Jerry Brown in Dialogues, by Jerry Brown
On Principles & Values:
1994: Started national call-in radio program "We The People"
In the winter of 1994, I started a national call-in radio program, "We the People." My plan was to take up contemporary ideas and controversies and explore them as honestly as I could. My hope was to clarify tacit assumptions and test them against
common sense and democratic principles. I invited guests and structured the show as a dialogue between myself and the person who joined me in conversation.
For guests, I sought out people whose writings or whose life exemplified unusual intelligence and honesty. I wanted to learn as much as I could about our society and the mental structures which shape it.
I looked for people who had deep understanding, or perhaps a special vantage point from which they saw things many of us had missed.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 13
Jul 14, 1998
On Free Trade:
GATT pushes short-term consumption; ignores over-consumption
Here in California, projections show a massive and continuing paving of the prime agricultural land in the Central Valley. The building of houses is so much more profitable in the short term than the production of food that the market drives people to
pave over their land. After all, the food can be grown in Mexico or it can be grown in Asia, it can be grown in Spain, wherever.In the last few years, there's been a mounting chorus call for the elimination of barriers to global trade. This is the
GATT, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, which opposes any barrier to the movement of goods across borders. What this is calling for is energy consumption, extraction, and more and more possession of stuff--chemical, plastic, whatever--with
almost no real recognition of the issues of overconsumption.
Everything seems to be moving toward more container ships, more things in them, more port expansion, more railroad cars, more trucks, more subdivisions, more garages.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.271-2
Apr 24, 1997
On Corporations:
Shameful growth of inequality in America is continuing
Today in "The New York Times", retiring Labor Secretary Robert Reich put out a kind of valedictory; he had a bar chart and some nice words for President Clinton. He happened to mention that the wealthiest 20% -- all the people who do things in this
society that get any visibility--that their income has increased 30%, while the bottom 20% had sunk significantly. The story also says that our President has been told specifically not to talk about these class issues.
Now Reich might have said, "This is a horrible thing. It's a scandal. The President's doing nothing; the Congress is doing nothing. I quit." Instead, he explains that the President is on the right track and he'd be doing even better if
Gingrich wasn't in the way. But it's there if you read it. The shameful growth of inequality in America is continuing.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.142
Apr 16, 1997
On Environment:
Sustainability ideology obscures need for attitudinal change
There are a lot of good people running around--The Natural Resource of Defense Council, The Environmental Defense Fund, The World Wildlife Fund, Audubon--and there are a lot of corporations talking about sustainability and pollution in
their annual reports. And yet, there seems to be a danger in this kind of environmental ideology in that it obscures the need for attitudinal change, for a shift in our relationship to the land, for a spiritual connection to place.
The environmental discussion is not only about whether we can make a more efficient car and then recycle all the parts, because if we add millions, or hundreds of millions,
of drivers to the planet and don't change the attitude, which emphasizes having rather than being, we will not forestall catastrophe.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.147
Apr 16, 1997
On Free Trade:
Maquiladoras liberated rural women to new servitude
"The Nation" magazine recently had a report out of Juarez, Mexico, where a large number of women work in the maquiladoras, producing shoes and T-shirts and windshields for the US market.
The maquiladoras, according to this report, have brought women a perverse sort of liberation, a sense of freedom from rural traditions, but they have also brought a new form of servitude, which has reached extremes of murder and abuse.
So in this global economy, women may believe they have advanced, but it's a complete trap, because of the pay they get, the way they're treated,
and the demoraling of their community through a way of life that is totally at variance with very old traditions.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.138
Apr 16, 1997
On Free Trade:
Global development system expands gap between rich and poor
I want to highlight this notion of development; it's so powerful. Harry Truman announced "The Development Decade" in 1949, and it has since become an overwhelming obsession. To challenge it is almost obscene.
It's almost like taking your clothes off in public. It is taboo to challenge the notion of development. Why do we accept development as an unquestioned good?
Development is a race, and the rules of the race are made by influential people as part of a system that dramatically expands the gap between the rich and the poor everywhere in the world.
This logic of development is rarely--if ever--challenged by "The New York Times", the White House, the G-7 summit, at major party conventions, in the mass media, or even in the schools.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.140
Apr 16, 1997
On Environment:
International produce supply line is not sustainable
To get more local food sufficiency and more biological diversity, it strikes me that 2 things are going to occur. Number one, you're going to require more human labor in the production of food; and number two
, you're going to have to reduce these massive exports from the US.The Oakland produce market starts opening at about 10:00 at night and these trucks pulling in are gigantic. I saw one truck being unloaded and
I looked at some tomatoes that came from Sinaloa, Mexico. There was a whole bunch of produce stacked along the sidewalk there and I asked the driver, "Where did you come in from?" He said, "I came in from Nogales." That's a long way from here.
I just have to think that such a huge truck--the driver said it cost about $150,000--certainly burned up a lot of oil. That supply line, it strikes me, can't be a sustainable system.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 42-4
Apr 11, 1997
On Free Trade:
NAFTA and GATT send jobs to Chinese & Mexican workers
[Speaking to Texas truckers,] Here in Washington, both the Republicans and Democrats are constantly singing the praises of NAFTA and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. As for trade here in Oakland, we have a port with trains coming and going
throughout the day--130 cars at a time picking up containers that come off dozens of Chinese ships filled by people making $30, maybe $40 a month. And this is this thing they call a global village with all these rules managing the flow of traffic.
"Very soon these trucks are going to be driven by cheaper workers from south of the border and you're going to be out of a job."
He understood that he was going to be hurt, eventually, by NAFTA. It hasn't happened yet, but it's pretty
hard to stop the logic of that, isn't it? Why should a transport company pay somebody $12 or $13 dollars an hour, when, by just going below the border a few miles, the business can save an enormous amount of money?
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 46-7
Apr 11, 1997
On Crime:
CA fired 8,000 college teachers & hired 25,000 prison guards
In California, between 1980 and 1995, one new state college has been built while 8,000 teachers in higher education have lost their jobs. At the same time, 15 new prisons have been constructed and 25,000 new guards have been hired.
We are witnessing an incredible reallocation of commitments in California--and it's mirrored in most of the other states--toward greater coercive control as opposed to education and enlightenment.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 74
Dec 9, 1996
On Environment:
Fight to save the Headwaters ancient redwood groves
[Interviewing Gary Snyder:] BROWN: How do you look at the fight to save the Headwaters--a spectacular 60,000 acres of ancient redwood groves in northern CA--owned and logged by Pacific Lumber Company?
How can citizens block any further incursion into these remaining groves, which provide a vital habitat for a number of threatened and endangered species?
SNYDER: There are plenty of ways to get all the timber we need by intelligently, sustainably logging 2nd growth, 3rd growth, 4th growth, and on and on, for the next 10,000 years.
BROWN: Does Pacific Lumber have a right to maximum profit, despite the irreparable ecological toll? After all, private property is relatively recent in terms of redwood history.
SNYDER: It's a tragic story.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 67-8
Dec 9, 1996
On Environment:
EPA cost analysis ignores value of standing forests
BROWN: When the Environmental Protection agency recently suggested tighter air restrictions, their reasoning was based on the costs of associated health damage exceeding the cost of reducing toxic emissions.
It's the same old paradigm, founded on a simplistic equation whereby the whole argument is expressed in quantitative economic terms.
So when you look at the redwood trees, it's the underperforming asset that, when chopped up, starts to really perform.GARY SNYDER [Poet and writer]: Well, you could even use economic arguments by making a cost-benefit analysis for the next
200 years based on wealthy tourists coming to see the redwoods and paying for the amenities. Those redwoods would pay for themselves many times over.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 68-9
Dec 9, 1996
On Foreign Policy:
Kuwait War demonstrated US innovation in technology of death
50 million people were killed in WWII, 15 times as much weaponry was dropped in the war in Kuwait.It's an unspeakable evil. Sometimes, in self-defense, you have to do a lot. But here there was no issue of self-defense. The greater the magnitude
of harm you inflict on other people, the greater the justification ought to be. And here, there's no proportionality whatsoever. By any standard of ethical or moral judgment, by any tradition I know of, there's culpability.
Perhaps the real message of the Gulf War--to China, India, Pakistan, Libya and every other nation--was that whatever weapons they have now, they've got to get better ones. Kuwait was a demonstration case, a message to other countries, that technological
innovation in the weaponry of death must be pursued with a vengeance and with renewed commitment. So really, the Gulf War was not about making the world safe, it was about making the future far more dangerous, for the US and everyone else.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.112-3
Oct 11, 1996
On Homeland Security:
Media colludes with politicians to glorify military killing
I'd like to make a point about the Gulf War and the media. When the troops returned, we started having all these parades and celebrations. I never heard this described as a purification process.
To some people, it seemed that the media was in collusion with the politicians and the military to glorify killing in a very obvious way.
You add up all the casualties of war and the expense of war, and then you look at the polls that show that close to half the American people believe that we shouldn't cut military spending.
You realize how powerful the propaganda and distortion is about the nature of this business called defense, called sending a message, called flexing our muscles, putting force behind foreign policy.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.103-7
Oct 11, 1996
On Environment:
Animals are public trust; why do trees belong to landowner?
The theory of the law is that the trees belong to whoever has title to the land, whereas the wild animals are held in public trust by the people at large.
The only way that the people can stop the cutting of trees is to tie in the disappearance of the trees with the disappearance of the wildlife, which, in effect, does not belong to the landowner.
That's the kind of indirect legal framework that creates such difficulty in stopping the massacre of the ancient forests.
Earth First advocates leaving trees to grow for at least 150 years. That might well be incompatible with the financial structure of Louisiana Pacific and Georgia Pacific.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.253
Sep 11, 1996
On Environment:
Capitalism needs to evolve to avoid ecological destruction
Capitalism has been with us for just a couple of hundred years and has evolved, it hasn't remained the same. As you look out and see the proliferation of inequality and the continuing assault on the environment, you see that the successes at the material
level of the capitalist economy are running into some major contradictions.What I see here is that the notion of the sanctity of property has obscured the fact that no person created the wildlife or the redwood trees.
They were around before America ever became America.
You can't destroy timber in Humboldt County in a way that creates erosion, silts up the streams, destroys the salmon spawning ground, and, in other ways, impacts the larger community and the world.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.254-5
Sep 11, 1996
On War & Peace:
Kuwait War: missile flashes didn't feel like we were killing
During the Gulf War, we saw green missile flashes broadcast on CNN. We didn't see Iraqi people, human beings, young boys--many of them Christians--buried alive by vehicles driven by American GIs. If we'd gotten that picture, we
might have had a very different reaction to this very popular war. Television plays what it chooses to play, and there we are. We're taught to accept violence, because it doesn't feel like violence.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.101
May 8, 1996
On War & Peace:
How do we stop the human race from wiping itself out?
The question I'd ask is, as we have more and more powerful weapons, and as we're conditioning people to take off the safety catch, how in the world do we stop the human race from wiping itself out?
That's the question. War has been a part of human civilization for as long as we know, as far back as the Homeric epics and before.
But now we have biological weapons. We have nuclear weapons that can be made in a garage, if you've got the plutonium, that can be miniaturized to fit into a bowling bag.
So we're entering into an entirely new brave world, and unless we can shift our sensibility and get that safety catch back on, it's a very questionable assumption that we can keep going.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.102
May 8, 1996
On Families & Children:
1978: legalized midwifery despite Cal. Medical Association
Suzanne Arms is the author of 7 books on pregnancy, birth and bonding. She is a crusader for a more natural way of childbirth, a return to a more human, connected, feminine and less technological passage in to life."I remember in 1978, a group of us
who were lobbying for midwifery and the right of the midwives to attend birth legally in CA had a chance to talk with you. You set up a commission to study alternative birth practices.
"I remember the bill that came out of that, allowing women who weren't part of the medical establishment to assist at birth. It's kind of a preposterous notion that midwifery had to be legalized, but nevertheless, we tried to do exactly that.
In response, the CA Medical Association made the bill its number one attack item. So while we may talk about childbirth, this subject is certainly embedded in the whole system of politics, and the money and the corruption that goes with it.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.278-9
Mar 28, 1996
On Crime:
War on crime is fabricated to frighten people
CHOMSKY: The US is way ahead of the rest of the industrial world, maybe all the world, in imprisoning its own population. That's for population control. None of that has anything to do with crime.BROWN: Some prisons are now run by companies that
are listed on the stock exchanges. And you've got states like Texas building surplus capacity and then using brokers to bring in prisoners from other states, using their lower salary base to house prisoners for $40 a day rather than $80 a day.
This system is working so well. Some people might say that this increase in prison population is a conspiracy, because it seems to be working almost perfectly for those with extra capacity for sale.
CHOMSKY:
Everything you said is correct, but I still think that major goal of this fabricated war on crime--which is not affecting crime, incidentally--the major goal is to frighten people, and to make them hate and fear each other.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.225
Feb 12, 1996
On Homeland Security:
$265B Pentagon budget passed without much debate
Let's take for example the latest Pentagon budget. I don't recall much significant debate about it at all. Clinton signed it at $265 billion. The only issues that were talked about in the media were the banning of HIV-positive enlisted personnel, and
the banning of abortions at military clinics. In terms of the $265 billion and how that stacks up against other countries, I don't think I saw anything in the mainstream press at all, and I saw nothing about foreign aid.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.222
Feb 12, 1996
On Crime:
Death penalty is a test of our humanity
Over the centuries, there has persisted the sense of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, a belief in righteous vengeance, a primordial feeling that the killing of criminals will balance the scales of Justice. Christian denominations have accepted
capital punishment, and legislation expanding the death penalty to 50 additional criminal offenses has been enacted here in the US. At the same time, Christian doctrine calls upon believers to forgive, to turn the other cheek, and in most
European nations, the death penalty has been abolished. We are faced with the question of the death penalty nearly every time we vote, either in specific crime-related measures, or by candidates promoting their stand for or against capital punishment.
This question is nothing less than a test of our humanity, of how we see ourselves and others and how we define the role of the state.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 79-80
Feb 6, 1996
On Crime:
1/3 of young black men in jail means absolute oppression
BROWN: Let's take a look at incarceration. It wasn't long ago, maybe 20 years, that there were a million fewer people behind bars in the US than there are today. With the increase in prison capacity that our leaders boast of, this country is embarking
upon an experiment in incarceration that has never been tried outside a totalitarian regime. What are your thoughts on this?GUEST: One in every 3 African-American young men is part of our criminal justice system, either in jail, on parole, or on
more are put in jail than go to college.
BROWN: To have a percentage of a population reaching that level is staggering in its message of absolute oppression, disconnection. There's something so wrong and yet the response as far as
I can tell, is to do more of the same in some vain hope it's going to turn things around.
GUEST: Just listen to the racism that permeates the political rhetoric.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 90-1
Feb 6, 1996
On Homeland Security:
War killings make humans tolerate violence
There's so much violence around the world, so much killing connected to governments, to our own government, that it seems like human nature tolerates it. It's as if the outrage we feel as a society at people being murdered is a very selective reaction.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 84-5
Feb 6, 1996
On Free Trade:
Promote village economy by keeping money in community
BROWN: Could people start to get back some more of a village economy, as opposed to this hyperconsumption that we're all hooked on in one form or another?GUEST: Yes, absolutely.
Another of the really interesting things that has been happening around the world is a revival of community currencies.
BROWN:
I wonder whether the state or the city could actually pay a part of their salaries in local money. For example, in many US cities a large percentage of city employees live in the suburbs.
If one were to say, "We're going to pay you, in part, in currency that is only accepted within the city limits, in the community that has generated and continues to generate your livelihood."
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.240-1
Jan 29, 1996
On Free Trade:
We need people for things other than global competitiveness
What we have done is become complacent with the idea of redundant, surplus people. When we talk about issues, it's all about economics and getting people equipped for global competition. The implied premise is that if they're not needed for competition,
they're not needed at all. We may want to invoke something human, but that "something human" has no place in the world we're in now, according to the people who run it.The criteria has become competition. We have opened our borders for this
competition. There's billions of people out there, and the dirty little secret is that a huge number of Americans are redundant and no longer needed in the social organization that is upheld by those who have their hands on the levers of management and
control. I believe that's what is going on now in Washington. They're doing the only thing they know how to do, and that's try to make economic sense out of something that only can be understood in theological or human terms.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 23-5
Nov 14, 1995
On Welfare & Poverty:
$35B for urban agenda is drop in the bucket of $6T economy
Do human terms enter into discussions? I know they are part of the political conversation. I engaged in that myself when I was in NYC in 1992, running for President against Bill Clinton.
We had an open discussion at Gracie Mansion in front of 15 television cameras. There was this big commitment made to an urban social agenda that was supposed to cost $35 billion--a drop in the bucket in a $6 trillion economy.
But after that highly publicized meeting, the whole subject was only mentioned one more time, in the Los Angeles Times, before the election.
And between then and now, I don't believe it's ever been discussed.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p. 23
Nov 14, 1995
On War & Peace:
True history of Vietnam never was heard from our leaders
Some years ago, I first read Noam Chomsky's comment that the US had invaded Vietnam, and my initial reaction was that this view was mistaken.
But then I began to study the history of Vietnam and the origins of the conflict there--Vietnam's importance as a colony and its role in WWII, the arrival of the French, and then the English,
and then the return of the French, and all the covert money the US spent there. I realized that I had never heard--certainly not from our political leaders--the true history of the war and all its causes.
I feel that if we don't focus attention on learning what has happened, we can't very well come to the truth.
Source: Dialogues, by Gov. Jerry Brown, p.123
Sep 29, 1995
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