Transcript

SARITA GUPTA: Hi! I’m Sarita Gupta. Thanks for joining us for the latest conversation in our “On What Matters” series. I’m the vice president of U.S. programs at the Ford Foundation. I’m a brown-skinned, South Asian woman with salt-and-pepper hair. Today, I’ll be speaking with Jamila Hodge about promoting a trauma-informed public health response to violence. Welcome, Jami.

JAMILA HODGE: Thank you, Sarita. I’m so excited to be here. As you said, I’m Jami Hodge, and I’m the CEO at Equal Justice USA. And I’m a Black woman with loc’d hair, and I’m wearing glasses.

SARITA GUPTA: It’s wonderful to have you here. Let’s learn a bit about your work, Jami. Why has the current criminal justice response to violence been ineffective? How does EJUSA address those gaps in its work by using a public health response to violence?

JAMILA HODGE: So Sarita, I answer that question through the lens of someone who has spent 12 years working as a prosecutor. So not just having a seat up close to our criminal legal system, but someone who’s spent a lot of time as an active participant in it. And when we think about our criminal legal system, there are essentially three questions it’s going to answer. The first is, “What crime was committed?” The second is, “Who committed it?” And then the third is, “How do we punish them for it?” And so with that being the focus—and that’s really from everywhere, from policing, through prosecutors, through our court system—what those questions don’t center are the folks who’ve been harmed: victims and survivors. And those questions don’t focus on what actually drives violence. It’s very much focused on, “What do we do after the fact? Who do we track down? Who did it? How do we figure out what crime this is? And then how do we punish for it?” So the work that we do at EJUSA, that I feel so privileged to be a part of, is really recognizing that for us to truly address violence, we have to center the folks who’ve been most impacted, and that’s victims and survivors. And for us, that’s work that we started early in our history as an organization. We began as a death penalty abolition organization, working to end the death penalty. We’ve been part of the last 11 states to end it. But the way we helped—beginning, you know, more than 20 years ago, to help shift public opinion—was by organizing with Black and Brown murder victim family members. So elevating the voices of victims and survivors, victims’ families, survivors families, who had been marginalized in the process. And that’s very much how we do our work today around building community safety. It’s really with, by organizing with, partnering with those who’ve been most impacted so that we’re asking different questions and answering different questions than those the system attempts to answer. We also do our work through a public health lens, through our restorative justice work. And so, that’s the work that really centers the victim in an incident, and it really is a process of bringing them—first separately, the victim, and then the person who caused harm, separately—to really begin to assess what needs there are, for both the victim and for the person who caused harm. And then there’s work that then comes together in a community conference where they’re able to meet together. They come up with a plan, and so what we find is restorative justice allows a pathway to healing versus a pathway to punishment. So those are just a few examples of the way we do our work through a public health approach.

SARITA GUPTA: That is incredible work that you described. So can we just take a moment, and can you define for us what restorative justice means?

JAMILA HODGE: Restorative justice is an alternative, in most places, to pursuing a case through the criminal legal system. So I’ll just use our work for an example, at the Restorative Justice Project that we house, we work specifically with youth and young adults. And so what happens is, at the point that a case is brought to a prosecutor, and again, where we’re really trying to focus on cases where there’s a victim, someone who has been harmed. We’re talking about more serious cases, and this is done with the victim’s agreement, right? That instead of just moving the case forward to either a trial, or a plea, and then moving towards sentencing, that there’s this opportunity to have a different path. And that different path really allows, first of all, the victim to be centered in terms of working with a community-based organization to figure out what they need. And often what we find is when someone has experienced violence, there’s a lot that’s needed just to create a sense of safety again. There are often a lot of questions about, “Why did this happen? Why me?” That go unanswered in a criminal legal process, that there’s an opportunity to actually have those questions raised and answered in a restorative process. But in addition to working with the victim, there is work that’s done with the person who caused harm. And again, it’s really understanding that we’re not going to just say this is a bad person that we’re just going to put away. We’re going to actually ask some questions through a trauma-informed lens, learn about their story, and often that’s how we get at those root causes. “What drove this? What caused you to do it? How do we set you up so that you don’t do it again? How do we help you do the internal work that you need to do and support you in that?” And then they come together for a conference, where there’s an actual meeting, where those questions and a dialogue can be had, and that conference leads to an agreement. So, one of the things that the system promises, right, is there’s accountability. This is how we get justice, and, you know, accountability for the victim. But that accountability doesn’t, in the system, actually always require acknowledgment by the person. You can be sentenced, and go to prison, and never acknowledge what you did. And it also doesn’t often require repair. And that’s the difference in a restorative process. It’s accountability that repairs. And that agreement is, “How do you, to the very best of your ability, make repair for the harm that you caused?” And by having an agreement, it allows some flexibility and some creativity, but that really centers the needs of the victim. And what we find is that it works. You know, the victim satisfaction is significantly higher who go through restorative processes. Recidivism rates are significantly lower for people who go through restorative processes. So it’s an important alternative that works.

SARITA GUPTA: What I love about that definition, and that approach, is it is seeing people as whole people who have experienced harm and who have harmed. And so it’s a beautiful orientation. So let’s talk a little bit about how your work addresses issues of race and structural inequities, that too often go ignored by our current system.

JAMILA HODGE: That’s such an important question. I personally feel like, if I am in a room and we are talking about, whether it’s criminal justice reform or transforming responses to violence, if we have not talked about racial justice, then we are missing the mark. For us to really address and change both our current responses—which is the, you know, the criminal legal system and so many people who are ensnared—and also build up alternative responses to, “How do we get to root causes of violence?” We have to begin with the foundation and understanding that so much of how our criminal legal system came about is rooted in racial oppression. We know that, history teaches us from the 13th amendment that abolished slavery, except as punishment for crime. And so learning and understanding that history and making sure that we bring that focus into any conversation, because if we’re not talking about it, even solutions can actually exacerbate the racial disparities that we see. So part of the way we do that is, again, in who we center in our work, and again, that is working with the communities who are most impacted. And so not only do we see racial disparities in our criminal legal system, there are so many statistics that bear that out. Whether that’s, you know, making up 40% of the population on death row when we’re about 14% of the population, I’m speaking specifically about Black people. We know that at pretty much every point of a police encounter that Black people are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched if stopped, you know, the punishment that comes is more harsh. There’s a lot of data to support those racial disparities. But I think what we talk less about are the racial disparities in who’s impacted by violence. There’s recent data that shows that Black people are 12 times more likely to be the victim of gun violence. There’s recent data from the CDC that shows that the leading cause of death for Black men and boys under the age of 44 is homicide. So knowing that our communities are disproportionately impacted, not just by the system, but by violence, and then really organizing with and working with, in the communities where violence rates are highest, is how we do our work. And knowing that, again, those closest to the problem know what they need to be safe. So how do we support and help get resources to those communities? Because we know poverty is a driver of violence. And how do we resource these solutions that are working on the ground to address the drivers of violence?

SARITA GUPTA: I really appreciate that very important point about addressing the real drivers of these structural inequities, because to your point, you can in fact come up with solutions that just reinforce those inequities. So I love those examples, thank you. So tell us, how does this work try to change the larger narrative about the essential ingredients of community safety?

JAMILA HODGE: Yeah, again, just speaking from the experience I had being in the system, the system is really set up in its adversarial way, with this false narrative that the way we get to safety is that we have to protect us quote-unquote “good people” from the quote-unquote “bad people.” And so, so much of the system is about identifying who caused the harm, punishing them, and by punishing them, we mean by putting them away, incarcerating them, removing them from community, removing them from society. And so, there’s a narrative that drives that, and so many people that I admire talk about this, you know, whether that’s going all the way back to Dr. Martin Luther King, that there was a lot of efforts in the civil rights movement to change laws, but not necessarily to change hearts and to address the underlying narratives. And as we see right now, laws are under attack, and laws are consistently, even right now, being rolled back. We have got to change hearts, and that means we’ve got to address the narrative that we never addressed. You know, part of the narrative that justified slavery was that Black people are dangerous, that Black people are violent, that they need to be controlled. And, again, we abolished—except as punishment for crime —abolished slavery, but we never tackled that narrative of having violence and dangerousness attached to Black skin. So one, we’ve got to be willing to call out the false narratives that we need to tear down. We’ve got to uproot those trees, right? If we think of narrative as a forest and trees as the messages, and I get this from, I think it’s the Color of Change description of what narrative power means, so we’ve got to uproot those, those false messages, but then we’ve got to plant the new trees. Right? And we’ve got to show people that, yes, we all desire safety, but let’s first redefine it. Safety is more than just the absence of violence. Safety, when we think about where we feel most safe, we’re talking about thriving communities, we’re talking about green spaces, we’re talking about places where our children can play, places where we feel like we’re known by name, we can walk our streets. So, when we first broaden the definition of safety so that it’s not just the absence of violence thriving, but making it about what communities need to thrive, that requires something different of us. That requires us to resource differently, not just sort of buying into this false narrative of good people versus bad people. So, all of this work really is about one addressing those false narratives, but then we’ve got to tell the stories of what’s working. Newark, New Jersey, is a place we reference often in our work because it’s where we’ve done our deepest work, and it’s a place where there is a thriving public safety ecosystem that centers community members and centers grassroots partners who are doing the hard work of addressing drivers. They had a 63-year-low in homicides. It is pretty incredible, the gains that have been made there, but we have to tell that story. So many people don’t know that there are solutions out in the world that are working. So when violence happens, and politicians and leaders have to be able to address it, too often we revert back to our same old, same old status quo. And we’ve got to tell the story so that they know that we can respond with something more than more police and more punishment.

SARITA GUPTA: There was so much you just offered in that, the images in my head of uprooting the false narratives and planting the new narratives, and all that you said about how important and critical it is to redefine what safety means. I love that, that it’s not just simply the absence of violence, but it’s about thriving, and what does thriving communities mean? So what is the power and potential of greater investment in community violence intervention strategies?

JAMILA HODGE: So when we think about solutions that work, right, that drive down violence, community violence intervention and prevention is one of those important strategies. And we have seen a historic investment by the federal government, really for the first time, in these strategies. But we need so much more, especially when we spend $300 billion annually on our current systems. So the investments we’ve seen are really just a drop in the bucket compared to that. But what it is, is essentially having a different alternative to police when violence is happening in real time. And there’s lots of parts. Community violence intervention and prevention is a broad sort of catchall. There’s lots of things that fall within that larger description. But I’m going to focus just for a second on frontline violence intervention workers, who really show up in the moment when violence is happening or about to happen or in the aftermath of violence. And these are folks who have the real experience, so credible experience. So usually they are from the neighborhood, they have in, some point in their life been involved in, you know, often the violence or maybe it’s in the neighborhood crews or, whatever. But they have that sort of street credibility because they’ve been there. They’ve walked in the shoes. And they have a passion for making sure that people don’t end up with the consequences that many of them have. Many of them have served time or have been justice-involved, and they want something different, particularly for our young people; and so having this important alternative, and again, I point to Newark as another incredible example of this, in this sort of great success of driving down shootings and homicides. The Newark Community Street Team, which that frontline violence intervention work in Newark, is an incredible, important part of how these successes that we’ve seen have happened. And whether that’s doing safe passage in accompanying kids to school in neighborhoods where they don’t necessarily feel safe or, again, knowing because there’s cooperation with the police department, you know, when that, call comes in that they can be deployed, that it’s not always the police that need to be deployed. And to be able to do, again, through more of a relationship lens as opposed to a punishment lens. How do we go in? Know who’s involved? Figure out what the needs are? How do we de-escalate in a way that’s not going to lead to a police shooting or some other, often very dangerous and could be deadly response?

SARITA GUPTA: Wow, that’s really powerful, and so needed, because I think so many of us have followed stories that have resulted in unnecessary violence. So we’re going to actually go to some of our audience-submitted questions, and our first question is from Stanley from the New York City Department of Youth & Community Development, who asks, “What are some strategies youth development workers can incorporate that are trauma-informed?”

JAMILA HODGE: Thank you for the question, Stanley. It’s a great question. And what I appreciate about a trauma-informed lens, which again, is so different from the way our system operates, is it makes us ask different questions, right? If you’re using a trauma-informed lens, instead of making it about the person—so, “What did you do?” or “Why did you do it?”—we ask the question, “Well, what happened to you?” Right? And we try to learn more about their story, about their background, about what they’ve experienced, because one of the things that I know for sure—and saw, again, because I was a participant in the system—is, I never had an experience where someone caused harm who had not themselves first been harmed. And usually that victimization began in childhood. And so trauma, we know, is a driver of violence, and when we don’t meet people, we don’t meet those needs, and trauma goes unaddressed. We don’t provide pathways to healing. We shouldn’t be surprised that unhealed trauma can lead someone to be someone who is causing additional harm or harming others. So in the youth space, I just think about, there are so many incredible examples of how people are doing this. One of our close partners in Newark is Al-Tariq Best in the HUBB, and he uses music, and he has a studio where youth can come in. They can lay their beats, they can record a podcast, they can learn videography, but it’s also a space where they hold groups. It’s also a space where they have counselors. It’s also a space where they will get mentors and have a chance to build real relationships, where you can get to know the whole person as you bring them in around an interest and are able to engage them on their interest. But ultimately it’s about, you know, truly caring for the folks that we are trying to serve, regardless of what they’ve done, right? And that’s why we have to combat that narrative of good versus bad. It’s really understanding we are all capable of both, and there’s so many structural factors that influence which choices we make.

SARITA GUPTA: Newark is just incredible, in terms of, to your point earlier, of the examples of some of the really interesting and new approaches to community safety. But that was such a lovely example that you offer. Thank you. So at the Ford Foundation, we have a focus on achieving justice for disabled communities, so our next question comes out of that work: “Given that we know gun violence both creates disabilities and exacerbates them, how can disability justice organizations be engaged to advance community safety?”

JAMILA HODGE: Thank you, another really important question. And what it does for me is flag the fact that we’re not doing enough to include the voices and experiences. While there’s a very robust disability justice movement and folks who are working in that space, I think often we’re too siloed. And so one of the things that we need to do is just make sure that we are reaching out, and making sure we’re hearing directly from those who are doing that incredible work, because there’s overlap, clearly, as the question indicates. And so I do know of, there’s one organization who comes top of mind, Activating Change, which does that work at that intersection of criminal justice reform and disability justice. So I just appreciate the question for lifting it up, and really feel personally challenged that even in our work, we need to do better and make sure that we are reaching out and hearing from all impacted communities.

SARITA GUPTA: That’s terrific. Well, Jami, I am so grateful for your leadership and for the work of EJUSA. I know this work takes time and can be really, really tough. So as we close out our conversation, I wonder if you can share with us what keeps you motivated?

JAMILA HODGE: It’s so important because it is, it is tough work. And not only for me personally, but I think about often our partners that we support and, just all they go through in trying to do that frontline work, trying to get resources, trying to manage all the things. And so for me, there are a couple things. You know, I’m a mom of two girls, Nylah and Zaria, who are nine and eleven, and they motivate me every day to want the world to be a better place for them, as they will grow up as Black women in this space that often doesn’t invite them in, doesn’t want to see them, doesn’t want their input, wants to keep them small. How do we change that? I have Black nephews, brothers, people I care about, and I know how Black men are often feared and targeted. And so just wanting the world to be better for them. But then, the other thing that motivates me is that I truly feel like—and I find this with so many people I get to partner with in this work—that it’s not a job, it’s a calling. I truly could not do this work if I had to do it in my own power, you know, I know that I am walking out a purpose that God gave me. And so for me to do this work, I have to rely on his strength. I cannot do it alone. So that definitely keeps me here, keeps me motivated, keeps me strengthened in the tough times.

SARITA GUPTA: That’s just beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Jaime, for a great conversation. And to those tuning in today, we hope you’ll join us for the next “On What Matters” episode. Stay tuned for more information.

Accessibility Statement

Transcript

MARTÍN ABREGÚ: Hi! Thanks for joining us for the latest conversation in our ongoing series “On What Matters.” I am Martín Abregú, and I’m the vice president of international programs at the Ford Foundation. I am a white Hispanic male in my mid-to-late fifties wearing glasses and with salt-and-pepper hair. And today, I will be speaking with Degan Ali about how to create locally led development and decolonize aid. Degan believes in rethinking the structure of providing aid and leaning into local civil society organizations to assume the mantle. Welcome, Degan. 

DEGAN ALI: Thank you, Martin. Thank you for having me. I’m Degan Ali. I’m the executive director of Adeso. I’m a Somali-American woman with a hijab and wearing glasses.

MARTÍN ABREGÚ: So, Degan, let’s learn a bit more about your work. So why don’t we start at the beginning? Why don’t you help us understand what the current development aid models look like and why they need to be transformed?

DEGAN ALI: Well, the current aid models are extremely broken. We have a situation where a lot of the Global South countries that are still in poverty are dealing with an ecosystem and architecture that was developed by Global North countries and former colonizers. All the winners of World War II came together and formed these institutions that we’re still dealing with the ramifications. The impact of those structures, whether it’s the World Bank and the IMF or whether it’s the UN and the Security Council veto power, are held in the hands of these five countries. And so it creates a situation where a lot of Global South countries don’t have a level playing field. And so because they’re not able to trade effectively, because there’s a massive debt burden, we have countries that are not able to meet the needs of their citizens. When you are using 40% of your revenue as a country to finance debt or to finance interest on debt, then you cannot provide health, education, or humanitarian support if a crisis happens, and therefore you need aid. So on the one hand, these governments, these Global North institutions, are trying to ensure that these countries stay in poverty. And on the other hand, they finance aid and development, acting as if they have altruistic motives, but when in reality, all they have to do is create a level playing field for these countries to lift their people out of poverty. So, these are the underlying factors of the problems. And I feel like what we end up doing is just looking at the superficial issues around, we need to have a more participatory way of working with communities. All of those things are really important, but we need to understand why these countries are still poor. It’s not by accident, it’s by design. 

MARTÍN ABREGÚ: We are talking here about a structural problem. But what would a decolonized model look like? And how do we get there? Because we’ve been kind of stuck in this development aid model for a while. So how do we move from here to there?

DEGAN ALI: I would love to say that that transition is going to be easy, and I would love to say that it’s going to be painless, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case. I think it’s going to be a very painful transition. And as they say, power is never given willingly. You have to take it, and we are already seeing a situation of multipolarity. We are seeing a situation with the rise of the BRICS nations. We’re seeing these BRICS nations coming up with new systems of banking. We are seeing de-dollarization and the dollar losing its power. All of these things are going to allow Global South countries to really create a system where they can trade and develop their countries under more equitable terms. But it’s painful for the North, because the standard of living that many Northern people are experiencing in Europe and the U.S. is as a result of the status quo, is as a result of the current structure and systems that keeps us in poverty. So our rise, unfortunately, will mean pain for a Global North citizenry to create that equilibrium. We have to come to a point where we can renegotiate the global governance systems. We have to get to the point where we can renegotiate the structures such as the UN, and the World Bank, and the IMF. Unless we get to that point, then we are still not talking about the root causes of problems. Imagine a situation where a country like Ghana becomes a donor to a crisis in Louisiana or a crisis in France. I mean, that’s the kind of world where we should be seeing, where there’s mutual solidarity, mutual aid that goes from the south to the north, from the north to the south, the south to the south. You know, that kind of situation is where we should be working towards, not a situation where it’s all one-sided, and it’s only one side: north to the south. 

MARTÍN ABREGÚ: Degan, why is it so important that development initiatives be led by people on the ground? And how is that different from other conversations that are currently taking place around localization?

DEGAN ALI: So localization has become, in my opinion, it’s a conversation around transactional issues. We in the Global South don’t get enough resources in the aid sector. As I said, one of the manifestations of how the system is broken is that in humanitarian and development aid—this is emergencies, health, education, philanthropy, all of that combined—we don’t receive more than 4% of the global aid, meaning the ones at the community. The last-mile actors working with the communities every day in insecure environments, we’re the ones who die first, our staff are usually the ones who die first and risk their lives in places like Syria and other countries, but we get the least amount of resources. And so the localization agenda was more around, “How do we get more power as civil society, how do we get more resources directly to us, and how do we have a seat at the table in decision-making forums?” Whereas I think there is another angle, a deeper angle, and that is about, “Okay, great, you have more resources, more power and all of that, but how do you address the root causes of these problems so that your communities are not continuously meeting these challenges all the time? How do we help address the root causes?” And that goes to the structural issues that I described earlier, and that is what decolonization for me means. It means that we should not be just tweaking the system around the edges, which is important. Let’s tweak. Let’s do that. It’s important. I’m not saying ignore it, but what I’m saying is simultaneously, let’s figure out how to address the root causes of the problem, which is the architecture that is broken, that is ensuring that our governments don’t have the resources to meet the social contract between the government and its citizenry.

DEGAN ALI: And that contract is not met because many of these countries are servicing debt. I’ll give you a very good example. So Malawi post-independence had very strong policies, really positive pro-citizenry policies around food sovereignty. And they said that they’re going to subsidize their farmers and have a reserve for emergencies. If you can’t feed your citizens, you can’t do anything; you can’t develop. And that’s a basic thing. And so fast forward a few years after independence, the IMF, the World Bank came along and said, we’re going to give you a loan, and as a condition of those loans, you have to remove all subsidies and the reserve that you have in place. So they’ve destroyed all of their food sovereignty, ability to be food sovereign and resilient. Fast forward again years later. There’s a drought that happens. There’s no reserve to cushion the people against a drought, and so people become malnourished. Food insecurity happens. The same governments that control the IMF and the World Bank and instituted this policy to ensure that Malawi had no food sovereignty are the same ones now who ended up giving funding to UNICEF, to all of these NGOs to run food security, agriculture, malnutrition programs in the same country. So on the one hand, you take, on the other hand, you act like you’re giving. So this is the contradiction, this is what aid is about. Aid is just, is a symptom of a bigger, bigger problem. And that’s what we need to address. And that is why I appreciate the importance of addressing surface-level issues around power and resourcing to local organizations. We continue as Adeso to do a lot of work in that space, with the “Pledge for Change” and other work that we do on advocacy. But we also have to take equal importance in really dramatically and completely addressing the architecture issues. 

MARTÍN ABREGÚ: All right. Thank you for that, Degan. We are receiving questions from our audience, so I would like to move us to our first question. And this is coming from a common friend of ours, Abby Maxman, CEO of Oxfam America, and Abby is asking, “Can you talk about how you think the “Pledge for Change” can help make a tangible difference in empowering local and national organizations, and how that shift of power would ultimately help people affected by crisis and poverty?”

DEGAN ALI: So I think now we’ve just talked about the global architecture and the system. Now let’s talk about the reality on the ground, how this aid system manifests itself on the ground for the communities. And what has happened is that the aid system not only has created terrible power dynamics between Global North institutions like the UN, UN agencies, and Global North civil society that we call INGOs—we know all the major brands like CARE, Oxfam, Save the Children, IRC, all of these major international NGO brands. All of these institutions hold all the resources and power and decision-making with the backing of their donors. And so how that transpires on the ground with communities is that these institutions really come to communities with a top-down approach. There is no community involvement in the design of projects. I’ll use the example of Ghana coming to California because there’s a crisis, a drought or something, and they start implementing programs without any involvement and engagement of the community. They develop their proposals in Accra, they have their decisions in Accra, and then they come top-down heavy in large numbers with all the Ghanaian staff on the ground, no involvement of the local population, and this is exactly what happens every day in the Global South. Every single day this is how aid is administered in a very disempowering way, and so what we have tried to say is, okay, there are the global issues, the structural issues, and we need to work on that. But we have also practical issues on the ground where we have terrible power relationships between civil society from the North, the INGOs, and civil society in these countries, and how do we improve those relationships so that when they come into our communities, they come with a position of humility. They come to us with real involvement and inclusivity. And that is what the “Pledge for Change” is trying to address. And so we have started this process with 12 INGOs that have made three commitments on how to improve their way of working and their behavior internally, but also externally. And the three commitments are around partnerships—equitable partnerships—how to share power with civil society in the countries and share resources. The second one is about storytelling and things like poverty porn imagery, and all of that. And the third is around influencing their peers and their back donors. So Americans, NGOs in the U.S., should be influencing USAID. It is not our job, my job in Kenya, to influence the U.S. government. It is civil society in the U.S. to do that. And unfortunately what has happened over the years is that they’ve become almost like subcontractors of their donor governments and they don’t really influence them. They’re no longer holding their governments accountable because they get so much money and resources. As we say, it’s difficult to bite the hand that feeds you. And if you become a billion dollar NGO, it’s going to be very hard to say, “Hey, I’m going to really hold USAID accountable and tell truth to power,” when they are giving you so much money. So these are the problems that they have to face and deal with if they are really serious around decolonizing their business model and working in a real way of mutual solidarity. Then we have to question whether these business models are even effective and fit for purpose. Some of these NGOs will have to change. As I said, the world is changing, and if they don’t change with the world, then they’re going to either close down and not exist, or honestly they might even be kicked out. We’ve seen some negative impacts of, you know, governments pushing back on civil society space. Some of it is because the governments are not all of it, but some of it is because these governments are saying, “Enough is enough. We need our sovereignty back. You can’t come into our countries and do as you please.” And more and more of that is going to happen. And so if they don’t change their behavior, they don’t change their business models, I think there’s going to be more negative consequences of the status quo. So this is what the pledge is about, is saying we are committed as INGOs to working with you in mutual solidarity and to fixing our house and getting our house in order so that we can become better partners to you.

MARTÍN ABREGÚ: Thank you, Degan, for that. And talking about what is changing, you know, we got another question from Catherine about what diverse models of leadership are necessary to respond to the unique needs of communities and locally led development. What can you say about that? 

DEGAN ALI: So this is a very interesting question, because I think there is a contradiction between the Western leadership model, where it says that to be a good leader, you have to—a successful leader of any entity—your success matrix is measured by money. How much income you have grown, the organization, how many staff you have, how many countries you operate in. All the metrics of success are around power, and that is good leadership within the Western definition. And we have emulated that. We have bought into that, we’ve become colonized, and we think that that’s what we should be looking like. We should be imitating these Global North institutions, which is a big problem. Even I went through that process as Adeso, and I thought that my metrics of success as a good CEO of Adeso was to grow the organization, become bigger and bigger, and work in more locations. And I had an “Aha!” moment and I had to pivot massively, and it was extremely painful and hard. So we have to control that instinct of following in that path, both in the Global North and in the Global South. And real, good leadership should be about coming to communities and places with real humility, really saying, “I don’t know, this is not my context, this is not my community. I don’t understand, help me understand. How do we create things together? How do we work in real partnership? How do I recognize your value? Yes, you might not have the best systems, you might not have the best reports, you might not have the best budgeting, and all the back office that INGOs have spent so much money over the years in developing, subsidized by their donors.” We don’t have the luxury of those resources, but our knowledge of the community, our understanding of the culture, that should have value. There should be some way of valuing that. Maybe not in monetary terms, but in other ways, that’s as powerful and as important as money. And so that is what the kind of leadership that we need civil society to demonstrate, UN agency leaders to demonstrate, and the whole global aid architecture to demonstrate.

MARTÍN ABREGÚ: So we have time for one more question from the audience. So I want to bring this question from Kay. “Can only the former colonized be active in decolonization or can citizens of former colonial powers also contribute?”

DEGAN ALI: I mean, for me, I just don’t see how we can do this alone. This is not a situation that can be fixed alone, and there’s equal responsibility, not only in our hands as citizens of the Global South, but there’s if not more responsibility on the part of the citizens of the North who have benefited from our exploitation over the years. You have a responsibility to fix this. And that’s what we have been saying to INGOs, is to say, “You need to go back to your roots as real civil society, and as a real third sector that holds your government and private sector accountable. Stop being just contractors to your governments and stop thinking only about money and income and expansion and being an imperialist in our countries.” And so, yeah, there is a huge responsibility for both actors. We have to work hard in taking responsibility for our failings, our shortcomings as a Global South, and we have to take personal responsibility and recognize that our leaders are not the best. But we also need help. And this is what real solidarity looks like, is that everybody reflects on and takes ownership of their shortcomings and their history and their contributions to this problem. And that we work together to solve it. It can’t be done by only one side.

MARTÍN ABREGÚ: Thank you, Degan, for such an illuminating conversation. And thank you to all of you for tuning in today and we really hope that you will join us for our upcoming conversations in our ongoing series “On What Matters.” Stay tuned to learn how. Thank you!

End of transcript.

Accessibility Statement

Transcript

[Darren Walker, a Black man wearing glasses and a blue suit, President, Ford Foundation.]

DARREN WALKER: Imagine the world today without this moment.

[The Berlin Wall is torn down as elated spectators cheer.]

DARREN WALKER: Or without this moment.

[Nelson Mandela and his wife, Winnie, walk among a crowd of excited citizens on the day of his release from prison.]

DARREN WALKER: Or this moment.

[Greta Thunberg, at 16 years old, challenges politicians about climate change.]

GRETA THUNBERG: We children are doing this to wake the adults up.

DARREN WALKER: So what connects these moments, these movements, these transformations? A thriving and open civic space: a space to advocate for ideas and to hold leaders, institutions, and the private sector accountable.

[Rosa Parks addresses U.S. television audiences during the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, followed by footage of other major historical events when human rights have been enhanced.]

ROSA PARKS: Well, we hope to achieve equal rights.

DARREN WALKER: Throughout history, the only way we’ve expanded rights is through collective action, through people power. Today, movements around the world are asking hard questions about sustainability, inequality, and the violence and oppression that still exists.

[Women around the world protest for their rights.]

Protesters [in Spanish and then English]: Patriarchy is our judge. 

DARREN WALKER: At the Ford Foundation, as part of our long-term commitment to protecting and expanding civic space and democracy, we are listening.

[A Black woman at a protest holds up a sign with the text “I can’t breathe.”]

DARREN WALKER: We all create civic space. Together we can keep it alive and vibrant and ensure an equitable, democratic, and prosperous future for us all.

[For more information, visit Ford Foundation.Org]

End of transcript.

Accessibility Statement

Transcript

FAYE GINSBURG: Judith Heumann, you are an amazing and unrepentant badass. [applause]

NARRATOR: Judy, known as the mother of the disability rights movement, is introduced as NYU’s 2021 Commencement speaker.

FAYE GINSBURG: And I’m not the first person to tell you that. [applause]

NARRATOR: 1988, Judy addresses a joint House-Senate hearing on the Americans with Disabilities Act.

JUDY HEUMANN: People in our society have been raised with prejudicial attitudes that have resulted in extreme discrimination.

[Footage from one of Judy’s YouTube videos.]

OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: Judy, what do you think is your biggest strength?

JUDY HEUMANN: That I’m a networker, I like to speak with people, and I like to help people.

OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: And what’s your biggest weakness?

JUDY HEUMANN: That I’m a networker, I like to speak with people, and I like to help people.

JUDY HEUMANN: I’m Judy Heumann. I’m a white, disabled, motorized wheelchair user. I wear glasses.

[Photos of Judy as a child with leg braces. An adult Judy rolls onto stage at Tedx Mid- Atlantic.]

JUDY HEUMANN: When I was 18 months old, I had polio. This was a time when my family really began to realize what disability meant to some people: fear.

NARRATOR: When Judy’s family enrolled her in school, education officials claimed she was a fire hazard.

JUDY HEUMANN: They told us not to worry because the Board of Education, in fact, would send a teacher to my house. And they did. For a total of two and a half hours a week. But for good behavior, they threw in an occupational therapist who taught me that very essential skill of cross-stitching.

[applause]

NARRATOR: Despite this, Judy went on to graduate from college, and, at 22, she applied for a license to teach in New York City. The Board of Education denied Judy specifically because she used a wheelchair.

[Young Judy to a news reporter.]

JUDY HEUMANN: I’m really tired of having to be a second class citizen.

NARRATOR: And so, Judy Heumann sued the Board of Education.

JUDY HEUMANN: This is a really important time in my life because it would be the first time that I really would be challenging the system.

NARRATOR: And Judy Heumann won! She became the first wheelchair user to teach in New York City, and Heumann versus the Board of Education was the first disability civil rights case ever brought to federal court. Judy went on to found Disabled in Action and advocate for the Independent Living Movement globally. In 1972, when President Nixon vetoed the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs funded by federal agencies, Judy set out to claim her rights.

JUDY HEUMANN: Disabled in Action decided to have a demonstration in New York City in front of Nixon Headquarters.

[Film strips show people with different disabilities gathering.]

JUDY HEUMANN: We decided that we were going to sit down in the street, and we were gonna stop traffic.

[Footage and photos show traffic gridlock.]

JUDY HEUMANN: There were only 50 of us. But basically, with the one street, we were able to shut the city down. We protested. Nixon signed it. Then the regulations that needed to be promulgated to implement that law had not, in fact, been signed. And so, we demonstrated.

ACTIVISTS (chanting): 504, 504!

NARRATOR: Judy was one of the leaders of the historic 504 Sit-In in San Francisco. A diverse group of people, with and without disabilities, take over the federal building.

[Judy speaks to government officials.]

JUDY HEUMANN: We want the law enforced. We want no more segregation. And I would appreciate it if you would stop shaking your head like you understand what we are talking about.

NARRATOR: After almost a month—the longest occupation of a federal building in history—504 was signed.

[clapping and cheering]

NARRATOR: It was the first federal civil rights protection for people with disabilities. Judy went on to influence global disability rights policy, impacting millions of lives. She worked in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, the World Bank, and with various sectors, including philanthropy.

[Judy, during her time as a Senior Ford Fellow addresses foundation staff.]

JUDY HEUMANN: They’ve been a lot of efforts over the last 30 years to really get the donor community to acknowledge that you can’t address social injustice without including disabled people.

[One of Judy’s YouTube videos.]

OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: Judy, where are we?

JUDY HEUMANN: We’re in our apartment. Jorge’s and my apartment. OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: Which photo makes you smile the most? JUDY HEUMANN: The photo of Jorge and myself, the day we got married.

NARRATOR: Judy and Jorge Pineda, also a wheelchair user, kiss at their wedding ceremony in 1992.

OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: What would you like to be remembered for?

JUDY HEUMANN: My compassion and fight for change.

OFF-CAMERA INTERVIEWER: And Judy, what would you like people to know about the disability movement?

JUDY HEUMANN: It’s becoming more powerful. Disabled people are feeling prouder and speaking up—recognizing that disability is a part of who they are.

[One of Judy’s YouTube videos.]

JUDY HEUMANN: You know, what I love about New York? The crowds! [Judy addresses the crowd at the NYU commencement.]

JUDY HEUMANN:This movement is made up of thousands of people. And you are many of them. No one person ever creates a movement.

[applause]

[Images that show Judy’s activism throughout her lifetime with fellow activists and government officials all over the world.]

[In her apartment, Judy dances, spinning in her wheelchair while holding hands with a friend.]

JUDY HEUMANN: There you go! You learned it here.

[Text on screen: Judy Heumann, December 18, 1947 to March 4, 2023.]

Director, Writer, and Executive Producer

Jessica Reynolds

Editor

Renee Forbes

Archival Producer

Claire Kinnen

Voice Over

Elizabeth Hull

Copy Editor

Megan Quitkin

Sound Design and Re-Recording Mixer

Nicholas Montgomery, AudioNiche

Special Thanks Jackie Berkowitz Sara Bolder Rebecca Cokley Chelsea Dare James Devitt Bridget Hayman James LeBrecht Kylie Miller Nicole Newnham Beverly Ornstein Trusten O’Malley

Elizabeth Pasquariello Katherine Salinas Beth Sheckler

Maeve Sheridan Catherine Hyde Townsend Anthony Tusler

Allison Walker Chi-hui Yang

Archival

Access Living Associated Press

Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) Getty Images

HolLynn D’Lil Howard Schwartz

Judy Heumann’s Personal Collection

NBC

Netflix

New York University Tari Hartman Squire TED Talks

US Embassy London

World Institute on Disability (WID)

[The video ends with the Ford Foundation logo.]

Accessibility Statement

Transcript

HILARY PENNINGTON: Hi, I’m Hilary Pennington. Welcome to the sixth conversation in the live series, “On What Matters.” I am so excited today to be talking with Saliem Fakir, who leads the African Climate Foundation. And we’re going to get into the conversation, but first, let us bo th introduce ourselves. I serve as the executive vice president of programs for the Ford Foundation. I’m a middle-aged white woman with very short blond hair. I’m wearing a navy sweater and sitting in front of a white wall. And Saliem, let’s turn to you to introduce yourself.

SALIEM FAKIR: I’m Saliem Fakir, the executive director of the African Climate Foundation. I have black hair, I’m middle-aged, and a person of color. I have a white wall behind me, and I’m wearing a black jacket. And it’s really wonderful, again, to be on the show. So thanks.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, we have a lot to talk about, but we’re going to start out with just a short video that will give people who are listening a sense of the work that you do, Saliem. So let’s roll that video, and then we’ll start.

[The African Climate Foundation. Simple animated graphics support the narrative throughout this video.]

NARRATOR: The African Climate Foundation is the first and only African-led climate change regranting organization on the continent. As an African-led, African-based, and fully African-run organization, we support local solutions to Africa’s climate change and development challenges. We envision a vibrant and climate-resilient Africa, in which inclusive socioeconomic development delivers sustainable and equitable growth. And we work to support interventions at the nexus of climate change and development that will deliver long term socioeconomic transformation and inclusive development on the African continent. We focus on supporting transitions in three key sectors, namely: energy, land use and agriculture, and cities. We also work on interventions that traverse these sectors, such as finance, digitization, infrastructure, industrialization, geopolitics, climate diplomacy, human rights, climate justice, gender, youth, health, and education. Through a combination of grantmaking, fellowships, research, technical assistance, coalition building, and targeted advocacy and multi-stakeholder convenings, we support a range of interventions across our programs. We believe that change cannot be brought about by one party acting alone. We actively pursue, support, and foster strong partnerships and platforms for collaboration. Our work seeks to confront and respond to the disconnect between climate change and development planning in Africa and demonstrate the alternatives to existing practices that can avoid long-term economic risks, through new climate resilient development pathways. And support the development of robust multidisciplinary evidence to inform better decision-making by social partners, regional institutions, and governments. Our goal is to support African agency at all levels, from government to civil society to communities. We have built strong capacity, which has enabled us to significantly increase our grantmaking throughout Africa. A key priority for the ACF is to ensure that our work has reach across the African continent. To achieve this, we seek to ensure that African countries are covered by either our grants, or by staff representation. And we work to maintain strong relationships with key regional institutions. Our work seeks to bring real economic solutions and to strengthen African agency. The work of the ACF would not be possible without generous support from—and partnerships with—philanthropies.

[The African Climate Foundation. To learn more about our work, visit our website. www.africanclimatefoundation.org]

HILARY PENNINGTON: Saliem, one reason I love talking to you is that you are hopeful that we actually can secure the future of the planet. And you have so many ideas about sustainable development. And another thing I love is that you don’t talk about a clean energy transition. You talk about a just energy transition. So, can we start with that? Can you talk a little bit about what just energy transition means to you and what it should mean to others. And in particular, the justice aspect of it, and how it connects to broader justice aspirations for society.

SALIEM FAKIR: So, Hilary, before I answer your question, I thought maybe I’ll explain a little bit about the African Climate Foundation. It’s a very new foundation that was set up on the 1st of April, 2020, and I’m very glad to say that since last week, the 1st of April, this is our third year. And we’ve taken a conscious decision when we started to say that the narrative around climate has largely been not really filtered through the right lens. And what we wanted to build is sort of a conclusion of our strategic focus, around what we call a “climate and development nexus.” And embedded in that, we are very interested in aspects such as social justice. We are arguing that climate risk—ultimately, even climate opportunities or investment, ultimately—their success is not so much determined by how much we only just deal with the effects of climate change, or for that matter, how much greenhouse gas we reduce, but really about how we build a more wholesome, economic, resilient model on the back of these climate risk interventions that we want to mitigate against, and also the opportunities in investment in climate space. And I will come to some of that later. And why we say economic resilience—because that is really the core at the heart of what is needed on the continent. We need the right type of growth, with the right distributional effects, and we will only know if we succeeded with economic resilience and economic development and growth; if there is a strong feature of social justice and social benefits to communities at large and individuals at large. And that is really what we think should be the bedrock of all the climate solutions that we are seeking on the continent. It’s not the other way around.

HILARY PENNINGTON: I love that. Well, so let’s stay with that for a minute. You know, if the aspiration is for development that can also produce inclusion—and the thriving of communities on the continent—what are some of the critical building blocks that you see, I mean, in terms of policy or technology or development priorities, that would help produce this equitable growth?

SALIEM FAKIR: For example, in South Africa, we are faced with a situation of whether the route towards dependency on coal will produce the best social and economic outcomes for the country. So on the one hand, South Africa’s coal dependency is very high. We have one rank, somewhere around in the 20th highest emitters in the world. We will be faced with challenges around our carbon intensity in the future, especially if countries adopt more punitive measures against imports that are coming from coal-intensive, coal-dependent economies. And coal, in general, is on a decline. And if we look at the performance of our coal plants, particularly the new coal plants, the energy cost from coal electrification is very high. So they are going up, because the true cost cannot be transferred to consumers. So there are certain cost recoveries that cannot be made, because the whole system itself requires reform, and we need to widen the energy mix. South Africa also has the energy crisis, which is hammering the economy, and the quickest way to solve that is to set objectives—around our emissions, our lowering the price of electricity in the future, and also reducing energy security, which is affecting livelihoods and it’s affecting jobs. And it’s also costing consumers, not only through load-shedding, which is the term we use, but also through higher prices that they have to pay from their salaries, particularly poorer communities. If we can find solutions, such as new technologies, particularly renewables, wind and solar, that are mature at a much cheaper cost, if we can diversify from coal and reduce coal, for example, generate electricity from coal from 90% to, let’s say, even half that, or even much lower than that, with cheaper cost energy, we will, effectively—what technically is called bring the price path much lower in the future, rather than going up. So we are protecting jobs in the long run through a number of mechanisms. One, through less inflationary energy costs. And you can see that, for example, in Europe with the Ukraine war: Energy prices have gone up because of the high cost of gas. That has major social effects and also affects jobs. The second part is that the second way to protect our economy is by ensuring that any goods that we manufacture, in a country that is highly industrialized and very export-dependent, that we are not, in the future, penalized by carbon border tariffs that would be imposed on goods that are imported from South Africa. That could be steel, it could be cement, it could be all kinds of things. That is dependent on electricity or energy sources that are carbon-intense.

HILARY PENNINGTON: I love that you refuse that kind of false trade-off, that, you know, you can’t have jobs and development, and at the same time, protect the environment. But I’m curious, you know, because that is a very well established sort of narrative. Right? Who is it harder to convince to change their minds on that subject: policymakers or the public?

SALIEM FAKIR: For example, in South Africa, the case is very clear. We need to diversify, because we’ve got absolutely no option. But you find that even in the policy-making setting, there are these divisions in the decision-making space. One view is that we must go in the direction towards cheaper energy sources and cleaner energy sources, if you want to put it that way. Others are saying, well, you know, we’ve just handed a lot of coal interests to new economic interests in the economy. They have a lifespan of 20, 30 years. It’s an indigenous resource. If you have renewables, you have to import the technology. Why not use our coal and keep going? On consumers, I don’t think that argument should be made just on the basis of climate. It should be made on the basis of how much they will save in income if we made the right decision in terms of our diversification of energy mix. And we are able to prove to them that this is not only a way to protect their income, because inflation eats away income, it destroys income, which means that people who are affected by inflation are actually getting poorer. Secondly, it says to them that through rapidly mobilizing more suitable technologies that are sort of aligned to less constraints and can be built as we need, we are reducing energy, we are improving energy security and, with that, we can actually grow the economy. And thirdly, I think we are saying that by making the South African economy, or any economy that is fossil fuel dependent,—we can also look at Nigeria and other countries—by making them fit for purpose for where the world is moving, in terms of decarbonization, we are providing political leadership and economic leadership to respond to changes in the world that in the long run will affect us. So, for example, if you took high gas dependency in Europe—particularly Germany, that was highly dependent on piped gas from Russia—suddenly the geopolitical relationship changes. Germany has to spend a lot more money to look for new sources of gas from elsewhere, which means that it has not tailored its economy strategically to respond to a crisis like it just had about two years ago with the Ukraine crisis. So we must be able to be agile economies. And the only way we can do that is building more resilient energy systems that can respond to a number of things. In this case, the cost of energy, energy security, and penalties that we could face because the world is increasingly being decarbonized. And, you know, if we don’t adjust to that, there’s impacts on the economy down the line.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yes, huge impacts. Well, I love that you make the connection to people’s pocketbooks, right? Not just their jobs, but the everyday average consumer who may not work in the energy industry, who clearly is affected by all of these kinds of costs. And that does seem to be something that is beginning to shift and may, in the end, build the kind of political pressure that’s necessary to support the sorts of policies that you’re talking about. And, you know, just staying with this, because I think one of the great benefits of having a dedicated, only three-year-old African Climate Foundation, is that you are able to put new ideas out into this space, and to get people thinking and working in a different way. Let’s talk a little bit about just a couple of things that you’re the most proud of, that you have been able to do in your very, very short history.

SALIEM FAKIR: One of the things that we did, and it’s now becoming a model for linking nationally determined ambition, which is around, in this case, emission reduction to a stronger investment program, and new kinds of infrastructure, and being able to then gain global support through cheaper sources of finance. In this case, climate finance is the achievement of the Just Energy Transition Partnership deal that was agreed to by South Africa in the COP26 in Glasgow, where philanthropies like ourselves, and others as well, played a big role in developing, I think, a very pioneering model, which has never been done before anywhere in the world, grown and developed indigenously within South Africa. A prime to post-recovery program that is part of the economic development agenda of South Africa. But at the same time, solving South Africa’s climate ambitions and being able to unlock huge amounts of funding. In this case, $8.5 billion dollars..

HILARY PENNINGTON: Say the amount again?

SALIEM FAKIR: $8.5 billion dollars.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yes.

SALIEM FAKIR: That was raised. And it’s a deal that is now—basically—the pledges and the agreements have been secured. Some of the money is flowing, and the rest will come, based on the role out and execution and operationalization of an investment plan. We’re finding that countries like Indonesia have just adopted a similar thing. And Vietnam and Nigeria and Senegal are looking into this and, potentially, what they call a kind of mini JETP in Egypt. It doesn’t have to—most of these are aimed at displacing fossil fuels with a program of investment into clean energy solutions that are supported by the international community. But one element of it that I think is unique to South Africa, which we would like to see work in Indonesia and Vietnam, is a very strong feature of the just aspect of those energy transitions. It’s very germane in South Africa. In fact, the concept of the just transition comes from the workers movement, particularly the International Labor Organization. And in the 1970s, the US workers recognized that new environmental standards and programs and new environmental enforcements—would lead to potential job losses in sectors that were polluting chemical industries and so on. And they were proactive in looking at ways in which to support workers that could be affected by this. So if we’re looking at, for example, displacing coal, or oil, or gas, anywhere else in the world, there are lots of people that are highly dependent on those industries, not for direct jobs only, but also indirect. And remember, those industries are located in particular geographies that are critical to those local municipalities and local economies. So whole communities are affected by it. It’s a bit like mining, I know the Ford Foundation is doing a lot of work on mining. If you took out the mining and you didn’t replace it with something more viable in the long term, you know, you do a lot of harm to people that have been dependent on those industries for 20, 30, maybe even 50 years, and suddenly you’ve just created a vacuum. So these transitions have to be more. So one of the purposes of the just transition is to look at energy transitions without just being fixated on the finance and investment side, and also just the technology solutions, but also the just aspects. What does it mean for local economies? What does it mean for household incomes? What does it mean for the development models, future development models? But even in South Africa, for the coal mining areas, where coal has been the pivot and the anchor of those economies, now you’re taking it out, you’re creating a vacuum; what would you replace it with? So there’s a responsibility. Remember, a lot of extractive industries, often there is some local benefit, but the larger portion of the benefit actually happens in the global sphere and the national sphere. Much of the royalties and the financial benefits of many other things—they happen in the economic hubs, not necessarily in local areas. So we have a national responsibility, moral, ethical responsibility, to make sure those—what we’re displacing is replaced with something better and improves the wellbeing of those people. This is where, I think, the just aspects of the transition, actually for a long time, that has been missing from the climate debate, brings the development aspects much closer than they were before. And it’s becoming less of just an environmental issue, but it’s becoming an issue about the future of economic development, the future of economic models, new kinds of inclusive economies. That’s the debate that we are steering outstate as a result of the work we’re doing on the just transition.

HILARY PENNINGTON: I think that’s such a hugely important addition. You know, I mean, these industries are not—they are extractive in many, many ways, right? And I think until there are concrete ideas and examples, where we can see that communities that everyone thinks stand to lose, can actually be protected, and help to make the transition, that’s essential to get where we want to go. And you know you have, Saliem—we’re going to go to audience questions, because we have so many people who want to hear more from you. But before we do that, I just want to ask you the question I always close with. And you almost, in a way, have begun to answer it. But just, you know, if you were to say one thing that gives you hope, given the complexity of what you work on, what would that one thing be?

SALIEM FAKIR: My view on climate is that you must take a more enlightened view, a more eclectic view. Use the debate to open up new avenues and vistas of discussion around what the nature of our economies are in Africa. And many of them are enclave economies with very little interconnection with the rest of the economy. In fact, if you analyze a lot of economic literature, they will show you maps of Africa, in which it’s basically, you know, infrastructure built around the mine. Go to a port and everywhere else there’s very little other types of infrastructure developed. So I think what we are saying in our work is: Those enclave economies are not viable. They’re actually responsible for a lack of economic resilience. They are, actually, the root cause of why we have such high levels of climate vulnerability on the part of the continent. And secondly, they are forfeiting our ability to invest in new technologies that would modernize, at the same time, both decarbonize our economy and take us away from an enclave model to investing in other components of the economy in order to diversify. We need a lot more manufacturing. We need a lot more tradable services. Not just services, which are just based on consumption, but services that require integration of electricity, digitization, and the better use of our human talent on the continent. That this talent is better integrated into the regional and global economy. For now, regional trade is very poor on the continent. We take a lot of raw material. We export it. We bring it back at a higher cost. This is not a very sustainable way to deal with our economies in the long term, and we maintain at ACF, if we can build more inclusive, diversified economies, we will also make our economies more resilient to climate change, because we’ll have the resources in government and elsewhere in society through higher income. And secondly, we are able to take opportunities like new technology waves—whether it’s electric vehicles, renewables, battery technologies, green hydrogen—and build these into our economies. That they make us far more healthier and resilient in the longer term and improve human wellbeing. The last thing I want to say is, because we have enclave economies, we don’t put enough emphasis on human talent and capital on the continent. And the way to unlock that is through improving electricity access and cheaper sources of electrification, because it will enable a lot of other things in the urban sector, you know, integration of digital and other forms of entrepreneurship to be built around improved electrification. That’s the vision we have.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Thank you for that. That is such a strategic and coherent vision. So we have time for only a couple of audience questions. The first one we have is from Aguil, and the question reads, “We know there’s misinformation/disinformation about South Africa’s JETP Just Energy Transition Plan, especially in the midst of increased rolling blackouts.” And that’s what you mean when you say load-sharing. And actually the result of that is blackouts across South Africa. “What can be done to counter this misinformation and ensure that the just part of the transition plan is centered?”

SALIEM FAKIR: The thing is that there’s a number of levels. One is, I think, the government needs to communicate its decisions on the JETP and its information and engagement needs to improve. And I can tell you, they’re fully aware of this. In fact, the new project management unit has been set up to implement the JETP, and through the Presidential Climate Commission, are looking to improve engagement with different stakeholders. They started that process early last year, but it needs to work. We ourselves as ACF, we’re investing strategically in a lot of key media to improve communication, not only on the just transition, and not only JETP, but also look to increase accountability and transparency on what companies are doing. Not just coal companies, by the way, but also green energy companies that are investing. They also need to do a lot more around the just transition. They are benefiting hugely from this new policy shift, but are not actually improving the just transition dividend, and we are seeing lots of gaps there that we need to address.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, I think that that kind of communication is so important to keep the public with you. You know, when they are suffering blackouts on a weekly basis. So I’m going to turn to the next question, which is from Liz M., and that is, “What is philanthropy’s role in achieving a just transition, given the competing priorities and agendas of stakeholders. Are the current commitments from philanthropy enough, and what more is needed?”

SALIEM FAKIR: I would say, you know, to Liz that we have very low investment from philanthropy on climate and development issues. In fact, the figure that was put up by Climate Works Foundation is around 2%. It might have increased because of ACF, but probably not very high, probably 3 to 4%. But philanthropy has a huge role, and we’ve shown that if you take a more holistic, integrated model of linking climate with development, you can make the relevance a lot more clear. And the power of philanthropy is that it doesn’t have the billions of dollars, but it has the sufficient resources to create the enabling conditions for those billions of dollars to be used in ways that can mold, deal with climate risk, and climate vulnerability, and climate investments, and create new opportunities. But you have to take an integrated approach, build the right ecosystem that can drive that, and use our money, which is highly flexible, fairly easy to access if you make the right arguments and alignment with the right strategies, and be able to move it at much greater speed than usual development finance institution and bilateral funders.

HILARY PENNINGTON: That’s a huge asset. So our last question is from Stefan, “How does South Africa’s JETP think about addressing inequalities that might emerge in coal-producing geographies as a result of transitions to renewable energy? For example, might inequalities emerge between the coal-producing east and the renewable-producing west of South Africa? And if so, are there strategies to minimize the effects of deindustrialization in the affected communities?”

SALIEM FAKIR: So the best way to think of the just energy transition is two levels: One is very specifically focused on the just aspects of the energy transition, particularly the coal mining areas. And we have to align that with a much broader development model that goes beyond just the energy sector. The energy sector alone won’t solve the broader development needs and there are some really big challenges there. We shouldn’t just focus on renewables but actually look at other development opportunities, particularly in land use, agriculture, and do some really novel stuff. And the second part is to hold a bigger picture that the just aspect is much broader than just a particular geography and an energy technology or energy carrier. In this case, coal was switching to renewables. It is the just transition out of coal into clean energy. But we must take a more macroeconomic view and say, “How do we ensure distribution, redistribution, and the kind of fiscal support that is necessary to develop broadly our economy as a whole?” And also ensure that geographies that are going to benefit that we have—we can also ensure in the coal mining areas that, even though it’s not linked to the energy sector, we can at least substitute with jobs or better economic opportunities. Ensuring fair wages, decent jobs, and more holistic livelihoods and welfare in those areas. I do think that South Africa is an unequal society. So when we look at just transition, we have to locate it within the broader spectrum of inequality, and say that we have a duty to fix not only the broader macroeconomic issues, but also, within specific localities that are going to be impacted by energy transitions as we switch to new technologies.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, you know, I love that you joined back where you began with the relationship between workers rights, workers visions, and a broader and more inclusive economy, with what it means to move towards a just energy transition. Saliem, you know, thank you for your really visionary and practical work and for a wonderful and inspiring conversation. And thank you to everyone who has joined us to hear it. We are really grateful for your time and your attention. Thank you.

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Transcript

HILARY PENNINGTON: Hi, I’m Hilary Pennington. Thank you for joining us for the fifth conversation in our live series, “On What Matters.” I’m executive vice president of programs for the Ford Foundation. I’m a white woman, middle-aged with short hair, sitting in a brownish dress against a white wall. And I’m really excited today to talk to Dr. Timnit Gebru, who is an expert on artificial intelligence and technology, and especially on how to reduce the harm and the uneven benefits that it brings to society. And Timnit, over to you, to introduce yourself.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: Hi everyone. Thank you for joining us. My name is Timnit Gebru, and I am founder and executive director of DAIR, which stands for the Distributed AI Research Institute. I am a light-skinned Black woman sitting in front of a white wall background, and I’m wearing a maroon sweater.

HILARY PENNINGTON: So we’re going to start by showing a video that just frames the issue that we’re talking about, and, in particular, talks a little bit about the potential harms of algorithmic bias. So here’s to the video.

[Kade Crockford, Director, Tech for Liberty Program, ACLU Massachusetts. A white gender nonconforming person wearing business clothing.]

KADE CROCKFORD: Digital technologies, the information age, have changed the way that we live in ways that are really obvious—like, the fact that we all carry tracking devices with us everywhere we go—and in ways that are really opaque—like the various black box algorithms that every single day make decisions for us.

[An animated 3-D black box spins as chains made up of ones and zeros flow into it on all sides.]

A black box algorithm is a mathematical formula that companies like Google and Facebook, as well as even governments, use to process large quantities of information and make decisions about what you’ll see when you open up your web browser. They determine what price an airline will try to sell you a plane ticket for, and they can even determine how much your car loan will cost. That matters because it may very well be the case that someone in a rich, white neighborhood gets charged substantially less for auto lending than someone who lives in a largely poor, Black neighborhood—despite the fact that those people have pretty much identical driving records. This also happens in the employment context, where employers are using black box algorithms to sort through large quantities of data about applicants.

[An animated 3-D black box floats above three separate stacks of resumes, scanning each stack with a laser beam.]

The algorithm will automatically sort and dispose of many, many applicants before any human being even enters the process to decide who’s going to get the job or who will get an interview. And those types of systems are in use in almost every industry today. Right now, there’s a major information asymmetry, right, between folks who work at Google and Facebook, about exactly what these tools are capable of, and what they’re currently doing, and the vast majority of the public. We need to bridge that gap. And we need technologists alongside us in that fight. Fifty years ago, when there was no public interest pathway for law students, really, besides working for the ACLU, we were not doing all we could as a society, frankly, to maximize what it means to be a lawyer, to maximize the benefits of a legal education as far as, you know, impacting the society in general in a positive way. It’s equally important now for technologists to also come to the table and tell lawmakers exactly what these tools are doing, you know, what the future looks like, and how to ensure that we don’t, you know, magnify exponentially the existing inequalities in our society. If we don’t bring those technologists into the public interest fold, I think we’re really looking at a very dangerous world in which technology does exacerbate and exponentially increase those inequalities.

[This is tech at work for the public! Hashtag Public Interest Tech. Ford Foundation dot org forward slash tech. Ford Foundation logo: a globe made up of a series of small, varied circles.]

HILARY PENNINGTON: So Timnit, let’s get started. At Google, where you led cutting-edge research on the ethical implications of AI, can you talk a little bit about how your experience there, and your scholarship, led you to leave Google and made you decide to start DAIR?

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: I, famously, also got fired from Google and, you know, when I started working at Google, I was co-leading a small research team called the “Ethical AI Team,” with my then co-lead Margaret Mitchell. She had actually started the team. So I had been hired, to my knowledge, to do exactly what I did when I got fired, which is alert the research world and the public as to the harms of some of the AI systems and mitigate their harms. So at the end, I wrote a paper called “Stochastic Parrots” on the dangers of large language models, which led to my firing, and that really clarified that I couldn’t really do that kind of work in a setting like Google. And so I started a nonprofit called the Distributed AI Research Institute to do this work.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, it’s really important work that you’re doing there. And I think–let’s talk a little bit about why you’ve called it that. You know, I think for all of us who are reading the newspaper these days or watching anything on social media, we have heard about ChatGPT, and also just the headlines about the potential harms of technology. So talk to us a little bit about why you’ve structured DAIR the way you have. Why is it called the Distributed AI Research Institute, and why is it so important to you to put people at the center of the work and the research?

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: Yeah, it’s really interesting because the first word that came to my mind when I wanted to–when I was thinking about starting a research institute was “distributed,” and I actually called Eric Sears of MacArthur Foundation, and I was like, “Does this sound fine to you?” You might, you know, might sound wild, but I really want an institute where there are people distributed around the world, who don’t have to leave their communities, that are embedded in their own communities, impacting the trajectory of AI development, right? I think that that is really a counterpoint to the centralization of power that we are currently seeing right now. So you mentioned ChatGPT, right? Even if the claims by these companies that, for instance, things like ChatGPT could replace lawyers or doctors were true, which I don’t believe are true, what they would want is, you replace all the lawyers in the world and all the doctors in the world, and pay one company located in one location for all the services that you want in the world. What I want is something that is the complete opposite. Have a distributed group of people around the world, impacting tech and other societal development.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, I love that you talk about and you imagine not only what you don’t want but what you want from technology. And so, let’s dig a little bit deeper into some of the concerns that have animated you. And can you talk some more about some of your ethical concerns about AI? And, you know, specifically, its impact on the environment? I think in a way, most people don’t know that it’s an incredibly carbon intensive industry but more broadly than that.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: So, you know, you mentioned, for example, the news on ChatGPT, right? And some of the news is people speculating about whether these systems are sentient or they feel things. And I think the reason that this happens is because there is an intentional obfuscation of all of the things that are involved in creating these systems, whether it is exploited workers who are providing data and labeling data and suffering from PTSD while looking at toxic words and images, or the amount of compute power that is required to train some of these models, right? We often talk about things like, we say the cloud, where, you know, things are not actually being processed in a cloud. They’re being processed in large data centers that take lots of water, for instance, from local communities and that require lots of energy. And even if it is, quote unquote, “from carbon neutral sources,” which some companies claim, it’s not free, right? There are resources that are needed—minerals that are needed to create some of these even renewable energy sources. Trees that are cut to build these data centers. So our concern, especially with large language model based systems like ChatGPT, when I wrote even my paper, was that the people who are benefiting from these kinds of systems, like, for instance, predominantly English-speaking people, let’s say living in the U.S., are not necessarily the people paying the costs of the ensuing climate catastrophe because of the energy consumption of these models, whether it is within countries like the U.S., for instance, or across countries.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Timnit, just for a minute, can you explain how AI actually is made?

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: This is a really good question because, how the sausage is made, as people say, is really an important aspect of actually some of the issues that are important to put forth as well. And for the audience who might be interested, we wrote a paper called–actually an article called, “The Exploited Workers Behind AI,” just so that people know how many people are involved in this process. So many–most of the systems that people call “AI” right now, are based on what we call machine learning. And these types of systems, and specifically deep learning–I don’t want to get into a lot of jargon–but the important point to note is that many of these systems require a lot of data and a lot of compute. So you first have input data–many times that is labeled according to a particular type. So, for instance, let’s say what you want to do is classify whether there is a cat in a photo, right? So you, many times, need lots and lots of photos with cats and maybe without cats, and people to label whether there are cats in those photos, or not. And of course, people that supply those photos as well, right? And then, these models are trained on lots of those kinds of photos. And finally, you have a model that has sort of learned how to classify a new photo with a cat or not with a cat. This is just kind of like a simplified example. Now, at all ends of those spectrum, you have a lot of humans involved, right? Humans supplying the data, oftentimes, without their consent, especially nowadays, we’re seeing artists fighting back. We have humans labeling the data. Oftentimes, if the data is actually toxic or disturbing, you have–similar to content moderators–you have these humans sifting through lots and lots of data and having to see all of this horrible content, giving them PTSD. And you have, of course, the compute that, as we talked about, has a lot of environmental footprint because we have all these data centers that are required to train many of these models.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Let’s go back for a minute to one of the things you said. You talked about language models and the predominance of the English language being used to build these models. And you also talked about the word sentient, as in feelings. Do these, you know, does the model have a feeling? Talk a little bit more about the ways in which these systems get constructed, and why and how it is that they cannot actually be sentient.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: So we actually dubbed the term “stochastic parrots.” Actually, I say we—I can’t take credit for it—it was my colleague, Emily Bender. And what that means, you know, we’re trying to show that when you see a parrot speaking, supposedly coherently, grammatically correct sentences, you don’t think that it’s extremely intelligent or that it’s understanding what it’s saying, but you think, “oh, it’s cute,” right? And so these systems are, in a similar way, have learned to stitch together words to create the most likely sequences of words, according to what they see on the internet. So they’ve been trained on lots and lots of data and text from the internet and have been trained to, again, output the most likely sequences of words. So when we see the outputs–these outputs–we as humans can attribute intent to these outputs and feel like it might be coming from another human and forget things that are even as complicated as large language models, right? In the sixties, there was a system called Eliza, a chatbot called Eliza that was much, much simpler, right? This is in the sixties, and people still talked about it like it was some sort of person, and its creator actually was very distressed by the ethical concerns raised by such systems, even at that time.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yeah, even at that time. Well, you know, sometimes when you look at what we’re up against, right, and you look at the black box, as it was referred to in that video, you look at the size of the companies that are developing the AI, it’s easy to feel that even you, and even DAIR, and all the other amazing and smart activists are a little bit like David up against Goliath. You know, it just seems so big–the forces that you are fighting against. And yet, on the other hand, of course, we know, David won. David defeated Goliath. So tell me a little bit about some of the progress that you’ve made at DAIR that you are proud and excited about.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: So I think that, yes, sometimes it does feel that way. I mean, we don’t have the $10 billion that OpenAI just received from Microsoft, but I have to remember that it is people. A collective power is the biggest form of power, right? And when society decides that they don’t want something or they’ve had enough, they’ve been able to move forward in the past. So that’s really what I draw inspiration from. And for DAIR, I think the fact–just even our continued existence–and that I find that most of my team members really want this organization to exist, that’s our first win. You know, we have not only researchers in computer science, and sociologists, and engineers, but labor organizers and refugee advocates working together to chart the future of this technology. And we’ve been able to, already, work on projects that actually put data in the hands of people in marginalized groups. So one of our early projects that we’re still working on is on understanding the continued legacy of spatial apartheid. So this is the legacy of apartheid South Africa, right? And so we use computer vision techniques and satellite images to draw the boundaries of townships so that people in townships can actually have firm evidence that their quality of life is not as good as those of suburbs that were delineated during apartheid. And this work was also led by Raesetje Sefala, who is someone who grew up–who was born and raised in a township. So to me, these kinds of projects are–they’re what give me hope and they’re what, I think, you know, move me forward in believing in people’s power and people’s collective power.

HILARY PENNINGTON: That the people are the stone that fells the giant. I love that. Well, we’ve gotten a lot of questions from the audience, and I’m going to turn to some of those now. And I’m going to start with a question from Crystal, who wants to know, “What are the biggest factors making AI regulation complicated? What will privacy look like with AI and what will machine learning in the private sector and government look like?”

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: That’s a really good question. There are a number of factors complicating AI regulation. One of them is that regulators feel like they’re not well-equipped to regulate because they don’t necessarily know how these systems work. But, you know, I always remind them, they don’t have to know how these systems work in order to regulate. They only need to understand the impacts, right? So the people who know how to build something are not necessarily the best people who know how to evaluate societal impact. So that’s one. The other one–the biggest one to me, I think, is the imbalance in resources. We’re many times in a situation where the people who are harmed–the onus is put on them to show–to prove harm. Even in the cases where regulation is present, like, the general data regulation protection–the GDPR–in the EU, right? A lot of times the onus is on the individuals who are harmed to prove that they are harmed, rather than putting the onus on tech companies before they put out products, proving to us that they are not harmful. And finally, the agencies themselves that we expect to work on regulation are very understaffed, and they also have a hard time enforcing regulation, even once you have the actual regulation in place. And of course, we can’t forget all the lobbying that–speaking of imbalance of power and resources–that biotech companies have to sway the interest in their favor.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, what you describe is really sobering, too, because even if we had better regulation, how can it be enforced? What do you think about that?

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: I think honestly, it’s really about, kind of, we need to have even regulation that we have right now–that I’m sure is being broken–like worker exploitation, or union busting, right? That could do a lot if we really enforced and punished companies who break these laws. That can move us forward, even when we’re talking about AI. But the problem is, again, there is a lot of lobbying, right? And then, there is also, you have agencies that are understaffed and under-resourced, where we are expecting to go up against these companies. So we need to–at even the agencies that we have right now and the laws that we have right now–we need to ensure that they have adequate resources and staff to enforce existing laws. And we need the punishment to have teeth, so that it actually forms as a deterrent.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Yes. All right. Well, let’s go to the second question, which is from Monica, who says, “Data can be biased because people are biased. How will the inputs to AI be, quote ‘corrected,’ as to avoid biased assessments, recommendations, or actions? And who is deciding what ‘corrections’ will be made? How will we ever reach an equitable application of this technology?”

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: This is such a great question because many people in the field of AI want to make people think that there is such a thing as a neutral technology. In fact, Sam Altman, who is the CEO of OpenAI, even tweeted saying that ChatGPT should not have any political inclinations or should be, quote unquote, “neutral”. And a whole bunch of people were like, “What about, you know, so fascism will be okay? Or Nazism?” You know, you can’t be neutral. There is no such thing as being neutral. And this question, I think, gets to that, right? There is no such thing as a neutral or unbiased data set. So, what we need to do is make those biases and make those values that are encoded in it, clear. I wrote a paper called “Lessons from Archives” with a historian, whose name is Unso Jo, and we were talking about how archivists, right, they have curators when they’re curating data, and we know that the curator’s point of view is going to be encoded in there. Whereas in this case, people think that just because they’re putting data from the internet, that everybody’s point of view is represented. And that’s just not true, right? So what we need to do is make those values explicit, and those values are often decided by society. We have laws already, existing laws, saying what’s okay and what’s not okay. So I think that’s what I want people to know is, like, there is no such thing as a completely unbiased data set.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Well, and I love the emphasis you’re putting on making it transparent, making it visible. So I’m going to go to our last question, which comes from Erin, and that’s turning to action that all of us could take. So Erin says, “How should those of us with influence in the corporate social impact space be steering our companies in relation to AI, especially technology companies whose philanthropic strategy is tied to making a charitable digital impact? Where should we be putting our efforts?”

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: So this is a great question. I think that if you’re at a company that is trying to invest in philanthropic ventures, I would say that you should ensure that they’re not doing it in order to then go back and skirt regulation and show, see, these are all the places that we’re investing in. And so you shouldn’t regulate us. So I think that’s really important to make sure that they’re investing in grassroots organizations and other organizations. But we need to make sure that the net impact is positive, rather than resulting in not regulating, holding them accountable. The second thing I would say is that, if you’re inside a company, you know, you can always–a collective action is really important–you can always have partnerships with people outside of the organization and kind of funnel information because often people inside companies know what’s going on before the rest of us do. And third, it’s really important to move resources to people who are very much impacted by this technology and know firsthand what is needed to counter these negative impacts. But they’re not legible to, let’s say, philanthropists, they’re not legible to funders, so they don’t get all these resources, right? And so it’s really important to build connections and networks with groups of people that you generally wouldn’t see in your day-to-day. Find those people, follow them, whether it’s on social media or conferences or wherever. You might find people like that. Build relationships and personal connections and invest in those people and organizations. So for instance, of course, DAIR–I have to plug my own organization–but there’s organizations like Mijente that I love, and there’s organizations like AGL, AINow, Data and Society, etc. And so, yeah, this is my recommendation.

HILARY PENNINGTON: I love those examples. They give me hope. And I want to close with just a final question, which I always ask, which has to do with what gives you hope, especially given such a challenging area that you work on, with so much change, and so much uncertainty, and so many aspects of it, that are frankly, really scary. What gives you hope? What keeps you going?

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: I think it’s going back to what I said earlier, that even though there’s all this money and centralization of power, I always try to remember that it is collective action and people power that is the biggest form of power. And so, oftentimes, when I see the next generation, when I talk to students, when I talk to other people organizing, I see how passionate they are, and how optimistic they are, about building a different path and a better future. So these are the things that give me hope, talking to these people and seeing the next generation.

HILARY PENNINGTON: Thank you. Thank you so much for just a wonderful conversation and thank you to everyone who has joined us to listen to it. And please be ready to join us for the next conversation in the series, which is with Saliem Fakir. And stay tuned for some details about that. Thank you so much, Timnit.

DR. TIMNIT GEBRU: Thank you.

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