Memphis vs. Musk, With Representative Justin J. Pearson
“No matter how many billions you have, you don’t have enough to buy our lives.”
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Memphis vs. Musk, with Rep. Justin J. Pearson | A People’s Climate
Host Shilpi Chhotray is joined by Tennessee State Representative Justin J. Pearson, a fierce advocate taking on corporate power — from Big Oil to Big Tech. You may know him as one of the two Black representatives who was expelled for demanding gun reform on the House floor after The Covenant school shooting in Nashville. But long before becoming one of the youngest members of the Tennessee legislature, Rep. Pearson was on the frontlines in South Memphis, organizing against a crude oil pipeline that threatened his hometown.
Now, in Rep. Pearson’s district, Elon Musk’s xAI project is expanding its empire with massive, unregulated data centers that pollute the air, threaten their water, and undermine hard-won environmental protections. This conversation is about fighting against entrenched corruption, unchecked corporate and political power, and billionaires who put profit over people’s health and future.
Key Topics Covered:
- Defeating the Valero / Plains All American Byhalia Pipeline
- The rise of Elon Musk’s xAI data center in Memphis and the environmental toll of artificial intelligence
- Money in politics: How corporate lobbying and billionaires shape elections and policy
- Civil disobedience: The role of protest, direct action, and speaking truth to power
- Keeping people power alive in the face of corruption and broken systems
- Proximity to the fight: Understanding your local representatives, connecting local struggles to federal policies, and focusing energy where it can make the most impact
Resources
- Memphis Community Against Pollution
- Rep. Justin J. Pearson’s Speech on the House floor before being expelled
- “How Long, Not Long” Martin Luther King Jr. speech after marching from Selma to Montgomery
- NAACP and Advocacy Groups Appeal Permit for xAI’s South Memphis Data Center
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Host Shilpi Chhotray is joined by Tennessee state Representative Justin J. Pearson, a fierce advocate of taking on corporate power—from Big Oil to Big Tech. You may know him as one of the two Black representatives who was expelled for demanding gun reform on the House floor after the Covenant school shooting in Nashville. But long before becoming one of the youngest members of the Tennessee legislature, Representative Pearson was on the front lines in South Memphis, organizing against a crude-oil pipeline that threatened his hometown.
Now, in Representative Pearson’s district, Elon Musk’s xAI project is expanding its empire with massive, unregulated data centers that pollute the air, threaten their water, and undermine hard-won environmental protections. This conversation is about fighting against entrenched corruption, unchecked corporate and political power, and billionaires who put profit over people’s health and future.
Key Topics Covered:
- Defeating the Valero / Plains All American Byhalia Pipeline
- The rise of Elon Musk’s xAI data center in Memphis and the environmental toll of artificial intelligence
- Money in politics: How corporate lobbying and billionaires shape elections and policy
- Civil disobedience: The role of protest, direct action, and speaking truth to power
- Keeping people power alive in the face of corruption and broken systems
- Proximity to the fight: Understanding your local representatives, connecting local struggles to federal policies, and focusing energy where it can make the most impact
Resources
NAACP and Advocacy Groups Appeal Permit for xAI’s South Memphis Data Center
Memphis Community Against Pollution
Rep. Justin J. Pearson’s Speech on the House floor before being expelled
“How Long, Not Long” Martin Luther King Jr. speech after marching from Selma to Montgomery
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The Nation Podcasts
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
In Every City, There Is a Palestine w/ Hatem Bazian / A People’s Climate
"The insanity of the settler colonial mindset has no limit."
Genocide is not only the destruction of human life. It is also the destruction of land, water, food systems, and ecosystems that make life possible.
In Palestine, the devastation of agricultural lands, the poisoning and destruction of water systems, and the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of olive trees are part of a broader campaign to erase Palestinian life, culture, and connection to the land.
This is the environmental Nakba: the ecological destruction woven into more than a century of settler colonialism that continues to unfold today.
On this episode of A People’s Climate, Shilpi Chhotray speaks with Dr. Hatem Bazian, Palestinian-American scholar, organizer, and professor at UC Berkeley. They discuss how environmental destruction functions as a weapon of genocide and colonial control. From the destruction of Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure to attacks on beehives, they examine how the destruction of the natural world makes Palestinian life increasingly unlivable.
They also explore the architecture of occupation: how border walls, checkpoints, settlements, and segregated infrastructure divide land, restrict movement, and engineer two radically unequal worlds for the colonizer and the colonized.
Palestine is not somewhere “over there.” As Bazian puts it, “In every city in America, there’s a Palestine.” He points to collapsing schools, a healthcare system that leaves people to die, and endless wars waged to sell weapons. The same corporate and political systems shaping life in Palestine are also reshaping life in the U.S.
But Bazian argues that colonialism is fundamentally unsustainable and is clear about what that means for Palestine. “Palestine will be free sooner than later.”
Key Topics
- The environmental Nakba: How more than a century of colonization has transformed Palestine’s geography, agriculture, and ecosystems, including non-native tree species that have contributed to devastating fires.
- The destruction of the life-sustaining systems: Including attacks on beehives, farmland, water systems, and agricultural infrastructure, which undermine food production and make Palestinian life increasingly unlivable.
- Water apartheid and environmental genocide: Gaza’s contaminated aquifers, the destruction of its water systems, and the stark inequality in water access between Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
- The weaponization of settlement expansion: How new settlements and outposts bring waves of violence, displacement, and land seizures, pushing Palestinians out of their communities.
- The colonial dividing line: How the border wall’s construction uprooted hundreds of thousands of trees and creates two radically unequal worlds.
- Black-Palestinian solidarity: From the Black Panther Party and Angela Davis to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, how generations of organizers have built connections across movements and struggles for liberation.
- Islamophobia: The demonization of Muslim communities and its role in shaping U.S. policy and public perceptions of Palestine.
- The role of religion in justifying empire: How religious narratives become intertwined with ideas of progress and development to legitimize military power and environmental destruction.
- Colonialism is fundamentally unsustainable: Why the systems built on dispossession and domination cannot last, and why Bazian believes Palestine will be free sooner than later.
Resources:
- Seeds of Resistance with Vivien Sansour – A People’s Climate Season 1, Episode 7
- Palestinian Land, Heritage, and Identity, Shilpi Chhotray in conversation with Rania Batrice for Peace & Riot
- Dr. Hatem Bazian
- Dr. Hatem Bazian’s Substack
- A Dying Colonialism by Frantz Fanon
Credits
Presented by Counterstream Media and The Nation
Powered by Wildseeds Fund
Host: Shilpi Chhotray
Executive Producer: Mindy Ramaker
Engineer: Dennis Maxwell
Project Manager: Asia Simms
Dr. Hatem Bazian
Dr. Hatem Bazian is a teaching professor at UC Berkeley and a leading decolonial scholar whose work centers Islam's epistemology and Global South analysis. He founded the Islamophobia Studies Center, serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Islamophobia Studies Journal and President of the International Islamophobia Studies and Research Association. He co-founded Zaytuna College and American Muslims for Palestine, and serves as President of the Northern California Islamic Council and Chairman of the Muslim Legal Fund for America.
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