Civil Disobedience | Clare Farrell & Marta Benavides

02/28/23 • 61 min

Unjust laws certainly should be broken. Mandela, Rosa Parks, and many other inspirational leaders had no hesitation in calling to break unjust laws. But laws that prevent the voices of ordinary people from being heard also need to be resisted, because right now, in more than 100 countries around the world, governments in the last decade have taken various actions to shrink the civic space by restricting freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression.
At a time when there is so much hate, violence, and aggravation, activism must be imbued by love, compassion, caring, and a sense of justice, peace, and dignity. How can we embolden creative, peaceful, civil disobedience on a significant scale to wake up our leaders before it is too late and dig in deep to have the stamina and perseverance to keep going until those injustices are removed?

Our guests:
Clare Farrell is an active citizen, devoting her creativity, her energy, and occasionally her personal liberty to fight against climate collapse and the wider environmental crisis. She is also a fashion designer and lecturer. She has been arrested numerous times for her climate activism and as one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion she helps coordinate a mass movement of people using non-violent civil disobedience.
Marta Benavides is a theologian, ordained minister, permaculturist, educator, and artist. A leader of an ecumenical revolution focused on bringing peace to her country El Salvador, she is an ordained pastor who chose “to live and not die for the revolution” and has been bringing people from all fields to defend human rights and develop a culture of peace. She worked closely with Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated in 1980, which would see her go into exile in Mexico and the US, she returned to El Salvador in ‘92 following the peace accords.
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https://powerpeopleplanet.org
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Power, People and Planet is produced in association with the Green Economy Coalition, the world’s largest movement for a green and fair economy:
https://greeneconomycoalition.org
Additional support for the podcast was provided by the Robert Bosch Stiftung:
https://www.bosch-stiftung.de/en

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Previous Episode

Prosecuting Justice | Markus Beeko & Nani Jansen Reventlow

The contribution of the legal community through innovative, strategic litigation and other legal efforts is going to be one of the most critical undertakings in the fight for climate justice. Currently, there are more than 1,400 climate lawsuits underway. These legal battles address the destruction of our ecosystems and the attempts of indigenous people to uphold their rights through a range of different struggles.
Litigation and legal strategy has been a critical part of ensuring the strength of the activist community. Indeed, the legal community has a critical role in defending the shrinking democratic space in multiple countries throughout the world. However, the challenge remains in determining how legal strategies intersect with other mobilising strategies. Another challenge is determining the proportionality of effort that should be afforded to litigation battles, especially given that the wheels of justice turn very slowly in many countries: the climate crisis cannot wait for deliverance from protracted litigation in new areas of environmental law, corporate law and elsewhere.
Our guests:
Markus N. Beeko was appointed Secretary General of the German section of Amnesty International in 2016. He has been active in leadership positions for Amnesty in Germany and the International Secretariat in London since 2004. He is the Chair of Amnesty’s international steering group on "Human Rights in the Digital Age". He chairs the board of trustees of Stiftung Menschenrechte, and he is also Vice Chair of the board of the German Institute for Human Rights.

Follow Markus’s work:

Twitter: @mnbeeko
LinkedIn

Nani Jansen Reventlow is an internationally recognised human rights lawyer specialised in strategic litigation at the intersection of human rights, social justice, and technology. She is the Founder of Systemic Justice, the first Black-led, majority BPOC organisation in Europe working to radically transform how the law works for communities fighting for racial, social, and economic justice.

Follow Nani’s work:

Website: https://www.nanijansen.org/
Twitter: @InterwebzNani

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Learn more about Power, People & Planet on the website:
https://powerpeopleplanet.org
To watch full episodes of the podcast follow Kumi's YouTube channel

Follow Kumi on social media:

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Next Episode

Engaging Global Power | María Fernanda Espinosa & Meena Raman

In the early 1980s there was a slogan: think globally, act locally. Behind the slogan was the idea that, irrespective of the issue we were trying to address at the local or national level, we needed to better understand how global discourse, global processes and global power had the ability to impact what you could or could not achieve at the local or national level.
In the 1990s, a feminist organisation from the global South called Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era (DAWN) said that perhaps what we need to be doing is thinking locally and acting globally: to think in terms of what is needed at the local level and then advocate at the global level if that’s where real power resides. In reality, it’s not a question of choosing one or the other but about getting the right balance.
In this episode Kumi explores the different avenues of global engagement to understand the pitfalls and opportunities of such engagements.
Our Guests:
María Fernanda Espinosa is an Ecuadorian diplomat, politician, poet, linguist and academic with more than 30 years of experience in international organisations, the Ecuadorian government, NGOs and academia.
She served as President of the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly (2018-2019). She has held no less than three different senior ministerial positions in Ecuador’s government. She has also served as ambassador and permanent representative of Ecuador to the United Nations in New York (2008-2009) and Geneva (2014-2017). As of January 2023, she sits on the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group.

Follow María’s work:

Twitter: @mfespinosaEC
LinkedIn

Meena Raman is the President of Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth Malaysia), an environmental NGO based in Penang, Malaysia. She is the Legal Advisor to the Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP), a Malaysian NGO that has been advancing the rights and well-being of consumers. Since 2007 she has also been head of programmes of Third World Network
An expert on climate change, especially on the global negotiations including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement and the Green Climate Fund (GCF), she monitors and reports on the negotiations and provides analysis and support both to developing country governments as well as to civil society participants.
Follow Meena’s work:

Sahabat Alam Malaysia website: https://foe-malaysia.org/

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Learn more about Power, People & Planet on the website:
https://powerpeopleplanet.org
To watch full episodes of the podcast follow Kumi's YouTube channel

Follow Kumi on social media:

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