Ed Rampell<\/p>\n
What is The Welcome Table\u2019s premise?<\/p>\n
Josh Fox<\/p>\n
I realized our climate change movement in the West was not seeing a giant crisis on the horizon of climate displacement. We think a lot about climate change in terms of weather, extreme storms, or fires, but the human element is that people are going to lose their homes\u00a0\u2014 one out of every three people on the planet. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report says one third less of the planet will be habitable in 2070. That\u2019s going to cause the largest mass migration in history. There are already millions of displaced people.<\/p>\n
We are way beyond our climate targets from ten or fifteen years ago, and we\u2019re going to experience an enormous upheaval. I wanted to focus on welcoming, an extremely important virtue at a time when all we see are walls. What is the opposite of the wall, which symbolizes xenophobia, racism, militarization, incarceration, hate? The welcome table is solidarity, sharing, generosity, a place where everybody has a seat and can find a new home.<\/p>\n
Ed Rampell<\/p>\n
What are \u201cclimate refugees\u201d?<\/p>\n
Josh Fox<\/p>\n
Previously, a refugee was defined as someone in danger because of their ethnicity, economic status, political status, but one cannot say you\u2019re a refugee because of climate change now, which is a big problem. This needs to be rectified. We want the broadest definition possible of climate refugees, because, in the Global South, that should be a reason to declare asylum. These problems are the result of the Global North, of the First World\u2019s economies. The people facing the worst impacts of climate change are those who caused the problem least and have the least resources to deal with it.<\/p>\n
The question I get asked most is: \u201cWhere will I be safe?\u201d And there is no geographical answer to that question.<\/p>\n
Ed Rampell<\/p>\n
Sign up for Elon Musk\u2019s trip to Mars.<\/p>\n
Josh Fox<\/p>\n
These private space programs are the most irresponsible thing we could be doing in respect to climate now. Billionaires\u2019 private space programs can raise the temperature by two extra degrees, because they emit black carbon directly into the stratosphere.<\/p>\n
Ed Rampell<\/p>\n
The Welcome Table includes archival footage regarding the UN\u2019s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including of Eleanor Roosevelt.<\/p>\n
Josh Fox<\/p>\n
Donald Trump and other fascists are talking about border walls, dehumanizing immigrants. After World War II, there were so many displaced people, including my father, an infant survivor of the Holocaust, who came to the United States when he was eight. At that time, when the world had experienced this enormous upheaval, which I believe we\u2019ll suffer due to climate change, the people rebuilding the world after fascism\u2019s defeat decided to create a whole new Magna Carta for the human race. And the era of human rights and of nation states were born. Two hundred nations now, many who declared independence after World War II and the colonial era.<\/p>\n
Then the empires never gave up their power and created a system of border checks, visas and walls, exclusion, and economic and military hegemony similar to the colonialism of the past, keeping the Global South down.<\/p>\n
One of our Universal Human Rights is the right to move. There is no such thing as an \u201cillegal border crossing.\u201d You could argue climate, economics, race, religion, any type of oppression, which most people in the Global South face at the hands of the Global North, is a reason to cross a border legally and declare asylum. No one is illegal. The Trump administration and fascist governments of the world are in constant violation of our inalienable human rights. Freedom of movement now depends on how much money you have, and that\u2019s against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by almost every nation\u00a0\u2014 including the United States!<\/p>\n
Ed Rampell<\/p>\n
Your documentary goes to Italy to show African migrants fleeing natural disasters. What\u2019s so special about what Domenico \u201cMimmo\u201d Lucano is doing in Calabria?<\/p>\n
Josh Fox<\/p>\n
I was keen to go there because it\u2019s where my family left due to economic hardship. So many of these places are trying to exclude migrants, even though lots of the houses are empty, because so many left a hundred years ago. It\u2019s right on the Mediterranean, across from Libya. Up to forty thousand people have drowned trying to make the treacherous journey to Italy. Mimmo, the mayor of Riace, Calabria, decided immigrants are not threats to Italy\u00a0\u2014 they\u2019re a resource. His town had so few children born to Italians that they were going to lose their school funding. Meanwhile, boats were arriving from Africa and the Middle East daily.<\/p>\n
He gave migrants houses, jobs. And Riace, which was a ghost town, flourished. The mayor said, \u2018We\u2019re now a global village.\u2019<\/p>\n
So, Mimmo created an immigrant economy. He gave migrants houses, jobs. And Riace, which was a ghost town, flourished. Mimmo said, \u201cWe\u2019re now a global village.\u201d There are refugees from all over Africa, Afghanistan, Eastern Europe. Forbes called Mimmo one of the world\u2019s policy and thought leaders. But the Italian government, which blames immigration for every problem, prosecuted him for misusing public funds. Everyone knew these were trumped-up charges and Mimmo was the symbol of a new Europe. He was not allowed to travel to the United States to attend the celebrations at the end of our film.<\/p>\n
In that section, we point out Italians were not treated very well in America when we first arrived; we were portrayed as rats. Can you imagine New York without pizza?<\/p>\n
Ed Rampell<\/p>\n
The Welcome Table goes beyond the science of climate change to the economic and political systems that engender global warming. You also go into the history of empires and critique colonialism and capitalism vis-\u00e0-vis the climate crisis.<\/p>\n
Josh Fox<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t believe that coal, oil, and gas are the causes of climate change\u00a0\u2014 they are a symptom of a global system that starts with colonialism, the root cause of climate change. The attitude that a place can be exploited, monetized, and the resources extracted. The engine of capitalism and colonialism, the blood of that is coal, oil, and gas. You can\u2019t own the sun or wind\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s not a commodity capitalism can exploit. I\u2019m trying to tie together the long history of the transition from colonialism to nation states and looking ahead to a moment of international collaboration and equality. But if the oil barons are in control and continue to push coal, oil, and gas, and colonial domination, we are going to tank the climate.<\/p>\n
Ed Rampell<\/p>\n
What did you find in the Peruvian Amazon?<\/p>\n
Josh Fox<\/p>\n
The Achuar federation. There\u2019s a vast difference between the philosophies of the Global North and the capitalist economies and their political structures and the indigenous people in those regions suffering the impact of climate change. The Achuar are living in harmony with nature and have an incredible seven-thousand-year-old culture and are trying to protect it. Without the Amazon we all perish. Pointing toward the indigenous philosophy and customs there is very important. Welcoming is an indigenous value; not necessarily in our cultures\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scientists campaigned that this is \u201cman-made\u201d climate change, but that\u2019s not true. It is made by this system of extractivism and capitalism. The indigenous people in Africa and Peru did not make climate change. It is the fossil fuel industry, their political enablers and the billionaire class that are causing climate change. Looking at colonialism and the long arc of history, what came before it and where it has led us to is this climate catastrophe. How do we learn how to welcome each other again? We are all brothers and sisters on this planet and we have to start sharing.<\/p>\n
Ed Rampell<\/p>\n
You counterpose the capitalist system to the communalism of the Achuar, indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon. Ricardo from Amazon Watch points out on-screen they don\u2019t have privately owned land and share the resources derived from nature. At the end of his 1884 book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Friedrich Engels writes: \u201cThe next higher plane of society\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient [peoples].\u201d Do you think this is the solution to the climate crisis and the inequality that engenders it?<\/p>\n
Josh Fox<\/p>\n
Undoubtedly. We cannot continue to live in a society where there are billionaires. Every billionaire is a policy failure, a moral failure, a human failure. It should be illegal to have that much wealth and power. I\u2019ll point to the great socialist institution, the National Basketball Association\u00a0\u2014 there is revenue sharing among all the teams at the highest level.<\/p>\n
If we did the same thing, we\u2019d have all our problems solved now. If we taxed every billionaire, then we\u2019d have the global resources to take on these problems, fix climate change, move to renewable energy, have health care, schools, a better life for everybody!<\/p>\n
Additionally, look at what Zohran Mamdani\u2019s doing in New York. Look at Bernie Sanders\u2019s amazing legacy. I have always been a democratic socialist. Of course, the solution is to have generosity, sharing.<\/p>\n
Ed Rampell<\/p>\n
What would you like to add?<\/p>\n
Josh Fox<\/p>\n
In the film, there\u2019s a thousand-foot-long table atop the same levee that sank New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as a symbolic place to be. The table is that metaphor I want people to think about when we think of walls. When we worked on fracking, we saw people light their water on fire and that image defined that struggle. When we think about migration, I want people to think about the table, and to sing that song, \u201cThe Welcome Table.\u201d There\u2019s so much music in this movie. A wall on its side can be a table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ed Rampell What is The Welcome Table\u2019s premise? Josh Fox I realized our climate change movement in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-508496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}