are rising and you're having to migrate. But anyway, you're bringing this generic idea, climate change, right? Climate change has no scene, it has no plot, it's just words, into the future and my family.
And that to me is something worth stopping and thinking about for a few minutes. Because if we go back to urgency and agency, I think, and Mim's point about that being an experience that first just deals with how things are affecting me, maybe we're drawing a line that I don't often hear drawn between these feelings of malaise, right? Back to those fear responses. Am I freezing? Am I fawning? Am I fight or flight? To think, well, how are we gonna decide on our own terms how to respond to this down to, well, let's get rid of some parking lots and build housing, right?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (19:21.133)
So you're really making us think, but the other thing that you've done is you mentioned that when you first did that, the story was sensational. And so I'm really interested in your experience of narrative shifting, right? How we can reframe some of these narratives to kind of put power back into those hands to be asking, what if instead, we respond to this story this way?
Meghan Kallman (19:42.695)
Yeah, well, what if instead, our what if instead on this one was, what if instead we stopped scolding people, guilting people, nudging them, shaming them for their feelings of fear around a very real threat, and instead we created some systems of solidarity that didn't focus on your reproductive life as the site of your political action, right? That didn't focus on the number of children or the fact that their diapers would circle the earth by the time they were potty trained. And instead we focused on how do we make the systems better, more inclusive, fairer, more just for any kid that arrives. So that was our, that was, yeah. None.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (20:20.426)
Which is, sorry, Meghan, go ahead. I just, I have a bad habit of talking with you, Native New Yorker, right? In the third sector, you talk about paternalistic forms of organizing, right, as opposed to a clientele and activist and others, right? So it's interesting, because as you spoke, I was like, oh, she's trying to switch us from these paternalistic models to others, but please continue.
Meghan Kallman (20:47.195)
Yeah, and we're trying to really, the narrative shift has taken a very, very long time. I mean, we were on the fringe for quite a while. And there's a chapter in the book that has kind of like a trajectory of how this movement has, how we've gained some vocabulary. We owe a great debt, we are deeply indebted to Reproductive Justice Movement for teaching us some ideas that we use within climate organizing. And I hasten to note here that we're not reproductive justice advocates.
And overall, it was a lot of trial and error and getting mocked online. We declined to go on Tucker Carlson tonight, not once, but twice,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (21:39.662)
Oh my God. Smart, smart move. But I think as- And yet you chose to talk to us. And yet you chose to talk to us. I mean, Mim Plavin-Masterman, watch out. Just saying, the gotcha questions are coming, Meghan .
Meghan Kallman (21:50.185)
The fact that the climate crisis continues to be unmitigated is sort of good news for the mainstreaming of this conversation, but that's not actually good news overall, right? We would rather that we mitigate the climate crisis and make this not a thing that people have to grapple with anymore. That's obviously not the case. And so, you know, I think that sort of progression of the news and coupled with all sorts of other things that are going on, right? The pandemic, the war in Gaza, all sorts of, you know,lack of financial security, inflation. You know, these climate arrives on a landscape that is already pretty troubled for young people. You know, looking ahead at like, you know, can I buy a house? The answer for most people is no. You know, what are the other sort of things that are bearing down on my experience of adulthood and my experience of raising a family, et cetera? And so, again, like our what if was, what if we stop blaming ourselves and blaming each other? And what if we focus on, you know, taking ownership for the agency and the feelings that we have and figure out how to get involved? There's a researcher named Erica Chenoweth, she’s at Harvard. She's a political scientist. And she has found that it takes only 3.5% of a population. And she has found that across 60 countries in a span of 200 years, that it takes only 3.5% of a population to be engaged in a sustained way to change institutions. That's actually not a super daunting number when you put it like that.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (23:25.318)
Let's draw a line between that, can we do, do you mind if I interject, between that 3.5% and what you described as a landscape that's very troubled for the young, right? Speaking of narratives, we often hear this narrative, even though the majorities of young people statistically see climate as the greatest threat, we often hear this narrative of young people as being unwilling to do anything, right? They're entitled, they just want everything to come to them. Especially among Gen Xers and older, you hear this narrative. And so I'm interested as you get into that three and a half percent, if I got the number right, and that troubled landscape at what gets folks over the hump as you're doing this work from I'm panicking to wait a minute there are ways for me to experiment, to organize, to think about what I can do.
Meghan Kallman (24:17.487)
Yeah, I think, you know, building up solidarity between different groups of people, particularly different ages of people is really important, right? Like, there, we have a whole chapter in the book that talks about families, and we interview a number of elder climate activists, as well as younger climate activists. And we talked to a couple of social psychologists about how you get through some of those, like, generational differences of experience. Because it isn't just understanding, it's experience, right? Where people have different experiences of the world and come of age at different times. And so the moral of the story and all of that is you have to listen to other people's reality and not dismiss it because it's not yours. And figure out where you can get together and put your shoulder behind this collective project of making, again, of making the world's institutions safer for everybody.
Meghan Kallman (24:43.911)
You know, and I think as a sociologist, I could go on and on about like, the institutional divestment from things like civics education, et cetera. But you also, when we only measure civics education, and don't get me wrong, I am 100% for civics education all the time. I'm a politician and I don't really believe that that's an important thing. But there are lots and lots of different ways to get a political education, right? I'm really encouraged actually by like,this spate of labor organizing among young people and in industries where you haven't seen it. So a generation and a half ago, that's where many people got their political education because we were much more highly unionized as a society. So how do we teach ourselves and each other the skills that are required to do some of this organizing? And there is richness of experience across generational lines. The only thing we need to access that is the ability to talk to each other. And sometimes that's a hang up because there are some generational resentments that exist in both directions. But again, we are all members of families in one way or another. We all know people older or younger than us. And those are skills that can be built.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (26:20.373)
So I want to pick up on, well, actually there's many threads that you said that I want to pick up on. So one is an observation and then two is sort of a two-part question. So the first observation is there's a lot of empathy that runs through your work for people. People in impossible situations are facing what feel like impossible challenges, sort of giving them that space to process. So there's something very inclusive about that approach to it in the first place. So like, we're not going to scold you and tell you what to do. We're just going to listen to you and express, like help you feel whatever you feel.
But then the second thing is, how does that inform your work as a politician? Because I would have to think that it does. If it's informing your work here and organizing, like what are some, I'm going to ask you to brag a little bit about your accomplishments. Like what are some things that you've really pushed for and that you've accomplished as a state senator in Rhode Island that are kind of building on this sort of background and training and things like that?
Meghan Kallman (27:13.811)
That's a good and challenging question. Well, I often feel like teaching and being a politician are, in some days I'm like, this is the same skillset, and some days I'm like, this is completely opposite skillsets.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (27:27.523)
Wait, break that down for us, will you? When is it the same? When is it different?
Meghan Kallman (27:33.195)
Some days, you know, so I think the idea of in a classroom, as you all as professors know this, right, is that when someone comes with an idea and the idea isn't fully articulated or they haven't gotten there yet, there's a way to ask them a few questions to get them to sort of circle around and eventually hopefully land on what it is that they're going for and to sort of create space for them to step into the strength of their own idea. That is a skill that that certainly transfers to working with constituents and working with community groups, for sure. And so the idea to the ability to play a long game, think of an academic semester and like a legislative session actually kind of in similar terms, right? Like what's the stage of where are we right now? How much, and I do think that learning is a really important thing in a part-time legislature like ours, not everybody is gonna be fluent on all the issues that they have to legislate on, right? So there's a lot of conversations that happen amongst all of us, myself obviously included about like what it is, you know, like getting into the weeds or the details about the things that we work on. The ways that they're different sometimes, you know, I think organizing is, organizing in the community and organizing politically are sometimes very different. You know, I, politically, we build coalitions, that's what we have to do to get bills passed, right? I have somebody who's a member of the opposite party, he sits behind me, we're buddies, you know? And we disagree vehemently on a series of issues that are very close to my heart. And there's a series of issues on which we do not disagree and we support each other's bills and each other's work, right? And so those differences are recognized, we acknowledge them, nobody's trying to pretend them away, but we are also finding the common ground that enables us to put forward some other things. You know, and I don't know that like a Republican is often associated with a few supports in my bill, including for instance a death of dignity bill, which is not a thing that I had expected from the people. So we need to highlight this because this is the only instance in America that we have been looking for.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (29:42.21)
So we need to highlight this because this is the only instance in America in 2024. Forget across the aisle. She's got someone from the other team sitting behind her, kind of kicking the desk, but also working together on bills. Just everyone. This could happen, not just for Meghan and her colleague. But as you go on, Meghan, you said a phrase I want to highlight, which was create space to step into the strength of their own idea. AndI'm wondering as you continue, if you could even tell us a story or two. There's this big concept you've talked about when you said the only thing we need is the ability to talk to each other. But I'm wondering if you just added a second piece. Maybe first we need the ability to talk to each other, which is important, but then we need to create that space to step into the strength of our ideas or even test them and find out they're not strong. Can you get into that a little bit? You're obviously an experimenter.
Talk to us about a story or two, and it could be a student, it could be a constituent of people who are stepping into that space, and what makes that more possible or less?
Meghan Kallman (30:50.427)
Yeah, I think what makes it most possible is meeting each other with curiosity, right? Even if my practice for myself is when someone says something that like appalls me to the core, that my first question is always something like, tell me more about that. I want to get them to tell me a little bit more about where they came from. And sometimes that means that they sometimes that means that they clarify and I'm like, oh, yeah, that really does appall me to the core. And sometimes that means that like, oh, I actually meant this other thing. I'm sort of working my way through.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (31:24.886)
Huh, huh, that's great. Caitlin Flanagan has this thing, what's the best argument for the other side, right? That when you're making your point emphatically, you should always ask that question. I think she got it from her father. So talk to us about this meeting each other with curiosity. I know I'm kind of interrupting the flow, but I'm kind of excited about where you're going.
Meghan Kallman (31:44.543)
Right. So I had an interaction with a gal who works in the service industry in my district the other day. And she knows that I'm in the legislature. She's a couple of years younger than me, probably. And we have the presidential primary is open, early voting is open, all of that kind of stuff. And we were just chitchatting. And I said, so, you know, we now have early voting across the state. Like, you can go do that. And she goes, well, I don't really vote. I prefer to make my change through other mechanisms. And as a politician and as a sociologist, I'm like, oh my god! But that's the wrong answer. That's totally the wrong answer. There is nothing that I will learn or that she will learn if my first reaction is, oh my god! But that's the wrong answer. That's totally the wrong answer. There is nothing that I will learn or that she will learn if my first reaction is, oh my god. Because then I should move on to further conversation.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (32:33.167)
This is the thing I'm gonna remember most from this conversation. I will learn nothing if my first reaction is, oh my God! It's brilliant.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (32:33.635)
This is the thing I'm going to remember most from this conversation. I will learn nothing if my first reaction is, oh my God! Can you tell that to my mother, please? Okay.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (32:33.167)We're actually dialing her in, Mim, right now.
Meghan Kallman (32:41.336)
Well, I mean, I think, yeah. And so. And so I said, tell me more about that. And I said, what kinds of things do you get up to in the community? And she told me about a bunch of things that she had done in her early 20s. And then she goes, yeah, I guess I'm not really doing that much of it, much of that anymore. And then, so she had this realization of like, oh, I'm not as involved as, like, the story I was telling myself about what I'm doing is a little bit inconsistent with what I'm actually doing. She did not commit to vote. She did ask me the details about how you go into vote early. But it was one of those things where she was just, where she was like, look, you know, I've voted, but I kind of don't get it. You're the only politician I've ever met. You're the only conversation that I've ever had with someone who makes decisions on my behalf. And I was sort of pushing this bill, which is actually another bipartisan bill that my Republican friends signed on to. It's a public option retirement program for people who are. That's how this whole thing started, right? For people who are in service jobs who do not have retirement benefits through their work, which is 43% of Rhode Island's workforce, it's a huge percentage. And so what the bill would do is create like a state run, like IRA basically, where you get automatic paycheck deductions, and the state just manages it. So that nobody puts any money in. This is just a thing that gets us over the financial literacy confidence for the first time we've ever seen.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (33:53.249)
Mm, mm.
Meghan Kallman (34:01.795)
So that's what I was doing. I was testing the waters with her on that, and she was interested in it. And then we got into the thing about how I don't vote. And then we got into this other conversation about, huh, what was my organizing background? She was an artist, I think still is an artist. And so we got there. But again,, if my first response is like, how could you not vote? Then there's nothing that I've come to understand about her experience that helps me communicate with her better, either about this bill in particular or about her experience as a member of my community in general. And I think that's really hard sometimes because sometimes, too, and this is maybe where the activism and the politics differ and also where the teaching differs, is that people will say some really offensive stuff, some things that besmirch core portions of my identity, right? I've had experiences on the doors where people make really anti-Semitic remarks, either not knowing or not caring that I'm Jewish. They will say all kinds, I mean, there's all sorts of stuff. It's very rattling. And there's some skills that you build around grace under pressure. I would argue that some of those skills are quite similar to what you do in the classroom. And that's also where the challenge lies is that in those moments of whether they're microaggressions or mesoaggressions or just aggressions,I did actually have someone threatened to put one of my door knockers in a body bag.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (35:37.859)
Wait, wait, wait. Say the last thing you just said to that again. Say that again.We're in the era of meso-aggressions, Meghan. Go on.
Meghan Kallman (35:43.843)
I was door knocking with a volunteer of mine who was working on the campaign, and he is a Mexican kid. He's not a kid anymore, but he was at the time of this experience. And get off my lawn or I'll put the two of you in body bags was I think the quote. So I would say that elevates to the level of macroaggression. But my point is that there are, when people come to the legislature,they often do so from a place of intimidation. Again, when we don't have civics building classes or skills or whatever, people show up, they're intimidated. We do not do a good job teaching folks how to engage with these spaces. And so often they come in nervous and angry and often they're there because they have tried a lot of other avenues to solve whatever problem it is. And then this is sort of the last resort. I will give one alternative example, which I think is a great one, which is a couple of years ago, I think it was actually my first year in the legislature. A group of Girl Scouts, the troop leader was working with their Girl Scouts saying like, what, what bill do you want to support this year? So they went through the whole thing of like looking what on the environment committee was being heard and they decided they wanted to support a balloon ban, which is just like the, a ban on the release of helium balloons. Cause you know, they choke fishes. It's not a great practice. But like 15, 9 to 11 year olds showed up at this hearing and they had been practicing with their troop leaders on giving testimony and blah, blah. And we passed the bill that year. And I actually think it's a no small part due to the fact that it's pretty hard to look a group of nine to 11 year olds in the face and be like, no. But I think what that also does is that teaches them that like they're powerful.. And so these are skill building processes that again we're sort of accommodating a lack of those in our educational systems over the long term. But Rhode Island's a little state, right? Like most people in the state can get to the statehouse within an hour, like I could walk there if I wanted to. And so relative to some other places, like for instance, Albany, it's quite accessible to the majority of our community. And I think that's a really beautiful benefit. And so we're, you know, that's a thing I think about a lot. But anyway, all this to say that, you know, the teacherly skills, the sort of hard-nosed negotiating skills, they come up at different times. But I do think that we need to feel good about this, like being curious about what people are bringing to the table is really important.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (38:24.426)
You're bringing me back to these parts of our brain when you contrast. I mean, clearly, I'll put the two of you in body bags is not meeting each other with curiosity. I think we can agree on that, right? That's the fight response, which is a very fear-based response, right? And it's often, if I know the difference between a poisonous snake and a non-poisonous snake, then my brain, my hippocampus can say, it's like if I see a lion in a zoo versus a lion running towards me, I'll interpret that amygdala threat differently. And what you're describing are people who can't be curious because of the amount of fear, but you then use this phrase, looking at a group of 9 or 11 year olds in the face and to be like, no, which really strikes me because that's what we're doing collectively, right? All over the planet, there are people, whether it's that you're like, yeah, I'll deal with converting over to net zero in a few years, right, at your company and community. You are looking nine to 11 year olds in the faceand being like no right you are screaming so it's very interesting where you kind of bring the availability heuristic to bear there where you're now looking them in the face and then it's much harder, right? So what you're making me think about is the differences between looking you and your Chicano neighbor in the face and threatening to kill you, right? Versus having a conversation in which we're curious about your opinion versus whether we even care about you when you're young and you have no influence yet. So you're truly laying these alternatives out . And if I could just ask one more piece here as I try to reflect on what you've painted, there's an old song by They Might Be Giants, and there's this line, I feel like a hypocrite talking to you and your racist friend, right? And I feel as if you're giving us a little bit of a corrective against, like obviously you can feel like a hypocrite if you say nothing, right? But you're saying, no, wait a minute,, we got to talk to you and your racist friend. We have to have that conversation. And that's an idea that I think is different from the purity-based approaches to anti-racism that we often hear about.
Meghan Kallman (40:59.011)
100%. And I think there's two pieces to that. I do not think that purity politics just sort of as a heuristic get us very far. But I do recognize that people who are on the receiving end of the worst bits of it ought to maybe be spared by their compatriots the ugliest parts of that work. So if somebody is making utterly offensive remarks about some piece of my identity, maybe that's a part for my buddy to go talk to them.
Meghan Kallman (41:28.479)
And if somebody is making offensive remarks about some piece of my colleague's identity, then maybe that's on me. So I think the question is switching off, right? Not making the person who is on the receiving end of the racist or the sexist or the anti-Semitic or whatever remark, that's not their job, that's somebody else's job. But I fully agree with this idea that there has to be an off-ramp, right? Like people are not gonna change their minds if they don't have contact with different ideas. That's not, it's not a realistic option. And this is where I'll say that, you know, I think the discipline of sociology has some growing to do a little bit because of the way that we determine, right, like good and evil. Somebody, here's another example. I got an email from somebody the other day who was arguing that we needed structural change, which is not an assessment that I disagree with, but also then in the same breath, dismissed all state-level legislative policy is not structural. And I was like, my friend, now where do we think structural change comes from? Structural change is executed in a series of interlocking steps, or it comes about as a byproduct or an artifact of war or natural disaster, which is not a thing that I wish on anybody. So there is a role for grunt work, there's a role for the very unsexy grunt work, and there's a role for really purposefully trading off
who is doing what grunt work so that we protect the most vulnerable pieces of each other. But I absolutely disagree with this idea that somebody is, you know, because somebody says something really problematic that we should never spend any time on them. They're gonna stay in that place unless we figure out how to build some bridges, right? Like my Republican colleague, he and I are never gonna agree about abortion, but we're gonna agree about a couple of other things that are really important to the state, including he actually voted for an access to contraceptive pill that I put through last year. Me not talking to him because he and I disagree on a thing that is core to my political values gets me and him and neither of our constituents anywhere, right? And I'm not making, I'm not mincing my words about how I feel about the right to access contraceptives and abortion health care, right? But it is my job to build coalitions with people who will not agree with me 100% of the time all the time.
That makes me a good politician. And that's not everybody's cup of tea, right? Like that's hard work. And again, people say things all the time that I just like kind of cut me to the quick. And again, right? Like we need to stick up for each other so that it's not always the person who is, who's sort of most offended or most hurt by something that's going on. But absolutely, we have to talk to each other's racist, sexist, anti-Semitic,otherwise bigoted friends all the time. That's how we build a culture of better understanding, of more justice. And we don't do that by not talking.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (44:28.034)
You know, Mim, this makes me think of our conversation with Nico de Klerk, the founder of the Be a Nelson movement in South Africa, who talked about your worldview enriching my worldview and liberating my mindset. He described an explosion of positive energy, right? And this conversation makes me think, during that conversation, Mim and I were like, wow, we need to hear this in the US. It makes me think that you're actually going into a very similar place. Now, I know you had, I think MIm , 90 questions. So I'm going to use this beautiful mute function because I keep getting excited about what Megan said.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (45:18.945)
Yeah. I mean, okay, so I have, again, observation leading up to a question. I can't help it. That's just how my brain works.
When you talked about how people feel intimidated and scared and angry coming to interact with the institution of the legislature, I can't help but think that that's on purpose, that the legislature is not designed for people like them. Like many institutions, it's designed for like middle class and upper middle class people, like the institution of education. And how you access the institutions, sort of the comfort with accessing and advocating, is a relatively middle class and upper middle class cultural value and norm.
So there's a way in which like you're really trying to cross these class and cultural boundaries in getting people to come and talk to you and come and say, no, we're not just a fortress, right? There are doorways, you can come and talk to us. Even though I think there is a message they're receiving that's a real message of like, you're not welcome here. Right? So that's just sort of a general observation. And then the second observation to go back to something you said about the conceivable future is the landscape for reproductive rights has changed dramatically. As you've been doing this work, in ways that I think sharpen the reproductive consequences of decisions for people, independent of all the climate change amplification. There's the Dobbs decision, and there's the case in front of the Supreme Court today with Mifepristone and will it be available, and the Comstock Act and all that kind of stuff. So there are ways in which decisions that are made in a relatively faraway place are bringing the pressures even more into sharp relief, I think.
And I guess that's sort of where my question is going, is like, how has that transformation of the political landscape changed the work that you guys are doing around this intersection of reproductive rights and climate change?
Meghan Kallman (47:02.319)
Yeah, absolutely. So first a comment about the legislature. Yeah, I mean, our legislature meets Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday starts around two in the afternoon and goes till six, seven, eight, nine, ten, sort of depending on the day. Right. That is a schedule that benefits disproportionately certain groups of people, right. People who have either professional jobs or lawyers, right, because they were the people who could govern their own schedule. For people who are caregiving or parenting, it's very challenging to make that schedule work when you've got, you know, like when you're at work at dinnertime and bedtime. And so we have had, right, the system filters for people who can meet that. And those of us who have, you know, ofor instance, I have a flexible day job, right? And they've been relatively supportive of this, a friend of mine, you know, parents living close to help with the kids, et cetera. So again, the question is around what identities or backgrounds do these structures privilege? And so yeah, so often what we try to do is like, you know, this is your first time in the state house. I had a constituent who came the first time last week and I put her in with a buddy so she didn't have to do it by herself, right? Like these things like this where we can sort of teach each other, because yes, they are imposing and also like many imposing things when we figure out how they work, they become less imposing. So there is an education process. I would just say that there's some interesting data emerging that full-time legislatures are more representative of the community, and they also tend to engender more community participation for a series of reasons. We can get into that at a later point. But to Mim's second question about the legal landscape, so the week that the Dobbs decision came down, two other things happened, which is that the Supreme Court also gutted the EPA's ability to enforce environmental rules and we got a book contract and it all happened within like two days. And so all of a sudden the book that we were writing was really different than the organizing that we've been doing. And what that means is that the idea of choice is legally dead, right? There are people in privileged positions, birthing people in relatively privileged positions who can more or less determine whether they want to carry a pregnancy to term or if they want to sort of try to get pregnant.
Meghan Kallman (49:25.691)
But with the contamination that exists, PFAS, so having this increasing evidence that an endocrine disruption and this and that, right? None of us are making reproductive, quote unquote, choices freely in the face of so much harm. Some of that harm has to do with contaminants. Other has to do with heat. Some of it has to do with the fact that you can or can't access contraception. Some of it has to do with food insecurity, housing insecurity, right? So we had this idea of choice Roe v Wade protected and it was very unevenly distributed. And now it's even more unevenly distributed still. Like Rhode Island codified Roe v Wade a couple of years ago because we saw this coming. But there's, and you know, Kansas just did this by popular referendum. There's, there are places that do that. But now there are funds, you know, being created for people to travel from parts of the country where they cannot access an abortion to other places in the country where abortion is legal and safe and accessible, right? And so it's creating this whole different set of reactions. And, you know, that was a tremendous, it was a tremendous blow. Like the blow, both the EPA blow and the Dobbs decision are tremendous blows. We've got, you know, more up, more news that we can await in the next day or so. But I think too, like it has made some of these conversations very,very practical.
Meghan Kallman (50:52.167)
The other time that I was thinking about that is reproductive rights being under attack, particularly in Texas right around the time we were experiencing a Zika surge. Zika among other things causes very, very severe birth defects. People were being forced to carry pregnancies to term, pregnancies that, or fetuses that didn't have a chance of surviving or a very low chance of survival, and leaving people in a real bind, right? And so this stuff, as climate change intensifies, all of these other effects are also intensifying, including healthcare resources that get strained in emergencies. So things like disasters, floods, et cetera. There's considerable evidence that when people are displaced, sexual assault increases, menstruating people have a much harder time taking care of their physical health. There's particular danger to birthing and breastfeeding parents.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (51:31.564)
Mm-hmm.
Meghan Kallman (51:47.477)
No, so the whole thing gets amplified. And we don't have to look far to see climate expressing itself in various different ways. It expresses itself in increased asthma rates, and in heat waves, and in water crises, and in PFAS, and in whatever else. I have a bill to comprehensive PFAS ban, which is aimed at getting PFAS, which are these like they're called forever chemicals, out of our water.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (51:48.594)
Yeah.
Meghan Kallman (52:16.211)
And I had a neighbor come testify in support of the bill last week, last Wednesday, a week ago. In fact, he's a rabbi. But he told this story of infertility that he and his wife had experienced. And they had seen a number of fertility doctors and all the doctors said, well, we can't formally say this because like the research is not like totally substantiated yet. But it's PFAS. Get PFAS out of your home. And so they went on this big purge. And they were wealthy enough to be able to do that, right? Throw away their mattresses, change their cookware, et cetera. And they have two children now. And he was quite careful to say, and all the doctors were also careful to say, like, this science is not established, but everybody knows that it's going in that direction. And so here's something that you can do. And here's the thing that you should change. But it should not be on an individual person to clean everything out of their house in order to be able to, you know, do well. Because they can conceive and carry a pregnancy, we should be able to make that true for everybody else who's living in this state.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (53:14.058)
Right, right. We don't have to just be on the blogs about how you can find expensive products. You know, which year did Patagonia take the PFAS out of its rain jackets or something like that. But just in our last couple of minutes, Mim, you make this point that, Meghan, you've really brought us to in an interesting way when you say climate change is a public health crisis. And I think in many ways that takes us full circle where climate change isn't just this sort of abstract thing happening to the earth as we might have described it as in the IPCC report in 1980 or something like that. It's in all the ways you're describing it's a public health crisis. I wondered if we could ask just one question though about the kinds of conversations that you're describing and helping people have versus the way technology has been used so often, especially amongst young people, to separate us, to make us more angry, to amplify your body bag neighbor and what he has to say. Are there ways you're using technology, or seeing it used in your work on reproduction or in your work as a congressperson to create these conversations and to stake out that space where people can step into the strength of their own ideas.
Meghan Kallman (54:41.211)
Yeah, this is actually a thing that I'm really working through for myself. I don't have nearly as much sort of like pithy wisdom on this, but I will just offer a few things. Technology is a fact of life, right? So wringing our hands about, oh, and this and that, like, that's not relevant because it's here and it's how people communicate. There has been some interesting data emerging on technology and its potential to do a couple of things. So one is like the increased micro. But there are really socially beneficial and socially consequential ways to work with technology. Obviously, as a public official, I had to get like fluent on Instagram because, it's not a thing that I love. But it is a thing that my constituents need and my job is to serve my constituents. And if some of them like are most apt to keep up with state-level political news through my Instagram feed and that of a couple of my colleagues, then I should give them that option, right? And so this is a thing that I use and take seriously. That said, I think it's really interesting and empowering, particularly sort of post-pandemic, to think about what sorts of connections either outside or sort of appended to technology really help people feel empowered. Both of you probably know this, but there's some interesting data on hybrid classes, where it's not some class, some students are online and some are in person. It's that the whole group is in person for a little while and then it's online and that you get a lot of the benefits of in-person and remote learning when you are able to blend them in that way. So I think there is, you know, there's a lot for us to explore. Again, I think it's a dead end to start by saying, technology is terrible and kids these days on their phone, not useful.It's not a little bit of curiosity, not relevant. Because it's here, right?I think the better questions are, what does technology really help us do? What does it help different groups of people do? And are there places in which it's hurting us? And if so, how can we mitigate that hurt? I think those are more useful ways of thinking about it, both politically and intellectually.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (56:34.671)
Kids these days. What does this technology really help us do? What does it help different types of people do? And are there places in which it's hurting us? And if so, how can we mitigate that hurt? I think those are more useful ways of thinking about it, both politically and intellectually. This isn't exactly the product placement we were going for where these, the I'm Meghan Kallman and I love Instagram. Nevertheless, technology doesn't just have to be horrible. You know, we might talk to the industry people about that, but seriously, we're so grateful to you.
Meghan Kallman (57:12.607)
Well, and I would also add though that podcasts are a great example. Podcasts are things that I listen to with some regularity, but I'm not like the person who has a podcast going all the time. I have a very close friend who is, she's a PhD botanist, she's brilliant, but she doesn't love to read. And her main focus, her main sort of mechanism of learning over the last six, eight years has been podcasts. And I think that's true for a lot of people, is that has opened up learning in a way that is just extraordinary that just didn't exist 10 years ago, right? And so when we wring our hands about everybody's texting, yeah, but everyone's also learning a ton of stuff because we have these other mediums through which to learn. And so how do we, again, how do we sort of assess what it's doing for us without this sort of sensationalism on either end and assess also what it's not doing for us? Like we can be clear-headed about that.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (58:06.865)
I love that closing point about how we can't just think of one thing, those messages back and forth in some complaining place.
Listening to Podcasts opens things up for our listeners, speaking of which, Meghan Kallman, we're so grateful to you for producing this conversation for our listeners everywhere. Thank you so much for making time for this and for really stimulating our thinking here on What If Instead.
Meghan Kallman (58:35.975)
I'm so grateful for the opportunity. Thank you both.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (58:39.081)
Wonderful. Thank you for joining us and it's great to see you.