Our Green Futures
Our Green Futures
Activism, organising and implementing a Universal Basic Income
Connor Woodall talks about his journey to becoming a political scientist, organiser and activist. He discusses the systemic changes we can make to our economic systems and the role a Universal Basic Income could have in this, changing what work we do and what it means to us.
Connor is a political scientist, organizer and activist from the United States. His main focus is systemic causes to the problems of the world we live in and shifting public narratives around how we speak about these systems. Connor is currently working on a universal basic income campaign in Germany and his main goals for the future aim toward shifting the status quo and promoting the implementation of innovative, equitable, and more sustainable ways of living, working, and finding purpose for humanity.
Today, I'm really looking forward to speaking to Connor Woodall, a political scientist, organizer and activist from the United States. His main focus is systemic causes to the problems of the world we live in and shifting public narratives around how we speak about these systems. Connor is currently working on a universal basic income campaign in Germany and his main goals for the future aim toward shifting the status quo and promoting the implementation of innovative, equitable, and more sustainable ways of living, working, and finding purpose for humanity.
Emma:Hi Connor. Thank you for joining me today. How are you getting on?
Connor:Hi, Emma. Thanks for having me. I'm doing very well. How are you doing?
Emma:Good. Thank you. Very good. Would you like to start by telling us a little bit about you?
Connor:Sure. Yeah. So my name is Connor Woodall. I currently live in Rhode Island in the United States. I am a political scientist and an organizer and an activist. I recently got into nonprofit organizing in the progressive space over the past two years. And since then I've been really like finding kind of the, environment that I want to be in. And I've been shifting my thinking as to where I want to work and where I think I can make the most impact. And so obviously we'll talk about this in a bit, but more along the lines of more systemic change especially around our economic systems, both national and our individual countries and international. So I lived in many states in the US because of my mother's work, she was the primary breadwinner and my father was a stay at home dad with a major in sociology and he applied that generally to his day-to-day life, more than work because my mom worked. And so I got a bit, very big dose of that growing up. So I generally thought about the world from like a skeptical point of view, as in it's much better to live in a space where you can ask those questions rather than being denied the ability to even explore certain things that I think our society generally shun. I did my undergrad and my master's at UC Denver worked in local administration and was thinking about being like a city manager and I just really wasn't feeling the purpose and the the passion there. I decided to find some different routes and ended up getting into organizing around the time of Joe Biden's reelection actually. So yeah.
Emma:Great. And, what do you do outside of work? What are your interests and passions outside your, studies and your, day-to-day work?
Connor:Sure. I enjoy getting educated. So just reading in general. I currently live with my family. So hanging out with my parents and having conversations with them is also nice because I know that these are things that I will possibly regret in the future. You're not, spending that time. I'm also big into sports more playing than watching also activities like snowboarding and hiking. I love, absolutely love traveling and just like feeling that that difference of culture that, what used to be a shock to me and is it's no longer, cause I feel like I've adapted myself to not feel like I'm from a certain place and to just try to be like a human in a human world. Yeah I, don't think that I, don't think that I would have lived the life that I have, if it wasn't for the opportunities to travel in and just see different perspectives.
Emma:Yeah. That's so interesting. And so you mentioned about systemic change and economics. So how did you first make that connection? What was your journey into seeing the links between that and sustainability and climate change?
Connor:That is a great question. I actually, I think that it happened at a younger age than I like realized. But I think for a lot of these issues that are grandiose. And that seemed like they're so unchangeable that for many of us, we may have had these thoughts as at a younger age as to this idea that our, systems, especially like our systems of economics and politics are designed by us. Whether that's designed to, by us for us. That's another question. Let's go from a young age. It's easy to take a look at what is going on in the world and go, oh this doesn't seem like it's right. Or maybe there could be a better way for us to design this so that things could be more efficient so that we could have more longevity for, future generations. And I started thinking about it in those terms of sustainability for the human race, going forward with resource allocation, with what we're doing to our climate, how we are creating these situations where governments are becoming less democratic because of the influence of economic capitalist systems that realize that there is many different avenues to make money in these systems, whether that be selling this or using tools of misinformation to win politics, to greenwashing these ideas around like human rights and, what we all deserve for your future coming from a big corporation that never gave a crap about any of us. And so I feel like it was, it had been a long time coming, but I think my general ideas around economic change were more around like human rights. When you think about reducing poverty, like literally everything that we talk about in the SDGs so, much of that can come down to even us just being more sustainable using better resources, especially using better resource allocation of, those that are actually in our countries. Yeah.
Emma:I think that's really interesting as well, just to stand back and realize that, our economic systems, the systems that we live in are human created and were designed by us it's not something natural. And I think when you go through education, it's just so embedded every day that this is the way that we live and there's not really an alternative out there. And I think it takes a second to stand back and realize that we can change that for the better. And so with economic systems that were used, that are being used right now how did we get there? What was the history behind that? And what are some of the alternatives? The way that we could maybe adapt our economy and systems to become more sustainable?
Connor:Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So I think I'm actually gonna touch on the second part you talked about first. And then we'll go back a bit to the history. So when looking at systems in general, I have found a good tool for this is to apply the question. Why do we think the system is good in the first place? And so we can apply this question to both the idea of capitalism, but the same we can apply to the idea of democracy. And I think democracy is an easier example to use. So let's, use that real quick. So why do we want to live in democracy? Because throughout human history, very few people have controlled the general masses, and those people who actually had a say in influencing politics and government were very limited. And were the privileged few. And so our ideas, especially the, ideas that the United States is promoted about democracy, which are some of the things that I actually really hold dear and think that it's a wonderful thing that we've done. We haven't followed up on it, which is the problem. But what are the things that are good within democracy, which would be the protection of human rights, equity, getting everybody an equal say in your vote. And and another huge one for me is accountability, right? And this ability for us to actually hold leaders to account and to not hold them on pedestals that are untouchable right. In that idea, those are the core concepts of why we should want to have a system like that. And so in knowing that's what we should strive for. And so the same thing can be applied to economics. So economics is, a system where generally the power has been held by very few. As we moved into these class systems into this part of history, we had these classes and especially where we had like ruling classes of people where you had a feudal system where very small amount of people dictated the rest of the economics for everybody else. And as we've shifted away from that system, We have come to that point where we start to ask those questions and we go, okay, what is the part of the economic systems that we are living in that we actually want to keep, that we actually think benefit us. So now a little bit, like on, on just like the history and a little bit of, getting into what we were talking about earlier about this idea that these are human created systems, they are not inherent, they are not inherently good or legitimate. They do exist. And that is the only thing. And so I love seeing this trajectory of like what was like, what is basic economics? What is the most base level of economics? And it comes down to the sharing of goods, within a local community or tribe. And as that becomes bigger, it becomes bargaining and trading amongst the different groups that are in regions. As these economies became bigger and bigger and we started to see like both feudalism where we have Kings and Queens and landlords, people who controlled all the land and they would they would rent it out to the serfs or they would lend it out to the serfs to work on it. And so you also see this like around within the same time as well, like these more developed economies, right? The Byzantine empire, the Roman empire where, and British empire as well, which then becomes a bigger issue getting into colonialism and their control of the money. You actually have these organized forms of economics where obviously gold and silver are tangible resources and there's some value that people can apply to them, but it's this beginning of a trust and an overall monetary system that we can all then use to trade. So from that point into the industrialized world and this this time of great innovation and productivity and efficiency but when it comes to the longterm effects of all that, well scientists have been reporting the effects of climate change since the early 19 hundreds, right? Like really getting into this is what it looks like when we're this industrialized. And so all of these negative implications that occur because we still live in a world and we have ever, since we moved away from that, that like trading and bargaining way, way long ago, where profit motive drives everything. It, beats morality. It beats integrity. It beats sustainability in every point, but for some reason, And the only conclusion I can come through is that we decided that supporting our economic system and profits is more important than, having a robust and sustainable political system. It's, the only logical conclusion I can come to why we would ever allow anything like that to happen. Yeah, right now where we currently sit, I am super fearful of, just like the trajectory that we went down and the conclusions that we came to, especially with this reluctance to, to move away from, the current form of things like it's it's something that is so inherent and was always going to happen. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good brief history, but I think understanding it first and like why we should care and think about it is really, helpful.
Emma:Yeah. Yep. And how do you think we can get away from this focus on GDP? And as you say, profit over anything else in society, what are the alternative models that could come in and replace or sit next to GDP I know for example, in Scotland where I'm just now there's talk of a wellbeing economy and having different indicators come in. And then another idea around that is, as you mentioned about the tech creating billionaires and these individuals that have so much more wealth than anyone could really get in their lifetime outwith these industries. So what are your views on the alternatives either to GDP or to try and reduce this great inequality and wealth?
Connor:Yeah. I think it's actually something that's quite difficult because there are quite a few models out there for just restructuring our economic systems. So like a circular economies, that, that really focused more around sustainability and, using more localized resources. There's also like the example like you used, right? There's like wellbeing economy where you have these other metrics that you put on top, right? So you have GDP, which obviously we, I think we've had this conversation many times, about GDP and how the person who developed the idea of GDP, he said, don't follow this, this is not a good metric to use. And then we all just said, he said use it. Which is a little sad. So I, believe there is one country that uses multiple different metrics as their wellbeing economy, right? There is potential for change there. I think as for like and this is something that I've been thinking a lot about lately and like really challenged myself on the social change part of it is how do you get a whole society of people to restructure their ideas around this? And I don't know if it's, if there's potential for it to be like this quick change where we have a broader social conversation and say, yeah, let's all switch our metrics and go forward from here. I think that there needs to be some sort of segway to get there. And that's where, what I'm currently working on, which is, within a UBI, a universal basic income in Germany is this idea of giving people the leeway to start to push away from those industries that don't act the way that they want to, that don't support the global economy, the way that we want and don't support the national economy and the society in general. And so looking for these kinds of avenues out of our current structures has been like my latest conclusion that I've come to as we won't be able to get these larger economic systemic large systemic changes. If we don't have that out, if we don't have that route for people, that, that detour, it's the example I always use. You, can't shut down a major highway and expect everybody to still get to the city. We need to have some sort of alternative route for people to take, to get us there. And that's where I think that there's a lot of really great potential for a universal basic income in taking away the need for constant production, right? This need for people to only apply themselves in life and in society through a monetary compensation model. Whereas we know already in all of our societies that, that they work also with volunteers and with people who are just committing their time to take care of their family or their friends, or to give back to their communities. And there's so many different ways that we can move away from these systems of economics that they were designed for these things, because we didn't have innovative ideas about how to do them in any other way. And this comes back to really like understanding the history of it. Future generations, they will either look at us at this point in history with sadness in their eyes saying you could have done more, or they can say you took the risk, you did what was needed. And now we are all better for it. And I think when you see that dichotomy and you see those two options, we don't have any other option it is now or never that we need to begin to change these economic systems. The UN sustainable development goals. 2030 Emma is very close.
Emma:I was going to ask you, if you could explain a little bit about universal basic income and what that could look like. And so you said you were working in Germany on that. Is there any other examples of it being implemented or what are the sort of basics of the idea?
Connor:Right? Yeah. Yes. So the basics of it are actually a bit dependent on who you ask. There's actually some models and examples of it in the United States and in Europe as well. But what they don't have is what we consider the like universal unconditional basic income. So they are giving a conditional basic income. And this is what generally the models are, which kind of makes it difficult to understand what the real outcomes could be. So the difference between an unconditional and conditional basic income is conditional means basically you'd be like the government would would find a group of individuals who make under this amount of income and they would support them monthly for a year or two, whatever, however long the trial is. And they would get that money no matter what, right? Every, every month they would get that money. Now an unconditional basic income is that it is unconditional as it is for every single citizen in the entire country. And so we're giving this to the most impoverished people. We're also giving this to the richest people, and people will go why are you giving money to rich people? Because it's easy, because it makes sense from a bureaucratic standpoint, right? If we had to go and dictate who all gets money, then there'd be a lot of red tape a lot of bureaucracy in that wherein we could just take that money away from them when we go do taxes. So what we're going to take that 1200 back, whatever how much money you give to the richest people, they will pay it back. They will give it back. And so a lot of our ideas around universal basic income started with just more of like morality and ending, poverty and ending homelessness, providing more leeway and opportunity for people to choose the work that they want to do. And as we went on with this narrative guide that we were developing for it, we realized that it has more to do with creating a future that is sustainable, and that has economies that actually work for us. And I think the main proponent for that is this idea of worker autonomy. And when you remove the need to work when you remove this being tied to your employer. So the thoughts with UBI is that like throughout human history workers have never had autonomy. They've never had the choice really of what they do for work. Yes. There are a few of us, there are a handful of privileged people in this world who can make the argument that, Hey, I choose my vocation. I choose the work I do. The majority of people in this world don't really have many options. They don't really have many choices when it comes to work. They have to do what they can do that that is locally available to them that provides the amount of funds. And that may be, they may do it even if there are human rights, abuse is being made. If there is physical and mental abuse, if there are physical and mental harms from the work and people stick with it and they stay with it because you're tied to your work. And so really, yeah, I see UBI BI as a potential tool, we've been calling it a UBI assisted economy where you can use it to help to start to create this floor for all of your citizens so that they can then begin to choose the work that they want. We love to talk about free markets, but then we go bail out industries because we're scared that workers are going to lose their jobs well, in what world does any other industry compete? If we're constantly bailing out industries, because we want to protect the worker. Now we no longer have that excuse. And so it creates this kind of cool dynamic where we say, let big failing businesses fail, because that's what we said we wanted in the first place. If a business is failing then why do we want it to be a part of our economy? If, a business says I can't support my employees enough, so I need to pay them under a living wage, even. Obviously in the United States, this whole thing is stupid because our minimum wage is under a living wage, even though we dictate both of those things. You say that's not the fault of the employee. That is your fault. That is your greed, your desire to make profit, your playing to your shareholders. It should fail, but it doesn't. And, this is something that I really like, I get so much hope when I think about UBI and this idea of like, give people the autonomy for the first time in human history, give people the right to choose what they do in their life I think it's a good model for that. I don't think it's an end all, I don't think it's a fix to all of our problems, but for us to start to tear down these these, shrouds of what we thought economics was and what it's for and, get ourselves to realize that it's for all of us, system that is supposed to work for all of us and when the 1% and the 10% own so much and control so much of our lives. At one point we got to take a step back and go let's change something up right now or never.
Emma:Yeah. I love the idea as well of giving people that extra choice and also that time to be involved in things like volunteering that we see as so important to our society and, care as well, to care for relatives and, family. And maybe to explore new avenues maybe try something creative or try and take a hobby further that really only privileged people have the opportunity to, try and to try something and know that if it doesn't succeed, you can try a different avenue. One of the arguments that I've seen around UBI is this idea that all the prices will just be increased if you have this additional money that's given to each household. Is that something that you've seen in the case studies or examples that have been done? And is there like a set way to decide how much money each household should get? What are the thoughts around, that?
Connor:So it's actually a very interesting conversation cause like inflation occurs when more money comes into the overall economic system. But it's interesting because the money's already there for UBI in the way that we're modeling it, the money is just held in the hands of different people. You are redistributing money from rich people who should never have had the money because the tax system should have never been written that way. And we can talk a bit about how the US set this precedent for rich people, making more money and CEOs deserving not only 60 times as much their employee, but 300 or 300 times. And so it's realizing that this is just a shifting of that money into these other places. And so if we're going to create a floor that supports all of us more, and we're trying to use UBI as this idea that says, look, we all just think that everybody should have more every single month that instead of the gap and equity growing, it should be declining, right? We should be becoming closer and we should be having more class mobility. So there is definitely going to need to be a rider legislation that comes along with it to be implemented as well to control for inflation. Because that is the exact outcome that we don't want to have. If that occurs, we may have the exact opposite implications where people are actually burdened by it. But if you can put a moratorium on housing and certain prices of certain goods, especially if you can tie it in a way to UBI and moratorium, which for any of the listeners out there, moratorium is basically like a pause on payment or like a pause on a certain type of of policy or legislation. So it would be like a pause on increasing prices for certain goods. Yeah, but I think one of the challenging things is back to this idea of like models that currently exist are conditional and they are small and they don't have this broader societal change that we see could come from a UBI, right? And, I think that those are things that you can't really see with these smaller models of UBI as well as like the, inflation rates is one. And I think we are at that point where. We need to take some risks, right? If we aren't trying and trying to get some models going for how we can, go forward. I, think we're just setting ourselves up to fail more than we already have. Which is why we all feel hopeless because all the scientists have been telling us we'd needed to make a change.
Emma:Yeah. Yep. And they're thinking about work and different opportunities in this sector. Coming from sort of policy and economics, that's obviously a route into this world and researching different systems and things, I know there's many jobs as well and avenues into this sort of work. So I can think, for example, on circular economy, there'd be plenty jobs, designing circular products or making supply chains, more circular and reducing waste. How did you get into the organizational space? Is that something that you would recommend? Do you have any tips or advice for getting into that. Or for any sort of job that can make change within this sector?
Connor:Sure, Yeah. So I actually, this is a very interesting connection to the whole, like future of work. So one of the reasons why I really gravitated towards organizing was because of just like the environment and the type of space that they tried to foster. Moving away from hierarchical structures of leadership and just generally more respect for each other. Which I just, I absolutely loved. And I found it so different from the corporate and the local government jobs that I had been doing. And I think that's where organizing is where I'm finding my passion and no matter what we need to be organized. We need to have plans. We need to have accountability. We need to have ways to push each other and, to really help each other find our true strength. And I saw it as an avenue for change. And then. Not only that I could be more organized myself and I could understand like what I care about and how I can collaborate with others, but like having power in this world and feeling like you have even in inkling, right? Even just like feeling like you have a teeny bit of power in this world goes a long, way. And I think it's, I think it's something that more people need, more people need to have somebody legitimize your feelings and to say I'm on the same page. I have those exact same feelings or to hear you passionately talking about something that if you brought this to any other space, they'd shut it down because guess what? Those are defenders of the status quo. And it's, like I said earlier about that idea of feeling like I knew something was wrong from a young age, but it was so hard to push back against these things that are so grand. And so I would suggest for anybody who is doing activism, especially around like climate change or systemic change to really try to find a space of organized groups who are fighting for those things. Whether that be for your own benefit to improve your leadership skills to and you don't even have to be a leader in any of this. None of it, you don't have to be a leader. I think the nice thing to realize is that you can be a leader, and those qualifications that we have often thought about for leadership, they don't apply. They don't actually make sense and they don't actually create better outcomes for the people that you're leading. So be brave, take those opportunities. Until you really put yourself in that space where people are thinking differently about hierarchy and leadership it's hard to know that it exists. So I would say, definitely go, do some exploring for anybody who like does activism in general. Cause I think that there's a lot of need for people to step into their power. And first to realize that power, I think it's, nice to have people kinda lead you down that path. Yeah.
Emma:Great. Thank you so much, Connor. Thank you for joining us today. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you about your work and, the different concepts and things that you think about and that you work on.
Connor:Thank you so much for having me on Emma. It has been an absolute pleasure and, hoping to come back on sometime in the
Emma:future. Yes. Yes. Anytime. Anytime. Happy to have you.
Connor:Awesome. Take care.
