Good morning.
Thank you.
All of us gathered here know
that these are frightening,
enraging, and uncertain times.
And I also know in my heart that we
need each other in community 
now more than ever,
both for our individual well-being
and for our collective change-making 
and movement building.
So to try and bring forth my
best in this crazy era,
I feel I have to strengthen 
and center myself
so that I can act more effectively 
on behalf of the people
and the places that I most love.
And this may sound strange, but trees have
become a great help in this quest for me.
To a scientist…
[APPLAUSE]
To a scientist, trees are a 
perennial woody plant
with a main trunk 
and a distinct crown.
To a poet, a tree literally means truth,
from the old English word troth, 
which means something deeply rooted,
with a strong trunk, something 
that sweeps the sky.
In many ancient spiritual traditions,
trees have been seen as a symbol of wisdom,
of wholeness, and of healing.
But too often, I’ve found I live
as if I were mostly a trunk,
focusing on the urgency of now,
neglecting what’s available to me 
through my roots and branches.
Roots provide nourishment to trees,
drawing up water and 
nutrients from the soil
and from the mycelial
networks under foot.
We too need roots to offer us stability,
and to help inform our actions,
from the wisdom of our intuition,
our ancestors, and our dreams.
As communities, our roots entwined underground
can strengthen and stabilize us
to endure high winds, floods, and 
catastrophic weather events.
To strengthen myself, I’m
practicing honoring my roots.
I’m remembering that I’m here
because of my ancestors’ prayers,
suffering and resilience.
I personally feel most rooted these days
by my love of the natural world,
of Mother Earth,
by remembering and listening for
guidance from my Jewish ancestors,
and from my deep connection to all women,
and those who identify primarily as she,
to an archetypal gendered
embodied experience.
Because of the persecution and slavery
that my Jewish ancestors faced
over thousands of years,
they were forced to migrate often,
and so they didn’t get to put down roots 
in any one place for very long.
They had to learn how to
carry culture and stories,
and their sense of the sacred on their backs,
or buried deep in their hearts.
They developed rituals to strengthen
remembering and community,
which helped them survive
 traumatic times.
One of the most beautiful traditional
Jewish teachings is called Tikkun Olam,
the responsibility to help heal
and repair the world.
It feels more relevant now than
at any prior time in my life.
The Cabala, the ancient book of
wisdom in the Jewish tradition,
says that the brokenness in our world
is due to the turning away from one another
of the masculine and feminine
aspects of the divine.
We can help heal the world, 
they suggest,
by helping the feminine and masculine 
aspects of the sacred to reunite.
I continue to work towards healing
both the feminine and the masculine
roots within myself
so that I can better serve 
that larger rebalancing
that I believe is so central to 
navigating our way forward
with a reoriented compass.
Then there is my lineage as a woman,
which roots me both through 
my embodied experience
and also through the
historical and cultural violence
the many generations of women who have
fought, died, and suffered before us
for freedom, health, and justice,
which lives on in me.
This connection reminds me that
we’re all born of Mother Earth,
and in truth we belong to her.
And often what we do to women,
we do to the Earth, and vice versa.
I remember that whether we are
biological mothers or childless by choice,
a mothering impulse to nourish and
cultivate life
is very much alive and powerful 
within each of us.
I’ve seen the most indomitable 
and persevering love,
perhaps our greatest resource 
for change, from women.
And I believe that the only thing stronger
than a determined woman
is a group of women who 
have each other’s backs.
[APPLAUSE]
As medicine to heal our
hyper-individualized culture,
acting in communities of all genders
is essential to strengthen and nourish our resolve.
It can stabilize and fortify us
the way tree roots weaving together 
underground can do.
Branches and leaves are
essential for the health of trees.
They extend a tree’s capacity to
reach out for and absorb the light.
Aided by sunlight, leaves perform alchemy
that literally grows the tree,
converting water, sap, and
light into new growth.
My branches uplift me.
And they invite me to stretch upward,
providing an updraft under my wings,
filling me with inspiration and vision.
My branches are many of you in this
extended community,
of doers, thinkers, dreamers, 
and organizers.
You buoy me and help me flex
with the winds of change.
You nourish and widen my
perspectives
and inform my vision.
I’m especially inspired and fortified
by the youth and women’s movements
emerging all over this 
country and the world.
After a suicide wave ravaged
the Lakota Sioux Nation,
teenagers began healing by learning
their culture’s sacred ways.
They formed One Mind Youth Movement,
establishing a small prayer camp on the
north end of the 
Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
The Indigenous Environmental Network
paid for One Mind members to be
 trained as organizers,
and they learned how the struggle
against the pipeline
was part of the same struggle as the one
against alcoholism, poverty, suicide, and abuse.
They organized a 500-mile relay run
from the Sacred Stone Camp to Omaha,
to deliver a letter to the
Army Corps of Engineers.
Young runners participated from all
seven communities of the Sioux,
spread out over an area 
spanning five states.
Their vision, actions, and perseverance
helped launch a movement,
creating unifying bonds among people
from many scattered nations
devastated by centuries of genocide 
and systemic abuse.
Practicing peaceful and prayerful protests,
they attracted many more.
The connections woven among diverse
communities are helping them work together now
to defeat the outrageous voter suppression efforts 
currently assaulting North Dakota.
Yeah.
[APPLAUSE]
Meanwhile...
Meanwhile, Earth Guardians with
youth from all 50 states,
and in partnership with Our Children’s Trust,
are suing the government in a suit…[CHEERS]
in a suit-- [CHEERS]
Right?
in a suit known as Youth V Gov.
for failing to act on climate change,
seeing it as a Constitutional right
to have clean air, clean water, 
and a healthy future.
Their case seeks to hold
the government accountable.
So far, in spite of several administration
efforts to derail it, the trial is going forward.
And meanwhile…wait—
Meanwhile, Earth Guardians' membership
 has spread across six continents, 
spanning 40 countries.
[APPLAUSE]
And over the past eight months,
the survivors of Marjorie Stoneman 
Douglas High School shooting
have altered the debate about
gun violence in this country,
launching national campaigns and mobilizing
marches and voter registration drives.
They’re determined.
Their determination to 
challenge the status quo,
hold politicians accountable, and get stricter
gun laws passed has been truly spine-tingling.
The issues may vary, but the trend
is unmistakable and global.
Aided by social media,
young people are mobilizing in huge numbers and 
with fierce commitments to demand change.
My other great inspiration is women,
who are awakening to proactively speak out 
and demand accountability
for systemic gender
and racial violence
while standing for human rights, climate justice, democracy, and economic equity.
Persevering women are doing what
they’ve always done,
building relational structures
through grassroots organizing
that develop over time into 
real social movements
by standing together to protect 
and defend what they love.
While past demonstrations had
focused on specific issues,
the Women’s March built upon years of
organizing by women from Black Lives Matter,
the Dreamer Immigrant Youth Movement,
Indigenous women,
and leaders such as Tarana Burke,
founder of Me Too,
to mobilize millions of diverse 
women to forge connections,
not only in this country 
but all over the world.
The executive director of the
National Domestic Workers Alliance,
and co-director of Caring Across Generations,
Ai-jen Poo observed:
Women began to listen to our own stories
and each other’s,
and realizing the immensity of the 
commonalities and challenges we face,
began responding at scale.
Inspired by the courage of the
truth-telling they heard,
from farm workers to Hollywood celebrities,
the number of voices speaking grew, swelling the 
cultural momentum of Me Too into a wave.
Now this also provoked a predictable backlash
from an entrenched patriarchy so threatened
as to become even more repressive
 and dangerous in response.
We stopped looking up to 
those in power," she noted,
"and started looking around at the 
women standing behind us, and beside us.
We realized our strength is our diversity,
not our singularity.
And the power that we need
to claim is our own.
We shifted…[APPLAUSE]
Yeah.
We shifted from focusing on protesting laws
to lifting each other up to become the lawmakers.
[APPLAUSE]
In only three years, the founders of
Black Lives Matter,
Patrisse Khan Cullors, Alicia Garza, 
and Opal Tometi
have organized a decentralized 
network of people
across the US and the world
to demand accountability for police brutality.
Through their work, countless other
organizations have formed,
including the movement for Black Lives,
the Black Youth Project, Black Voters Matter,
and Say Her Name.
Mujeres Unidas y Activas,
an immigrant rights group,
was able to get the historic 
California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights
adopted into law  through their work.
And Indigenous women have been coordinating
strategic campaigns for Earth and climate justice across the nation,
from Idle No More to Indigenous Climate Action,
to Amazon Watch,
and the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, 
to name only a few.
Women-led grassroots movements are also growing
in size and influence all over the planet.
Both of these branches, the youth and women’s
leadership movements, share a common ground
and are happening
around the globe.
Each is defining leadership as
raising up other leaders.
And all are developing leadership structures
that are deeply inclusive,
mutually  respectful 
and non-hierarchical.
Notably, to counter the divide-and-conquer
strategy that has been undermining progressive
movement building for so long,
each is recognizing diversity as a
source of strength,
and engaging in the hard work needed to 
bridge differing worlds.
They’re also embracing the mutual mentorship
that occurs when youth and elders work together,
without succumbing to the
divisive trope of ageism.
These movements are also taking a
whole person long-term view.
All are modeling in their care and
treatment of each other,
the free, healthy, dignified and loving
world they seek to co-create.
They’re modeling new forms of leadership,
valuing vulnerability and sharing authority.
This letter, written recently from Tarana Burke
and others of the Me Too movement,
to Professor Blasey Ford,
intending to offer their love and support,
sums it up so eloquently:
Dear Dr. Blasey Ford,
we witnessed you show up for duty,
not as a superhero but 
as a fully human woman.
You showed us that the new hero, the kind
of heroism called for in this moment,
is a woman facing the patriarchy
with no weapons other than her voice, 
her body, and the truth.
And I would add her dignity,
which never flagged.
Here’s how a tree shows us what we are
capable of accomplishing together.
Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, 
a tree researcher and Bioneer,
loves to debunk false 
stereotypes about trees,
like how we imagine trees as 
stationary, non-moving beings.
She knew that they were 
dynamic entities.
And so to prove it, she turned a 
tree into an artist.
On a Douglas fir, she tied paintbrushes
onto the tips of twigs, held up paper,
timed their movement 
for two minutes,
and measured how much 
distance each twig had marked.
By multiplying the amount of movement by the
number of twigs per branch,
the number of branches per tree, 
and the number of minutes per year,
she was able to come up with the distance
that a single Douglas fir had moved in a year.
Want to guess?
It was 186,540 miles.
[LAUGHTER]
As she observed, when we shift our attention
from the immovable obstacle of the trunk to
the dynamic movement of the 
twigs, branches, and leaves,
we learn that a tree can actually move
seven times around the Earth in a year.
May we remember the value of every action,
however small it may seem,
as each twig travels 
thousands of miles,
and each leaf is an alchemist.
May we invest our vision, our hearts,
and our purposeful hands in the magnitude
and vision of what we 
can accomplish together,
and in the emergence of the joyful and
liberating future we can co-create.
Like the Douglas fir, together our movements
are powerful beyond imagining.
May we navigate the long road 
ahead in community,
remembering to listen for and 
call upon our roots and branches.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
