The Education of an Idealist
10/25/19 - What does it take to live your ideals? We discuss growing up and trying to make a positive change in the world with former UN Ambassador Samantha Power.
Amina reveals that at the end of a frustrating day early in her career, she wrote a cold-email to a personal shero to Samantha Power. Did we start the podcast solely to interview the people we admired from afar? Listen and decide for yourself.
In this interview, Samantha Power talks candidly about her frustrations about the civil war in Syria, successes in fighting Ebola and dictators like Joseph Kony, participating in the Paris climate accords, and the times she felt isolated within the Obama administration. She also shares her personal journey from big ideals to grappling with the scale of change available in a given moment and system.
And, we answer a listener question about how far our personal activism can go.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power
TRANSCRIPT: THE EDUCATION OF AN IDEALIST
[Ads]
(0:50)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman. On today's agenda we're talking about idealism, growing up, changing your mind, and all kinds of things with Samantha Power, author of The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir.
[Theme Song]
(1:30)
Aminatou: Heller!
Ann: Hi, hi, hi. What's up?
Aminatou: Nothing much. We're going to be in D.C. this weekend so I'm excited about it.
Ann: Oh my god, yeah, if you are listening to this on the day it drops we will be there tomorrow night doing a very classic, chatty CYG show in front of many of our D.C., Northern Virginia, maybe some Maryland besties. I can't wait.
Aminatou: Right. In the city where it all started for us.
Ann: Do you have like homecoming feelings when you go to D.C.?
Aminatou: [Laughs] I was just in D.C. and it did not feel like a homecoming so I'm going to say no. But, you know, I definitely have that lived there for long enough that so much is very familiar and also things that are so new shock me. You know, it's just like a very weird medium to be in where you're just like okay, I lived there so long ago but I lived there for so long. So it's just a -- it's interesting. But also so many of my favs live there so it will always be that's the thing that's exciting about going to D.C. It's never random town stuff. It's just like the people who still live there I love so much.
Ann: I was talking to a friend this week about how when you move away from a place you don't really fully feel like you've left it behind until the last friend you knew while you were there also moves away. Like as long as you have someone there. [Laughs] But yeah, I really -- I think that is very true for me. Cities that I have left, if the people I . . . I mean it sort of doesn't work if a friend from somewhere else has moved there in the interim. It kind of has to be someone who I knew when I lived there and is still there. And then I can really feel rooted back in that time of my life.
Aminatou: Yeah, there's definitely like -- D.C. still gives me deep bunker feelings where I'm like no, if the world is falling apart and I'm here I have people here who will take care of me. So, you know, it's definitely on my list of good cities.
Ann: Okay. Not like literally the Pentagon is a bunker feelings? [Laughs]
Aminatou: Oh no, sorry. That metaphor, imagery, whatever I did was stupid. But you know just this feeling of like okay, if I'm ever stranded here it's 100% good feelings. Whenever -- if it's like you know how sometimes you'll go somewhere and you know people but you just sneak into town and it's for work and you just don't have time to see your friends?
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: D.C. is always a place where any time I sneak in for work there are always multiple people I can text and the minute that I text them they're always down to clown. You know, it's never like "Ugh, why didn't you tell me you were coming? Blah, blah, blah." There's never any kind of those feelings. It was like yes absolutely, let's go to La Diplomat for dinner and do something dumb tonight. I love it.
(4:05)
Ann: [Laughs] La Diplomat will always be a laundromat to me.
Aminatou: I know!
Ann: That's like my old-timey D.C. [Laughs]
Aminatou: If you live in D.C. and you are listening to this on Friday and you want to come see us on Saturday, the 26th, you still can. Just get tickets at callyourgirlfriend.com/tour. Hey Ann, remember a bazillion years ago you had asked me if there was ever someone that I admire that I ever wrote a note to?
Ann: Right, like a cold note.
Aminatou: Like a cold note. And I at the time wracked my brain and couldn't think about it.
Ann: You were like no, I do not invade strangers' inboxes. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Right, I don't do that. Well guess what? It was not true. I 100% did that and found the evidence of it and it was so #cringe which #cringe is also cringe. But . . .
Ann: Crinkle mouth emoji that you love to use, that's what I think of. Yeah.
Aminatou: My crinkle mouth emoji. I, like when I was working at the D.C. think tank that I worked at I'd had like a particularly bad day at work where it was just, you know, probably was wearing like a twin set, probably my boss had said something awful to me. Just like bad, like not good.
Ann: A twin set with an American Apparel skirt? [Laughter]
Aminatou: Oh, [Laughs] thank you for knowing my heart. And, you know, and I wrote Samantha Power a note, like full meltdown at work note.
Ann: So for listeners who are not familiar, who have not sent her cold emails, could you give the brief like who is Samantha Power?
Aminatou: Oh my god, could I give a brief who is Samantha Power? [Laughs]
Ann: The 101. Samantha Power 101.
(5:45)
Aminatou: I am sorry, you're really making me laugh. Samantha Power is an author, an academic, but is known to most people I would say as a diplomat. She was the United States ambassador to the U.N. under Barack Obama and if like me you have been following her trajectory for a long time you also know that she was a professor at Harvard. She wrote this kind of seminal book about genocide. During the Rwanda genocide she was a reporter who chronicled the Bosnian war and is somebody that has always been at the forefront of talking about what our response to genocide should be and a lot of her work focuses on genocide prevention. Man, if I were braver I would read this note out loud to you.
Ann: Wait, describe the gist of it. Just describe the gist of it.
Aminatou: Okay. The gist of it was literally hello, I am a baby in policy. I really like what I do. I think I can really make a difference in the world. Why are there so many obstacles?
Ann: Aww, that's so sweet.
Aminatou: Ugh, it was just like meltdown mode. You know the kind of note that's just like how? How can I be you? Tell me what to do. And Samantha Power responded to me, like very quickly responded to me, and she was very much like -- she was like you have to follow your convictions, you have to do what you want to do, but also she said -- she was like the world is so much bigger than policy. And so finding this and remembering this 100% made me cry because I definitely left that career field and didn't look back. I obviously still am somebody who like wants to do good in the world but also I was like wow, you know, always had heroes. And sometimes your heroes respond to you.
Ann: What if this many years in we figure out that the whole podcast has been an excuse for us to email the women we admired from afar and sent cold emails to in moments of desperation? [Laughter]
Aminatou: Mission accomplished.
Ann: My mind is blown. Like we really -- what is the opposite if you played yourself? It's like wow, you really -- we really did right. We really did right by ourselves.
(7:50)
Aminatou: You took care of yourself. You took care of yourself. Good job.
Ann: Yeah.
Aminatou: So anyway I talked to Samantha Power this week on CYG. First of all she did not remember that note and she was very worried that she hadn't responded to me -- that was her response, she's like "Oh my god." And I was like don't worry, don't worry, if you hadn't responded to me I would not have invited you on this podcast. [Laughs]
Ann: But people receiving notes like that don't remember them because they usually only -- they usually get like several. You know what I mean?
Aminatou: Right.
Ann: It's not as big an event for her to receive that email as it was for you to receive her response.
Aminatou: Of course, of course. It's just a very -- it was a funny moment in the interview where she panicked.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: I was like don't worry, I wouldn't bring this up if it didn't have a good ending.
Ann: Oh my god, cute.
Aminatou: It was very cute. The reason I really wanted to do this interview also is because obviously Samantha Power has lived an entire -- you know, she's lived like ten lifetimes since I wrote her that note like a million years ago but also I have lived ten lifetimes and so it was really interesting for me to revisit the work of someone who I deeply admire. I'm also very -- have always examined my own relationship to why I admire her, why that kind of power is fascinating to me, and also what it means for time to unfold in a lot of the idealism you have. I was just like very excited to talk to her about that. So here's my interview with Samantha Power.
[Interview Starts]
Samantha: I am Samantha Power and my book is The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir.
Aminatou: Thank you so much for making the time and joining us today.
Samantha: Delighted to be here.
Aminatou: Before we sat down you were telling me that your book events have been dominated by women coming to them and that was surprising to you. I would love to know why that is surprising to you.
Samantha: Well, you know, I guess I have worked technically in the area of mass atrocities and genocide for most of my career before I met Barack Obama back when he became a first-term senator. Then when I worked at the White House I worked in a very male national security environment. Some of that is what I describe in the book of what it was like for me for the first time to really feel gender in the workplace because I'd always worked alone as a journalist or an activist on the outside and actually there were tons of women in those walks of life when I had lived them, but when I shifted to being in the government it was all dudes, everywhere dudes, and then I became US ambassador to the United Nations, this crazy privilege of a job to represent America, and it was all dudes pretty much. It was very male-dominated. Sometimes I'd be in meetings and I would say "Are we in 1945, like the founding of the UN? Or is this 2015, 2016?" So that was both my experience of life -- I suppose that I must have adjusted to it -- then inevitably because it's a big chunk of my life are these government years. I'm describing national security and issues that have for too long I think been the purview of men.
(10:50)
And so then I put this book out and yes the book has an awful lot that I suppose conveys the experience of being a woman in the sense that I am by definition a woman and I'm telling my story but I think the ways in which women are reading the book have caught me off-guard. And I think it's that the policy stuff about national security, it's really a backdrop for one woman's encounters with the world, with guys in the national security establishment or with my dating life, my for many years unsuccessful dating life, or being a mother trying to juggle two young kids at the same time I'm doing a 24/7 national security job.
So what's beautiful is that I feel while it's on what could be a kind of esoteric set of topics insofar as those are the issues I worked on it seems at least that the individuals who are reading it are seeing the universality of what I'm encountering along the way.
Aminatou: It's so interesting for me to hear this. When I was 22 I was a baby working at a Washington, D.C. think tank. I had a full meltdown at work one day and I wrote you an email.
Samantha: Oh god, did I not respond?
Aminatou: Oh no, you absolutely responded.
Samantha: Thank god.
Aminatou: Which I thought was shocking that you did. But I remember -- the reason I bring up this story is because I think that you . . . it's interesting for me to hear you qualify yourself that way because I think that for a lot of women you were always the possibility model of what does a life in policy, what could that look like? And you were somebody who had been a reporter and then you were a professor then you were engaging with just these really hard topics and you were doing it in a way where you were really signaling that you would not compromise your idealism and your own ideas and then also you were the only woman that anybody could hear. So one, thank you for responding to my email.
Samantha: Thankfully.
Aminatou: That was incredibly kind.
Samantha: I don't have that job anymore so my life worked out really well. [Laughs]
(12:55)
Aminatou: But I think that so much of your story now is about your Obama years essentially, the thing that catapults you into the more mainstream, right? But I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit more about a lot of the steps that brought you there because you were still someone for who that was a stretch for. You're an immigrant. You had this completely other kind of background and being in government I think is -- now it seems like yes, duh, it's a thing that you did. But I think that it was still you were not the kind of person that people think about when they think about who gets to have the jobs that you have.
Samantha: Yeah. I swear way more than the traditional diplomatic model. No, and the background of being out in the world or even being such a vocal critic of missteps by the United States, sins of co-mission and omission, it was a big adjustment for me and you're right for those who would've noticed it would've been a bit of surprise. Especially when I was named U.N. ambassador I think that was -- even though that was less of a transition for me because I'd been in the Obama administration as human rights adviser for the first four years, I think the idea that somebody famously undiplomatic would have a leading diplomatic job in the Obama administration was probably terrifying for some people.
(14:15)
But to go back I guess, and again it's partly responsive to your first question about kind of self-identifying as a woman but I immigrated to this country not by myself. I was nine. My mother brought me from Ireland, first to Pittsburgh then to Atlanta, Georgia. I wanted to be a sportscaster when I grew up, like sports had been my way of relating to the kids in the neighborhood. I played sports. I watched sports. I talked about sports. When I got to college I was part of a team of people who were on a radio sports talk show. I mean I was really sports, sports, sports, sports of all things. And if I'd had more natural talent I would've even done whatever I could've to pursue, you know, amateur sports of some kind.
But instead the summer after my freshman year I was in Atlanta, Georgia interning at a sports department of a TV station, the CBS affiliate, and as I was taking notes on a baseball game, an Atlanta Braves baseball game, the footage came down from Tiananmen Square which, you know, was now a very long time ago. 1989, June of 1989. I was only 18. The kids in the Square were probably roughly 18 or 19 as well. And it had been actually days of peaceful protests where young people were claiming greater freedom. They wanted to associate, to be able to write and speak freely. Poetry was being read. Kind of a mockup of the Statue of Liberty had been built out of styrofoam and was erected opposite the founder of the Chinese State Mao Tse-tung and the students were just exuberant with the sense of possibility.
(15:55)
But the day I was taking the notes on the baseball game the tanks came in and they crushed those protestors and those dreams. And I just asked myself not how do I become U.N. ambassador one day but rather how do I maybe diversify my interests here? How do I learn a little bit more about what's happening in the world? I would not have thought in that moment or in those days at 18 -- I would've just . . . it would've never dawned on me that I would one day get to work in foreign policy. That was as remote as me going to the moon. I mean it would've been so -- I was always I guess a person who could become very obsessive about something and very intense but the idea that the -- my microscope would kind of turn so, uh, at a 180 degree angle to world affairs and human rights, I mean that would really take years. It was never a sudden turn.
So -- but that was a key. I look back at that moment as key but also my thought was oh, that's terrible. I'm not doing enough. I want to do more. And then very quickly but I can't. [Laughs] Because what -- I mean I have no skills, no . . . I couldn't be an aid worker. I couldn't be a human rights worker. I was 18 years old. All I could do I thought to myself was learn more. I'll just go back to college and just try to read more and be a better student and take Chinese history and learn about human rights.
And so then four years later I graduate from college and a very similar kind of serendipitous thing happens in that I get employed as an intern again, no jobs in my life at this point, but working in Washington for a career U.S. diplomat. I have a young researcher who helped fact-check my book and so forth and he said "I think we need to dial back the white male 60-something mentors." And I said "What do you mean? Why? That was the life I lived." I wasn't -- other than Madeleine Albright who the hell else was I going to find? And she was sort of, you know, too well out of my league.
(18:10)
But I worked for this U.S. government official who didn't care that -- man or woman who was working for him. He was just looking for someone who could edit his editorials. He'd been in the government for 35 years. He'd been ambassador to help the Kurds in Northern Iraq when he was ambassador to Turkey, helped Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees in Thailand. Great humanitarian but also just totally practical and creative about how to use government and international institutions to help people.
So that was my first job was with someone like that. So that -- for the first time I was working for somebody who took that next step that I couldn't take when I was a kid which was okay, it's one thing to be sad or to be outraged but what's that one thing however small that you can do that will make something better somewhere? Or at least hopefully will. And there I was in my early 20s, maybe 22, being surrounded by that mindset. I think then sort of catching as it were, contagious, to be around somebody who had that mindset of not just is it bad -- you know, what Obama would call admiring the problem which is something to be resisted at all cost but is very tempting when something's hard -- but what can the United States do usefully? And then for Mort, my mentor, he would say "And what could I, Mort, do to get the U.S. . . ." For me I would just say "Is the coffee warm? Am I doing my job as an intern?" And then by osmosis am I myself developing some ideas or some exposure to the vast array of ways you can make a difference once you've decided a problem is of concern for you?
(19:48)
So these were really important shifts I think along the way. And again government wouldn't have even been on my mind other than being mentored by somebody who'd been in government. I was much more in a kind of activist mode of what can people do on the outside to pressure government to be better?
Aminatou: That's interesting that you say even then that you are in an activist mode because we don't think of activists as people who go on the inside to work, you know? Ever at all. There is that tension is always there. And you're famously also asked by a Mexican ambassador to choose between are you an activist or are you a diplomat? Your response is very much like I can do both of those things. And I would love for you to unpack that a little bit more.
Samantha: I mean what's funny is that the experience of shifting from being on the outside to being suddenly in the situation room is on the one hand like stepping off a cliff because you are -- if you're me I had been a columnist at Time magazine. I'd been a professor with all these highfalutin ideas and I'd been an activist in the Save Darfur movement and elsewhere and suddenly I have no voice. I'm part of this process where if I make an argument in a meeting and I lose I don't get to feel good about how gripping my lead was in my column. I don't need to say "Well I did my part. I wrote a compelling account of what people are going through in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe." Who cares if you write a compelling account?
When you're in the government it's are people doing the thing that I think would make things better? Or have I heard something today from someone who knows a hell of a lot more than me? You know, have I latched on to an idea that now I think I can build a coalition among democracies to support?
(21:42)
And so there was no consolidation. When you fail in government to kind of for lack of a better phrase get your away or advance your ideas in a way you think is best, that's it. You know, and people on the outside, my former NGO friends or journalist friends, it's not like I could talk to them and say "No, it's over. You know, we're not -- that's it. We've gone as far as we're going to go. Or actually, you know, the president is of the view that in this instance right now, let's say on Yemen, after the Iran deal that we somehow -- the Saudi relationship is in such a difficult place that we're going to support these limited steps that they're taking in Yemen." Where my own view is that therein madness lies given who's running Saudi Arabia or running that war, at least in Yemen.
So you're jumping off a cliff on the one hand. On the other hand, and this is maybe why while there were those growing pains that I write about in the book of learning a new lingo and my husband and I used to walk out each night and walk by the White House on purpose and look up at the White House in order to remind ourselves how lucky we were to be working there, partly because the days weren't going that well, but my husband developed this sort of framework for us to assess our days where we'd say to each other "Respected, not respected. Effective or not effective."
And so we'd be walking out and one of us would say "Respected. Not effective." [Laughter] "Not effective, not respected." It was this like -- but notwithstanding that and those adjustments, life inside over time became very continuous with my life as an activist because in a way it's the same thing. It's you're trying to build coalitions around -- you have a load star, right, that in my case might be end the war in Syria or even combat a human rights recession that has now taken hold around the world where human rights are being dialed back in too many places.
(23:45)
So you have your compass, like that the large goals . . . but then those very quickly have to get turned into really small, tactical things that you want to pursue because you know you're not going to end the war in Syria either singlehandedly or overnight or anytime soon. And so what are you pursuing against that dark backdrop? And then you're looking for partners around the table just like you would be on the outside.
I was constantly trying to think what is President Obama looking at right now? What is he -- he's just back from a factory floor in Ohio. How's that coloring how he's going to receive my argument in this meeting? Or he's just back from Walter Reed and he's just met with soldiers. And so I would study his schedule even to know kind of where his head or his heart was in a given moment.
And in that sense I think that's like the aspiration at least of effective advocates which is in order to bridge the distances, right, between one's own experience and objectives and the critical gatekeeper or power broker or energy company or whoever you're trying to influence, it's like to bridge the distance between what you want and their mattering map you have to know them.
And so in that sense the experience of having been a journalist, like trying to bridge those distances between Bosnia and the siege of Sarajevo that I was experiencing in my early 20s and then my readers in Massachusetts or in San Francisco or in Washington who just were not going to have the experience of living under siege, so it was my job to bring that to them but in terms that would make them not want to look away but actually engage the humanity of the people who were being affected.
And so too in government maybe I just in government had come back from a refugee camp but everybody else in the room hadn't. So, you know, you can't be maudlin and sort of saccharine about it but on the other hand you have the ability if done right to bring those voices into rooms that too often exclude them. So it didn't -- it was against jumping off the cliff on one hand but it felt as if what I'd done before was on one level like the best possible training for what I was trying to achieve within government.
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(29:09)
Aminatou: It seems to me just like reading so much of your experience in the White House that it was also very lonely. This part of having to always constantly be the one that's pushing for, you know, a particular position or you are one of the few that holds your exact same value system. How do you think that would've been different if you were not the only one?
Ann: Well I . . . you know, on very few issues was I completely isolated. I do have examples in the book where that was the case for sure. I was advocating to recognize the Armenian genocide which had occurred a very long time before, 90-plus years before. This was not long after President Obama took office and I was newly in the government dealing with these growing pains, these transition pains, and I just couldn't figure out how to make the government work where we would all sit down and have an airing of this complicated issue which seems kind of simple, like why wouldn't you recognize the Armenian genocide?
Well we were drawing our troops out of Iraq. Turkey now in the news again but didn't want us to recognize the genocide, denies that the genocide occurred. I'd wrote a book that documented in part that genocide and we promised the Armenian-Americans we were going to do it. That was a very lonely experience because I didn't have a lot of allies in the national security community. Little Armenia, a little country, couldn't really compete with all the gravity pulling us towards Turkey and what it wanted. And I was so frustrated because I couldn't figure out the mechanics of how to make the process work so at least President Obama would get to hear the counter-argument to that which he was being offered by some of his closest advisers.
And so there's a horrible scene in the book where I'm at an event the day before our statement is about to come out not recognizing the Armenian genocide so I know I've lost. And I'm at an event where President Obama is speaking, I'm eight months pregnant, and I end up getting stranded from my delegation and wandering around kind of backstage trying to find the entrance to go and find -- either stand or sit down and watch his remarks which were about the importance of remembering genocide by the way because it was Holocaust Remembrance Day. So even that was just so painful that we were going to give that beautiful speech on the eve of then not recognizing the genocide as we had promised. So I'm wandering around and a security guard thinks I'm a threat because I didn't bring my badge or my ID.
Aminatou: Who's this threatening pregnant lady?
Ann: Who's -- yeah, it's definitely the worst form of threat. Maybe threatening to give birth backstage. But he's about to escort me out and the next thing I hear the voice behind me, the familiar voice saying "Hey, she's with me!" And it was President Obama who had just stepped out of a kind of greenroom in order to use the restroom and so I kind of confront him. Instead of -- he's trying to ask "Oh, how's the president? How're you doing? How much more time?" and sort of sizing me up. And I'm like "I'm really worried about the Armenians."
(32:10)
And so we end up having this super tense, not at all friendly . . . he just wanted a conversation about baby names and I'm dragging him into the muck in part because what I was doing was no more noble from a process standpoint than what others had done which was I wanted to have the conversation just in a one-on-one channel. I wanted to win the argument.
So anyway either at that moment or within the next hour my water broke a month early so I ended up giving birth to my son Declan on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day almost as a monument to my failure to get that across the finish line. So that's an example of loneliness.
But one of the themes that I come back to again and again which I think applies throughout my life but it only crystalized when I was sometimes feeling like the skunk at the lawn party on some of these humans rights issues, it's an expression that actually Hillary Clinton offered to me when at one point I ran into her when I was U.N. ambassador. She said "How're you doing?" I said something like "Well you know people say it's lean in but I'm feeling a lot of the time like it's fall down." Because with the kid part especially, like just being the kind of parent I wanted to be at the same time I was in my job. And she said "No, no, no. It's not that. It's not only lean in; it's lean on."
And actually within government a huge lesson for me relatively early, within the tail end of my first year, was find those people who are like-minded. Like if you went into a meeting and you were raising concerns about a drone strike for example, which I might do, if you went into that meeting knowing there was someone else who had the same concerns as you both of you are going to be stronger in the meeting.
(33:50)
When you know that other people have your back, that they share your values, that they're going to be there for you sort of no matter how you do or how you fare it does change the experience of it. So by the end I did not feel lonely. I felt as if sometimes we didn't get what we wanted but the community of people who believe that our security and our respect for human rights are intricately linked is way bigger than sometimes the outcome of American foreign policy would lead you to believe.
Aminatou: Do you feel that on the aggregate you were successful doing that? Because I feel like so many of the scenes that you write about were just like great, another loss. Another loss.
Samantha: No! No!
Aminatou: [Laughs] Another -- but from the standpoint where it's very . . . like I thought about this a lot when I was reading it. I was like what is keeping her here? This seems . . .
Samantha: No, no, no.
Aminatou: This seems like a lot.
Samantha: Okay, Syria definitely falls into that category of here I am. I've spent my whole career since my early 20s promoting the cause of preventing mass atrocity. I'm at the White House. The first four years we're able to do really important things against the LRA, Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda and beyond. We were able to help bring South Sudan into existence using the toolbox. But Syria is a big -- I mean what can one say? Hundreds of thousands of people killed. But it wasn't the only thing we worked on and even against that backdrop I was able to negotiate the resolution that took 1,400 tons of searing chemical weapons away from Asaad. I was able to get the Russians to go along with the humanitarian resolution that got food to people in Northern Syria, actually in the very part of Syria that is now back in the news for all the wrong reasons. I was able to get specific political prisoners out of jail working with the Russians.
So even against that backdrop I think it's more a story of okay, when you -- in that instance of Syria which is the exhibit A for what you're describing would I have preferred to be reading about Syria in the newspaper or doing even just these modest things to try to mitigate the harms somewhat?
(36:00)
And then alongside Syria, this is why I'm surprised you have that impression from the book a little bit, being empowered by President Obama to build with Secretary Kerry a global coalition to end the Ebola epidemic in West Africa that was slated -- at that point predicted to be on the verge of infecting 1.4 million people. It would've been hundreds of thousands of deaths -- preventable deaths -- and instead Obama said we're sending 3,000 troops and health workers. All right Sam, you tell me what the Cubans are going to do. "Oh, okay Mr. President. They're going to send doctors." "Okay, what are the Chinese going to do?" "Mr. President, they're going to build Ebola treatment units. The United Kingdom, they'll do Sierra Leone. We'll do Liberia." To be part of seeing the international system work the way it's supposed to, because as you sort of imply it doesn't always work that way and that's one reason people are despairing about our institutions and their ability to deliver for us. But when it works it's an awesome thing to behold.
And climate change of course which now has young people exercise finally in such an intense way, getting the Paris Agreement which had been negotiated by Secretary Kerry on President Obama's behalf in Paris but was very vulnerable. Most environmental agreements take a decade to come into force. But working with President Obama and the rest of the team to get the Paris Agreement over the finish line, it wasn't just a moot success. We did it in eleven months, shorter than any major climate or environmental initiative probably ever, or in the history of the U.N. at least. And that wasn't just moot. It meant that if President Trump -- then if candidate Trump prevailed and was elected president in November 2016 even if he followed through as he would do in withdrawing the United States or seeking to withdraw the United States from the climate agreement it would still bind other countries in the world.
(37:50)
And so again did we prevent -- did I personally prevent Donald Trump from becoming president which would've been the most surefire way to promote efforts to combat climate change? No I did not. I definitely did not succeed in that regard and that's perhaps where the larger darkness comes from I think more than what I did or didn't do within government. But I offer example after example where as a single individual who leans on other people we are able to make really, really positive change. And the sort of theory of the case that I land on which can sound a little accommodationist maybe and maybe that's also what you're reacting to is the idea of shrinking the change. It's not thinking I have to solve the whole refugee crisis in order for me to feel okay about what I'm doing on refugee policy.
No. If I'm me and I'm U.N. ambassador if I can somehow be part of convincing our administration as a whole to take double the number of Syrian refugees we took last year every single one of those individuals who's sending money back to refugee camps or enriching our communities here in Clarkston, Georgia or Buffalo, New York, every one of those refugees is changing the trajectory of his or her family but also of a whole community. And so I think keeping your compass but making sure you're very clear about what it is you think you can do within your arsenal.
Aminatou: That's actually the perfect way of putting that because I think your critics are very loud people so we hear them a lot. But a thing that you do very well in this book is present all of the information and evidence that one needs to make up one's mind for one's self.
Samantha: I try to lead the witness a little bit. No, I do. I do.
Aminatou: No, but in general it's very much like here is the truth of what is possible and then there is no -- you get to make up your mind with that. But I think that you're right, one of the things that I am reacting to and I think that a lot of people react to is that when we start talking about this kind of value system or we start talking about idealism really what we're saying is we're so ready to fuck shit up. Someone is going to . . .
Samantha: Right.
(40:00)
Aminatou: Someone is finally going to do it. And that's not how government works. That's not how most change works. There's so much that we want and there's so much that needs to change.
Samantha: And we need. So much we need.
Aminatou: And watching that change like shrink in real-time I think is -- it's incredibly hard. It's incredibly painful. That's going to be the life of what probably those of us who want to change things will always fight about. I was like well nothing changes easily. I'm glad that you acknowledge that because I think that that's something that I think about a lot. It's like how much of this is just my own like ugh? Like why -- why did the president leave and Syria's still a mess, you know?
Samantha: Right.
Aminatou: What does that mean about the entirety of the Obama administration and also what does it mean of the reality of the world we live in?
Samantha: Right. Well just to come back to the point you make about -- I mean I think someone who read the book said that I give the reader enough to hang me on. [Laughter] Which I think -- I forget who said that. But what I really wanted to do is to bring people inside and I don't mean just inside government. As it happens, yes, that's probably where that information is most available. But also into the life of being a war correspondent and what it's like to talk to a family and get them to share with you what's just happened to a loved one of theirs. And then at a certain point for those same families to realize that you have nothing to offer them. And then to have the experience of asking them to tell their story and them just looking at you and being like "Why would I tell you my story? What the fuck are you going to do for me? You're not helping me."
And then to grapple with am I a voyeur? Why am I here? Am I here to be on the front page of the Washington Post or am I here for the original reason I came? And so to bring you inside, and you could argue that in both ways. In that case you could say wow, the press actually made a major difference and because of press coverage massive amounts of humanitarian aid were provided. Ultimately even the war was brought to an end by outside actors led by the United States.
(42:00)
But in the places -- you know, some of the examples like we've talked about like Syria, Ebola, dealing with the question of how many refugees to bring to this country and how to deal with the fear that is being stoked by some about the other, everybody who's trying to make some change somewhere is going to bump up against limited information, generally like-minded people who don't agree with you, non-like-minded people who want to destroy your effort. [Laughter]
And so while the backdrop for my story in the later years ends up being in the situation room and with a president, I mean at the UN as ambassador, these kind of rarefied opportunities that I had, the dynamics are so familiar I think to people from their own lives and you're right about this moment. I feel this so acutely. I felt it initially going back to a campus to teach and now I feel it out on the road. There is such a sense that what's happening whether it's our divisions or the warming planet or racial injustice in this country, just what's happening is not okay.
And I think people have a really hard time saying it's so devastatingly not okay and yet I'm going to shrink the change. Like it just feels . . . if it's devastatingly not okay we need something transformational. And I basically believe we need something transformational but I don't know how to get from A to -- I don't think you go from A to transformation. Even some of the more transformational candidates we have in the Democratic primary, in order for say an Elizabeth Warren to get the nomination if that's her persuasion, if you like her platform which is transformational in many ways, at least by the standards of modern politics, a lot of people are going to have to give five bucks. A lot of people are going to have to go canvas and get out the vote. A lot of young people are going to have to figure out how to use stamps for the first time in their . . . I mean my students at Harvard, they don't know. They've registered because now more and more students are getting registered when they show up on campus as freshmen. Then they get the form and they're like "I've never been to a post office." I'm like figure it out. You can do this. I promise. We need you.
(44:15)
Aminatou: The balance of democracy hangs with young people who don't know how to use the postal service.
Samantha: I was shocked. And then you think about it and you're like okay, I'm totally projecting my life experience. My stamp-laden life is being projected on these lovely young people. But the point is I too even at the highest levels of government felt shit, I'm just one person and the change we need is so much bigger than me. And then on my good days I rallied from that and said "You know what? I am just one person, but I'm one person and what can I do given whatever the tools that I have at my disposal? And how can I expand the number of tools I have at my disposal, expand the number of people who agree with me by being particularly charming or persuasive?" I think that that's where we have to get now is that we can rage at the machine and we should. But if the rage doesn't motivate us to do something or to expand the constituency of people who are even raging constructively in the same direction then we're going to be raging a hell of a lot more, you know, within no time.
Aminatou: Yeah, you know, I think it also just -- for me at least -- it brings up a lot of feelings of am I that radical if I am not living up to these ideals that I professed for a long time? Or were my ideals radical at all? What is idealism without any kind of radical action? And so I have been thinking about that a lot and I think that reading you brought back a lot of those feelings for me of just like oh yeah, of course I'm just one person. I cannot change the system alone. But also am I taking these ideas as far as I can take them? And am I doing enough which I think is something that we should all be questioning all of the time.
(46:03)
Ann: I think so too and that's where again I love this concept which I borrowed from a book called Switch which I think the subtitle is like Making Change When Change is Hard. Just this idea of shrink the change. You know, what -- and my motto with my team when I was UN ambassador was there's got to be something we can do. And I would put it that way, be like okay, ten years of freedom in decline around the world but what is the something that we, I, you, us, like we can do? And for us it was to launch a modest campaign to try to get 20 female political prisoners out of jail because we couldn't deal with the human rights recession as a whole but maybe we could chip away at getting some of these women out of jail. And in the end 16 of the 20 women were freed from jail and are now rabble-rousing and making trouble, many of them, in their countries but was -- is working with their lawyers and families to secure the release of 16 women sufficient? No. But it feels a hell of a lot more constructive or more of a stepping stone than it would have if I tried to draft the five-year plan for combating the human rights recession in the world. I mean it's almost absurd.
The only thing I would add to what you said or maybe just -- and this is maybe my alibi for myself on one level -- but I do think it's a fine line between self-questioning and saying okay, is there something, just something a little bit more that I can do than I'm already doing? A fine line between that and unproductive self-flagellation.
Aminatou: Agreed.
Samantha: You know, where it's like making modest inroads. It could be a virtuous cycle of wow, okay, I tutored one refugee person who just moved into my community or I brought them linens. I feel great. If I think about that for too long, shit, there's 70 million displaced people in the world and I brought somebody linens? Or I drove them to their job interview? Really? Is that the . . .
(48:08)
And you can just quickly again feel dwarfed by the magnitude of what you're up against whereas I think my theory of change, and it's nascent, but is that virtuous loop of doing something small for somebody, feeling the power of the small gesture even, that's what gets you up the next day to in my case not just watch sports but try to do the next thing whereas if I spend too much time measuring -- and again, I hope this doesn't sound like a cop-out, but measuring the extent of the impact of any one individual's small act against the gravity of the harms and the suffering that's out there, I think it can be a recipe for kind of curling up. So a little forgiveness -- self-forgiveness -- as fuel I think is important also.
Aminatou: Samantha Power thank you so much for joining us today.
Samantha: Thank you. Thanks for reading it so beautifully.
[Interview Ends]
Ann: Okay, so definitely meet your heroes. That's the message. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Listen, it was a big moment for me. You know I don't get frazzled a lot. It was very much like can you please sign my book? I have not had that feeling probably since I was 22 so there you go. [Laughs]
Ann: I also think some of the themes about growing up and reassessing the ways you are really able to live your values in the world reminded me of this listener email that we got a while ago that I just want to read because I think your conversation with Samantha is relevant. The listener writes "I like to think I am as good of an activist as I can be in terms of doing things. I call legislators, not just my own, write letters, go to protests, vote with my dollar, and with my real constitutional voting power and all of that good stuff. I'm vocal about my beliefs and articulate them thoughtfully rather than just spewing keyboard vomit everywhere. I am constantly trying my hardest to check my privilege and I am dedicated to supporting marginalized communities with an open ear and absolute willingness and power to amplify their voices and make them heard. That said I feel like I am just preaching to a choir and what really scares me is there are tons of us out there doing exactly what I am doing but it really doesn't feel like it's making a dent in anything. Not to be a Debby Downer or even a Captain Obvious at this point but even as our collective activism has grown things have gotten markedly worse in the United States. I'm writing to ask your take on this and pose this topic for a future episode. What do you think isn't working at this point? Is it us? Is it that we're living through an absolutely deranged administration? A little bit of both? Maybe a lot more of the latter than the former?"
Whew. This email is just like I think I'm working really hard and things keep getting worse is the TL;DR on this listener email.
(50:52)
Aminatou: I mean this email really -- this email is really speaking to my heart because I think I am in a place of so much fatigue about the things that I usually do. But I think that one thing I always ask myself is re-frame it to being like well if we're doing this much and things are not working if I don't do them are things going to get worse? And I believe that answer to be yes almost every single time. And so it doesn't feel great right now but there are definitely worse ways to be.
I also think that this question of why should you live your values out loud, right, it's like what are you actually trying to accomplish? And I think that for me at least -- and I think this is a deeply personal question for a lot of people -- I don't know that there's a unified answer to if everyone was an activist them politics would be 10 out of 10 perfect. For me it's the question of how do I live with myself?
(51:50)
I cannot go to bed at night knowing there is not a bare minimum of things that I am doing. I just could not live with myself. And that is completely removed from other people's expectations. It is removed from the political situation. It is removed from what places in the world I've lived. I just know that it is something that is a core value in me to do certain things. And so that is a self-mission that I have to fill, otherwise I don't sleep at night and the self-loathing is at a maximum level. And I'm trying to keep the self-loathing at a respectable level.
Ann: Right. I relate to that and then I also want to tell this listener something about how little we all know about the future. I just want to do a reminder not to go full butterfly effect here but we really don't know the ultimate impact of the actions that we are taking right now right? So there is this short-term where you're like oh my god, people are still in cages at the border and this is the way that all this dehumanizing language about trans people is being metabolized culturally. Like we can kind of see the short-term like oh my god, we're not having an effect. And then also there is like a really long -- there's a lot longer view that I think is truly impossible for us to take or to know which is like who knows, maybe this listener who is writing in has inspired a few people in her personal life to become more active and more outspoken in their beliefs and the work that they are going to do is going to have an impact she's completely unable to see right now. Or actually there is kind of a sea change happening in that big, nebulous cultural way that we can't see in motion just yet.
I mean I don't know, and I don't mean to be all maybe it is working or like conspiracy theorist, like one tiny change can actually affect the whole course of the future. But I really do think there is this sense of all you can do is take action with the info that you have now and you -- there's not going to be a future in which you didn't right? We're not going to know how things would've turned out if you had done nothing. And actually that's pretty amazing. It means that you can have a stake in at minimum things having not gotten any worse. That kind of mystery about tomorrow is something that coupled with exactly what you said about feeling good about myself when I go to sleep at the end of the day is sort of like the best I can do.
(54:10)
Aminatou: If you study any kind of progressive movement or change most of the people who are doing the work don't live to see the change. It is truly like the cherry on top of the cake or whatever that image, the bonus, if you live to see this kind of huge shift in the time that you are living. But the truth is people have been doing that work since before you showed up.
Ann: Right. Or the Stacey Abrams quote, be a good ancestor. Like exactly that.
Aminatou: Right. And I don't say this to temper anybody's feelings about what you want to happen in your lifetime. I just think that if you look throughout history this is something that is true and also, you know, your point is very well-taken about you also don't know who you're influencing. I think that we can all look through our own lives and see that a lot of the behavior that we have when it comes to activism is really something that is born out of observing other people. And usually they are people who are close to us. And I think that thinking sometimes about, you know, who are you living these values out loud for? And a lot of times that is for your community.
Obviously strangers will also see it in a lot of ways and you can inspire a lot of people but I think that there is a lot of power in that kind of accountability in your life. And so I don't despair in that way. Like yes things are very hard but guess what? Things will always be hard for a variety of reasons. And obviously it feels like extra shitty right now but this is not the shittiest that it's been in history. And so I don't know. I'm not saying that all those things give me hope but I think that I really try to re-frame what the question is for me and what the goal is and what the aim is of doing all of this.
(56:00)
Ann: Right. Also wow, things will always be hard. The hardest lesson to learn while also maintaining your desire to get up and do good every day, you know? Like truly. [Laughs] Yeah, that is a hard truth to hold.
Aminatou: It's true. I don't know, I close my eyes and I think throughout -- you know, even when people tell you about the good old days or whatever.
Ann: Oof.
Aminatou: When was a time when all of humanity was like we are so content, we are so -- like getting fat off the land, everybody is happy. Just everything is going hunky-dory. I was like were there even three days in history that were like this? When is this time? And so [Laughs] it doesn't . . . I guess when I think about it that way I'm like okay, great. Like it's just it's the time for it to suck for me.
Ann: Right. It's called Eden, Amina.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: When Adam and Eve and Adam and Steve all together lived in harmony in Eden.
Aminatou: I know, you know? But even then I was like two days, ruined. Ruined. So I don't know what to tell you. [Laughter] Also the idea of the Garden of Eden is not exciting to me. I'm like you mean there's only two of you and all you have access to is apples? This is not . . .
Ann: The worst camping. The worst camping. Like we make reality shows about how that situation is in fact horrible. That does not sound wonderful to me.
Aminatou: Right? You ruined all of humanity over a sub-par snack? For real?
Ann: Also imagine the bug bites on your naked bod. I can't. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I know. I'm like this is not great. Let Bravo intervene. Change the set.
Ann: Who would've thought this episode would end up there?
Aminatou: [Laughs] But, you know, so anyway back to the listener. Not to make you despair but I do think a lot of big, deep breaths and also putting one foot in front of the other is real. And it's why sometimes it's always so interesting when we get these very big political wins that we celebrate really hard which is so important. It is so vital and important. But I think a thing that we forget a lot of times when we win is that actually we've been losing all along.
(58:25)
And so I think that just being human is hard. Being human is hard. I don't have anything more profound to say beyond that but I really feel for this listener and I am also there myself.
Ann: We're both there and I'll see you on the Internet.
Aminatou: You know? I will see you on the Internet. [Laughs] I'll do the work of showing up. I'll see you there.
Ann: Oh my god.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf where Sophie Carter-Kahn does all of our social. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.