Biden using Trump-era policy to deport Haitian migrants without chance to claim asylum

Guests: Arelis Hernandez, Lee Gelernt

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As a scientist, I have to say there's nothing wrong with facts, facts explain how the world works. You can say, I don't believe in gravity, but if you step off the cliff, you're going down. But how do we use facts to make decisions? That's where the whole challenge comes in.

MATT GALLOWAY: The Canadian scientist Katharine Hayhoe has spent her career charting how climate change is reshaping our world. In her new book, she explores the challenge of explaining that in an increasingly divided world in 30 minutes, she's here to talk about the communications problem within the climate crisis and how being an evangelical Christian has helped her bridge gaps. Also this morning, we head to Winkler, Manitoba, where the gaps are growing as the pandemic continues.

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Not just neighbour against neighbour, family against family. Every day I hear another story of somebody. Well, I haven't seen my daughter. I haven't seen my son for so long. And they refuse to be vaccinated, so therefore I can't see them.

MG: How one city is finding itself being split apart over vaccines and masks and why officials worry the anger on the streets could last a generation. That is in an hour. We start, though, in Texas with shocking images of a crisis on the border and outrage at the immigration policies not of Donald Trump, but of his successor in the Oval Office. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

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[Indistinct chatter and noises]

MG: It was the sound of migrants crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico into Del Rio, Texas, most of those migrants are Haitian. Over the course of the past week, almost 14000 migrants gathered under a bridge in Del Rio trying to seek asylum in the United States. And then U.S. border agents moved in on horseback, chasing down those who reached the American side of the river. AFP photographer Paul Ratje captured those scenes and told NPR what he saw.

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So I thought the Haitians were quite scared. And I think there was some panic which resulted in them trying to run around the horses. The agents tried to block them. And then the one agent grabbed a man by his shirt and kind of swung them around.

MG: Arelis Hernandez is the Texas correspondent for The Washington Post. She's been covering the situation from the Mexico Texas border. Arelis, good morning.

ARELIS HERNANDEZ: Good morning.

MG: Paint me a picture of what it's like in this area of Del Rio, Texas, Ciudad Acuna and Mexico, and in this camp in particular, what is it like there?

ARELIS HERNANDEZ: So Del Rio has long been a crossing point, or at least from Akuna del Rio. It's literally just about maybe a football fields length of river that separates the two places with, you know, bluffs on the Mexican side. And then it's, you know, riverbank full of Carrizo cane, which is like a bamboo cane on the other. And this is you know, this is a popular place as the water tends to be less deep than other parts of the Rio Grande. And in this particular place where earlier this week, you know, thousands of people are crossing, it's like a dam or spillway that's there. So there's concrete. It's pretty easy to walk across the swift current. But inside the camp is sort of, you know, they're under the international bridge that connects Del Rio to see [unintelligible]. And, you know, they're making shelters out of this cane that I had mentioned, the sort of bamboo lake plant using blankets and things that they had bought in Mexico to shield themselves these past few days. It's been, you know, over 100 degrees in this part of Texas. So it's not been easy, easy in terms of sanitation. Food has been running out. It's really been sort of a miserable existence for the thousands who have been sweltering under there.

MG: And when we say thousands, I mean, people have seen the photos of those under this bridge. Do we have a sense as to how many people are there right now?

ARELIS HERNANDEZ: It seems that the population has been reduced to under 10000. And I think the projections by US Customs and Border Protection is that by the end of this week, they would have had the vast majority of people either moved out, transported to other processing stations or on expulsion flights or released into the country.

MG: What is it that is bringing the migrants to this border crossing now?

ARELIS HERNANDEZ: So it's a confluence of factors. This is, like I said, since January, been a terrifically popular crossing point. And what that is, is that, you know, when people make it through, they communicate then back to their relatives who might be in other parts of the world, say, hey, you know, this part is pretty safe. There isn't as much perceivable cartel activity as there is further down river. This would be a good place for you to cross. And if you're going to cross, do it now. The other factor being that, you know, the Biden administration has been more open to extending temporary protected status to Haitians, which is this, you know, protection from deportation as a result of some kind of natural or manmade disaster in a particular country. And so, you know, Haitians who reached the United States prior to July, it was extended first May and then July, were being allowed into the country with temporary protected status. And I'm sure that that message then was relayed to relatives who have been living in South America for a long time.

MG: And is that where I mean, I was said in the introduction that many of the migrants are Haitian, but they're not coming directly from Haiti or they have been spending time in other countries in South and Latin America?

ARELIS HERNANDEZ: That's correct. I've been spending the week talking to them about their various experiences. And many come from Chile and Brazil and have been there since after the 2010 earthquake devastated the island nation. So they've been in Chile for, you know, four or five, six years and have tried to make it work. In some cases, these are countries who gave them like identification papers and had pretty strong economies and they made it work for a few years until the pandemic hit. And the pandemic with them being foreigners would be who didn't have access to in some cases, you know, getting legalisation in those countries figured it was better for them to leave, given that there seemed to be an opportunity at the border and they have stronger ties to the United States.

MG: I mentioned the AFP photographer whose photos of Border Patrol agents on horseback trying to, you know, like using a horse's reins to stop migrants from crossing, dragging people across the ground. These images have been seen around the world. Have they affected people's thoughts about trying to cross?

ARELIS HERNANDEZ: I don't know if that- I'm sure that's part of it. I haven't talked to him directly and asked him that question, but I also think it's the expulsion flights. None of these folks will want to go back to Haiti at all for them, as my colleague quoted one person in Haiti. Haiti is hell for them. So, yes, certainly the treatment is a factor. But I think it's all ultimately the possibility they could be sent back to a place that they haven't seen in years.

MG: How is the president handling this? I mean, he's facing criticism not just from Republicans and we'll get to that in a moment, but also from his own party. Part of this, again, fuelled by those images that we're seeing, but also by what's going on in the broader crisis. What sort of bind does that put Joe Biden in?

ARELIS HERNANDEZ: Well, Joe Biden came into office promising, you know, to to employ a different set of standards when it came to immigration policy. And that included a humane and orderly process was the phrase that came up over and over again. And in some cases, you know, he delivered on that by ending some programmes that were criticized by human rights organisations for being inhumane. But here in this case, you know, those promises seem to fall flat. So I've been talking to a lot of people who are just disappointed on all sides. Republicans have long this is a winning issue for them at a time for primaries here, particularly in Texas. So they're going to keep banging the strong as long as they as long as they can. In Texas, being a Republican state, this this is you know, this is a perfect opportunity for them to, you know, be on the vanguard. And the governor here has like, well, if the federal government is not going to do it, I'm going to do it. On the flip side of that, Democrats and immigrant advocates are just incredibly disappointed with the Biden administration saying that what's been happening in Del Rio and Valverde County right now is not orderly and humane.

MG: Just before I let you go, what happens now to those 10000 or so people who are under that bridge?

ARELIS HERNANDEZ: So it's going to be different fates for different people. And I'm not entirely you know, I'm not entirely sure what discretion or what standards, Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol are using to decide. But families and most families seem to be getting through and released into the country being processed. I was at a bus station. Well, it's a gas station in Del Rio where migrants are being dropped off by the agency and allowed to continue with travel papers on their way, whereas, you know, are still some families also that are being expelled to Haiti and its expulsion, not deportation, because these folks have not gone through any kind of screening process for credible fear, like for asylum seekers. So some will be expelled and some may continue under the bridge or in some kind of processing facility in the meantime before, you know, their particular fates are decided. But as far as we can tell, there are still people who want to come here and are on their way here and are finding more difficult travel through Texas, through Mexico now that enforcement has been stepped up.

MG: I really appreciate you giving us the picture from the ground. Thank you very much.

ARELIS HERNANDEZ: Thank you.

MG: Arelis Hernandez is the Texas correspondent for The Washington Post. Joe Biden has kept in place a Trump era policy that allows some migrants to be deported, as Arelis was saying, without the chance to seek asylum. A federal court ordered a halt in the policy last week, but the Biden administration is appealing that decision. And in the meantime, many migrants are being put on planes back to Haiti. Lee Gelernt is a lawyer and deputy director of the Immigrants Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. He's in New York City. Good morning to you.

LEE GELERNT: Good morning.

MG: The Biden administration is trying to deport these migrants quickly, putting them, as we were saying, on several flights a day before. They cannot use any further this policy called Title 42. You are the lead attorney in challenging Title 42. Just briefly explain what this what this is.

LEE GELERNT: Right. So what happened during the Trump administration is that they clearly did not want asylum seekers to come to this country, particularly from Central America. And throughout the first three years of the Trump administration, they tried various policies to stop entry for asylum seekers. We and other groups challenged those policies that have varying degrees of success in the course. But ultimately, people were still getting some type of screening. Then when covid hit, the Trump administration seized upon that as the silver bullet to use covid as the pretext to [[unintelligible] all asylum. And what they did is use the public health laws in the U.S. Code of Title 42, hence the Title 42 policy name, and said, No one, no asylum seeker will be allowed to come into the country and there'll be no screening whatsoever for asylum. They'll just be immediate expulsions. And it caused horrific harm. Hundreds of thousands of people were expelled without any screening. We expected and hoped that the Biden administration, when they came in, would get rid of the Title 42 policy. Unfortunately, they didn't immediately get rid of any part of it. Eventually, they got rid of it as to unaccompanied children, but left it in place for all others, including families with small children. And we negotiated, the Biden administration came to us and said, will you give us some time to fix the Trump administration policies? We put our litigation on hold for six months. Ultimately, the Biden administration did not get rid of the Title 42 policy. We went back to court and got an injunction that you referenced last week that goes into effect on the 30th. And what we told the district court and the district court accepted was that the public health laws do not allow the expulsion of people they weren't intended for, that they allowed testing quarantines. And public health officials throughout the United States and other places have said you can safely process asylum seekers, just take the basic mitigation steps that everyone knows about now.

MG: So when you hear the administration say that this is necessary to protect Americans from the further spread of covid-19 in the midst of a fourth wave, I mean, there's no you don't believe that there's justification for that?

LEE GELERNT: No, we don't. And it's not because we don't take the risk of covid seriously. It's because we know that there are mitigation steps to take. But more importantly, not just us, obviously, it's all the public health experts who have submitted declarations in the law saying here's how you can safely process asylum seekers. You can build outdoor processing centres. They've had eight months now under the Biden administration. To do that. You can have mass testing, quarantine, and there's now readily available vaccines. And so given the harm that it would cause to send families back, which is horrific, literally in some regions, literally two out of every five families pushed back over the bridge by the United States are being kidnapped by cartels in Mexico. You can do this safely. So it's not a matter of not taking covid seriously. It's a matter of their mitigation steps. And what the Centres for Disease Control has said is not that you can't process asylum seekers safely, it's that you have to take the basic mitigation steps. So really, it was an indictment of the Biden administration not taking these steps. And what that suggests is that this is not really about public health for the Biden administration, but about immigration enforcement and to that extent, probably politics.

MG: Let me well, let me ask you about that. Joe Biden campaigned on the idea of, you know, a more humane immigration system. He said he was going to undo the moral and national shame of the previous administration. Have you seen substantial changes within this administration's approach to immigration?

LEE GELERNT: So we have and I think what it is, is a mixed record. I am also the lead attorney challenging with challenging the family separation, practised what the Trump administration was doing at the border, taking little children away. The Biden administration has pledged to fix that, to remedy to give those families a remedy and to reunite them. I have been working constructively with the Biden administration on that, and that has been going well. But we are extremely disappointed with the Biden administration keeping title Florida to its border. They said they would want it wanted a more humane asylum system. Title 42 policy was the most extreme of all, the Trump administration asylum policies, and unfortunately, the Biden administration has kept it. So I think it's it's a mixed record. Anybody who says they haven't done anything better than the Trump administration, that's. Wrong, they have gotten rid of certain significant programmes that the Title 42 policy is causing real harm to families, in some cases kidnapping, death, and we just need to get rid of it. The Bush administration has to get rid of it. And I think it's a mistake to solely focus on the Haitian situation. I'm glad that people are finally recognising what Title 42 is doing to people and the Haitians need relief. It's appalling what's happening to these camps. It's appalling that we're going to deport people back to Haiti, but they are a small subset of the problem. Hundreds of thousands of people have been expelled under Title 42 during the eight months of the Bush administration in the last year of the Trump administration. And so I think the Haitian situation is just the most dramatic illustration of the harm caused by Title 42

MG: just in the last minute and a half or so that we have. I mean, this is not a problem just to have Joe Biden or of Donald Trump's administration. The issues on the border have spanned administrations. And I mean, Arelis was talking about the political bind that he finds himself in. What would you want Joe Biden to do in a presidency that's already facing headwinds from his own party, let alone from Republicans, and with a political calculus that he's trying to make with midterms on the horizon as well? So what should he do?

LEE GELERNT: Right. Well, so I think ultimately, you know, you're going to get criticism from the right about immigration no matter what you do. So what you need to do is do what the law requires and give people asylum hearings and just do what's morally right and what the law requires. And I think it's wrong to assume that we can't have an efficient, humane asylum system in. The administration just talked about surging resources to expel all the Haitians. Well, what about surging all those resources to the border to process them in a fair way? I think that's what needs to happen. Remember, the Department of Homeland Security's budget is over 80 billion, 20 billion of which is for the border. We can certainly send more asylum processors to the border. We can certainly build outdoor processing centres to you, mainly process people. We don't need to constantly surge resources to expel people. We can surge resources to have a more efficient and humane asylum system at the border.

MG: We'll be watching to see what happens next. Thank you.

LEE GELERNT: Thank you for having me.

MG: Lee Gelernt is a lawyer, deputy director as well of the Immigrants Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Anderson Cooper. You know the name. You know his face. He's been an icon of American journalism for decades now on CNN. Chances are you do not know his whole story because neither did he until he wrote his latest book. That book is called Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. It's about the wealth, fame and ugly underbelly of one of the most famous families, a family of which he is a member. I spoke with Anderson Cooper about it. Here's a sneak peak.

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It is so against everything in my nature to talk about the Vanderbilt’s, to kind of even in my own mind, except that I am related to this interesting group of people because it had no bearing on my life as a kid. And I particularly thought no good could come of this. The little I knew, the Vanderbilt’s, it didn't look very good to me. It looked, you know, yes, they had a lot of stuff, but the ones I vaguely knew about didn't seem terribly happy lives. And I looked at my dad's family who were, you know, relatively poor in Mississippi growing up in the Depression on a farm. And I thought, you know what, that's the origin story that will helped me live a better life. There was no pot of gold waiting for me when I turned 21, as most people probably thought there was. And I'm very happy about that. Like, holy crap, I can't believe these people. And, you know, they're fascinating. But I mean, a lot of them are irredeemable. A lot of them are awful. One of them who married into the family was a horrific racist growing up as a child in the Confederate South and later in life became a funder of the suffragette movement and divorced her husband at a time when that was just completely unheard of. And she felt she was paving the way for women to be able to get out of loveless marriages. So, you know, I watched the crown and I think, oh, my God, this is like the Vanderbilt, they're like the crown, like every season. It's just another thing you can't believe.

MG: A bit of my conversation with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper about his new book. You can hear the full interview coming up in the days ahead on The Current. Well, your CBC News is next. And then.

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The best place to start these conversations is not, first of all, by just picking out the science and metaphorically hitting people over the head with it. More facts aren't going to fix this problem. Begin the conversation, rather, with something that you have in common.

MG: Climate change has a communications problem. The climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe is out to fix that. I'll talk to her about how to talk to your friends, your colleagues and, yes, even your relatives about global warming. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

Talking about climate change requires honesty and connection — not just arguing, says author

Guest: Katharine Hayhoe

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. Still to come, the town of Winkler, Manitoba, is one of the least vaccinated in that province and divisions over the vaccine and covid restrictions are tearing the community apart. It has become so acrimonious that the police chief had to put out a call for civility on Facebook. I'll speak with the mayor of Winkler in about 30 minutes. But first, what we talk about when we talk about climate change. Climate change has been a political lightning rod for a long time, but it wasn't always that way. It started out as just facts being offered up by scientists and accepted by most politicians of all stripes. Somewhere along the way, though, those facts came up for debate. Here's an unlikely person to try to explain why. Take a listen to Newt Gingrich, Republican firebrand, in a debate with Democrat John Kerry in 2007.

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VOICE 1: What would you say to Senator Inhofe and to others in the Senate who are resisting even science? What's your message to them here today?

VOICE 2: My message, I think, is that the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective, possible steps to reduce carbon loading of the atmosphere.

VOICE 1: And do it urgently.

VOICE 2: Yes. And let me, if I can, let me explain partly why this is a very challenging thing to do if you're a conservative. For most of the last 30 years, the environment has been a powerful emotional tool for bigger government and higher taxes. And therefore, if you're a conservative, the minute you start hearing these arguments, you know what's coming next. So even though it may be the right thing to do, you end up fighting it because you don't want the bigger government and higher taxes.

MG: Well, that's one explanation for the story of how we became so divided on this issue, it turns out, is much bigger. Climate change has had a communications problem. Katharine Hayhoe has been trying to fix that. She's an atmospheric scientist, a Canadian and a professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University. Her new book is called Saving Us: Climate Scientists Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. Catherine, good morning.

KATHARINE HAYHOE: How are you?

MG: I'm very well. How is your summer been? I mean, we have had in this country a summer of fires and record temperatures and extraordinary storms. What about for you in Texas?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: We are seeing these changes everywhere. Today, we're seeing that wildfires are burning greater area heat waves and more extreme heavy rainfall and floods are increasing and hurricanes are getting bigger and stronger. They're intensifying faster and they're carrying a lot more rain with them. So wherever we live, whether it's on the East Coast, to the West Coast or the centre of the north and the south, every single place, now we are seeing what I think of as global weirding. Things are just getting weird.

MG: Those are facts. And you would think that in presenting those facts, people in Texas, people in Canada, people around the world would be able to interpret those facts and be clear that the facts are real. In the book, you make it clear that facts aren't enough when it comes to talking about climate change. What's wrong with facts?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: Well, as a scientist, I have to say there's nothing wrong with facts. Facts explain how the world works. You can say, I don't believe in gravity, but if you step off the cliff, you're going down. But a wildfire doesn't stop to ask which party we're affiliated with or which one we voted for in the last election before it burns down our house. So we know that facts do fundamentally govern how this world works, but how do we use facts to make decisions? That's where the whole challenge comes in, because for scientific issues that aren't politically polarised, like dark matter or answer, if a scientist said they'd made a new discovery and here's what it was, most people would say, oh, sure, I accept that. But for Sawney, challenging issues like climate change, which have enormous moral and ethical implications and huge implications for how we live our daily lives and what values we hold to be true and the vision of the future that we want for ourselves and for our children. In those cases, we filter any facts through our pre-existing frames. And if our frames say I don't want to fix this thing, then we are not accepting of facts that say it's urgent and demands action. Now we will go out and we will find and thanks to the Internet, we can do this a YouTube video or a blog or a so-called pseudo expert who's saying exactly the opinion we already had. It's called motivated reasoning, where we make up our mind first based on what people whose values we share say, and then we go looking for justification for why we are right.

MG: When did you realise that there was a communications issue in terms of how we talk about climate change?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: Well, ironically, it wasn't until I moved to Texas. So in many ways I feel like moving to Texas, which is a very, very difficult thing for me to do personally. It was the best thing that happened because that's where I started to meet people who had genuine questions about the science. And when I responded to their science sounding questions, then we went a level deeper. The real questions were, why does it matter to me? And is there anything we can do to fix it that doesn't involve destroying the economy and taking away everything I hold dear?

MG: You love talking. To people about these issues, and I mean, the first line of the book is I'm getting used to being hated. Why did you open the book with that? And what are you really getting used to?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: So I opened the book with that because that was probably what surprised me the most until I moved to the US. I had never even met somebody who didn't think that climate change is real. And I had always sort of mentally categorise people like that is over there and just a few of them. But soon I realised that I was getting to know people, people who were smart, people who were educated, people who shared my faith as a Christian, people who wanted to do the right thing. People who had values that I shared and yet they had been listening to people telling them that climate change wasn't real and then it got worse. I realised there was a lot of people who saw any information that challenges their particular perspective, ideology or identity as a threat. And they react to it as a threat. They see what I do. They see what I say and what other climate scientists say as a threat. And it isn't only in the US. I'm really sorry to say that probably about a third of the abuse I get comes from our fellow Canadians. And that was a shock to me that that is actually out there, that people would first of all, that they would wake up one morning and say, oh, I'm going to go hit on somebody who I've never met before just because they're telling me what the science says. But I think what I've really learnt, the most important thing I've learnt through all these conversations is that if people are willing to engage in a civil and constructive way, there's a lot of things that we can agree to disagree on. But what we agree on is far more than what divides us. We all live on this planet. We breathe it's air. We drink it's water. We eat the food that comes from this planet. All of our resources come from here. We want a better world for ourselves and our kids. We want a safe place to live. And I'm convinced that just about every single person already has every reason they need to care about climate change. And if they don't know what that is, it's simply because they haven't connected the dots between what is already at the top of their personal priority list and how climate change is affecting that today.

MG: Is that why you say in the book it's dangerous or at the very least unhelpful to divide people into this idea of being believers and deniers, that people believe in climate change or they deny climate change and it's either or.

KATHARINE HAYHOE: Yeah, we live in a world where people want everything to be binary. Sometimes, you know, it just it has to be black or white. It has to be this way or that way. It has to be my way or the highway. And so when it comes to climate change, we often hear those two words, believers or deniers. And I don't like either of them. I don't like believers because it makes it seem like some type of religion that you have to buy into. And in fact, US politicians have very cleverly turned that around and painted climate science as an earth worshipping religion that all true believers will reject. But on the other hand, I've also seen many people who have questions about climate change and frankly, who wouldn't have questions with all the conflicting information you can find on the Internet today. I've seen people who have questions that are too quickly labelled as deniers. It's often used to just draw a line in the sand to further divide us rather than focus on what unites us. So I prefer the spectrum that was developed by researchers at Yale University, where they have six different groups of people. They have people who are alarmed and concerned, and they actually make up the majority of people in the United States. And I would imagine a candidate who then you've got people who are cautious. They're the third biggest group. And here's the thing. They often leave with their doubts, but when we engage with those, then we can have productive and constructive conversations. Then there's a small group that are disengaged. They've been living under a rock the last 10 or 20 years. And then there's doubtful that 12 percent are doubtful. They're pretty seriously doubtful and it's a bit harder to have a conversation with them. But it is possible with patients. And if we are able to find a point of connection and not all of us can, but if we can find that point of connection, those shared values to begin the conversation, we can have a conversation with someone who's doubtful. But at the very end, we have the dismissive. We have that person in our lives might be your uncle or your cousin or your old university roommate or your neighbour or your co-worker or you know that friends you have. He lives down in Texas and maybe one of those people who is just obsessed with talking about how there's more polar bears now than there ever have been. And those scientists are just making all this up. And those people are the ones we dream about having the conversations with. And honestly, I think it takes a miracle to have a positive conversation with dismissive. But the good news is they're only seven percent of us and probably less in Canada.

MG: You mentioned your faith. You're a Christian and you write extensively in the book about that and what that means to you in this context. Why why does your faith matter in the work that you do?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: The reason I'm a climate scientist is because of my faith. So my undergraduate degree is in physics and astronomy community. And I was almost finished my undergrad degree and I was planning to head to graduate school to study galaxy clusters when I had to take an extra class to finish my degree. And I looked around and there was this brand new class on climate science I. Well, what's interesting. Why not take it, I took that class and I was completely shocked to find out, first of all, that climate change is no longer a future issue. It's already here and now, as we all know today. But even more importantly, I learnt that climate change is not only an environmental issue, climate change affects our health. It affects the water we drink in the air that we breathe. It literally affects the food we eat. It affects national security and the economy and amplifies refugee crises. It affects poverty and hunger and access to clean water and people dying of diseases that nobody should be dying from in twenty, twenty one. Climate change is, as the US military now calls it, a threat multiplier. In other words, it takes very basic goals, like the United Nations sustainable development goals of no poverty, no hunger and gender equity and good work and energy for all. And it exacerbates those problems. It makes them worse to the point where we can't fix them if we leave climate change out of the picture. So as a Christian, I believe that we are to love others and care for others. And it's not unique to Christianity. Nearly every major world religion has some tenet of care or stewardship over nature and care for those less fortunate than the poorest. Three point five billion people in the world have contributed about 10 percent of the heat trapping gases. It just isn't fair. And so that's why I became a climate scientist and that's why I care so much about this issue.

MG: Who does being a Christian allow you to reach that perhaps you wouldn't be able to talk to otherwise?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: A lot of people, the best place to start these conversations is not, first of all, by just picking up the science, so to speak, and metaphorically hitting people over the head with it. More facts aren't going to fix this problem. Begin the conversation, rather, with something that you have in common with the other person or people. And if you don't know what that is, ask. I've started conversations as I talk about in the book, over knitting, literally over being a mom. Whoever we are, we have experiences, passions, abilities, interests. We have pieces of ourselves that we can connect with other people over. And for me personally, one of the biggest of those is my shared faith. Interestingly, in the United States, white Catholics and white Protestants, white evangelical Protestants specifically are the least concerned about climate change of any people groups.

MG: Well, they'll often say God's in control, leave it in his hands and there's nothing we can do about it.

KATHARINE HAYHOE: That's the number one argument. But when you actually go to the Bible, Genesis one, Chapter one says that God gave humans responsibility over every living thing on this planet. And then you go all the way to the end of the Bible and it says, God will destroy those who destroy the Earth. And all through the Bible, it talks about caring for others. It talks about things that we are to do in order to express love to people. So these religious sounding arguments that people use their window dressing for the simple fact that I don't want to fix it, but if I say sure, it's a real problem and it disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world, but I don't want to fix it, that would make me a bad person. And most of us, we don't want to be a bad person. And so our subconscious grasps for reasons or rationale to explain why we don't want to fix it. And it's really interesting. I actually saw a tweet from a right wing pundit over the weekend in the US who said, I refuse to feel guilty over the extreme weather events that are happening because they've always happened. And I thought, you know what, he's actually very self aware. He is literally connecting the fact that climate change is exacerbating these extreme weather events with the fact that he doesn't want to feel guilty about it. And that's why he's rejecting the reality of the science.

MG: So how do you break through that? How then? I mean, part of it is talking to people. But beyond that, how do you end the cognitive dissonance that people have that they know this is happening, that they're not going to engage with it?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: Well, often the solutions that we're told that we sort of pick up instinctively are all about don'ts and not don't drive, don't fly, don't eat meat, don't have children. Pretty soon it's just like this list, this new list of Ten Green Commandments. Yet at the same time, we instinctively understand deep down that me changing my lightbulbs and changing my diet and driving electric car, not driving at all, that is not enough to fix the whole problem. And not only that, but depending on who we are and where we live, we might not even have the ability to make some of the choices that we want to logistically or financially. And so we feel guilty. And when we feel guilty, we just want to disassociate and pull the blanket up over our head. And then, you know, what's going to happen. The worst case scenario is going to come true. So how do we break the cycle of guilt? We break it by recognising there's something that. All of us can do to make a difference. The world has changed before and it hasn't changed because people felt guilty. It's changed because people recognised that there was something better, that there was a different way to live, that slavery should not be the foundation of an economy, that women should have a vote, that civil rights were essential for all. Some of us benefited and some of us suffered under those systems in the past. Just as is happening with climate change today, the most marginalised people are already suffering the impacts of climate change today. But the solution is not to be paralysed into inaction. The solution is to say, you know what the world must and can't change.

MG: Is that a message to individuals or is that a message to politicians?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: It's to individuals. And that's why the book is called Saving US, because it is literally about us. The planet is going to be orbiting the sun long after we're gone, but we are the ones who have the ability to reach for that better future for all of us. And it begins with action. Hope comes from action rather than the opposite way around.

MG: I guess I ask about the politicians in part because they're the ones with hands on the levers of power that can actually enact massive policies that could change the course of the world.

KATHARINE HAYHOE: Well, you're absolutely right. Politicians are part of us, too. People often say, well, how do I talk? You've explained how to talk to a normal person, Catherine, but how do I talk to a politician? And I'm like, well, this may shock you, but politicians are actually human. And so if politicians, too, they have things that they are concerned about, they have priorities. And whatever their priorities, they're being affected by climate change to every single one of them. Some of those politicians are in denial. Some of them have decided that they don't even want to entertain this idea that their constituents may not support them if they talk about the urgency of climate action. So they've decided to go with public denial. And again, not just in the US, Canada, Australia, you even see it in the UK. Some too many politicians, though, do realise that it's important, but they don't understand either the urgency or they don't feel like there's the political will for action at the scale that's needed. And that's where we come in part of using our voices is looking for candidates. And I actually like to email the candidates in my writing, especially the more conservative ones, and say, hey, what are you going to be doing about this issue? Because whoever you are, I don't care what party you're in. A thermometer does not give you a different answer. If you are blue, red, orange or green, climate is changing. The impacts are serious. And I want to know what you how you are going to use your voice in your party to help make a difference.

MG: You talk about the motivating factor of fear in this book. We've already hit one degree of warming. What frightens you the most about what's happening right now? That you the things that you see right now?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: It is scary, and for us climate scientists, there's plenty that keeps us up at night. Every new scientific study that comes out shows us that climate is changing faster to a greater extent than we thought or affecting us in more ways than we thought. We look at the vicious cycles in the Arctic with thawing permafrost, releasing massive amounts of heat trapping gases. We look at the fact that two thirds of the biggest cities in the world are built within a metre of sea level and sea levels, rising twice as fast as it was now 30 years ago. As a scientist, this is scary. But the science also offers this hope that it is not too late to avoid the worst of the impacts. I study the difference that our choices make in the future, and I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt that our future is in our hands. Every choice matters, every year matters, every bit of warming matters and every action matters. But if we don't act, that's a choice in of itself and we will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

MG: I think people who are listening would say she seems relentlessly positive in the face of what she knows. And and that comes through in the book as well. You talked about hope. What's the hardest thing about finding hope?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: The hardest part of it is that it does not come and find you the opposite of hope, despair, frustration, bad news. All of that does come to find you. I didn't experiment a little while ago, not with CBC, with CNN, where I went to their website and I said, OK, I'm just going to you know, I have this theory that basically a lot of the news media is just about bad news, right? It bleeds. It leads. Isn't that kind of the old adage

MG: guilty as charged?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: So I counted 35 headlines on CNN's Web site and about seven of them were neutral. All the rest of them were negative. They made me feel frustrated or angry or afraid or fearful or anxious. And so if we just sit there waiting for information to come into us, what are we going to do? We're going to feel anxious, afraid, disenfranchised, disempowered, hopeless. And if that's the way we feel, then we're never going to do anything about it. The number one thing that we lack is efficacy, a sense of if I do something, can I make a difference? If we together do something, can we together make a difference whether it's our neighbourhood or our parents group, whether it's, you know, our ultimate Frisbee team, can we make a difference? So how do you find help? You have to practise it. You actually have to go out and look for it. You have to look for examples of people who are active, examples of other groups and organisations like places of work or neighbourhoods or places of worship that are doing something that maybe yours could do, too. And ultimately, our hope follows our action. There's a great quote from Totenberg that says, Don't look for hope, just go out and act. And when you act, hope is everywhere.

MG: The last thing I want to ask you about is a word that's in the book Soulistalgia. What does that word mean?

KATHARINE HAYHOE: That's a heartbreaking word. It's a word that I first encountered when I was up in Alaska talking to people who had lived there their whole life, who viewed the glaciers that surround them as not just geographical points, but its friends as people who they visited regularly. Soulistalgia is the idea that the world is changing before our eyes and you and I, we literally live in a different world than the world that we were born into. When I go to the places where I grew up as a child, I see different birds, I see different temperatures, I see smoke clouding the air. I see things changing right in front of my eyes, places that I love, places that we want our children to enjoy the way we did. And that grief, that sense of loss can be overwhelming. And it's a grief that we have to acknowledge. But that grief, again, can turn us to action, to determination that we will lose no more, that we will do whatever we can to preserve what we can. And I was part of another amazing book just last year, a collection of essays written by Women in the Climate Fight. And I love the title. It's called All We Can Save.

MG: Katharine Hayhoe, it's great to talk to you as always. This is a wonderful book. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist, a proud Canadian and a professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University. Her new book is called Saving Us: A Climate Scientists Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. She mentioned that book, All We Can Save. I spoke with the authors of that book. You can find my interview with Catherine Wilkinson and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson from last summer on our website. Go to cbc.ca/thecurrent. And if you want to hear more climate content, of course, head over to CBC Radio One's What on earth? With our friend Laura Lynch this week, they'll be talking about what comes next for the Trudeau government on the environmental file. What on Earth airs every Sunday at twelve thirty p.m. on CBC Radio One. Your regional update is next and then in 90 seconds, I'll speak with the mayor of Winkler, Manitoba, about how covid vaccines have split his community. And then in about 15 minutes. School is back in session for boys in Afghanistan a month after the Taliban took Kabul, girls are still left out in spite of all the promises made by the Taliban. I'll talk to one woman who is worried that will become permanent. I'm Matt Galloway. And you're listening to The Current and CBC Radio one. Stay with us.

Tensions rise as vaccination rate remains low in Winkler, Man.; and millions of Afghan girls shut out of education

Guests: Martin Harder, Pashtana Durrani

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. The anger and vitriol between Canadians who have refused the covid vaccine and Canadians who support it has been slowly building from a swimmer to a boil. And those bitter divisions are tearing apart the social fabric in the city of Winckler, Manitoba. It's one of the least vaccinated communities in that province. Last weekend, the chief of police called for calm. In a Facebook post, he wrote, Drug traffickers and career criminals are more respectful to law enforcement than some people in Winkler who decide not to wear a mask. And he asked for a return to public civility. Martin Harter is the long-time mayor of Winkler. Mayor Harder, good morning.

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: Good morning, Matt.

MG: There were some very strong words in the letter posted by your chief of police, Ryan Hunt, who called for an end to the anger and resentment in your city and said drug traffickers and career criminals are more respectful to law enforcement than people who decide not to wear a mask. What is going on in your community?

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: Well, obviously, there are some very, very strong opinions. And there is the and I'll say probably a smaller group of individuals that have really made a huge issue out of it. There's some very hard feelings. And part of it honestly comes from the simply saying that that they are being forced and they're objecting to the fact that they're being forced.

MG: Have you seen I mean, we talk about the strong opinions. Have you seen neighbour being pitted against neighbour in your town halls?

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: Very much so. Not just neighbour against neighbour, family against family. It's it's practically every day I hear another story of somebody. Well, I haven't seen my daughter. I haven't seen my son for so long. And they refuse to be vaccinated. And so therefore, I can't see them. I can't afford to let them into my home. Like, those are very, very hard words. And it saddens me because it's a year, a year and a half ago when they said the not to make light of the virus because I fully understand the impact. But just simply seeing the impact on our culture will take a generation to fix. And I wish I was wrong, but I'm not.

MG: You've hinted at some of the reasons behind this, but your city has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the province, just over 40 percent. I mean, as you understand it, what are the reasons why people are refusing to get vaccinated?

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: Too much information, unverified information coming off the Internet, the changes in the information being coming from both our federal and provincial and even on the world stage of what how the virus works. I realise that a lot of it's in research. And then to come back, let's see what this is all just research. And so therefore the vaccine does research. So therefore, I am not taking the vaccine to the point now where, all of a sudden, you know, this is real. And I realise that that this may have an impact in some maybe even considering taking the vaccines to now almost getting driven to the point where while now I'm embarrassed to take it because what are people going to think? Because I've been so strong against it till now. So that's it's that's pretty deep.

MG: You yourself got vaccinated and you posted the video of yourself getting the shot. What was the reaction that you got from residents of your city?

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: You know, it's interesting on one hand, and I did it simply because my own decision, I depend on my local doctors. I went to them for advice and they said yes. And I certainly haven't regretted doing that to my wife and I. We both vaccinated. My family's vaccinated. And the reaction was very interesting because on one hand beforehand and I did this video with Dr. Closson as well, in regards to go see your local doctor, the reaction was very strange because on one hand, it was suggested that maybe I didn't come out strong enough that I would promote the vaccine to now all of a sudden that I had caved in to the process. And so now all of a sudden, I was ridiculed for doing the vaccine because now all of a sudden I had let other people down. And it's a very tough place to be as a mayor because you serve a greater community.

MG: How worried are you that that greater community is truly ripping itself apart? I mean, when you have the chief of police saying that he thinks that that drug traffickers are more respectful to law enforcement than people who don't want to wear a mask, it speaks of something deeper within the community. What are you most concerned about?

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: Well, I'm certainly concerned about the attitude that needs to change. And we are very desperately trying to make some of those changes. But it's not a long historical issue that we have dealt with. We have a tremendous community that has been united. It is showing up. And all of the volunteer labour that we get, it's showing up in all of the money that's been raised for various facilities that we would never have been able to build, the community spirit is absolutely phenomenal. It's a one issue thing that has divided the community, which is which is very sad. And I wish it would have been done different. I wish there would have been more evidence that I wish there would have been more justification for for the restrictions that are being placed. But, you know, you also have to realise over the course of this year and a half, the restrictions are on, the restrictions are off, and then all of a sudden you can do this and you can't do that. And then you have to buy essential nonessentials, get separated, and all of a sudden that's gone. And it's been a nightmare. And I honestly wish that there would have been more consistency.

MG: There are people who are worried about the long term effects of this. A doctor in Winkler, Eric Lane, warned that some of his colleagues may leave the city because of a lack of support from patients. He wrote a letter to the community in which he said after attending births, deaths, cancers and other health needs, most of my colleagues and I feel our advice is no longer valued from some. Our advice is despised. Are you worried that that with this fourth wave and the reaction that doctors like Dr. Lane are facing, that doctors could leave your city?

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: My position there has been as mayor, we have worked and I've been here for 15 years. And I know the mayor before me was working on the same thing to establish a local medical destination centre. We have that. The province of Manitoba built a regional hospital out between Morton and Winkler. We have a medical centre in [unintelligible]. We have a medical centre in Winkler that is stacked with doctors. I think we have when I when I moved to Winkler in 1980, there were six doctors. Today, there is probably closer to 50 doctors that are serving this community and the province at large.

MG: But many of those doctors feel, as they said, that their advice isn't just not valid, it's despised.

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: Absolutely, because totally being ignored. And the interview are the recap that they did with Dr. Closson earlier in the video. I mean, he said that, he said, I've been a doctor for 40 years and Dr. Lane has been here, I think probably 25 or 30. But you've depended on us and Dr. Classes, especially an anaesthesiologist. And he says, I put you to sleep and the doctor is going to do what they have to do. And you trust us with that. And you're not going to trust to the fact that we think that you should have a vaccine. But every time they come out and say something, there's another Internet expert that comes out and says, oh, no, this is wrong, that's wrong. This is wrong to the point where you have somebody who and this is a real case where somebody is giving swimming lessons and then a private pool and says, well, if you're vaccinated, you can't come because you may shed like it just blows me away. But a lack of information, lack of education, or should it say education from means that maybe we shouldn't be depending on...

MG: What is your role in that education? I mean, you talked about getting the vaccine on a video, but what is your role in trying to bring the community together?

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: I will concentrate on working with the 80 percent rather than the 20 percent, because we are spending 80 percent of our time on the 20 percent. Rather than spending your time on the things that are positive, the things that we can make a difference in our community. So that's the emphasis that we're going to be taking and we're going to show the world that Winkler is what we have been known for and what we will continue to be.

MG: Take a listen to this, because there are questions as to whether Winkler is, you know, what it's been known for, whether that's still the case or not. Zachary Hildebrand owns a coffee shop. He says, because of the low vaccination rate and convictions for going against covid restrictions. He is actually closed indoor service at his place, which is called Whitecap Coffee. Take a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

For a case of indoor dining, I would have to turn away over half of my customer base, right, in order to keep providing that service. And again, if my goal is to support people as best I can, I don't I didn't see how I could turn that many people away and still maintain that culture that I was looking for in my business. And so for that reason, we decided if we close, we can save everybody the same as again, as long as they're respecting each other in this space and distancing in that kind of thing.

MG: What do you think of Mr. Hildebrand's approach?

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: I love it. I love it. I hate the fact that restaurants are being targeted. But the reason I love his approach is exactly the same reason that I was going to start working on the 80 percent of the positive ones. He has decided that I have a customer base that I need to look after. And so therefore this is the best way that I can do it. As a city of Winkler, we know what we are and we know what we need to do in order to continue to build a community. That is the piece that we need to concentrate on to service everybody that is there not to exile anybody or create a system that serves one side or the other side. We need to serve them all. And that's the difficult place when you are in the middle from a political perspective.

MG: We're heading into fall. Winter's on the doorstep. People are expecting I mean, we're now in a fourth wave that this is going to be a pretty difficult winter for some communities. How worried are you just finally that this will get worse before it gets better?

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: Well, I know that there is nothing that that I can do right now that is going to change the minds of people. And the more pressure that's being put on, the more reluctant they will be to change. So I will concentrate on making sure that we respect each other, that people are cared for. And if we are and if we are the fourth wave, our people will look after each other and we need to make sure that we're there for those. The long term impact of the mental stress that has been created by this virus and including the restrictions are absolutely devastating, especially in smaller rural communities. It's different in big cities because you're not somebody that walks down the street and you get ten people that recognise you at a fifteen minute walk by. But in rural Canada, rural Manitoba, that's how it is. And that is the reason why it's more devastating on a smaller community than a larger centre.

MG: When do you think those neighbours in those family members are going to be able to talk to each other again civilly?

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: I'm hoping that when the virus is calmed down, that it's not and not any longer the virus,

MG: Martin Harder. It's good to speak with you. I appreciate getting the view from inside your city. Thank you very much.

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: Thank you very much.

MG: Take care of yourself. Bye bye.

MAYOR MARTIN HARDER: Take care. Thanks.

MG: Martin Harder is the mayor of Winkler, Manitoba.

[Music]

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio one, my name is Matt Galloway. In the days after the Taliban marched into Kabul, promises were made. Taliban leaders announced to the world that they had changed. The education of women and girls was banned the last time they ruled, but not this time, they said. Now, a month after the takeover, education activists fear that was all just talk. Recently, secondary schools were reopened in Afghanistan, but only boys were told to return to class. Here is Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahideen at a press conference on Monday.

SOUNDCLIP

In the case of schools and female students, the Ministry of Education is working hard to lay the groundwork for the education of high school girls as soon as possible. Work is underway on the framework. And we hope that this will be done, God willing.

MG: In the meantime, millions of girls are going without an education Pashtana Durrani is an educator and the founder and executive director of the NGO Learn Afghanistan. Pashtana, hello.

PASHTANA DURRANI: Hi.

MG: What's going through your mind as you hear the Taliban say that they need more time to have girls return to school?

PASHTANA DURRANI: I find it amusing that when they were fighting and they were attacking girls schools, the girls didn't need any sort of plans to go to school or need transportation. But now all of a sudden they do. And I don't understand, if the boys don't need it, why do the girls need it? It's something that, you know, amusing to me that the coming up with excuses, but they are not even legitimate.

MG: So when you hear them say that this is just a delay around safety and transportation, that those are the reasons why, you know, the return to school needs to be delayed. You don't believe her?

PASHTANA DURRANI: I don't I don't think they're using it as a political bargaining chip because they can. They are stopping this just because for political legitimacy, for aid, whatever they can find.

MG: Tell me more about that. The political legitimacy that you think that they are stopping this for. What do you mean by that?

PASHTANA DURRANI: Because here's the thing. If they do this and there is no ruling back on this, what would they do? What excuse can they give right now? If they stop the educational thing, they can say, OK, we don't have the money, we don't have the funds, we need support or whatever. And for that, the countries need to recognise us. They need to give us funding so we can continue with this. That's the first thing that you have to think about. The second thing is maybe their own group, because the military side is not very big on girls education, women's rights and all that. The political side of the Taliban, they're a bit more moderate and they want legitimacy. So right now they're just inviting and they can't decide on when to like, you know, open up the schools or even open up the schools, because with the girls in universities, everybody that asks me. It's just a few years to three years, girls will graduate and then it's done. With these girls who will be in grade six up until they're from seven up until 12, they'll keep on graduating and keep on enrolling in universities. And that's something that they don't want in the future. So for that, for the second reason, they're are trying to stop the high school graduation of girls. And at the same time, of course, you have to see that they want political legitimacy. They want to be recognised. They want to function as a government.

MG: Do you think the Taliban has changed? I mean, the lines that were given when they took power were that the Taliban is different than the Taliban of 20 years ago.

PASHTANA DURRANI: I mean, if you call it talking in English, you are like, you know, having a good system, a good change, then, yeah, maybe. But other than that, what sort of problems have these children? Did they not abuse them? And did they not abuse the human rights of a lot of people in Afghanistan? Are they stopping children from education? Are stopping girls from education? I don't think they have. They have the same people. They are even more notorious than they were back then.

MG: What do you hearing from your female students about the fact that that only male students can currently attend secondary school? How worried are they that they will never get back to the classroom?

PASHTANA DURRANI: T Disappointing and hopeless, to be honest. Like these girls didn't fight against the Taliban. They didn't vote for me. And they're just children, young girls right there in the teen age. Right. What did they do to deserve this way? Their future has to be controlled just because somebody else is in the position of power. So those are the sorts of things that I personally feel like, you know, is affecting them. And at the same time, they're putting themselves there like, you know, we didn't do anything. We just normal people wanting to be something, you know, why are we stopping it?

MG: How much progress has been made in the last 20 years? UNICEF says that the enrolment for girls in secondary education went up by something like 40 percent, compared to six percent in in 2003. What has changed, do you think, in the last twenty years?

PASHTANA DURRANI: See, in the last not even the last 20 years, but even before that, how women went to school, they went to jobs. They did have their own medicinal schools, engineering schools or whatever. But then came the civil war. We lost everything. And now, again, we were just trying to be like the old days and we were sitting the steps like them. I'm not saying everything was nice. We had good schools. We had good teachers. The funding was used by all these big organisations just to be taken out again out of Afghanistan. Afghanistan was treated like a project, but at the same time, at least we had girls in schools enrolled in school. They were getting graduated. They were becoming part of the society and they were becoming responsible citizens, you know, paying taxes, becoming someone who would be needed in Afghanistan. And all that is lost right now. Everyone is begging. Everyone is OK with women begging, but not in jobs.

MG: So what would that mean for your country then if those gains were rolled back and erased?

PASHTANA DURRANI: It's a lot of economic instability. If you look at it, it's a lot of economic instability taking. Afghanistan who is good in accounting, has to go and beg just because of the economic crisis and also because of her gender, she cannot have a job.

MG: Have you received any sort of guidance from the Taliban about what might happen with the schools that you run?

PASHTANA DURRANI: I haven't. I haven't. And to be honest, we are all looking, OK, this Tuesday something will happen. That Saturday, something will happen. It's gotten so much in my mind. I was dreaming last night that the Taliban open up the school and we hear it on radio and the girls and the one with I'm with in class, we all cheer up. You know, it's just like subconsciously in my head that Qaeda will open up schools. Now, when is the part that is becoming very [unintelligible]? Because we don't know when they will open up.

MG: But you think the schools will open up?

PASHTANA DURRANI: If they know we have other solutions to do, good for them and good for us, because we need to at least have something positive to look forward to, you know,.

MG: What are the other solutions? You mentioned ghost schools. I mean, those there were there were underground schools that existed in the time when the Taliban was in power before. Are those the kind of solutions that you would have to put back into place if the Taliban enacted a full ban on women's education?

PASHTANA DURRANI: Ghost schools were the ones that the government was so corrupt to them that they were only on paper and not in reality. And the ones that you are talking about are underground schools, the ones that were run by women and men underground just to like, you know, continue learning. And that was back in the 90s. And the solution I'm focussing on is the satellite solution, where we will be teaching girls through the screen, the satellite and will be sending them devices where they can, wherever they get online, if they get connected to the satellite, they will be landing on the space, which will be teaching them in Pashto already. And they can continue learning through micro learning bytes.

MG: Which is not anywhere comparable to being in a classroom.

PASHTANA DURRANI: Exactly, but at say it's continuing learning, it's continuing, having skills, continuing having certificate.

MG: What do you make of the protests that you've seen in the last few weeks? They've been in front of the Education Ministry. They've been in front of schools as well. Women and men fighting for the right for women's education. What do you make of that?

PASHTANA DURRANI: I think it's a it's something that we have to understand that Afghan women are not willing to give up. They are trying to resist. They are doing everything in their hands just to like, you know, continue the progress or make sure that the progress, that the gains that we have made, we don't lose it like we did in the 80s and in the 90s. And I think our efforts for one reason, I feel like they are the most brave women.

MG: Do you think that the protests will have an impact on changing the minds of those leading the Taliban?

PASHTANA DURRANI: I think they are not changing them by looking at the soft power of speech. But at the same time, they will get annoyed into their decisions, you know, and they have to take some decisions.

MG: What do you want to see from the international community? This is a community that many people feel has abandoned Afghanistan. So for countries like Canada, the United States and other countries, what do you want to see from them when it comes to girls education in your country?

PASHTANA DURRANI: I think Canada has done a lot of good work in Afghanistan and the U.S. has also done a lot of good work on the military side, which is a lot of the abuses. I don't want to go into that. But at the same time, the fact that they have worked in the education sector, the work sector, the workforce, building capacity building sector, those were good things. And we should be like, you know, at least recognising them and to be grateful for those. Apart from that, most important thing is the international community at the moment has to pressurise the Taliban. There should be mechanisms in place, for example, of the Taliban are not accepting women rights and educational rights. They should be deploying peacekeepers in the next two, let's say, one month if they don't, you know. If the international community doesn't and freeze the assets, it's going to affect the people and their living conditions, maybe freeze the assets, but at the same time sanction the group of Taliban instead of sanctioning the whole country. You know, things like these should be in place.

MG: What do you say just finally to the students that you work with, to the girls who are worried about the future of their education?

PASHTANA DURRANI: I want to say one thing, that they will continue getting education no matter what, no matter where our education is not the problem then mentality is. And for their mentality, we cannot stop what is rightfully us.

MG: Pashtana, it's good to speak with you. Good luck. And thank you very much.

PASHTANA DURRANI: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

MG: Pashtana Durrani is an educator and the founder and executive director of the NGO Learn Afghanistan. This is part of our ongoing series, Afghanistan and the Shadow of the Taliban. We'll have more stories looking at that country, its people, its leaders, coming up in the days, weeks and months ahead on The Current. That is The Current for this Thursday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. Broadcaster, musician and current Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew. I'll speak with Tom Power about his new young adult fantasy novel. It's called Walking in Two Worlds. That's coming up in just a few moments. Before we go, I'm going to leave you with a little bit of Bob Marley. It was 41 years ago today in what was then the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh that Bob Marley gave his final concert. He was already seriously ill with cancer. But I think it's fair to say not a single person in the crowd would have been able to tell he was up and dancing and singing for about 90 minutes straight. Eight months later, in May of 1981, he was dead. Here's a bit of that night. This is Bob Marley and the Wailers live from their final show, It's Natural Mystic. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. And we'll see you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

The Current Transcript for September 23, 2021

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Thursday September 23, 2021 Full Transcript

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