Good morning. My name is Lindsay
Newton and I work in community
engagement at the Missouri
Historical Society. On behalf of
MHS I would like to welcome you
to STL history lab. We are very
excited for you to join us
virtually. Thank you for being
here. Safety is a top priority
and thus nearly all of our
programming is virtual right
now. But the museum is open
Wednesday through Sunday with
safe several safety precautions
in place. And we would love for
you to visit if you feel safe.
Advanced reservations are
required to visit all Missouri
Historical Society locations.
Please visit moe history.org to
plan your visit and reserve free
tickets. Today's program, women
and environmental activism is
inspired by two special exhibits
app in Missouri History Museum
inviting Mississippi and also
the newest exhibit at the
history museum beyond the ballot
St. Louis and suffrage presented
by Wells Fargo. So today we'll
enjoy a conversation around
environmental activism with
local historian Elizabeth Picard
and un representative and focal
point on rights of nature Myra L
Jackson. So they're both here
with me and I'm going to hand it
off to them shortly, but first,
I wanted to quickly mention a
few details about how the
program will run today. This
will be a roughly 25 to 30
minute presentation, with about
10 minutes at the end saved for
questions and answers from the
audience. You can submit
questions you have any time
through the q&a button in your
toolbar. Please know that we
will do our best but we may not
have time to answer all of your
questions. And today's
presentation is being recorded.
So if you'd like to view it
again or share the presentation
with us It will be posted on our
Missouri Historical Society
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We would really appreciate if
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keep an eye out for that when
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know that some of you watching
Today our Missouri Historical
Society members, thank you. We
are grateful for your support.
If you're not a member, we would
love for you to consider joining
today. I will soon post a link
to our website in the chat box.
We also sincerely thank city and
county residents for your tax
contributions through the zoo
museum tax district. And with
that, I turn it over to our
first speaker Elizabeth Picard.
Elizabeth, thank you for being
here with us today.
Thanks, Lindsay. And good
morning, everyone. It's gonna
pull my presentation up here.
In theory, I've pulled it up.
I'm going to try that again.
Sorry for that, everybody. While
I'm doing that, I just want to
say thank you all so, so much
for having me. I'm excited to be
here. Huge thanks to Lindsay and
all the staff at the Missouri
Historical Society for inviting
me to talk about a topic that I
love. Women's History, in
particular the history of
women's activism in St. Louis
itself. And of course, I am
unbelievably honored also to be
presenting with Myra Jackson and
I'm looking forward to her
presentation. As much as I know
that all of you are one of the
things that I wanted to just
start off by saying is my job is
to sort of give a historical
underpinning, how did we get
here? What's the history of
women's involvement in
environmental activism? And what
is it in St. Louis, I'm going to
cover roughly that era from
about 1870 to 1970, with a
couple brief forays back to the
1820s, and up to the 1980s. But
that's sort of the scope of time
that we'll be talking about. One
of the things that I think it's
really important to acknowledge
from the outset, is that it's
really easy as academics for us
to say, well, we're going to
study the civil rights movement,
and we're going to study the
environmental movement, and
we're going to study the rights
of women and we're going to
study the rights of LGBTQ
people. But actually, very
often, women were working across
all of these different sets of
challenges at the same time, as
women started to foray more out
into the public sector. They saw
these as intertwined issues and
the sort of attitude that they
took And the way that they
promoted themselves was as
municipal housekeepers, they
were responsible for the health
and well being of their
families. And they saw their
role or framed their role in the
hopes that it would make it more
palatable to say, you know, we
do this at home, we should have
a say in how it plays out in our
society. And so here's a great
suffrage banner from the 1950s,
saying, our food, our health,
our play, our schools, these are
all regulated, and we don't have
a vote, but it affects us
deeply. And of course, that's
still the same argument that
women are making today. Women in
St. Louis, were involved from
the very start in efforts like
smoke abatement, clean water,
environmental equity, making
sure that people have safe clean
places to live no matter what
their status is in society. And
then later with the advent of
nuclear power and nuclear arms,
they became very active in
calling for regulation of
nuclear waste. And really
calling attention to the health
effects of nuclear testing on
children and families and the
people living in the world all
over the globe. So those are the
areas that I'm going to focus on
today. I wanted to start with a
sort of quick scan of one woman,
a woman named Edna gal Horne,
you may know the name Gellhorn
through Martha Gellhorn, who was
married to Ernest Hemingway,
Martha is Ed Miguel horn
daughter. So they are very much
related. She lived from 1878 to
1970. So her almost hundred year
lifetime encompasses this period
that we're talking about. She
first becomes active in her
activist life in 1903. Because
the city had a real problem. We
were going to host the World's
Fair one of the features the
World's Fair if you've ever
visited the history museum and
seen the beautiful murals if
you've been to Forest Park and
seen the grand basin with all of
these unbelievably gorgeous
fountains everywhere, but the
quality of St. Louis's water
treatment was so poor, that the
water would have been brown and
disgusting in all of these
fountains. And so there was a
huge municipal effort to get
clean water. And that led to St.
Louis having one of the most
advanced scientifically most
effective water treatment
facilities in the world at the
time. And Miguel Horne was
involved in that she was a
leader in the equal suffrage
league and later in the league
of women voters. She was the
person who said we will not
segregate our league of women
voters in St. Louis and we will
not meet anywhere where our
black members can't walk in the
front door and be welcome.
And then after suffrage was
gained, she became active in
smoke abatement activities in
the 1940s. And then in the 1950s
continued working on clean water
and in 1958 she became a
founding member of the greater
St. Louis Citizens Committee for
nuclear information, working
with Eleanor Roosevelt. And
others and I'll talk more about
the work that the Citizens
Committee did a little later on
in this talk. But let's start
with water. As I mentioned, St.
Louis had a water problem and
the majority of the labor
dealing with that water was
women. In the 1820s series of
terrible cholera epidemics had
already started hitting the
city, the one in 1849 is very
well known. Mark Twain famously
said that the water in the city
of St. Louis was too sick to
drink and too thin to plow.
That's how dirty the tap water
or the well water or pump water
was at the time. This red
earthenware jar is part of the
collection of the Missouri
Historical Society. It dates
from about 1850 and it's the
kind of jar that was used to
actually allow water to settle.
So you would still add up the
sediments would fall to the
bottom and you would skim the
clean water off of the top,
Jesse Benton Fremont who grew up
in St. Louis I mentioned in the
1820 cholera epidemic a sense
that should be pretty familiar
to us today. All we're busy and
all needed for a panic had set
in and nothing is so cool as
fear. Our poor gentle Mr. savory
died alone. Gay Madame does
everybody nursed others like a
hero but was herself a victim,
our house of a diet kitchen,
good soups, preparations of
rice, and well filtered and
purified water, it became the
occupation of the house to keep
ready. So in those days, people
were going to rivers streams,
Wells, pulling up the water,
letting it settle, hoping that
the things they treated it with
my treat the collar, which it
didn't generally do. A little
later on, there was this concern
over clean water and so pumps
were installed and you can see
this one on the other side. But
that's still meant eight to 10
trips for water every single
day. You can imagine walking
down to the corner of your box,
filling up a bucket, bringing it
back how much labor was involved
in that and this continued to be
problem into the 1950s. And in
fact, still water quality and
the quality of the water going
back into the river after really
big storms as a problem for St.
Louis and the region. Another
huge challenge was air
cleanliness. And you can see
this image of downtown in 1939.
This is Black Tuesday. The
problem that St. Louis had was
that the locally available coal
was soft coal was by two minutes
coal, and it was unbelievably
dirty. And women again bore the
brunt of taking care of this,
this smoke and soot ruin
merchandise in stores. And it
meant sometimes having to really
redo laundry just after had been
hung out on the line, because so
much dirt would have fallen on
it just depending on what the
atmospheric conditions were. And
so women in 1910 formed a
society that was determined to
try to end smoke, the smoke
pollution in the city. They led
this effort, they had a 1300
members, they worked for 30
years to try to get
environmental measures in place
to ensure that we would have
cleaner air in St. Louis. And
they funded studies by
Washington University in St.
Louis, that showed literally how
many pounds of soot fell in St.
Louis homes every single year.
It was a really huge effort. A
lot of their initial legislative
attempts were struck down
because they were trying too
hard to regulate business. But
after events like this Black
Tuesday and 1939 people finally
agreed that something needed to
be done. And that's why you'll
find sometimes homes that were
built in the 1930s that have a
coal hole and a gas furnace. And
that's because there was this
huge push to turn the city over
from coal fired heating to gas
and electric. I love this quote
from the women's organization
for the abatement of smoke in
St. Louis. We feel that the
present condition of our city
enveloped in a continual cloud
of smoke endangers the health of
our families, especially those
of weak lungs. and delicate
throats in Paris the eyesight of
our schoolchildren and adds
infinitely to our labors and our
expenses as housekeepers. And as
a nuisance, no longer to be born
with submission. I certainly
identify with that feeling. And
it really was a severe health
and safety and labor
impact for women in St. Louis.
So we're talking initially about
really fairly big things, water
that circulates everywhere air
that is just belongs to
everybody. But women also
throughout the 19th and 20th and
into the 21st century, worked on
micro environment, looking at
living conditions, looking at
health and the impact on health
for children and adults living
in these conditions. This woman
Charlotte Rumbold is very well
known for her work on the parks
commission and for her late her
labor working on pageant and
mask and St. Louis. But actually
she started out studying living
conditions in downtown St.
Louis. And downtown St. Louis at
the time was characterized by
houses that were not necessarily
in great condition. no running
water again, walking to those
pumps, and sometimes the pumps
were right next to the outhouse.
And so there was contaminant
cross contamination, from the
outhouses to the pumps, you can
see the condition of the
outhouses. And also the yards of
the houses tended to just be
filled with trash. There wasn't
good trash collection. So she
had a lot of pictures like this
in her book, which is now you
can get from Google Books and
look at them yourself. Showing
the conditions of children
playing in these yards. They
also tended to build right up
next to each other. So often,
light and air were problems. And
Charlotte Rumbold was pushing
for just minimum sizes of rooms
to be considered fit for human
habitation because there were
some people who were living in
sheds where the roof was
completely falling in. Just
trying to push for some basic
decency standards for any place
that wanted to call itself a
dwelling. And of course, as I
said that work continued through
the century and continued on.
This is Freddie Mae Brown. She
was, again someone who worked on
poverty. She worked on race
equity. But she also was behind
an organization called the St.
Louis Metropolitan black
survival committee, and it is
believed to have been the only
African American environmental
activist group in the country at
the time of the first Earth Day.
And what Ms. Brown did was
collect a group of youth from
the union Sara Neighborhood
Association, and they did
performances of guerrilla
theater all over the city to
bring awareness to things like
the effects of lead poisoning,
the effects of a lack of trash
collection, which was still a
problem in the city at the time.
And she really is considered to
be incredibly important in the
national Earth a move Because
she was saying, look, yes,
forests are important. oceans
are important. But we also need
to be taking care of our cities
making sure even today in the
city of St. Louis, their heat
island effect where there aren't
enough trees in certain
neighborhoods that actually can
cause death. There are still
more heat related deaths in this
country than there are deaths
due to hurricanes or tornadoes.
And so it seems like that urban
heat island effect are really
important to be working on. And
so her focus on this also then
brought those environmental
concerns into the forefront in
working for in the work of other
equity organizations.
And then, as I mentioned, after
World War Two, the advent of
both nuclear weapons and nuclear
power, became a focus of
environmental activists. Over
there on the top right of the
screen, writing with her pen is
K DRI, who was a leader and a
founding member of the Missouri
Coalition for the environment,
she was a real leader in trying
the efforts to stop the building
of a second nuclear reactor. I'm
sure you know that the energy
generated by a nuclear power
plants is considered to be quite
clean, but the problem is the
radioactive waste that they
leave behind. And she was
unbelievably tireless, and her
work against that and successful
in stopping the second Calloway
reactor from being built. As I
mentioned about Ed Miguel horn,
there was also the St. Louis
committee on nuclear
information. And they were
pushing the government to set to
share information about the
effects of nuclear testing and
they started something that was
a national effort called the
babies to study and they were
collecting baby teeth starting
in 1958. Dentists here in St.
Louis would analyze them for
levels of strontium 90 and what
they found is that after
Hiroshima and Nagasaki There
were 100 times the level of
strontium 90 in children's teeth
as there had been prior to the
advent of nuclear weapons, and
they could find a correlation
between arise and level of
strontium 90 and above ground
nuclear testing. This led to the
1963 partial Nuclear Test Ban,
which was negotiated by john F.
Kennedy, with the Soviet Union.
So it was an unbelievably
important national movement that
was effective in moving the
needle internationally for the
rest of the world, which I think
is probably a great segue into
my research portion of the
presentation. I'm really excited
to introduce her. I can't wait
to hear what she has to say
about how women continue to work
across all of these different
areas of activism to make the
world better for all of us.
Thank you so much, Elizabeth.
I am noticing that I don't know
if you can hear me
get stuck.
We can hear you
all right, because the camera
didn't want to come in I'm gonna
see if it will now it doesn't.
So it looks like I am without
camera which is the first. Let's
be sure I can go in and share
screen and bring my presentation
up.
Go back out. Aymara. Yes, Josh,
did you turn off your video make
sure your video is turned as
doesn't have a slash throat in
the lower left? Yes, I did. And
it just is I'm getting a message
as I do that which I've never
seen on all the five years I've
worked on zoom is you can't
start your video because the
host has stopped it.
They be
Alright, so now I'm going to put
start my video, and there I am.
Alright. So from here then, let
me share my screen.
I have been thinking about the
impact on me already have your
presentation, Elizabeth. And
you're right. What a segue.
There are many elements of your
presentation that speak to the
moment because whenever we're
talking about the global goals,
and what we're trying to
achieve, implementation happens
locally. It is a municipal
concern. But I start with this
image of our atmosphere, the
biosphere. Because when we think
about home today, ever since we
have seen the Earth from space,
we have a sense of Our Common
Home the earth. And one of the
other titles I hold is diplomat
of the biosphere. And his
deployment of the biosphere. I
listen to the biosphere, and I'm
paying attention to the
biosphere and attracting
attracting it every day. And it
is a very thin space that
encompasses our watersheds,
drawling cycle, everything
that's happening in terms of
photosynthesis, everything on
the land, it is our life zone.
So I like to pull that in
because the women you spoke up,
we're focused on home. And now
when we think of home, we have
to think of our shared home or
in a connected world. And we
understand today how what we do
impacts the whole And so I
worked for three years,
volunteering, left my corporate
life left my life and electrical
engineering, organizational
development to really focus on
what I saw as an earth in peril.
And I went to the United States
to understand what they were
doing as they convene nations to
address it. And I happened to
come at a time in which they
were going from the Millennium
Development Goals, to just
determining what would be next.
And I became a part of the open
Working Group committee. We
worked for three years to chisel
out 17 goals that would change
our world and transform it, and
they go all the way from no
poverty to gender equity,
quality education, good health,
peace and justice, life
unwatered land, sustainable
cities and communities climate
action, you name it. There's
seven Have them. The way I like
to look at them is so that I can
actually see the goals that are
associated with the biosphere.
And this is the graphic I love.
But the point of why I'm
bringing this up is to share a
story, a personal story personal
stories along the way that
illuminated the path to where we
need to go rests on the
empowerment of women and girls.
Ambassador choudry joined me as
I gaveled out in a meeting and
out of meeting on communicating
the SDGs it was something I
organized and as one of our last
meetings on the Sustainable
Development Goals, after the
hundred 92 nations adopted our
work and the goals that
Ambassador choudry was on the
panel along with other media and
other guests. And he said
something that day that stuck
with me, he said in the history
of the United Nations and at
this time We're talking it's 70
year anniversary at its 75th
anniversary this year, that the
only investment that has ever
produced the beneficial outcomes
sought were the investments made
in women and girls. And the same
year Christine Lagarde, who is
now heads up the European Union,
central bank, but at the time in
2015, that the IMF started to
really lay down the fact that
the IMF it was their total
business to be concerned with
macro critical resilience
factors like income inequality,
access to education, gender,
equality, equity, climate
change, and she said something
important in that context, she
said, Look, you can take two
equal countries to equal
profiles, but if that one
country over the other, had
women who were not being allowed
to Go to school or being
persecuted. That that is where
you would see a nation descend
into civil war and collapse and
that IMF was looking at all of
that very closely in terms of
their own metrics going forward.
Fast forward to Poland, this was
the end of 2018. We're in the
room here and Poland at the
climate change meeting of the
United Nations that happens
annually except for this year.
Last year, they ended last year,
we were not able to meet because
of COVID.
The
meeting on this particular
moment was somber, because we
were aware of the climate
scientists report. But it was
something about hearing it in
the room that day, that a hush
fell on the room, a room that
usually busy with people Looking
at their cell phones and moving
up and down and about, with
still, you could feel in the
room everyone holding their
breath. a recognition that there
were decision makers in the room
that could turn the tide on the
worst news we could have ever
heard that day. And at the same
time, you have this very young
15 year old Greta Thornburg with
us. And we're getting to know
her and she us and delivering a
very strong message. And this
somberness of this moment hasn't
left me it left me with a chill.
informing our deep crisis was
the data from 1.5 degree of
warming to two degree warming be
so vastly different in
consequence, and not knowing how
we would turn the tide on even
reaching 1.5 the difference
between a strain livable world
and a world driven by chaos,
suffering and conflict was the
difference. And know that with
COVID, we really are in a whole
new level, an increase of
attention on the moment. Food
Systems are failing. And I
highlight that because of the
information I'm going to share
with you. But I want you to keep
in mind what Elizabeth was
sharing. As we go through this,
how long we've known how and
what to pay attention to.
There's no doubt there are many
human movements underway. I've
been tracking them, and I could
speak to each of them. We don't
have time today, but I just want
you to know many are led by
women. I want you to take a
close look at this list. And I'm
not so sure if our images are
blocking you out or your screen
can see all the data or the
numbers. I'll have to share
those With you, refrigeration is
at the top list of things we can
do to draw down carbon out of
the atmosphere. This is work
done by drawdown. There's a book
out there audio book if you're
not familiar, and that runs at
about 89.74 Giga tons
refrigeration. I want to walk
through very quickly why I'm
showing you this list. Land
Management represents four of
the top 20. Just keep that in
mind. Food Systems, eight of the
top 20. When you add that
together, it's 12 of the top 20.
But here's what you also want to
note is that women and girls
show up at six and seven, that
if we educate girls, if we allow
for family planning and open the
way for leadership and
empowerment of girls We can
reduce by 59 point 60 in each of
those categories for a total of
120 Giga tons of carbon
reduction by doing those two
simple things. But I think you
all would agree that whenever
we're looking at land
management, and we're looking at
food that women are right there
to leading the way, well guess
what the world knows this too,
particularly now, what COVID has
done is highlighted how broken
the systems are, and how much
work needs to be done, and where
women play a crucial role. Right
now to put any kind of proposal
together to address the global
concerns without women would be
not being knowledgeable about
the crisis, where we see
echosign which is the
destruction of the natural
environment, especially when
we're fully done. We see
increased violence against women
In children animal slaughter
capture human trafficking humans
enslavement, genocide,
corruption, extraction of wealth
and indeed war.
The CO violation of nature's and
humans rights go together they
are codependent and governments
often side with private industry
rather than with human or nature
rights advocates. We're looking
at 500 years of what it takes to
make progress in the way that we
have been living together on the
planet, safe slavery itself 487
years to abolish slavery, animal
rights 382 years children 269 to
not put debt on children 175
years to suffrage, an earth law
began about 140 years now. 143
years In 2017, the New
Zealanders who set forth that
first request to grant legal
rights to the one Gunny, one
good Nani River. One Ghannouchi
river, let me get it right was
in 2017. And I've worked very
closely with the women of the
mayority tribes that worked on
that steadily. So water is about
life, the biosphere is, is the
core of its regenerative and
power to regain and reclaim. Its
a equilibrium is through the
rivers the fresh waters of the
earth that is the most
regenerative system of the
earth. And no doubt has a direct
correlation to water in our own
bodies. So it's getting hot and
what most of these human
movements are aiming for. system
change all together. So remember
those numbers? Remember the land
management piece if you bring
together your idea of who
farmers are, do you think of
women? Well, women are the
primary farmers around the
world. They produce 60 to 70% of
food as smallholders on less
than five acres. They carry the
world's production. And if they
had more support, ownership,
access to finance, they could
grow more and more important,
the way they grow using
traditional methods allows for
us to draw down carbon.
Currently, our industrial way of
farming is lending itself to the
release of carbon and to the
release of the enrichment in the
soils that allows us to capture
carbon. So what women are
already doing around the world
we need more of and people are
paying Attention. Solar was
number 10 in the rankings, and
many of the women in the global
south are leading the way in
their communities with the
addition of solar. I want to
talk about the fashion
revolution. And the reason I
want to speak to that one is
because there's a real
difference in what's going on by
women led movements in the
global north versus the global
south. I like looking at those
that bring both together in the
fashion revolution is one of
those. It's primarily been
spearheaded out of Europe. And
I've spoken at these meetings,
and they continue, but it's when
they now have reached across the
equator, to those that are
actually making the clothes that
have begun to make the
difference. And they're moving
fast to send them message that
we have to pay attention to the
supply chain that involves our
clothing. And they've taken it
full on and you can see and I
don't have time to go into the
in depth aspects of the
messaging, but I want to put
that on your radar. That fashion
is an area that is growing our
awareness of our impacts. And
the our consumer choices that
we're making look at this data
point 27 22,720 litres of water
to make a T shirt. And that's
the kind of water volume that's
attributed to what we would
normally consume in a three year
period. Who would have thunk for
one t shirt we're talking about
that much of freshwater
resources. Another is tree
sisters. They're working also
with
The global south to achieve
reforestation, Claire Dubois
founder says we have to make it
as natural to give back to
nature as it is to take nature
for granted. I love what she
says when she says we need to
move from a consumer species to
a restore species. Their
organization alone has been able
to in the few years that they've
been around to complete a
restoration project in India.
They have 10 other projects
underway in other parts of the
world and they've been able to
fund up to 12 million trees so
far. The big deal here though,
is that they have been stunted
by COVID. When we look at the
power that the world now knows,
is held with women when we
empower them. I can point to one
of the largest marketing firms
in the world 3000 offices
Worldwide that is looking at
through a campaign called hold
her gaze women. And they are the
provider of detail to some of
the largest international
corporations in the world. The
key brands you and I recognize
they advise, and they are
sticking their neck out to
retool how they advise their
clients. They're letting them
know that they will not have a
brand, or loyal customers if
they don't change. And I find it
very exciting to watch what
they're doing. The real crux of
the story, my friends is this is
that what we know as we have
become very much aware of the
earth as our home, that the
metrics that enable us to make
good decisions about what we do
how we spend how we govern how
we what the businesses we
support. And all that's
associated with that has to do
with measurement metrics. GDP
won't get us there. It measures
goods and services in
production. It does not measure
anything associated with the
well being of the planet, nor
the health of people. And so the
move is on to move us toward a
metrics that allows us to
measure the economy and to have
the right algorithms under
finance to make a difference.
One of the big examples of
putting metrics on something
really Elizabeth pointed to one
of them, just measuring how much
coal was showing up in homes.
How much of the fallout from the
nuclear waste was showing up in
the dental caries of people was
key metrics. GDP would measure
that Those that big data has to
be brought forward. And women
are doing that every day to find
the ways that they could put the
numbers in front of decision
makers in front of nation
states. So they will address
concerns. But now the whole
world Let me tell you is walking
away from the current money debt
system and from GDP. We're fast
moving toward the kind of
circular economies that allow us
to measure the health and well
being in our economy. So caring
economy is showing us the way
towards social wealth, economic
indicators, something that's
been the work of Rhian Eisler,
author of The Wealth of Nations,
chalice and the blade. And so as
I look at where we are now, this
is the image that makes me
chuckle every time because it's
so it points to the power of the
moment in our opportunity. And
that's when we Look at outside
of Wall Street, the bowl, and
the young girl facing down the
bowl and from behind she looks a
lot like a grandmother tuberc.
But any girl,
we need to see the full
empowerment of women and girls.
And this image from September
23, when 16 young people came
together from around the world,
including Grafton Berg, to set
forth another data. They said
another lawsuit against the
government's on behalf of
children and their full rights
to a planet where governments
are acting on climate change and
on reducing global warming. And
when I look at these young girls
and I have sat in the rooms with
them, they understand better
than climate scientists or as
great as climate scientists the
science, but they also
understand that they have a
voice and They're using it. And
so what I feel about the moment
is that we have a generation to
get it done. And it's a, it's a
call to all generations living.
We have still seven generations
living on the planet. And it's
shouldn't be on the back of just
women and girls, but it needs to
be all of us in this together.
And I'm hopeful. I'm very
hopeful. Thank you, Elizabeth,
for your presentation. And I'd
like to turn it back over to
you, Lindsey. So we can hear
from our listeners.
Thank you, Mayra. Thank you,
Elizabeth. We really appreciate
both of you sharing your
personal research, your work,
your insights, the conversation
is, is just really rich and so
much good information was
shared. I'm sure that our
audience has more questions. Now
is a great time. If you are
watching to type in some
questions to either Myra or
Elizabeth or both, give it just
a minute here. And while we are
waiting, I am going to post a
couple of links that I mentioned
earlier, you might need to copy
and paste if the links don't
work but if you'd like to hear
more about how to join as a
member or support Missouri
Historical Society, there's a
link for that and also want to
subscribe to email newsletters.
No questions just yet.
My return are Elizabeth, is
there anything you wish you
could have shared that you felt
you needed to connect out for
the sake of brevity, that we can
maybe take a moment here
a lot. There's one thing that I
just realized after I finished,
I forgot to say, which is the
strontium 90 levels in the
children's teeth, also
correlated with low infant birth
rate, which we know is a
significant risk for children,
and also an increase in
childhood cancers. So the and
part of what the women were
actually pushing for was just
for the government to share the
information about what they
already knew about these nuclear
tests and the effects that they
were having. So I loved what
Meyer said about metrics and
that you need you have to have
the openness also to know the
truth to know what's actually
going into our water to our air
to our bodies. So that was I
know something that after I
finished I went No, I didn't say
that. Myra, I you had so much on
all those slides, anything
There's so much going on. It
really is. And I feel that we
would have a sense of greater
hope if we could capture it all.
I, you know, as much as we we
also need the metrics. And it's
partly because we don't have the
metrics and we don't focus on
it, that we don't have a sense
that there is a silent landscape
of people who are moving with
their values. They're voting
with their values. They're
changing their own lifestyles
where they can I, I am tracking
a movement from cities back into
rural areas, people migrating
with thinking about the future,
what they want to be a part of,
there's a lot of frustration
also, that to do the best we can
is difficult. And it's difficult
because it's really hard to
navigate in the world without
consuming plastics. People would
love to have solutions around
that. It's It's difficult in the
modern world, the global north
to to operate without
participating in more harm than
people want to. And so what we
what we're really looking for is
the mechanisms that will allow
us to move very quickly
according to our values. And I,
what I see there is that many
people are beginning to move
beyond the boundaries that have
been a part of our norms. So
there is going to be a fair
amount of dissolution of, of the
systems we've been a part of,
and people are ready to be a
part of building the new
emergent systems. And that's
hard to track in the current
discourse.
Okay, thank you. And we do have
a couple of questions that came
through. First, how can we met G
and H.
Yeah. GNH is one system that is
really comes out of Bhutan. And
that is the gross national
happiness indicators, which
really gets down to they have 33
different components of it. The
Norwegian countries work with
similar metrics, where they're
looking at the wellness of their
people as a great indicator of
well being, in itself being a
measurement of happiness. I
think the world body is gonna
fall down somewhere in that
range of determining exactly
what that looks like the state
of Maryland where I'm sitting
today, runs GPI genuine progress
indicators, which enables us to
also look at the contribution of
healthcare workers in the system
and that and that add some, you
know, texture To the idea of
GDP, the idea is to measure what
really matters in terms of the
quality of our life, and allows
us to see the impact that we
have on the planet. And that
will give us the kind of
feedbacks, we need to make
really good decisions as
citizens of any nation, which we
make a lot. So that's the goal.
Yeah, I love talking about jmH.
I appreciate that question. One
other question I think we have
just enough time for. It was
mentioned that consumerism was a
factor in changing policies over
the decades. Can you talk about
the individual actions that
consumers can take not only to
reduce overproduction, but to
also protect our vital lands and
waters?
Elizabeth, you want to jump in
from your
I mean,
so, first of all, I want to just
say that sort of consumerist
activism is, is really old, anti
slavery activists in the United
States insisted on only wearing
linen and wool so that they
weren't buying into the cotton
industry. They wouldn't wear
things dyed with dyes that were
produced by enslaved labor. So
the roots of it go back about as
far as industrialization does. I
mean, I can say personally, the
things are, try to buy from
people who actually have
statements about sustainable
practices. And you know, wear
things out, buy things
secondhand, if you can, because
you taking it out of there. This
is just something I've seen
stories and stories about bales,
and bales and bales of cast off
clothes from the global north,
and showing up in the global
south and there's not enough
people in the global south to
wear all the T shirts we throw
away.
So my role will have probably
much more
is the key is that you know, we
let me just say that we used to
capitalize nature.
And now you will get editors
have you place it lowercase. So
I made the case to Oxford
dictionary. Now two years
running and then in the UN as a
result of the research to find
out that only during the
Industrial Age Did we lose the
capitalization of nature, that
prior to that we had a sense of
relationship to nature, where we
regarded it as you know, sacred
and we have lost it, we have
lost some of our sensitivity and
our capacity to, you know, care
for the things that are made.
We've lost track of where things
come from, what kind of labor
goes into what we have, and that
is part of what we need to
recover and we recover that by
recovering a sense of
relationship with nature. To
begin with, to know where the
water comes from, I started my
whole work by saying, I know it
will shift and change when
people can answer a very basic
question. Where is my watershed?
And how healthy is my watershed?
If you can answer that question,
we're making a change. That's
significant. And so, I love your
question. That's the question of
the moment to go from consumer
to restore. And Elizabeth gave
you excellent. I mean, this is
what the whole fashion
revolution is saying, you know,
have a few wonderful quality
pieces, take care of them. The
other thing that I want to
mention, though, that you
wouldn't know is that what is
happening is, whatever the new
money system is, and metrics is
you can bet that that money will
track the supply chain from
where it begins in the earth as
its components to the entire
delivery system. Who makes it
who touches it? what people want
is they want well being of the
earth through the entire supply
chain. So when this shirt
arrives on my back, that I know
there's been no harm in the
system. And so what's believed
is that's probably where
blockchain will come in, that
blockchain technology will be.
And look how much you consume
during blockchain. So that's the
issue is the way to track
everything and every good and
service you receive with that
idea of no harm. So while
there's many things you can do,
you don't have all the
information you need to make
your highest decisions and
that's the challenge.
So ask for it. We have a right
to know.
You know, one other question
came in so I'm going to throw it
out there and I think it's fair
connected to the conversation we
were just having, as we move
from the US national
perspective, to a more global
perspective, how can we put
those indigenous protectors in
the forefront in our country and
globally?
First order? Yes. You know, I
feel this way. And I don't know
if others do. It's personal for
me, that when we talk about
Black Lives Matter, and the
reason to call it out, is I do
feel that, you know, everything
has to have its place to exist,
for all lives to go well. It's
about the wellness of all in
that equation. And so every,
every, every part of life that
has lost its way of having a
space to exist, must have its
space if necessary. Going to be
anything worth living. So you
lift up, you lift up Black Lives
Matter, you lift up indigenous
peoples, these are people that
have been marginalized because
basically they're close to the
earth. And the earth has been
marginalized. It's all about the
capture the mobilization of the
capturing of the earth. And so
the closer you are to the earth,
you got caught up in that. But
remember, no matter the color of
your skin on the planet, the
truth is, the systems we have in
place, are extracting from
everyone. And it's going to the
very, very top that one 10th of
the 1% is where the the whole
economy is driving toward and
protests. So we have to be
honest about that. Indigenous
peoples, many of them still hold
the knowledge that if we were to
lose it, we would lose, it would
be the equivalent of losing the
greatest libraries on the
planet. I consider forests and
waterways and the earth
libraries that we haven't yet
become acquainted with or
learned from. They hold the
touchstones to our ability to
return and become fully human by
returning back to the earth of
which we're a part. So
indigenous, it's, it's we must
lift up indigenous people in
this process.
Thank you. Thank you.
With that,
I will just share a couple more
slides. As I mentioned today's
talk about women and
environmental activism was
inspired by two of our special
exhibits right now at the
Missouri History Museum. Mighty
Mississippi, all about our
river. And also beyond the
ballads, St. Louis and suffrage,
talking about the important
impact women have made in St.
Louis throughout its past.
Today's Happy, Happy suffrage
anniversary. It's the hundredth
anniversary of women's suffrage
today.
It is yes. The very day. And
along those lines we have all
month, women making history
programs planned. Tomorrow there
is a program part of our
soldiers Memorial challenge
chats. Then Thursday a program
about what are we fighting for
connecting the suffrage movement
to now what are the movements
including the Women's March and
next week we'll be talking about
the suffrage story through
Bellefontaine cemetery. So lots
coming up this month. Thank you
for tuning in today Elizabeth
and my red Thank you. Thanks,
visitors. If you have a chance
to fill out that survey that has
popped up a Kobo toolbox survey
we would greatly appreciate it.
See you next time, everybody
