3. The Wealth Cap - Tools to Change The World

PREPARATION

Objectives of this module:

To understand the nature of wealth inequality and how it impacts people.
To realize the power of a cap on wealth.
To understand the power of public speaking and to practice it.

Check Your Understanding:

At the end of this module, you should be able to explain the following concepts:

What is capitalism and what is wrong with it?
What is Cosmic Inheritance?
What is Prout’s solution to the problem of uncultivated farmland?
Why does Prout recommend restricting the accumulation of physical wealth?
What should be the criteria for membership on economic boards?
What is the best way to organize a public speech?
What helpful tips should you remember for giving a speech?

Readings:

The Social Reality: Wealth Inequality

Prout’s Vision: Cosmic Inheritance

Activist Tools: Public Speaking

Revolutionary Speeches

CIRCLE-TIME

Excitement Sharing:

“What is something good that has happened in your life since we last met? Or would anyone like to read from your journal or share your recent activities?”

The Social Reality: Wealth Inequality

Capitalism supports a common belief that many people share—that those who are rich became that way because they were smarter and worked harder than the others around them. This unconscious assumption has never been researched or proven; yet most people, both rich and poor, think it’s true. Logically, if you believe that rich people are smarter and work harder, then it should also be true that poor countries stay poor because their people as a whole are not as smart and do not work as hard.

The reality is quite different. For hundreds of years, the rich countries have stolen wealth and exploited people in the rest of the world. Historians tell us that great wealth came from the slave trade. From 1500 to 1875, Europeans and Americans kidnapped between 10 and 12.5 million people and carried them across the Atlantic Ocean (The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database). These Africans were robbed of their humanity; their children were made slaves as well; their culture, language, and religion were destroyed. Slave labor in the plantations and mines of the Americas enriched the elites and helped finance the Industrial Revolution (Williams 2016).

Though legal slavery has ended, and the global capitalist system has changed a lot in modern times, it is still unjust and based on profit, selfishness, and greed. It excludes more people than it benefits.

Capitalism is a system in which people can earn income purely from the owning of wealth or “capital.” The more money you have, the more money you earn, often without lifting a finger. Do the math: if someone has two million dollars and earns just two percent interest by depositing that money in a bank, they’ll receive 40,000 dollars a year—for doing nothing at all. Of course there are hedge funds and other investments that will yield more than two percent interest per year. You may have noticed, too, that some people have a lot more wealth than two million dollars!

No, rich people are not by nature smarter than everyone else, and many rich people don’t work at all.

Another related myth of capitalism is that anyone can become rich. You will always hear some amazing stories of a smart person who worked hard, and who became rich. However, for every happy instance like this, there are millions of other smart, hard-working people who will never get that opportunity.

Global capitalism is fatally ill. It suffers from inherent contradictions like growing inequity and concentration of wealth. Committed to growth at all costs, global capitalism has become a cancer, out of control, and lethal to the world in which it lives. It is contributing to climate change and destroying our planet’s life support systems. It cannot last.

The Social Reality Discussion Question: Wealth Inequality

Our question now is: What is your opinion of income, wealth, and land disparity? How does it impact you? How does it make you feel?

We will go around the room, and ask everyone to say briefly what your opinion is of income, wealth, and land disparity, and how it makes you feel. Please speak for just one minute each.

[After everyone has spoken, 10-15 minutes] Excuse me, please, but we’re going to stop this discussion now, only because, as usual in this course, we want to focus on the solutions.

Cooperative Game: How Much Money is Enough?

Read the following instructions: “Planet Earth is limited. Human desires are not.

“The book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009) reveals how inequality has very negative effects on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, and promoting excessive consumption. In countries with high rates of income inequality, each of the following indices are much worse: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being. Even wealthy people tend to be happier when they live in societies where there is less of a gap between the rich and poor.

“A higher salary may induce a person to work harder or to improve his or her skills to be more productive… to a point. However, there is a limit to the output any one person can achieve: personal capacity is limited, and there are only 24 hours in a day. Production may increase with more money up to a point, but cannot increase indefinitely.

“Inevitably the production curve levels off. After that peak, more incentives will not increase a person’s productivity. Offering a salary increase that is a hundred times higher cannot induce one to work a hundred times harder or to become a hundred times more efficient.

“Sit in small groups of about four people and answer the following five discussion questions. One person in each group should take notes.

What motivates you to be creative and productive? Consider hope for a better future; your co-workers; your boss; the chance to use your skills, talents, and training; a noble cause; or a higher salary.
Have you ever turned down an opportunity to make more money? If so, why? Consider the career you chose, family priorities, something illegal or immoral you heard about, or another job far away.
Have you ever known anyone who became less happy when they got more money? How and why did that happen?
An ancient yoga saying is: ‘Poor is the person with many desires, and rich is the one with no desires.’ In your experience is this true?
How much money do you think is enough?”

After each group has shared its report, ask the group: There is a slogan, “Money is a human invention—we can change the rules!” Would you agree with this?

An ancient wisdom says, “Be careful what you wish for in life, because it might just happen and not make you any happier.” Have you ever experienced this? (20 minutes)

Prout’s Vision: Cosmic Inheritance

Planet Earth, her wealth of resources, and even the entire universe, are the common inheritance of all living beings.

According to P.R. Sarkar:

This universe is the thought projection of Brahma [the Supreme Consciousness], so the ownership of the universe lies with the Supreme Entity and not with any of Brahma’s imagined beings. All living beings can enjoy their rightful share of this property… As members of a joint family, human beings should safeguard this common property in a befitting manner and utilize it properly. They should also make proper arrangements so that everyone can enjoy it with equal rights, ensuring that all have the minimum requirements of life to enable them to live in a healthy body with a sound mind (Sarkar 1958).

Sarkar taught that every living being has both a utility value and a subtler, existential value. Nothing and no one can live independently; every complex human body depends on humble bacteria for its survival. Whether or not we can yet understand the utility and purpose of every animal and plant on this planet, we have a duty to try to preserve their habitats, and not to kill or exploit them needlessly.

Prout’s notion of ownership is based on the concept that the Creator and the manifest universe are one, and that the Creator permeates and resonates in every particle of it. Even so-called inanimate objects are vital with latent consciousness. The Creator invites us to use all resources with respect, and not to abuse them.

Because of this spiritual outlook, Prout does not give the same importance to the system of individual ownership of property that capitalism does. Collectively, like brothers and sisters in a human family, we have a duty to utilize and distribute fairly the world’s resources for the welfare of all. Prout therefore encourages the protection of biodiversity and natural habitats through reforestation, aggressive control of air, water, and soil pollution, and efforts to reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse gases.

All this represents a very different perspective from the current legal and economic systems of our world. Private property rights and the pursuit of unlimited wealth have become pre-eminent values. In the United States, for example, not more than three percent of the population owns 95 percent of the privately held land (Meyer 1979). In Great Britain, the richest two percent own 74 percent of the land (Cahill 2000).

According to Sarkar, “Uncultivated [farm]land is a liability for the human race.” He further states, “In Prout’s system of agriculture there is no place for intermediaries. Those who invest their capital by engaging others in productive labor to earn a profit are capitalists. Capitalists, like parasites, thrive on the blood of industrial and agricultural laborers” (Sarkar 1997, 117). Prout’s solution includes starting agricultural cooperatives to better utilize land and provide jobs to the unemployed.

The spiritual concept of cosmic inheritance also suggests that the life and well-being of humans must be society’s first priority, always taking precedence over financial concerns. Hence a Proutist economy begins by providing the minimum necessities of life to all people in every region, and then gradually raises their quality of life in a sustainable way.

The First Fundamental Principle of Prout

In 1959 Sarkar wrote the Five Fundamental Principles of Prout in the last chapter of his book, Idea and Ideology (Sarkar 1997). They direct how resources should be distributed. They are fundamental because all Prout policies are based on these principles, and while policies will change over time, these principles do not.

“No individual should be allowed to accumulate any physical wealth without the clear permission or approval of the collective body.”

In this principle is the recognition that the physical resources of this planet are limited. Hence the hoarding or misuse of any resource would reduce opportunities for others. Hoarding wealth or using it for speculation rather than productive investment directly reduces the opportunities of others in society. Hence, reasonable ceilings must be placed on salaries and inherited wealth, as well as on property and land ownership.

This principle is based on the concept of Cosmic Inheritance, that human beings have the right to use and share, but not to hoard or abuse, the resources that we have been jointly given.

Earnings should be capped at reasonable maximum levels. When determining compensation, all factors, such as performance bonuses and personal expense accounts, must be included. The gap between the minimum wage and the maximum salary will have to be gradually decreased, thereby raising living standards for all.

There is growing acceptance of the concept of controlling and reducing the income gap in the business world as well. Renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, “The most forthright and effective way of enhancing equality within the firm would be to specify the maximum range between average and maximum compensation” (Galbraith 1973). Some Japanese and European companies already have such policies. Neoconservatives advocate that no limits should be placed on what they call “economic freedom,” but a principle of law is that the freedom of one individual cannot be allowed to infringe on the freedom of others, and the over-accumulation of wealth does infringe on the economic rights of others.

Sarkar used the term “the collective body” to refer to society. He indicated that the government would have to assume responsibility for setting limits to wealth accumulation. It would do this by forming economic boards. He insisted that board members should be “those who are honest, who really want to promote human welfare… [by] rendering social service collectively…” (Sarkar 1958). In addition to setting economic policies and standards, Prout economic boards will also hear applications from citizens for exceptions to the ceilings. For example, an entrepreneur or an inventor would apply for funding to start a new business.

This principle applies to physical wealth. Intellectual knowledge and spiritual wisdom are unlimited, and so their accumulation is not a problem, as long as others are not prevented from using them.

Prout Vision Discussion Questions:

All government employees have pay scales. The U.S. federal government pays the president a little more than 10 times the salary of a starting worker, while Norway pays 5.3 times more. Do you think it is reasonable to ask the same from private business?

“Healthy individuals contribute to a healthy society, and a healthy society fosters the development of healthy individuals.” Do you agree with this statement, and that individual interests and collective interests do not have to be in conflict?

Mark Friedman lists eight factors that motivate people to work productively: individual ability, personality, the demands of the organization, education, experience, work environment, service culture, and income. What factors motivate you to work hard?

How do you think providing jobs to all with an adequate salary to purchase the minimum necessities would affect the wealth gap?

What do you think is a reasonable cap on wealth? How would you determine this?

Activist Tools: Public Speaking

Revolutionary speakers do not make a speech; they set the room on fire! They connect, inspire, and speak with passion. This tool builds on your strengths and develops more presence, so that you can connect with your listeners with warmth, energy, authority, and the power to influence.

It’s all in the delivery. Learning to give powerful talks is a valuable way to develop self confidence and assertiveness, and to become a strong leader. It helps in organizing your thoughts effectively and presenting ideas clearly and succinctly. Your mind sharpens by researching various topics and your viewpoint expands by learning about people, new ideas, and current events.

Most everyone has some nervousness, stage fright, and speech anxiety before giving a speech. (Some of the following public speaking tips are from Toastmasters International.) In order to minimize this nervousness, it is helpful to follow these guidelines:

Know the room. Visit the place or arrive early to become familiar with the place where you will speak.
Know the audience. Greet audience members as they arrive and chat with them, if possible.
Know your material. Memorize the introduction and conclusion at least. Memorizing your entire speech is even better, if you can.
Relax.
Visualize yourself giving your speech.
Realize that people want you to succeed.
Don’t apologize—you’re doing your best.
Focus on your message, not on the medium. Your nervous feelings will dissipate if you focus on conveying your ideas.

The following are the basic mechanics of giving speeches in a nutshell:

Topic: Every speech has a point. It is important to let the audience know what you are going to be talking about, and why they should listen.
Details: Here is where you provide the facts and details that support your main idea.
Climax: This is the punch or dramatic point of the speech; it is what the speech hangs on. It should hit everyone in their heart.
Review: Summarize briefly in two or three sentences what your speech was about.

In short: First, tell your audience what you are going to tell them. Then tell them. Then tell them what you told them.

Here are some helpful tips for giving speeches:

1. 1. Use good eye contact. This is a really important way of creating rapport with your audience. If, for cultural reasons, you don’t wish to do this, then look at the foreheads of your listeners.
  2. Use good body posture. Avoid shifting your feet or swaying back and forth, which is distracting. Avoid fooling with your hair, giggling, fumbling with papers, etc.
  3. Keep good composure. Even if you your stomach feels like it has butterflies inside, your audience should not know it.
  4. Sprinkle your speeches with personal experiences to draw the audience into your talk.
  5. For your opening hook, use a quotation, startling statement, question, or an anecdote.
  6. Avoid vocalized pauses, e.g., um, ah, and, so, etc.
  7. Use appropriate hand gestures; however, avoid using them too often in the speech.
  8. Take a moment to center yourself before you begin your talk.

Ask others to critique your speech so that you may improve your performance. These critiques should focus on how the speech was presented, including diction, voice quality, and how engaging the speech was for the person who is critiquing you.

Exercise: Give a Speech

Each participant chooses a topic from the first three modules on which to speak. Here is a list of possible speech topics:

Why is the growing gap between the rich and the poor a problem?
Would a cap on wealth be a good thing?
Why should economists have an ecological and spiritual perspective?
What’s wrong with materialism?
Can dharma give meaning to one’s life?
What can we do against the epidemic of depression?
What would happen if we guaranteed the minimum necessities of life to everyone?
Should products imported from other countries be taxed (tariffs)?
Should the minimum wage be increased?
Should there be stricter laws to protect endangered species?
How is pollution negatively affecting humanity?
Do we need to invest more in alternative fuels?
Should we have capital punishment?
Why is it wrong for the media to promote a certain beauty standard?
Should women always be paid the same as men when they do the same work?
Is capitalism working in this country?

Write a two to three minute speech. Fifteen minutes will be given to prepare the speeches. Then the speeches will be presented to the whole group. A timekeeper will give a one-minute signal, a two-minute signal, and a 30 second warning. Finally, after three minutes, the timekeeper will make a sound and the speaker must stop. Everyone will write an evaluation of all speeches and give the evaluations to the speaker after their speeches. The evaluations should answer:

What strong points does the speaker already have?
Did the topic engage you?
Did the speech reflect adequate preparation?
Did the speaker speak clearly and loudly enough?
Did the speech have a definite opening, body and conclusion?
Did the speaker use notes effectively if she or he used notes?
What could the speaker have done differently that would have improved the speech?
What did you like about the speech?
Do you feel called to action or inspired by the speech?

If time permits, the group will discuss the speeches in general—what they liked and what they think could be improved next time.

Closure:

The facilitator should remind everyone about further viewings, readings, and activities – Do as many as you can. Ask everyone to read the next module in the manual before the next meeting. Confirm the date, time, and place of the next meeting. Show the following roles for the next module and ask people to volunteer to lead a part.

MODULE 4: FOR THE WELFARE OF THE EARTH AND ALL LIVING BEINGS
Facilitator: _______
Timekeeper: _______
Excitement Sharing: _______ (10 min.) 0:00
The Social Reality: Pollution and Climate Change – review and lead discussion question: _______ (20 min.) 0:10
Cooperative Game – Namaskar Game: _______ (20 min.) 0:30
Prout’s Vision: Maximum Utilization and Rational Distribution 2-5 of the Fundamental Principles of Prout – review and lead discussion questions: _______ (30 min.) 0:50
Activist Tools: Consciousness-Raising Groups – review: _______ (10 min.) 1:20
Activist Tool Exercise Nature’s Beauty, Loss, and Return: _______ (15 min.) 1:30
Closure, Feedback, Role Assignments for Next Week: _______ (15 min.) 1:45

Ask participants to write anonymous feedback about the session before they leave. They can use the Feedback Form at the end of Module 1, or write whatever they like.

Activities—Do as many as you can:

Find a revolutionary speech that inspires you. Consider the following eight speech excerpts, or others by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Bill McKibben, Chief Joseph, Bill Ayers, Naomi Klein, Cornell West, Rev. William Barber, Gloria Steinem, Al Gore, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Paine, Michael Moore, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Vine Deloria, Jr., Dolores Huerta, Patrice Lumumba, Ang Sang Su Kyi, and Che Guevara. Read part of it to the group.

Watch some of the ten most popular TED talks.

Toastmasters International is a club that empowers individuals to become more effective communicators and leaders by regularly giving speeches, gaining feedback, leading teams, and guiding others to achieve their goals in a supportive atmosphere. You can attend any meeting for free as a guest. There are 16,400 clubs in 141 countries.

Research wealth in your community and country. Who are the haves and who are the have nots?

What are children learning about economics in school? Is there anything in your local school curriculum about the wealth gap, income inequality, or a wealth cap?

Study the curriculum of a local college or university. Is there any content about wealth disparity?

Revolutionary Speeches

These are short excerpts from eight powerful speeches. We encourage you to follow the links to read and, if possible, to listen to the recording of the entire speech. Practice one you like; then read it aloud forcefully to the group.

Emmeline Pankhurst: “Freedom or Death”

[Pankhurst (1858 – 1928) was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement that helped women win the right to vote. These excerpts are from her speech in Hartford, Connecticut, USA, on November 13, 1913.]

….Now, I want to say to you who think women cannot succeed, we have brought the government of England to this position, that it has to face this alternative: either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote. I ask American men in this meeting, what would you say if in your state you were faced with that alternative, that you must either kill them or give them their citizenship? Well, there is only one answer to that alternative, there is only one way out—you must give those women the vote.

You won your freedom in America when you had the revolution, by bloodshed, by sacrificing human life. You won the civil war by the sacrifice of human life when you decided to emancipate the Negro. You have left it to women in your land, the men of all civilized countries have left it to women, to work out their own salvation. That is the way in which we women of England are doing. Human life for us is sacred, but we say if any life is to be sacrificed, it shall be ours; we won’t do it ourselves, but we will put the enemy in the position where they will have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death.

So here am I. I come in the intervals of prison appearance. I come after having been four times imprisoned under the “Cat and Mouse Act,” probably going back to be rearrested as soon as I set my foot on British soil. I come to ask you to help to win this fight. If we win it, this hardest of all fights, then, to be sure, in the future it is going to be made easier for women all over the world to win their fight when their time comes.

Emma Goldman: “Address to the Jury”

[Goldman (1869 – 1940) was an American anarchist political activist, writer, and extraordinary orator. She and Alexander Berkman were tried and sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to “induce persons not to register” for the newly instated draft to fight in the First World War. These are excerpts from her speech during their trial in New York City, July 9, 1917.]

Gentlemen of the jury, whatever your verdict will be, as far as we are concerned, nothing will be changed.

I have held ideas all my life. I have publicly held my ideas for twenty-seven years. Nothing on earth would ever make me change my ideas except one thing; and that is, if you will prove to me that our position is wrong, untenable, or lacking in historic fact. But never would I change my ideas because I am found guilty. I may remind you of two great Americans, undoubtedly not unknown to you, gentlemen of the jury; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. When Thoreau was placed in prison for refusing to pay taxes, he was visited by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emerson said: “David, what are you doing in jail?” and Thoreau replied: “Ralph, what are you doing outside, when honest people are in jail for their ideals?” Gentlemen of the jury, I do not wish to influence you. I do not wish to appeal to your passions. I do not wish to influence you by the fact that I am a woman. I have no such desires and no such designs. I take it that you are sincere enough and honest enough and brave enough to render a verdict according to your convictions, beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt…..

But whatever your decision, the struggle must go on. We are but the atoms in the incessant human struggle towards the light that shines in the darkness—the ideal of economic, political, and spiritual liberation of humankind!

Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar: “Problems of the Day”

[Sarkar (1922 – 1990) was an Indian philosopher and spiritual master who founded Prout and the socio-spiritual movement, Ananda Marga. This excerpt is from his Renaissance Universal discourse given on January 26, 1958 in Trimohan, Bhagalpur, India.]

We must not forget, even for a single moment, that the entire animate world is a vast joint family. Nature has not assigned any portion of this property to any particular individual. Private ownership has been created by selfish opportunists, as the loopholes in this system provide them with ample scope for self-aggrandizement through exploitation. When the entire wealth of the universe is the common heritage of all living beings, how then can there be any justification for a system in which some roll in luxury, while others die for lack of a handful of grain?

In a joint family every member is provided with adequate food, clothing, education, medical treatment, and amenities, as per their individual needs, according to the financial capacity of the entire family. If, however, any member of the family appropriates more grains, clothes, books or medicines than he or she requires, will that person not be the cause of distress to other members of the family? In such circumstances his or her actions will be certainly antisocial.

Similarly, the capitalists of this modern world are anti-dharma, or antisocial, creatures. To accumulate massive wealth, they reduce others to skin and bones gnawed by hunger and force them to die of starvation; to dazzle people with the glamour of their garments, they compel others to wear rags; and to increase their own vital strength, they suck dry the vital juice of others.

A member of a joint family cannot be called a social being if he or she does not possess the sentiment of oneness with the other members, or if he or she does not want to accept the lofty ideal of joint rights and the principle of rationality. According to true spiritual ideology the system of private ownership cannot be accepted as absolute and final, and hence capitalism cannot be supported, either.

Nelson Mandela: “I am Prepared to Die”

[This is the conclusion of Mandela’s three-hour statement that he read from the dock at the 1964 Rivonia Trial.]

…Africans want to be paid a living wage. Africans want to perform work which they are capable of doing, and not work which the Government declares them to be capable of. Africans want to be allowed to live where they obtain work, and not be endorsed out of an area because they were not born there. Africans want to be allowed to own land in places where they work, and not to be obliged to live in rented houses which they can never call their own. Africans want to be part of the general population, and not confined to living in their own ghettoes. African men want to have their wives and children to live with them where they work, and not be forced into an unnatural existence in men’s hostels. African women want to be with their men folk and not be left permanently widowed in the Reserves. Africans want to be allowed out after eleven o’clock at night and not to be confined to their rooms like little children. Africans want to be allowed to travel in their own country and to seek work where they want to and not where the Labor Bureau tells them to. Africans want a just share in the whole of South Africa; they want security and a stake in society.

Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy.

But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on color, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by another. The African National Congress has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs, it will not change that policy.

This then is what the ANC is fighting. Their struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live.

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

[On June 11, 1964, at the conclusion of the trial, Mandela was found guilty on four charges of sabotage and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He began his sentence in the notorious Robben Island Prison, a maximum security prison on a small island off the coast near Cape Town. A worldwide campaign to free Mandela began in the 1980s and resulted in his release on February 11, 1990, at age 71, after 27 years in prison. In 1993, Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with South Africa’s President F.W. de Klerk for their peaceful efforts to bring a non-racial democracy to South Africa. Black South Africans voted for the first time in the 1994 election that brought Mandela the presidency of South Africa.]

Robert F. Kennedy: “On the Death of Martin Luther King, Jr.”

[Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968), younger brother of slain U.S. President John F. Kennedy, spoke before a large crowd in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was April 4, 1968, the day that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. The gathering was actually a planned campaign rally for his bid to get the 1968 Democratic nomination for president. This is his entire speech. After he spoke, Indianapolis was the only large American city that did not experience angry riots that night.]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because… I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.

For those of you who are black—considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible—you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization—black people among blacks, and white among whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but it is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King. Yeah, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love—a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much.

Rigoberta Menchú Tum: “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Lecture, December 10, 1992”

[Rigoberta Menchú (born 1959) is a K’iche’ political and human rights activist from Guatemala. She and many others brought lawsuits and testified against Guatemalan general and former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity during the bloodiest phase of the country’s 36-year civil war. These are short excerpts of her speech, translated from Spanish.]

…I consider this Prize, not as a reward to me personally, but rather as one of the greatest conquests in the struggle for peace, for human rights and for the rights of the indigenous people, who, for 500 years, have been split, fragmented, as well as the victims of genocides, repression and discrimination.

…The Maya people developed and spread geographically through some 300,000 square kilometers. They occupied parts of the South of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, as well as Honduras and El Salvador. They developed a very rich civilization in the area of political organization, as well as in social and economic fields. They were great scientists in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, architecture, and engineering. They were great artists in the fields of sculpture, painting, weaving and carving.

…Who can predict what other great scientific conquests and developments these people could have achieved, if they had not been conquered by blood and fire, and subjected to an ethnocide that affected nearly 50 million people in the course of 500 years?

…The expressions of great happiness by the Indian Organizations in the entire Continent and the worldwide congratulations received for the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, clearly indicate the great importance of this decision. It is the recognition of the European debt to the American indigenous people. It is an appeal to the conscience of humanity so that those conditions of marginalization that condemned them to colonialism and exploitation may be eradicated. It is a cry for life, peace, justice, equality, and fraternity among human beings.

Emma Watson: UN Speech to Launch HeforShe Initiative

[This is an excerpt from the moving speech by Emma Watson (born 1990), British actor and Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women, at the United Nations on September 20, 2014.]

Today we are launching a campaign called HeForShe. I am reaching out to you because we need your help. We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone involved…

I was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women six months ago. And, the more I spoke about feminism, the more I realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.

For the record, feminism, by definition, is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of political, economic and social equality of the sexes….

I decided that I was a feminist, and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Women are choosing not to identify as feminists. Apparently, I’m among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, and anti-men. Unattractive, even.

Why has the word become such an uncomfortable one? I am from Britain, and I think it is right I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decisions that will affect my life. I think it is right that socially, I am afforded the same respect as men.

But sadly, I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to see these rights. No country in the world can yet say that they achieved gender equality. These rights, I consider to be human rights, but I am one of the lucky ones.

My life is a sheer privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. My school did not limit me because I was a girl. My mentors didn’t assume that I would go less far because I might give birth to a child one day. These influences were the gender equality ambassadors that made me who I am today….

And if you still hate the word, it is not the word that is important. It’s the idea and the ambition behind it, because not all women have received the same rights I have. In fact, statistically, very few have.

In 1995, Hillary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly, many of the things that she wanted to change are still true today. But what stood out for me the most was that less than thirty percent of the audience was male. How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation?

Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue, too. Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society, despite my need of his presence as a child, as much as my mother’s. I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help, for fear it would make them less of a man. In fact, in the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20 to 49, eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality, either.

We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes, but I can see that they are, and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence…

Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong. If we stop defining each other by what we are not, and start defining ourselves by who we are, we can all be freer, and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.

Winona LaDuke: “Keystone Pipeline on Native Lands?”

[Winona LaDuke (born 1959) is an Anishinaabe environmentalist, economist, and writer, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation, as well as sustainable development. She was a two-time vice presidential candidate with Ralph Nader for the Green Party. She is the executive director of Honor the Earth. This is an excerpt from her talk at Cooper Union, New York City, on October 25, 2014.]

I don’t think any of us had any idea that they were going to retool the infrastructure of this country. We didn’t have any idea of the number of pipelines being proposed, the number of bomb trains that would be going by. We are in an era of society which is so addicted to fossil fuels… that we do extreme things to get them.

Extreme behavior is when you blow off the top of 500 mountains in Appalachia. That’s extreme behavior. Extreme behavior is when you drill 20,000 feet under the ocean and hope it’s going to pan out when you drill for oil. You keep looking for new places to drill.…. Extreme behavior is when you frack the bedrock and it explodes ….for short term gain for some energy companies.

Extreme behavior is what addicts do. We have a society that is based on addiction. I’ve been part of movements with a lot of people in this room to oppose nuclear power plants, oppose Dakota Pipeline projects. What we have done is we’ve successfully fought off a lot of power plants; we’ve fought off a lot of dam projects.

There are some pictures there of Big Maps in New Brunswick of a native woman in front of 300 riot cops with an eagle feather. Or pictures of a native man looking at snipers in his village, protesting Esteban Southwest Resources, a Houston-based fracking company trying to explore last year in New Brunswick.

I did not sign up for such a loss of civil rights, human rights. I did not sign up for the military to take over our territories to protect oil. I didn’t sign up for drones to protect the pipelines. None of us signed up for that. That is what a crisis in democracy looks like when you have a highly addictive society.

The answers are clear. You don’t ship your food around. You don’t slather your food with oil. You have an economy that doesn’t require so much energy. Public policy on a local level needs to be very diligent all the way up to the national level. We need power that is controlled by us, and not major corporations.

FOLLOW-UP

Further viewings:

Anderson, Chris. “TED’s Secret to Great Public Speaking.” April 19, 2016. 8 minutes.

Clifford, Jacob and Adrian Hill. “Income and Wealth Inequality: Crash Course Economics #17.” December 6, 2015. 10 minutes.

Oliver, John. “The Wealth Gap: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO).” July 13, 2014. 14 minutes.

Spencer, Joseph. “Global Wealth Inequality – Did you know this?” February 4, 2017. 6 minutes.

Wilkinson, Richard. “How Economic Inequality Harms Societies.” TEDGlobal. July 2011. 16 minutes.

References:

Cahill, Kevin. 2000. Who Owns Britain? London: Canongate.

Galbraith, John Kenneth. 1973. Economics and the Public Purpose. New York: The New American Library.

Meyer, Peter. 1979. “Land Rush: A Survey of America’s Land – Who Owns It, Who Controls It, How Much is Left.” Harper’s Magazine, January 1979.

Sarkar, P.R. 1958. Problems of the Day. Calcutta: Ananda Marga Publications.

— 1992. “Agrarian Revolution,” Proutist Economics. Calcutta: Ananda Marga Publications.

Toastmasters International.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

Wilkinson, Richard and Kate Pickett. 2009. The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. Allen Lane.

Williams, Tasha. 2016. “America, the House That Slavery Built: By Minimizing How we Talk About Slavery, We Ignore Its Profound Impact on the Development of the American Economy.” Pacific Standard, August 5, 2016.

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