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Cumming writes: "The author and activist, 44, on how people can behave magnificently in a crisis, 'gloom-and-doom' politics, and drawing pictures with her son."

Best selling author/activist Naomi Klein. (photo: Anya Chibis/Guardian UK)
Best selling author/activist Naomi Klein. (photo: Anya Chibis/Guardian UK)


Naomi Klein: People Can Behave Magnificently in a Crisis

By Ed Cumming, Guardian UK

06 April 15

 

The author and activist, 44, on how people can behave magnificently in a crisis, ‘gloom-and-doom’ politics, and drawing pictures with her son

wasn’t an activist as a child. I grew up in the 80s consumer culture. Very few teenagers want to be at war with the prevailing culture. But I was the daughter of activists and I always had a keen sense of right and wrong.

My mother had a stroke when I was 17. At the time I remember everyone saying how young she was, but you never think of your parents as young. Now I’m the same age she was at the time.

Helping my mother navigate her new world in a wheelchair taught me a lot about how brutally cruel certain parts of our culture can be, and how quickly we put up barriers to each other.

The success of No Logo was an incredible gift, because it gave me the freedom to do what I love at a time when journalism in general was cutting back massively. I was able to take five years to write each of my next books; it’s an interesting paradox that market success is what brought that about.

I have never been religious. I feel like I have a relationship with nature that is deeply nourishing and spiritual. But I don’t believe in God.

Before my son was born, I’d have 90-minute yoga classes and meditation routines. I was very zen. Now I’m lucky if I can work out for 20 minutes. But having a two-and-a-half-year-old can be very relaxing. I’ll go from all this doom-and-gloom politics stuff to just sitting on the floor drawing pictures with him.

I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic about the future, but I’m not a nihilist either. Reporting from disaster zones, such as Hurricane Katrina, you see that human beings can behave magnificently in a crisis. They gather and act with unbearable solidarity to overcome divisions.

There are two climate movements in the UK: there’s the more elite Prince Charles movement, but also a very activist, grass-roots climate-camp movement.

It was no accident that the spokesman for climate was Al Gore, a former vice-president, who reached out to billionaires like Richard Branson and Hollywood celebrities. It created this idea that the environment was elitist.

There is a temptation to think of all movements as the same: the Labour movement, the civil rights movement. But they’re not. The roots of the environmental movement in the US were a kind of country club, preserving land for fishing, hunting and birdwatching. It was a movement of insiders.

Obama blew an amazing opportunity. He came to power with a clear mandate to act on the climate and also the tools to do it thanks to the bailouts for the banking and automobile industries. No other president since Roosevelt has had that kind of economic power at their fingertips.

In the past we have overemphasised the importance of individual lifestyle choices and underemphasised the big-policy changes. People worry about their hybrid cars rather than fighting for free public transport.

I had thyroid cancer last year, which forced me to think about death. I think it’s healthy. One of the things I liked about yoga was corpse pose. It’s good to remember that you will be a corpse one day; a reminder that life is fleeting.


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