Speaker 1: The following episode was recorded before the WGA sag Aftra
Speaker 1: strikes of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Hey guys, welcome to the very first episode six Degrees
Speaker 2: with Kevin Bacon. Every week, I'm going to be sitting
Speaker 2: down with some of your favorite celebrities as well as
Speaker 2: leaders from their favorite nonprofits, and we are going to
Speaker 2: highlight some of the most pressing social issues of our time.
Speaker 2: So tune in every Tuesday for your weekly dose of
Speaker 2: do gooders. Now, let's start the show, And what a
Speaker 2: way to be kicking this off with one of my
Speaker 2: absolute favorite actors. I am constantly in all of the
Speaker 2: work that this man does on the screen and off
Speaker 2: A great, great person, a great citizen of the world,
Speaker 2: and a terrific and versatile performer. Mister Mark Refle So
Speaker 2: happy to have Mark Ruffalo here today. Well, we've known
Speaker 2: each other for a long time. But you know, it's
Speaker 2: funny because I actually, and this is embarrassing to say,
Speaker 2: I've forgotten that we'd actually worked together. I mean, we
Speaker 2: didn't really work together, but we were in the same movie, yeah,
Speaker 2: which was in the cut. That's right, And I I
Speaker 2: We're going to get into your activism and the and
Speaker 2: the organization, et cetera. I just want to shoot the
Speaker 2: ship just for a little bit. I remember that two
Speaker 2: things about that movie. One was that I wanted your
Speaker 2: part really, really badly, and Jane Campion was like, now,
Speaker 2: are you out of your mind? I got fucking Ruffalo
Speaker 2: and you're not. You're not going to play this part.
Speaker 2: And so she came back and said, well, there is
Speaker 2: this weird, you know, tiny little thing. And I was like, okay, cool.
Speaker 2: I mean, she's like, you know, an amazing director and
Speaker 2: you were were doing it and Meg and I, you know,
Speaker 2: and my wife always jokes with me that I have
Speaker 2: this way of finding like these incredibly important directors and
Speaker 2: doing the one movie with them that nobody saw. Like
Speaker 2: she says, that's like my talent. And I thought you
Speaker 2: were great in the movie. And it was a really
Speaker 2: cool movie, very very interesting, trippy, like in the way
Speaker 2: it was shot, you know, if I remember correctly, yes,
Speaker 2: all that kind of like split diopter stuff and yes,
Speaker 2: all this kind of crazy shit going on, but it
Speaker 2: was not. It didn't make it. Nobody put on a tuxedo.
Speaker 2: Let's say.
Speaker 3: No, No, it was quite I remember, Yeah, I think
Speaker 3: it's such a I think it's underappreciated obviously, and you
Speaker 3: were great in it too, by the way. And but yeah,
Speaker 3: I think there was such a backlash to first of all,
Speaker 3: the audience. I don't think wanted to see Meg Meg
Speaker 3: like that, you know. I remember there's a lot of
Speaker 3: a lot of the criticism was to see her like
Speaker 3: that was too disturbing for people.
Speaker 2: Which is just so wrong. I mean, you know, and
Speaker 2: it's interesting when you have the kind of huge success
Speaker 2: that she has really, as you know, she was America
Speaker 2: Sweetheart clearly, you know, and it very very had a
Speaker 2: very kind of specific kind of thing. And then to
Speaker 2: kind of you know as well as I do that, well,
Speaker 2: I mean, speak to me about that. Like, you are
Speaker 2: an actor, an incredible actor, if I may say, who
Speaker 2: is not in any way pigeonholed in terms of the
Speaker 2: things or the kinds of parts that you do, or
Speaker 2: the size of the movies that you do, or the
Speaker 2: tone of the movies that you do. You really have
Speaker 2: an incredible kind of diversity. But I have felt, and
Speaker 2: I'd like to hear your feelings about this, that getting
Speaker 2: that in this business is a is a real struggle
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 3: First of all, want to say, I did think with
Speaker 3: Meg it felt a little sexist to me, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like, it's much harder, I think, for
Speaker 3: a woman to do that than a guy. You know,
Speaker 3: they celebrate it when a guy does it all then
Speaker 3: look at you did it while he's doing something new.
Speaker 3: You know, he changed it up. It is incredibly hard,
Speaker 3: and you know you've done the same thing. You just
Speaker 3: have to, you know, I found myself always having to
Speaker 3: fight against you know, people think they know you. Casting directors,
Speaker 3: think they know your directors, think they know you do
Speaker 3: You do one part, and you do it well, and
Speaker 3: then everyone thinks, oh, that's who you must be, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: but but it isn't and and we're much bigger than
Speaker 3: but you know, no one they don't know, but they
Speaker 3: don't have the imagination or they just they haven't seen
Speaker 3: you do much of anything yet. And so it was
Speaker 3: always this kind of fight to stay ahead of that
Speaker 3: and to make sure early on that what I was
Speaker 3: doing wasn't a repeat of I know this. I mean,
Speaker 3: you can count on me, you know. I specifically try
Speaker 3: to do something totally different than that, just to keep
Speaker 3: widening the brackets of what people thought was possible.
Speaker 2: By the way. It was incredible and you were incredible
Speaker 2: in it, and I think that was probably the first
Speaker 2: time that I saw you. You know, it was just
Speaker 2: so it was so great, and you're right. I mean,
Speaker 2: you do something well and they want to see you
Speaker 2: do it again.
Speaker 3: I mean, how many dance movies where you offered you know?
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you. The next movie that I did
Speaker 2: after the dance movie was a bike movie. And I
Speaker 2: did it because it had this The director kept saying
Speaker 2: to me, I'm gonna have this kind of gritty you
Speaker 2: know score. He kept talking about Scorsese, you know, and
Speaker 2: like that was my whole hero world was the whole Scorsese,
Speaker 2: you know, the narrow Paccino New Yorky kind of thing,
Speaker 2: and we're shooting New York and it was going to
Speaker 2: be gritty, gritty, greedy kept taking gritty. By the time
Speaker 2: the movie filmed, I had a dance sequence on a bike.
Speaker 3: I remember.
Speaker 2: It was just the worst. I mean, I snunk it
Speaker 2: up on me and I tried to push back, but
Speaker 2: to no avail. And I you know, to this day, honestly,
Speaker 2: it's funny that you bring that up. I think of
Speaker 2: I think of that as exactly the issue that we're
Speaker 2: really talking about is that you know, I was trying
Speaker 2: to go in a different direction and I just it
Speaker 2: was just like they're just pulling me back to you know,
Speaker 2: you know America's whatever, dancer or whatever. I was. So
Speaker 2: I admire you for, you know, for stepping outside. I mean, what,
Speaker 2: let me ask you this, what was it that gave
Speaker 2: you the confidence? You know, even after you can count
Speaker 2: on me to to make you think that you could
Speaker 2: do that?
Speaker 3: You know, honestly, it was it was all the years
Speaker 3: that I was struggling. And in those years, you know,
Speaker 3: the thirteen years, dude, you can count on me, was
Speaker 3: all theater, you know, it was all this little you know,
Speaker 3: I was living in LA so you could do like
Speaker 3: a three thousand dollars production. It wasn't like New York
Speaker 3: where you have to have half a million dollars to
Speaker 3: do like the crappiest little thing anywhere. You know. It
Speaker 3: was like we could do it three thousand dollars production.
Speaker 3: So in those thirteen years, I'd done you know, like
Speaker 3: thirty five plays.
Speaker 2: And in the course, okay, so I mean you left home,
Speaker 2: you moved to New York, I mean to LA, not
Speaker 2: to New York. Yeah, yeah, when I was ok okay, okay,
Speaker 2: and yeah, where were you coming from? Where were you
Speaker 2: coming from?
Speaker 3: So I was coming from at that point, I was
Speaker 3: coming from I was coming from California. No, I was
Speaker 3: in Californa. I was in California, but I was coming
Speaker 3: from Virginia Beach, where I spent part of my teenage years,
Speaker 3: and the rest of them were in Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: And so by the time I was eighteen, I had moved,
Speaker 3: My family had moved like six times.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: You know. So I also started to understand that, you know,
Speaker 3: a personality wasn't muted or mutable. It was like something
Speaker 3: that was constant could be was malleable, you know. And
Speaker 3: and and you know, moving that many times you're sort
Speaker 3: of recreating yourself with a different friend group and so
Speaker 3: on and so forth. You're just so self possessed that
Speaker 3: you never change.
Speaker 2: Ever.
Speaker 3: I wasn't that guy.
Speaker 2: Right, right, and so you so you were all it
Speaker 2: was already kind of laying the foundation for understanding how
Speaker 2: to walk in somebody else's shoes because you were trying
Speaker 2: to to to fit in to to to to definitely yeah, yeah, years, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the same way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I remember that I'm feeling a way. And you know
Speaker 2: there were times that I sometimes, I don't know if
Speaker 2: you ever had this, where I would sometimes have a
Speaker 2: you know, a dark day and feel that I wasn't
Speaker 2: really being authentic in anything because there were some people
Speaker 2: who were just so specifically like that guy, and because
Speaker 2: my friends were you know, kind of all over the
Speaker 2: map and my my point of view, and like I
Speaker 2: had friend groups that really wouldn't intern act with each other.
Speaker 2: You know, sometimes I felt a little i don't know,
Speaker 2: fake or something. You know.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, well I was the same way. You know
Speaker 3: I could have. I was with the wrestlers, I was
Speaker 3: with the stoners, I was with the you know, the
Speaker 3: punk rockers. I was with the skaters, I was the surfers.
Speaker 2: And know, I can I can move all those groups,
Speaker 2: you know. But I know, so you met, you went
Speaker 2: to LA and did theater in l A.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: See that's really interesting because, uh, you know what, I
Speaker 2: never really even considered going to LA because I was
Speaker 2: coming from Philly so it was a short trip, and
Speaker 2: and New York was you know, I had a kind
Speaker 2: of a romanticized idea of what a New York actor was,
Speaker 2: but it was also because of the theater and the
Speaker 2: idea of I mean, uh, actually doing theater in LA
Speaker 2: was like very far, but that's totally cool.
Speaker 3: Who did that? I mean, you know who goes to
Speaker 3: LA to do theater? And you know, the funny and
Speaker 3: the hilarious thing was as I'd been doing theater there
Speaker 3: for so long and I had been begging casting directors
Speaker 3: to come and see it, and I came to New
Speaker 3: York to do a play. I did This is Our Youth,
Speaker 3: which was like it just exploded right, and all the
Speaker 3: LA casting directors are like, where the fuck did you
Speaker 3: come from? And I was like, motherfucker's I been under
Speaker 3: your nose for the plast thirteen years doing this exact
Speaker 3: same thing.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, that's funny because that was kind of
Speaker 2: I remember people saying, well, you could go to LA
Speaker 2: and do a play. But the great thing about that
Speaker 2: is that all the casting directors when you get to
Speaker 2: LA will all come to the theater. And I have
Speaker 2: my doubts. That's really interest because they were all, you
Speaker 2: know whatever, having dinner at the Ivy. But that's that
Speaker 2: is a that a that's fascinating. So do you think
Speaker 2: that getting a bunch of theater under your belt has
Speaker 2: had has uh contributed to this, you know, ability to
Speaker 2: be diverse in the in the in the parts that
Speaker 2: you play.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, you know, I was doing Shakespeare, I
Speaker 3: was doing Chekov, I was doing you know, modern stuff
Speaker 3: that we were writing.
Speaker 2: I was doing.
Speaker 3: We were doing David Ray, we were doing O'Neill. We're
Speaker 3: doing Tennessee Williams, we were doing every we were doing Moliere,
Speaker 3: we were doing Uh, we were doing Bernard Shaw. We
Speaker 3: were doing so many different styles and ages and time
Speaker 3: periods that I just I just became very fluid in
Speaker 3: my understanding of style, my understanding of forrest, my understanding
Speaker 3: of comedy, my understanding of drama. You know, and then
Speaker 3: and then just all that character work that you're doing
Speaker 3: along the way, and you just you just came to
Speaker 3: see that, you know, there really was as an as
Speaker 3: an actor, there really was no limitations. You weren't just
Speaker 3: a comic actor, or you weren't just a dramatic actor.
Speaker 3: And the best actors are actually one foot on a
Speaker 3: banana peel and the other in the grave. You know,
Speaker 3: where you could where you could shift those gears.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, easily. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: remember having a little notion about theater, and that was
Speaker 2: that you know, if you that that when they were
Speaker 2: casting television and movies in in in New York, that
Speaker 2: they were really they wanted the actual person to the
Speaker 2: closest they could, like it was the closest that they
Speaker 2: could find to the actual person. If they you know,
Speaker 2: the kid was supposed to be from Brooklyn, they wanted
Speaker 2: to get from Brooklyn. Yeah, that that that was the
Speaker 2: person that the they got the part. But theater was
Speaker 2: not that way. If you went and auditioned and did
Speaker 2: a good job portraying that character in the audition in
Speaker 2: that you know, on that stage, then you would get
Speaker 2: the part. And I noticed that really really early on.
Speaker 2: And I don't know about you, but I think part
Speaker 2: of it is that, you know, film is so in
Speaker 2: your face, and I think the directors get really afraid
Speaker 2: of something becoming being false. You know, acting. Yeah, see
Speaker 2: you acting now, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean especially when you're young too, because
Speaker 3: you only are one thing when you're young, you know,
Speaker 3: the idea of you being anything more than what you
Speaker 3: walk in the door with. For a casting direct there
Speaker 3: is as far as they can see. You know, I
Speaker 3: just did this documentary. Someone was just giving me shit
Speaker 3: about this, But I just did this docum my wife,
Speaker 3: I just did this documentary about Bonnie Timmerman, the great
Speaker 3: you know casting director.
Speaker 2: Who you did it? You directed it?
Speaker 3: No? No, not I. I did an interview for it
Speaker 3: because because she's someone I knew. I never got a part, right,
Speaker 3: but she asked me to do this, uh, this doc
Speaker 3: and they use a clip in this thing where I'm
Speaker 3: arguing with Michael Bay that I could play somebody other
Speaker 3: than who he thought I was, you know, and I
Speaker 3: was so righteous and it's it's it's embarrassing now.
Speaker 2: But what happened was they got me in for.
Speaker 3: One part, you know, and then halfway through the part
Speaker 3: he's like, go, no, no, no, you're not right for
Speaker 3: this part. Go read this part. So I went out
Speaker 3: and prepared for the part, and when I came back in,
Speaker 3: he's like, you're too young for this part. And I
Speaker 3: got pissed.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: I was like, you know, you asked me to come up,
Speaker 3: you know, and that's the that's the clip they used.
Speaker 2: Of course, Oh that's great. I got to see. This
Speaker 2: has to come out yet, this Bonnie Timmerman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's been out for a while. It's it's
Speaker 3: floating around on the internet. That clip.
Speaker 2: I gotta check it out. I gotta check it out.
Speaker 2: I remember that. I think it was Bonnie who always
Speaker 2: had the polaroids, right, Yeah, you always you always had
Speaker 2: started that. Yeah, you always had to take a polaroid,
Speaker 2: And there was a there's a at one point, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I guess I'd been doing enough stuff for
Speaker 2: I've been in the office enough times where I was like,
Speaker 2: I do I have to take a fucking polaroid? I mean,
Speaker 2: come on, you know what I look like, right, you know?
Speaker 3: Anyway, that's not she she uh, she told me that
Speaker 3: she did that because remember how we had to do
Speaker 3: they don't do this the same way. And remember how
Speaker 3: we had to do head shots and you'd have your
Speaker 3: like headshot if you played tennis, the headshot with your
Speaker 3: scuba you're on. They had to do all the character
Speaker 3: headshot or preppy headshot and right, and so you know,
Speaker 3: she was fighting against that kind of affectation, which is
Speaker 3: why she wanted to do those bullet rights. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it was like what it was, are you putting a
Speaker 3: book together? Like, why, you know, I don't have any
Speaker 3: makeup on. I'm wearing a T shirt, you know. But
Speaker 3: that's that's what Bonnie wanted and she you know.
Speaker 2: It makes a lot of sense really because I mean,
Speaker 2: those those head shots are I mean, to this day,
Speaker 2: they're just oh they're embarrassed. I mean they're embarrassing, you know.
Speaker 2: I And I remember having, uh that, that the the
Speaker 2: when I finally got an agent and this will probably
Speaker 2: be I guess maybe seventy nine or something like that,
Speaker 2: and he said, uh, you have to get a head shot.
Speaker 2: And the photographer is a Gerard Barnier. Do you remember
Speaker 2: this name? He was a he was a headshot he
Speaker 2: was the head shot photographer.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it was something like, to me, like an outrageous
Speaker 2: amount of money. It was something like five hundred bucks. Yeah,
Speaker 2: nothing like that. And I was like, I got how
Speaker 2: am I good? How am I going to get five
Speaker 2: hundred dollars to have it to have a picture taken?
Speaker 2: I can't can't like you know, my cousin take it
Speaker 2: or something. But now they had to get had to
Speaker 2: get your Arbonne. I think I still have those pictures.
Speaker 2: They're pretty bad. Yeah, we we.
Speaker 3: Had like that there was a you know, then there
Speaker 3: was a scale down version. We had like one hundred
Speaker 3: dollars person who we all went to, which was literally out.
Speaker 3: I was always outside with a you know, a bounce sport.
Speaker 3: You're holding your own bound sport for the shot. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, yeah, man, five hundred bucks to us is
Speaker 3: like that was that was like two months rent you.
Speaker 2: Know, No, no, no, that was that was crazy, crazy,
Speaker 2: crazy crazy. I I maybe it was less, but I
Speaker 2: remember it just being so.
Speaker 3: No, it was. It was that expensive. It was. And
Speaker 3: there was some people that I rememberer. I can't even
Speaker 3: remember their names, but there's people in LA that were
Speaker 3: making a grand to do headshots in the late eighties.
Speaker 2: But now you have this thing. Okay that again, I
Speaker 2: don't I can't, off the top of my head think
Speaker 2: of somebody who is able to coexist between you know,
Speaker 2: you're awesome Marvel World and then these movies that are
Speaker 2: completely in another sort of direction in the world and
Speaker 2: in a totally different kind of budget range and stuff
Speaker 2: that's like about something serious and things that you care about,
Speaker 2: and you have them both happening at the same time.
Speaker 2: And and first off, it's it's it's sometimes when I
Speaker 2: think about how long these these superhero movies take them. Sometimes.
Speaker 2: I when I look at your career, I think, how
Speaker 2: did he fit all of this in? You know, I
Speaker 2: mean that it's in it itself, must must have been
Speaker 2: a challenge or must continue to be a challenge. But
Speaker 2: also is there ever a time when you kind of go,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm gonna know the answer to this, but
Speaker 2: we ever, we're just kinda go, well, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I was, you know, working on a on
Speaker 2: on the on the big movie for a long time.
Speaker 2: Now I'm just gonna you know, I don't want to
Speaker 2: do anything else for a little while. I just want
Speaker 2: to rest, you know.
Speaker 3: I I it's funny you bring that up, because I
Speaker 3: probably in the last three years have been away from home,
Speaker 3: you know, in in chunks, probably about a year and
Speaker 3: a half, almost two years, running back and forth between
Speaker 3: year in Europe. And I mean, I you know, I
Speaker 3: used to.
Speaker 2: I was on it.
Speaker 3: I don't know what. I thought I was going to
Speaker 3: die young.
Speaker 2: So I was just.
Speaker 3: Trying to get as much in as I possibly could,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, in a way, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 3: was like, I gotta I was driven. I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know what it was. And then I just
Speaker 3: burned out, and so I said, I need to take
Speaker 3: a year off, which is which is basically what I've
Speaker 3: been doing in the middle of and it's been I mean,
Speaker 3: we had COVID and all that happened, but that was
Speaker 3: just so stressful that, you know, it was so kind
Speaker 3: of traumatic and and it was hard to really rest
Speaker 3: because you didn't know, you know, when you're going to
Speaker 3: get another job, and you know, if you're going to
Speaker 3: refinance a house, all those things that were happening during
Speaker 3: that time. So yeah, I mean, yeah, I definitely got
Speaker 3: to the place where where I just felt totally burned
Speaker 3: out and I and I and I was like, I
Speaker 3: don't know if I I don't know if I ever
Speaker 3: really want to act again. I'm not even enjoying anymore.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure everyone gets to some version of
Speaker 3: that at some point, and uh, yeah.
Speaker 2: But have you gotten past it or or is that
Speaker 2: still kind of how you're feeling?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I go to the Art Students League
Speaker 3: and just started a sculpture class, and it's just like
Speaker 3: that's like you love you know, Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: That's such a that's such a that's such a cool place.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's I mean, my sister.
Speaker 2: My sister goes. She used to go when she was
Speaker 2: living in New York and sometimes I would go over
Speaker 2: and you know, kind of see what she was working
Speaker 2: on and stuff. It's it's it's it's a for people
Speaker 2: that don't know it's it's it's a it's a it's
Speaker 2: a place for artists and to work out, and it's
Speaker 2: it's it's probably been there since oh gosh, I don't know,
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: Maybe, Oh yeah, I mean it's probably one of the
Speaker 3: oldest establishments in New York City.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know, you go and and any any any
Speaker 3: level of artist, from the rank beginner to the most
Speaker 3: you know, established artists are they're all working side by side,
Speaker 3: and it's affordable. I mean, you get studio space, you're
Speaker 3: there for five hours as a live model. You know,
Speaker 3: all the materials are there. I mean, it's it's just
Speaker 3: it's such an invaluable thing in New York City. It's
Speaker 3: surprised it's even left after Juliani and Blueberg. You know,
Speaker 3: let's make New York a luxury high rise built.
Speaker 2: Especially that right in that in that little zone too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, survive, you know, but it's it's thriving, it's beautiful,
Speaker 3: it's uh, you know, there's a quality there. It's diverse.
Speaker 2: You know, it's so you're sculpting. So so it was
Speaker 2: that was that relatively new or or or No.
Speaker 3: It's something that I it's something I always fancied myself.
Speaker 3: I don't even I don't even know why. I was like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be a sculptor. I'm gonna be a sculptor.
Speaker 2: Awesome. I love that.
Speaker 3: And then finally I had some time to do it,
Speaker 3: and I made a promise to myself that I would,
Speaker 3: I would, you know, really spend these last few months
Speaker 3: doing it and just be a beginner. And uh, you know,
Speaker 3: put your put my phone down. It's like five hours
Speaker 3: of no phone and uh you're there for five hours.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah wow. Yeah. And it's a life it's a
Speaker 3: life sculpting class. So it's it's very intense and quiet
Speaker 3: and and solemn, and you know, there's just such meditating,
Speaker 3: very meditative, and you know, you realize.
Speaker 2: Are you using tools or or your hands or in
Speaker 2: the us in.
Speaker 3: Your hands mostly in the clay. I mean you're there's
Speaker 3: some tools there's a you know, my teacher, you know,
Speaker 3: you have a sculpting knife basically, or or even he's
Speaker 3: used will use like little plastic butter knives too, because
Speaker 3: you get that nice raking quality. But it's very minimal.
Speaker 3: But it's you're in the dirt, you know, you're in
Speaker 3: the mud, and uh, it's so primal and and you're
Speaker 3: you know, your focus is so extreme and you have
Speaker 3: to see, you know, you really have to see, and
Speaker 3: you realize how you know, we we think we see,
Speaker 3: oh that's a tree, you know, we we we label things.
Speaker 3: We'll immediately go to a label, but to really take
Speaker 3: the time to see is like its own discipline. And
Speaker 3: and I just find it incredibly soothing to me in
Speaker 3: this jangled you know techno digital, ultra ultra ultra ultra
Speaker 3: world we're living in. You know, it's just all this time.
Speaker 2: That's great, that's great. I mean I think that uh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, we all we all can use different forms
Speaker 2: of mental soothing, of physical connection to two things that
Speaker 2: aren't on a screen. You know. It's well, it just
Speaker 2: seems like it's so important musing.
Speaker 3: I mean, is it your music like that for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, totally yes, that's it for me. Music and
Speaker 2: the animals, you know, horses and all kinds of animals
Speaker 2: and and and you know, I find that, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: when you're playing music with people, you have to listen,
Speaker 2: you have to react, you have to you know, you
Speaker 2: have to group. And I even think that as an
Speaker 2: act is as an actors, you know, you've worked even
Speaker 2: in such extreme you know, technical situations, you know, way
Speaker 2: beyond any of the stuff that I've done. But even
Speaker 2: the difference between going from the stage to film, there
Speaker 2: is a lot of gear that sometimes can distract you
Speaker 2: from this exchange of the emotions and characters and eyes
Speaker 2: and and and and and bodies and and all this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff that that you know, you you I
Speaker 2: often say that you know, you you could. You got
Speaker 2: to make sure when you're when you're acting with somebody
Speaker 2: in a in a film, that you don't let all
Speaker 2: that gear get between you and and the person. And
Speaker 2: I would think that working in a in a in
Speaker 2: the in a you know, a green screen or digital
Speaker 2: or superhero kind of situation, it becomes even harder to
Speaker 2: fight against that.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's so intense. I mean, when I'm
Speaker 3: doing the Hulk stuff I have. I have a helmet
Speaker 3: on that has like four cameras, you know, basically in
Speaker 3: my face, and you know, and and then a whole
Speaker 3: rig attached to me like a vest that has all
Speaker 3: of the digital recording system on it, you know, with
Speaker 3: the batteries. And then I'm in a suit that's basically skinned.
Speaker 3: I call it the man canceling suit because it makes
Speaker 3: you look big everywhere you want to look small, and
Speaker 3: small everywhere you want to big.
Speaker 2: I've been in suits like that before, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, I do.
Speaker 3: And so, uh, I had I had a special loin
Speaker 3: cloth made for my because it was just it was
Speaker 3: too too revealing, you know, so the amount you know,
Speaker 3: getting used to that and trying to be present in it,
Speaker 3: and and and I'm standing on a box that makes me,
Speaker 3: you know, ten foot tall. So all the actors I'm
Speaker 3: working with are literally at at you know, crotch level.
Speaker 3: Thus the loin cloth, you know, and you're trying to
Speaker 3: you know, you're trying to do that thing. You're trying
Speaker 3: to listen and connect and and you.
Speaker 2: Just have this.
Speaker 3: You know. It was funny because we just did She
Speaker 3: Hulk and and I was breaking in Tatiana with all
Speaker 3: this technology, you know, and what it happened. What happens
Speaker 3: is is the technology takes over and the acting part
Speaker 3: becomes the sort of side side gig, you know, it's
Speaker 3: sort of the it's the augmentation, it's it's no, it
Speaker 3: was no longer the thing, you know. And and I
Speaker 3: really had to like fight and fight for her and
Speaker 3: teach her that we can't let this technology stand in
Speaker 3: front of what we do as performers, which is I
Speaker 3: think part of this big fight we're about to have
Speaker 3: with the.
Speaker 2: Screen percent is and uh, it is really important to
Speaker 2: remember that and you know, to hold on to it.
Speaker 2: And we're going to have to We're going to have
Speaker 2: to fight to keep that in the forefront of people's minds.
Speaker 2: It's you know, it's ultimately never gonna work if if
Speaker 2: if we are you know, just recreated, and I can't
Speaker 2: wait to see that. I love Tatiana. She's so she's
Speaker 2: so good.
Speaker 3: I love her. It's so funny too, She's great and
Speaker 3: it man, she's just so good.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of the movies that you've made,
Speaker 2: you know, Spotlight being a perfect example, have had a
Speaker 2: you know, a point of view, not you know, how
Speaker 2: can I put this a social point of view or
Speaker 2: an environmental point of view? Which which is going to
Speaker 2: I mean, did you come up with something like The
Speaker 2: Solutions Project because of that experience or do you sometimes
Speaker 2: look for those movies because of your your your feelings
Speaker 2: about the world.
Speaker 3: You know, It's funny because well, first of all, I
Speaker 3: was always you know, Stella Adler was my teacher, and
Speaker 3: she was like, you have to be political. You have
Speaker 3: to be politically involved. You have to know what's happening.
Speaker 3: You know, even if you're playing something in the thirties,
Speaker 3: you have to know what the political scene was. You
Speaker 3: have to be involved in that part to understand the
Speaker 3: time and the place and who you're playing and and
Speaker 3: and their place in the world at that time.
Speaker 2: Right, So I didn't know that was part of her technique.
Speaker 2: That's really fascinating to me. Yeah, I've never studied, didn't
Speaker 2: study any of that, so and.
Speaker 3: That was a big part of it. So we were
Speaker 3: already like we were already conscious, socially conscious as artists.
Speaker 3: She really believed that you had to be socially conscious
Speaker 3: as an as an artist, and so but there wasn't
Speaker 3: you know, you know, the funny thing about acting is like, oh,
Speaker 3: what what made you decide to pick that part? It
Speaker 3: is like, I didn't pick anything.
Speaker 2: Well, that's true.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm lucky to even have a job, you know, right,
Speaker 3: I know, for so long, you know. And so you know,
Speaker 3: I found myself moving up state in the middle of
Speaker 3: this fracking fight, you know, and it's happening all around me.
Speaker 3: So I'm the longer like a guy on the sidelines.
Speaker 3: I'm like in the middle of it. And I'm trying
Speaker 3: to raise kids there and and you know, my neighbors
Speaker 3: like willing to poison my water, you know, and and
Speaker 3: and poison everyone's water around us, you know. So I'm
Speaker 3: right in the middle of that thing. And I and
Speaker 3: I get like a front seat view of what it's
Speaker 3: like to be in a sacrifice Zoe, and what it's
Speaker 3: like to be a frontline fighter, and what it's like
Speaker 3: to live in a world where there's two sets of laws.
Speaker 3: You know, there's the laws that are for all of us,
Speaker 3: and there's the laws that are for corporations or no
Speaker 3: laws that are for corporations, big wealthy corporations and people
Speaker 3: of power. And so that really changed me. And and
Speaker 3: that that started, you know, that moved on to the
Speaker 3: Solutions project. It was that it was my activism that
Speaker 3: that I was finding myself part of that made me say, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, why don't I do this with movies more?
Speaker 3: You know, I I you know, and I was at
Speaker 3: a point where I could, you know, I could start
Speaker 3: producing things and developing things and and that and that
Speaker 3: and and I you know, I'll tell you I did
Speaker 3: The Kids Are All Right, which was just a great
Speaker 3: film and a funny film by itself, but it ended
Speaker 3: up having a real impact on the gay marriage issue,
Speaker 3: which was which it landed right in the middle of
Speaker 3: right right, and it was so humanizing and and what
Speaker 3: you realized about gay people is their marriages were just
Speaker 3: as bad as everybody else's.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, they were they were going through
Speaker 3: the same stuff. You know, people who were married were straight,
Speaker 3: were laughing at the same issues, you know, and just
Speaker 3: humanize it. And I think it really did change the
Speaker 3: conversation culturally. I saw how important that became to that
Speaker 3: specific fight, and that's when I started to really feel like,
Speaker 3: you know, an article goes in a newspaper, goes this far,
Speaker 3: a documentary goes this far, but a movie that level
Speaker 3: of storytelling, if you could get past the polemics, if
Speaker 3: you can get if you could just tell the human story.
Speaker 3: It resonates in all kinds of people outside of their
Speaker 3: political beliefs, like you know dark waters that you know
Speaker 3: that things, that thing is seen by everybody, and and
Speaker 3: and we can all agree, like we don't want to
Speaker 3: be drinking poison water that some major corporation you know,
Speaker 3: knowingly did to us. We don't want our kids doing that.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't want that in our popcorn. We
Speaker 3: don't want that in our frying pans. You know, we
Speaker 3: don't want to die from some disease that someone else
Speaker 3: knew they were they were passing to us. No one
Speaker 3: wants to do that. So you know, when they hear
Speaker 3: that story, they see working class people being affected by it,
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, you have a change happened.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. It's great. Well, I think this is a
Speaker 2: good segue for us to bring out Gloria Walton, who
Speaker 2: works with you on the Solutions project. So please join us. Gloria. Hi, Kay,
Speaker 2: Thank Gloria, Hey you Mike, Well, thanks Gloria, thanks for
Speaker 2: joining us.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled. It's very nice to meet you. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess my first question is how the two of
Speaker 2: you met and how this whole thing came together.
Speaker 4: Gosh, how did the two of us meet? So in
Speaker 4: the work, Mark is hardcore, which I know, you know,
Speaker 4: given that your friends and so. And when I say hardcore,
Speaker 4: just meaning that he's always like in it with us
Speaker 4: in the community, you know, having just being really connected
Speaker 4: to his own personal experience and therefore being able to
Speaker 4: show up with like true authenticity and just one of
Speaker 4: the comrades. So, and that was like several years ago,
Speaker 4: because I've been doing this work for about sixteen years,
Speaker 4: and I started in South central Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: And what were you doing in south What was it
Speaker 2: you were doing in South Central? Just just kill people
Speaker 2: in Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I actually used to be a community organizer, and
Speaker 4: I still identify as an organizer. So I'm not necessarily
Speaker 4: I mean, sometimes I'm organizing people, but not in the
Speaker 4: ways that I did when I was at this organization
Speaker 4: called SCOPE, and I started as an intern there. It
Speaker 4: stands for Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education, and
Speaker 4: so essentially we were organizing the community's most impacted, and
Speaker 4: in South Central that was black and brown communities. And
Speaker 4: if you're not familiar, which I know you know we
Speaker 4: are familiar, but like South Central is a community that
Speaker 4: is surrounded by freeways from the north, south, east, and west,
Speaker 4: so it's literally in the center and therefore diesel trucks
Speaker 4: are kind of going through all the time going to
Speaker 4: the ports. And it's a highly concretized community, so minimal
Speaker 4: green space, minimal trees, and it has high rates of
Speaker 4: poverty and like low wage sector work. So that kind
Speaker 4: of gives you an idea. And so when we're talking
Speaker 4: about most impacted communities, these are communities that are unfortunately
Speaker 4: living adjacent to freeways, living adjacent to oil drilling and fracking,
Speaker 4: and so often the entrepe point and to climate was
Speaker 4: really like around public health, because you know, it wasn't
Speaker 4: a co incidents that South Central, you know, when you're
Speaker 4: looking at like Hounty averages, it was one of the
Speaker 4: sickest communities in LA and really across the state, and
Speaker 4: high mortality rates, high infant mortality rates, high rates of asthma, cancer,
Speaker 4: things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting I think when talking about climate, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to talk about it for so many years. I
Speaker 2: think for so many years it was such a big
Speaker 2: concept that it was hard for people to get their
Speaker 2: heads around even to this day, of any kind of
Speaker 2: like personal impact. I mean, when you think about it,
Speaker 2: it's you know, force masure is act of God and
Speaker 2: like and a lot of times there's things that are explained,
Speaker 2: but climate wise, they say it's a force masure. And
Speaker 2: when something I it sounds like what you're doing is
Speaker 2: bringing it home to the community that if your own
Speaker 2: health or the health of your children is being specifically affected,
Speaker 2: making that connection between climate change and something that's really
Speaker 2: as personal and as easy to grasp onto is that
Speaker 2: is is a really important thing to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And you know, one of the things that like
Speaker 4: the first lessons that I learned in community organizing was
Speaker 4: really talking about power and agency. So this idea of
Speaker 4: all of us having power to change things and the
Speaker 4: reality that the conditions that the communities, you know, people
Speaker 4: who live in communities like South Los Angeles are living
Speaker 4: in are not happenstance or coincidence, but it's actually the
Speaker 4: result of decisions that have been made by people and
Speaker 4: decision makers to create the conditions that we're living in
Speaker 4: and so in the movement, we often say that the
Speaker 4: redline communities of yesterday are the environmental justice communities of today.
Speaker 3: For that reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it's not just some random act of God, right, Like,
Speaker 4: you know, people decided who was going to live adjacent
Speaker 4: to freeways, who was going to live you know, what
Speaker 4: children were going to play next to fracking and oil drilling.
Speaker 4: Who was going to live in a community where all
Speaker 4: the diesel trusts run through it?
Speaker 2: Right? If I could get just personal for one one
Speaker 2: second with Gloria, I mean, you know, doing the kind
Speaker 2: of work that you do. I'll speak for myself. You know,
Speaker 2: when I decided to do the kind of work that
Speaker 2: I do, I did it because I wanted to be
Speaker 2: rich and famous and get girls. But somebody who who
Speaker 2: devotes and spends their life on something as you know,
Speaker 2: as as selfless as community organizing or you know, fighting
Speaker 2: you know, for against climate change, et cetera, it's such
Speaker 2: a it's it. I'm just always impressed with that, And
Speaker 2: I wonder if you can shed any light on what
Speaker 2: it was for you, uh, you know, parents, or one
Speaker 2: experience or or uh you know whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm appreciating that question. And I guess for me,
Speaker 4: it definitely started in childhood. You know. It's like I
Speaker 4: come from a most impacted community. My family is still,
Speaker 4: you know, in most impacted communities in Jackson, Mississippi, you know,
Speaker 4: is where my family is, and they're you know, dealing
Speaker 4: with the water crisis, amongst many other things.
Speaker 2: Right now, right down.
Speaker 4: And I grew up you know around like my uncles
Speaker 4: were day labors, and therefore they had infrequent work and
Speaker 4: inconsistent work, and often stayed with my mom. My mom
Speaker 4: was like the house that everyone could come to and
Speaker 4: eat and sleep and you know, clean their bodies. You know,
Speaker 4: she was that person, which was a beautiful thing to
Speaker 4: grow up around and a little traumatic in some ways too,
Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, it was just
Speaker 4: really showing me about and demonstrating the importance of showing
Speaker 4: up for the people that you care about. Generosity exactly,
Speaker 4: and compassion, right and love and so that's one one thing.
Speaker 4: So the fact that I come from these communities, it
Speaker 4: is personal and it's a deeply personal issue for me.
Speaker 4: And then there's like the beauty.
Speaker 3: Of it too.
Speaker 4: So you know, I shared like a lot of the
Speaker 4: crisis in South LA, but you know, the grassroots leaders
Speaker 4: there are very much the reason why I stayed in
Speaker 4: this work is really hearing their values, hearing their vision
Speaker 4: about the kind of community that they want to live in,
Speaker 4: you know, where people have like access to clean water
Speaker 4: and clean air and green space and good jobs and
Speaker 4: a connection to their power. And that's also something that
Speaker 4: I saw with my grandmother. She actually raised me the
Speaker 4: first four years of my life. And my grandmother was
Speaker 4: a farmer. And you know, there's like sayings and adages
Speaker 4: that I grew up hearing which we all know, you know,
Speaker 4: where my grandmother would be like, you know, make sure
Speaker 4: if someone lent me something, make sure you give it
Speaker 4: back better than you found it. You know, if I'm
Speaker 4: playing somewhere, make sure you clean it up and leave
Speaker 4: it better than you found it. And these are like
Speaker 4: adages and sayings that you know, you don't think much
Speaker 4: about when you hear them. You know, you may even
Speaker 4: get a little irritated hearing it. But these are the
Speaker 4: things that are It's like simple things like that that
Speaker 4: will help us do better as a society. And it's
Speaker 4: like a reflection again, like I just have to go
Speaker 4: back to values, you know, she would say that you
Speaker 4: need to think about the consequences of your actions. And again,
Speaker 4: all of this is about climate and the climate crisis
Speaker 4: and what we can be doing better. You know, Indigenous
Speaker 4: communities up and talk about thinking seven generations ahead, which
Speaker 4: essentially is what that's saying is about, like, think about
Speaker 4: the consequences of your actions. How is this going to
Speaker 4: impact you, your family, your community. You know, she would say,
Speaker 4: you're going to reap what you sew, so plant seeds
Speaker 4: that you actually want to harvest, right, and that everything
Speaker 4: comes from the natural world. Like as a farmer, that
Speaker 4: was really important to her and she instilled that in me.
Speaker 4: And you know, she was like from your food to
Speaker 4: your medicine to this home. You know, if you take
Speaker 4: care of the land, the land will take care of you.
Speaker 4: And so these were like basic things, you know, from
Speaker 4: the experience of poverty to the experience of people connecting
Speaker 4: to their individual power, values and vision is really what
Speaker 4: helps to sustain and drive me in this work.
Speaker 2: So for both of you, what is the day to
Speaker 2: day work for the Solutions Project.
Speaker 4: The Solutions Project essentially we are a national organization and
Speaker 4: you know, we were talking about most impacted communities and
Speaker 4: so that is who we are here to serve. That's
Speaker 4: who we represent our Black, Indigenous, immigrant, Asian, American, Pacific Islander,
Speaker 4: LATINX and other communities of color, and especially women of color.
Speaker 4: And the reason for that is because often, you know,
Speaker 4: regardless of what organization or corporation or wherever you're at,
Speaker 4: like women are the backbones of these places in spaces,
Speaker 4: and so that's something that we always want to elevate.
Speaker 4: But at the Solutions Project, essentially we are investing in
Speaker 4: BIPOP communities. We're amplifying by pop communities and their solutions.
Speaker 4: And I raise money, you know, that's one thing that
Speaker 4: I do. And when I say that, like I come
Speaker 4: from a most impacted community, I also used to organize
Speaker 4: in the most impacted community. I ran the organization called Scope,
Speaker 4: and therefore I understand intimately what it means and what
Speaker 4: it takes to do this work, and how often this
Speaker 4: work is under resource and underfunded, and especially if it's
Speaker 4: work that's led by you know, BIPOP communities and women
Speaker 4: of color, A fraction of resources go to those places
Speaker 4: and spaces, even though these are the communities that are
Speaker 4: like innovating transformative climate solutions. And I can share what
Speaker 4: some of those look like I'm.
Speaker 2: Really curious about that. What are some of those solutions,
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 4: So we find a plethora of organizations and some highlights
Speaker 4: that come to mind. I'll probably talk about Uprows, which
Speaker 4: is like an organization that's in Brooklyn, New York, and
Speaker 4: they are transforming as we speak, this industrial waterfront into
Speaker 4: a wind energy hub. And for them, that's about creating
Speaker 4: thousands of jobs, that's about powering millions of homes in
Speaker 4: New York. And that's about a demonstrative model of what
Speaker 4: a just transition looks like, which is a transition that
Speaker 4: is bottom up, where the people who are closest to
Speaker 4: the problems are actually informing the solutions. You can think
Speaker 4: about APEN. They're in in the Bay Area in California
Speaker 4: and they are instituting what's called resilience hubs and building
Speaker 4: this and essentially resilience hubs are all the community assets
Speaker 4: kind of coming together, whether that's youth centers, community organizations, libraries,
Speaker 4: places of worship, where people are saying, hey, we are
Speaker 4: the backbones of our community. Let's link up and figure
Speaker 4: out how to be proactive when we have any crisis,
Speaker 4: let alone a climate crisis. So you know, I can
Speaker 4: think about like COVID for example, community these came together
Speaker 4: and we're like the first responders, and so resilience hubs
Speaker 4: are really building off of that model, especially when it
Speaker 4: comes to climate, because often we're reacting to climate conditions.
Speaker 4: But when you think about building a resilience hub, it's saying, Okay,
Speaker 4: if we know that we're going to have these recurring events,
Speaker 4: let's figure out how to be proactive and think about
Speaker 4: climate adaptation and mitigation upfront, and let's think about the
Speaker 4: democratization of an energy transition upfront. And so these communities
Speaker 4: are in a long standing relationship to transform their neighborhoods
Speaker 4: in ways that benefit everyone. One thing that I think
Speaker 4: about with the climate crisis is people often just want
Speaker 4: to reduce it to solely being about too much carbon
Speaker 4: in the atmosphere, and that it is right, Like, we
Speaker 4: know it's definitely about carbon emissions, but when you just
Speaker 4: think of it only as that, essentially you think it's
Speaker 4: just a balancing act. Okay, we just remove the carbon
Speaker 4: and that's it. But one thing that I often say
Speaker 4: is that you know, you can have a clean, green
Speaker 4: economy that still has the same income, inequality structural inequities, racism, zenophobia,
Speaker 4: sexism that exists in today's society. And so when you
Speaker 4: think of it that way, that's actually a community and
Speaker 4: a society that's not so clean. And if our values
Speaker 4: aren't changing, you know, we'll be clean for a minute,
Speaker 4: but we're still going to get right back to where
Speaker 4: we started, because you know, we should be thinking about
Speaker 4: it as like the carbon crisis, like too much carbon
Speaker 4: in the atmosphere is really a symptom of the root
Speaker 4: causes about the values and dominant world views that drive
Speaker 4: our world and some of those things that come to
Speaker 4: mind for me again when I think about like most
Speaker 4: impacted communities is commodifying people and the places that we
Speaker 4: call home, and that means putting a price tag on
Speaker 4: the value of my life and putting one on the
Speaker 4: value of yours. And often the value of my life
Speaker 4: is sadly less than the value of yours. And that's
Speaker 4: how we've been making decisions in our society. And then
Speaker 4: on top of that, it's like values around hyper consumption,
Speaker 4: hyper production, mass waste, and you know, the phrases that
Speaker 4: none of us like to hear, but you know, we're
Speaker 4: in a reckoning where we do need to talk about
Speaker 4: white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, because all of these are the
Speaker 4: ideas and the values that got us here to think
Speaker 4: that we can extract and exploit at any cost, you know,
Speaker 4: the cost of human life and the cost to our environment.
Speaker 2: I love what you say because I really believe that
Speaker 2: you do a disservice in life if you don't look
Speaker 2: at the connections between things, the connections between things that
Speaker 2: are negative and the connections between things that are positive.
Speaker 2: It is very very important. Two, you know, not to
Speaker 2: completely compartmentalize these these these issues because oftentimes they are related,
Speaker 2: you know, education and race and climate and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: economy and all these things. So I'm really I'm very
Speaker 2: very impressed both with that notion and with you and
Speaker 2: with the great and powerful Mark Ruffalo. And I want
Speaker 2: to thank you guys for for being here and for
Speaker 2: hearing about this. But before I let you go, is
Speaker 2: there someplace that people can go or help out or
Speaker 2: or where can we where can we go to see
Speaker 2: this great work that you're doing.
Speaker 4: Well. The first thing you can do is check out
Speaker 4: our website, the Solutions Project dot org. And there's an
Speaker 4: s at the end of Solutions so Best Solutions Project
Speaker 4: dot org and you can see what we're doing, who
Speaker 4: we're funding. So again, I raise money every single year
Speaker 4: to resource frontline most impacted communities that are black, Indigenous immigrants, API,
Speaker 4: LATINX and other communities of color. And we also amplify
Speaker 4: their solutions and their vision and their values. And we
Speaker 4: really try to disrupt the dystopian narratives around climate and
Speaker 4: instead connect to the dreams the aspirations of frontline communities
Speaker 4: because that's what's really going to help make a world
Speaker 4: a better place. So check us out at the Solution's Project.
Speaker 4: That's also a great site where you can see, you know,
Speaker 4: if there's an organization that you want to get involved
Speaker 4: in in your neighborhood. We actually have a map and
Speaker 4: if you live in California, you can lift that up
Speaker 4: and see which organizations are in your neighborhood.
Speaker 2: That's great, that's great, that's great localizing it which is
Speaker 2: always really.
Speaker 4: Important, so important, and re resource over two hundred organizations
Speaker 4: across the country. Cool, and so please donate.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I'll just say this. As far as you know,
Speaker 3: probably a lot of your listeners are very feel, very
Speaker 3: responsible and responsive to you know cluses and the environment
Speaker 3: and social justice and so on and so forth. You know,
Speaker 3: there's very a lot of them probably actually give to
Speaker 3: a lot of big organizations. The one thing I could
Speaker 3: promise you this is that when you when you give
Speaker 3: to this organization, the greatest percentage of your money will
Speaker 3: end up in these communities, more than I would say
Speaker 3: any other environmental organization. I could say that for sure,
Speaker 3: and probably on par with the best social justice or
Speaker 3: environmental justice groups for sure. I mean, we are probably
Speaker 3: the best as far as getting resources, not just money,
Speaker 3: political resources, storytelling resources. You know, my function here is
Speaker 3: to use my privilege to lift these stories up into
Speaker 3: the mainstream to hear from the people we never get
Speaker 3: to hear from. That's been probably the greatest gift that
Speaker 3: I've been given and the greatest gift that I could
Speaker 3: give back. Thank you, Gloria. And Gloria does it, and
Speaker 3: she buyer values. And so just as far as organizations go,
Speaker 3: and even those small dollars, you know, we could stretch
Speaker 3: ten dollars into one thousand dollars. That's what these communities do,
Speaker 3: and we are the organization that's actually will make sure
Speaker 3: they get that money. The lion's share of that money.
Speaker 3: So you know, I know it sounds like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: these are big things, but man, even even you know,
Speaker 3: ten dollars a monthly, twenty dollars, these these little donations
Speaker 3: that people are giving to NRDC, and not to take
Speaker 3: anything away from them or some of these bigger organizations.
Speaker 3: Your money will go much farther and the return on
Speaker 3: your money will go much farther in this organization that
Speaker 3: so many others. So when you're taking that time to give,
Speaker 3: you know, definitely consider what we're doing, because you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's lifting the whole country from the bottom, and
Speaker 3: it's writing the grit eightest wrongs that the whole country
Speaker 3: was founded on. And until we do that and heal
Speaker 3: in that sense, you know, the rest of it, I
Speaker 3: just don't see. It's like building your home on a faulty,
Speaker 3: faut faulty foundation. You know, we have to write that
Speaker 3: and then the rest of the rest of the building
Speaker 3: squares up, it becomes straight, comes.
Speaker 2: Whole, beautiful. I love it. Thank you guys so much
Speaker 2: for being here. Mark Ruffalo, Gloria Walton, keep up the
Speaker 2: good work.
Speaker 3: Appreciate you man, thanks for having us that was so fun.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks for listening. That was a really fun
Speaker 2: episode of six Degrees. And if you want to learn
Speaker 2: more about the Solutions project, you can go to the
Speaker 2: Solutionsproject dot org and that's Solutions with an s the
Speaker 2: Solutions Project dot org. And you can find all the
Speaker 2: links in our show notes. And if you like what
Speaker 2: you hear, make sure sure that you subscribe to the
Speaker 2: show and tune in to the rest of our episodes.
Speaker 2: You can find six Degrees on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.
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