Victor Fiscella 

ENG 170 

Professor Apuzzo 

10 April 2023 

                                                                                                                   Interview 

 

The destruction of the environment has always been a controversial topic in the United States with passionate supporters on both sides of the argument. Some argue that destroying parts of the environment is a necessary evil and just part of life while others argue that we must protect our forests, rivers, and animals as they are at risk of never recovering. The point of this interview is to show how people are fighting against the harm of the environment at the local level and how even though there has been some progress over the last few years, it’s still an uphill battle. I will be interviewing Margaret Human from the local Extinction Rebellion group here at New Paltz. Margaret has been fighting for our climate and planet for many years. Extinction Rebellion MidHudson has been organizing events and protests for years at New Paltz to raise awareness about the ways we harm the environment and to warn about the dangers of harming our climate. The interview took place on a picnic bench outside the Main Course restaurant. It was chilly outside, and the bench was near the side of the road so the sound of cars going by made it hard to hear anything.  

  1. How long have you been protesting for the environment? 

“Since the Middle 90s I think it was? I don’t know if you know when the big globalization thing in Seattle was?” 

No, I don’t  

“After that we had a big one in DC and that’s where it began.” 

  1. What sparked your passion for this? 

“Oh, I don’t know, I actually had a whole lot of things. And then I thought I’d better focus on something and what’s the most important thing that’s really going to do us in? First is the climate.” 

  1. What’s the story of extinction rebellion? Why did you join the group? 

“I joined the group because it was doing something activist, it was blockading streets at the time. It was at the very beginning of it in New York City. And I had done a whole lot of, you know, signing petitions, and calling my congressman and all that. And I just thought we needed to. We needed to make some disruption, we needed to make some noise, we needed to get people to focus on this issue.” 

  1. What things have you protested with the extinction rebellion group? What kind of topics? 

“It’s all about climate. I mean, I’ve done other things. We could do some things of it. There’s been a big subcategory, or category. I have a hard time with words, I’m 81, of protesting the banks that facilitate the large greenhouse gas emitting industries, they invest in them themselves, and they lend them money. And so, we’ve been protesting banks, for the last years or so.” 

  1. How many of these protests do you feel are successful in the end? Like, you’ve raised awareness or you’ve actually gotten some progress. 

“It’s hard to know what you know, I have seen awareness improve over time when we began in 2018 maybe? You know, there is more awareness. That comes from a whole lot of things, I don’t know. And there’s a lot of groups that are focusing on this now are so I’m hopeful, sometimes I’m hopeful.” 

  1. How has the local government been in regard to these protests? Have they’ve been supportive? Have they tried to shut you down? 

“New Paltz. One person just walked into the meeting of the town of new supervisors and asked them to declare a climate emergency and they not only did that, they may have been planning to do this way ahead of me asking for a climate emergency, they have made a volunteer committee that does a lot of work with the climate. They got a silver I don’t know what certificate this is, I’m so useless. But it has the town itself has cut back on its carbon emissions and in its offices, and it’s done that and set up a thing where you could get your electric from renewable resources.” 

  1. How important do you think protecting our climate environment is for our future? 

“Totally, totally. I mean, we really can’t go on like this.” 

  1. How important is it that these protests remain peaceful and non-violent? 

“This is an issue that we are just beginning to grapple with in XRMidHudson. There’s a movie out there we’re all gonna go watch together called how to blow up a pipeline.” 

Oh, I’ve heard of that movie.  

“It’s on we can watch it on Netflix and we’re hoping then to discuss among ourselves was kind of hoping I don’t know whether this will happen that maybe we can have a public discussion at some point about this because at this point XR US  and XR New York City which is not yet affiliated with us they are not interested in property destruction but they haven’t written it out and there’s a lot of grades of property destruction and some of them don’t seem to me to be violent at all but there’s just a position I’m able to discuss it. As far as people as harming people I think it’s essential I think you get to the point where you don’t care where you’re figuring in the greatest good means we got to kill off these ones you’ve already lost the whole clan of having a good future.” 

  1. Do you feel there is a climate emergency here in New Paltz?  

“Climate emergency?  It’s all over the atmosphere is worldwide, if they screw it up in Bangladesh, it’s gonna get us and we’re screwing it up in Bangladesh at the moment.” 

  1. What would you recommend to someone who wants to start protecting the planet today? What do you recommend they do? 

“I’m gonna be I made this kind of discussion thing. Because we want to think in terms of campaigns rather than just doing a thing. For years, the Earth Day here has focused on what individuals can do. Individuals can’t do it. They really come to realize that we definitely have to do this as not just as a group but as a nation. And so we have to have campaigns that reach people with some kind of power to do something, but I think although you can’t just you know, sign a petition I think you’ve done your job, or I don’t know hung your clothes out on the clothesline. But there are but there’s just so many places you can slot yourself into a campaign. There are so many places even though XR is way down in the activist direct action there’s so many roles that are non-arrestable that people don’t realize it they think “I don’t want to go get arrested so I’m not going to join XR.” But there’s a million roles to support the people who were arrested. And there are roles that are effective with direct action without being arrested. For instance, we’ve been hanging banners from the Thruway which is hot illegal. But it gets the message out and we have the XR symbol on the banner.” 

  1. What is the craziest story you’ve had while protesting? What was something crazy that’s happened to you while protesting? 

“It’s actually fairly cut and dry. I was training some people for the rest of their roles and I tried to get press to them that I always chose the rest of the roles because it’s the easiest. Nothing crazy happens. You sit in some place where they don’t want you and the police come and take you to jail and then you have to go back later date to the court and then that’s it but crazy things. The first time crazy things would be from mistakes you make, the first time I went down to Washington DC we had something based in New Paltz now I don’t know what it was called but at any rate, it came to the mid-Hudson Valley action network, long time ago. I don’t know some buddy, we’re confronting the police. There were fence like barriers up and you couldn’t knock them over, but they would just stand sitting and somebody said, “we should knock those over and over” and Margerat goes and knocks the next one over and there is a policeman right behind one. And he’s got pepper spray to my eyes. It was awful, fortunately, but we had one of the non-arrestable people was a medic, and she had the stuff to wash your eyes out. But it was like I just realized how stupid it was like the person who said that wasn’t knocking them over. There was a policeman right there. And it was like I just was carried away but there was my first feal protest I had been during the Vietnam War I had been to these big marches and rallies and things in Washington but I would say when but I had never done directly.” 

Follow-up: What was it like in Washington? 

“When recently? In the 90s. The police there’s like five or seven or I don’t know different kinds of police in Washington DC and depends on who you got. The people that arrested us were nice like one that squirted me in the eyes. I couldn’t really blame them but there was another group that dealt with us in in the jails before we’re going to see the judge. The judge said you’re free to go so Margerat thinks well she was gonna walk out the front door, clearly that was not what was meant because this policeman grabs me and twists my arms behind my back and I said the judge said I was free to go he said you’re free to go when I say so and it’s true I mean we had to pick up our stuff but it was so funny it was like a bad memory. I have a bad brother nine years older than I am. I think he must have done something because it was so familiar.” 

  1. You mentioned that you are witch in your emails. What do you mean by this? 

“I belong to a pagan circle, most of us identify as witches but not everybody but I am because I try to practice magic, but not as much as I used to. Yeah, because I decided that the deities that I was worshipping, pagan deities, that that’s what they wanted from me. So for years I tried to figure out.  I’ve had some success with magic. I’ve also just recently, magic is very easy to kind of screw up. Did you ever read ministry tales of how somebody has things that didn’t work out quite like they meant.” 

Yeah, like the monkey’s paw. 

“Yeah. Be careful what you wish for. I just had a mild case of that and I wondered if I was going to continue with magic at all. We try to be careful, it’s all about focus.” 

Follow-up: So, is there any connection between this and like you’re protesting?  

“Oh, absolutely as a matter of fact. I took me a long time to realize that I am dedicand of mother nature. I avoided this for years because it seems so trait. Everybody, Mother Nature, but she’s the biosphere. And worship, to me means to acknowledge the worthiness. You know, when you say to like in the Middle Ages you would call someone Your Worship, your worthiness. And the thing that seems most worthy to me, worth the most, I mean, this biosphere is everything. We’re part of it and that’s what I wish.” 

Well, that’s all of my questions. So thank you. 

Margaret Human’s life shows how important protesting and raising awareness can be. It shows how the fight for our planet is a battle that we may never see the end of, but progress is slowly but steadily being made. Any awareness raised is a success because it builds up over time and eventually change can be made and our planet can be saved. Although some companies are trying to lower their emissions or hold back on their environmental destruction, it’s often up to the people to create the change in our world.