It Could Happen Here - The Marshall Islands Part Two: For the Good of Humanity and to End All Wars

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

In the second episode, James looks at the USA’s failure to apologize to or adequately compensate the people of the RMI.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. your podcast. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Hey, I'm Gianna Pertenti. And I'm Jamee Jackson Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The music you just heard was the anthem of Bikini Atoll, sung at their church on Kili Island in 1997. The words translate as follows. No longer can I stay, it's true. No longer can I live in peace and harmony. No longer can I rest on my sleeping mat and pillow, because of my island and the life I once knew there. The thought is overwhelming, rendering me helpless and in great despair. My spirit leaves,

drifting around and far away, where it becomes caught in a current of immense power, and only then do I find tranquility. Bikini Atoll has a flag as well. It looks a lot like the US flag, but in the top left blue rectangle, you'll only find 23 white stars. They represent the islands of Bikini Atoll. The three black stars on the upper right of the flag represent the three islands that were vaporized by the March 1st, 1954,-megaton hydrogen bomb blast codenamed Bravo. The two black stars in the lower right-hand corner represent where the Bikinians live now, Kili Island, 425 miles to the south of Bikini Atoll, and Egypt Island on the Majuro Atoll. These two stars are symbolically far away from Bikini stars on the flag,

as the islands are far away in real life, both in distance and in terms of quality of life. The Marshallese words running across the bottom of the flag, Men, Otejmzjez, Rejilo Ben Anij, translate to, Everything is in the hands of God. These represent the words spoken in 1946 by the Bikinian leader, Judah,

to the US Commodore, Ben Wyatt, when the American went to Bikini to ask the islanders, on a Sunday after they'd just been to church, to give up their islands for the good of all mankind so the US could test nuclear weapons there. The close resemblance of the Bikinian's flag to the flag of the United States is to remind the people and the government of the USA that a great debt is still owed by them to the people of Bikini. In today's episode, I want to pick up where we left off yesterday, in the hours after the Bravo shot. Here's Ariana again. And so when that fallout had arrived, the children, you know, they remember that they saw it in these movie nights. They thought it was snow and they were playing in this fallout.

And then later on that day, they started to realize that this was maybe poisonous. They just were not sure. But by midnight that night, the people were not able to move around as much. They were suffering dramatically. Their stomachs were churning, their hair had started to fall out, their skin was peeling off and like they said it was so itchy and when they would scratch the skin just peels off as they scratched and the fish that the men were out fishing for when they had came back that evening to eat. When they ate the fish, they said it was like they were just munching on sand.

John Ajean, the mayor of Rongelapitol, gave an interview in 1977, recounting his experience with the fallout. It fell on me. It fell on my wife. It fell on my infant son. It fell on the trees and on the roofs of our houses. It fell onto the reefs and into the lagoon. We were very curious about this ash falling from the sky. Some people put it in their mouths and tasted it. One man rubbed it into his eye to see if it would cure an old ailment. People walked in it and children played in it. Later, people on Utrecht Atoll experienced the fallout as missed. Mimic Kel, one resident of the atoll, said that, quote,

several of my babies, who were healthy at the time they were born, died before they were a year old. Altogether, I lost four babies. My son Winton was born one year after the bomb, and he has had two operations on his throat for thyroid cancer. The Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5 also came into direct contact with the fallout, which began raining down on them that same morning. They'd been fishing outside the designated danger zone that the US government had declared in advance, But when radioactive dust began to fall on them, they scrambled to leave. Pulling their gear took nearly six hours, during which time they were

covered in the dust and gathered some of it in bags to take home and determine what this dust was. Later in the day, they began to get sick as they headed home. One member of the crew kept a bag of the ash to have it analysed on their return home, but he hung it from his bunk bed causing the crew to get continued exposure all the way home. It took them two weeks to get back to Japan, and doctors quickly determined the cause of their blisters, sickness and hair loss. They asked the US Atomic Energy Committee for information on how to treat the fishermen. Instead, the US sent two scientists to observe them. One of the fishermen died, and the others were sent home after 14 months in hospital. They faced stigma

in public, and most of them eventually died from liver cirrhosis or cancer. 36 hours after the test, United States servicemen were evacuated from Rongelap. 54 hours afterwards, the people of Rongelap Atoll were evacuated. And 78 hours after the fallout hit them, less than half of Utrecht's 400 people were eventually evacuated. Here's Ariana again, recounting the story of one of those Rongelap residents. And so they were evacuated on March 4th, 1954.

And upon evacuation, the community was ordered to strip down naked on the ships. They did not separate the males from the females. The entire community stood naked on the ship and they were hosed down with a pressure washer. stood naked on the ship and they were hosed down with the pressure washer. When you talk stories with them today, they recall it as, you know, they say, you know, the hose was so strong, it felt like those hoses that they used to put out fires. And after they were pressure washed, they were given a soldier's underwear and t-shirt to wear for their journey to Kwajalein Atoll. And for the bigger women that were a part of this group that could not fit these soldiers' underwears and t-shirts, they were given just a small towel to cover while they were

journeying to Kwajalein. And also from these testimonies, one of my neighbors, she was seven years old at that time. And she said, you know, she's just a kid. And when everybody was standing naked, and she saw her uncles, and she thought it was funny at that time. But she realized later that that was such a breach of privacy and a moment of humiliation. And she recalls her grandmother's skin falling off. And she said, it looked like we all were like in a burning house and everybody had these scars on, like just the peel burning off. But at that time, she did not really realize it. She did not have a lot of burns.

She's still alive today, but she did not have a lot of burns because when the bomb was detonated, she was told to go inside her house. And so she had a little bit of protection. They were taken to Kwajalein Naval Base, where things became even worse for them. A week after the test, the Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. Department of Defense sent a joint medical team to Kwajalein. And these doctors drafted a memo stating that the exposed people should have, quote, no exposure for the rest of their natural lives. 111 traditional Marshallese leaders petitioned the United Nations to be more cautious with testing

and to stop it entirely if at all possible. The UN decided to continue, but with added precautions. It urged but did not compel the US government to compensate the Marshallese people. In fact, the United States was only beginning the damage it would do to the people of the Marshall Islands, and compensation would not come for another three decades. I'll let Arianna explain what actually happened next. On March 9th, 1954, the Project 4.1 scientists arrived. And then on March 11th, 1954, the Project 4.1 officially commenced without consent from the people. And this Project 4.1 was the study of radiation on human beings. And if you look at declassified files, we have a lot of them at the College of the Marshall Islands Nuclear Institute.

There's, you know, all different types of projects. And for example, like one project 2.3 could be the study of radiation on corals. And then, you know, 7.2 is study of radiation on the trees. And 4.1 just so happened to be the study of radiation on human beings. just so happened to be the study of radiation on human beings and when they were in Kwajalein they were there for a couple days they were ordered to bathe in the lagoon in salt water and scrub their burns three times a day every single day also they were ordered to provide urine samples three times a day they also had to give blood samples three times a day. They also had to give blood samples three times a day and this went on for the people of Woodrook. It was three months and for the people of Rongelap, it was almost a year and then they were moved here to one of the small islands here where they lived and waited for their home to be

cleaned up for them to return. And the thing is, while they were taking these blood and urine samples and having them bathe in the lagoon and scrubbing their burns in salt water three times a day, they all had clinical numbers. And so even the pregnant women, their babies in their wombs also were assigned a clinical number because even if there was still a baby, they were already monitoring these babies. Even if there was still a baby, they were already monitoring these babies. And the thing is, even with their hair falling off and their skin peeling off and their fingernails turning black and just feeling very nauseous and having a severe headache, they were not given pain medication. They were not given any type of Tylenol or any of that. They were just being monitored. And this whole time they thought they were being treated. They didn't realize that they were a part of this project that was just there to study how their body reacts to exposure to radiation. Three years after being evacuated, the people of Rongelap were allowed

to return. And then they moved them back in 1957 because the bomb that they were exposed to was in 1954. And they were there for 28 years. This wasn't a benevolent effort. It was a continuation of the USA's use of the people of the Republic of Marshall Islands as subjects of experimentation. Later on, when they were going to move the people of Rongelap back to Rongelap, what they wanted to study now was how radiation evolves in the food chain. Because when they had moved them back to Rongelap, this was the original exposed group. When they went back, it was not just the exposed group anymore because they were here for three years. And they took their family members that were on Majuro and some of them got married.

And so when they went back, there was 400 of them. And I always switch up which group was given a green card and a red card. But like if it was a red card, they were the exposed group and the green card was now the new control group that was going to eat the crops on the land and eat off of the land to see how the radiation has moved in the food chain. And that's when my mother's father was born on Rongelap in 1959. Eventually, the people of Rongelap were evacuated in 1985 thanks to Greenpeace, who moved them to other atolls when the U.S. government refused to help them or acknowledge responsibility. It was not just the people on Rongelap and the other atolls at the time who were impacted by the radiation.

The consequences have lasted for generations. And also, we've had many cases of birth defects or babies that were born, and according to the testimonies of these mothers that had given birth, their babies were born sometimes looking like jellyfish. Sometimes their babies were born without a head, without limbs. All they could see was the heart beating and the blood flowing through their veins and their intestines. And they just were not sure whether they should bury this baby when the heart is still beating

or if they should wait for the heart to stop beating. this baby when the heart is still beating or if they should wait for the heart to stop beating and some mothers had told their stories of giving birth to babies that they recalled looking like octopus some mothers recalled their babies looking like turtles some of them on many occasions they also had babies that were born looking like grapes the fruit it just looked like a bunch of grapes lumped together and for many of these cases these women were not speaking up at that time because what they were told by the atomic energy commission's officials was that this is the result of incest. And so it was a very humiliating experience. Many of these women had no idea that their own sisters were also giving birth to these monster looking babies that they were giving birth to.

And they would oftentimes bury their babies alone where nobody else was watching. And it's a worldwide culture that when someone passes away, we all gather to mourn this loved one. But for the women, the Marshallese women at that time, it was a very heartbreaking moment for them because they did not want anybody else to see this baby that they had given birth to. Not realizing that their own sister was also enduring the same fate. Welcome I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry

and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Things were not much better for the Bikinians, who had been evacuated at the start of testing in 1946. After a failed attempt to settle them on another atoll, many of the Bikinians elected to try living on Kili as their new home. Kili Island lacked a coral reef, and this made their traditional lifestyle of island hopping and fishing in the calm lagoon impossible. The Bikinians, inhabitants of the most remote atoll in the already remote Marshall Islands, were legendary for their ability to navigate using the stars and seas. But on their new island, the waves were so big that their traditional canoes couldn't sail at all. Soon, the boat the USA had given them to import food had sunk into the ferocious seas around the island and they were entirely reliant on airdropped food.

Some families moved to other islands or split their time between Kili and the atolls with better resources. But life on Kili was hard, and the lack of a protected lagoon made every delivery of food or supplies by boat a high-risk endeavour. Along with the loss of their homeland, many generations of Bikinians began to lose their navigation skills and their connection to the lagoon that provided so much sustenance and material for their traditional lifestyle. They had suffered severe starvation because for the people of Bikini, the atoll that they were now living in was just

uninhabited in the first place because all the fish around the atoll are cicatera fish, so they could not eat off the ocean. They could not grow any crops. And are you guys familiar with what anoni fruit is? Anoni tree? And it does not smell good, right? But they started eating the anoni fruit because they did not have any breadfruit or papayas or anything growing on that land. And the men oftentimes had to sail out in their canoes and they would be gone for almost a week because they sailed out as far as they could to be able to get fish that was edible for them. And then for the people of Enewedok, from their testimoniesies but at all that they were evacuated to was rat infested and so their babies had to sleep in boxes they had to build like boxes for their babies otherwise the

rats would come and nibble at their toes while they're sleeping and there was a lot of ways that they were trying to figure out how to solve this rat infestation and at one time they were giving people incentives like I think it was five cents if you brought a rat's tail or something you know like because they're just trying to get rid of the rats and they could not and yeah it's just a lot of trauma and a lot of moving around when the people of bikini were first moved from bikini to this new home of Rongerik Atoll, where they lived for the next two years. By the time the military had gone back to pick them up, he's a very elderly man now, but he was six years old at that time. And the way he describes it is that he says it was a very

traumatizing moment for him because they were carrying some of the people on leaves to the ship. They were very fragile. He said, if you have seen photos of the Holocaust, this is what our people looked like because there was just severe starvation at that time. In 1968, LBJ promised the Bikinians a chance to return to their beloved home, and the U.S. Trust Territory began rebuilding the structures and decontaminating the soil.

These efforts were hampered by infrequent flights and delayed by the discovery that the large coconut crabs on the island were still dangerously contaminated. In 1972, 100 people from three extended families moved back and began rebuilding their paradise, but it wasn't long before it became clear that their home was far from recovered. A visiting team of scientists from France, not the USA, found dangerously high levels of radioactivity in fruit, well water, and in the urine samples of islanders. The islanders had sued the federal government, and more research was done. By 1978, scientists had found an 11-fold increase in the cesium-137 body burdens of the people living on the islands, a level which the Department of the Interior called, quote, incredible. Once again, the islanders were removed from their home.

In 1983, the Republic of the Marshall Islands gained its independence and signed the Compact of Free Association with the United States. When the Compact came into effect in 1986, the Marshallese received their first financial settlement from the USA courtesy of Section 177 of the Compact of Free Association, which pledged reparations for damages to the former inhabitants of Bikini, Enewatap, Rongelap and Utrecht Atolls. They were promised a 12% rate of return on the trust fund, which would be administered by the US and would provide healthcare and property damage reimbursements. However, this fund relied upon the fiction that only four atolls were impacted by the nuclear fallout. There is considerable evidence to suggest that the

entire Republic of the Marshall Islands was directly impacted by fallout from the Bravo shot. The trust fund also tied the interests of the Marshallese to those of global capital. As the value of the fund's investments went up, so did their ability to fund healthcare and improve their living conditions. But I found financial reports from that trust fund in 2016. At the time, it had funds invested in US domestic public equities, 29.5% of the portfolio as of September 30th, 2015. International equities made up 27.4%. Fixed income funds made up 18%. Real estate made up 5.5%, hedge fund made up 15%, and a private equity fund made up the remaining 4.6%. But the interests of a low-lying atoll nation and those of global

capital will never really be fully aligned. The only reason hedge funds could offer such astronomical returns for their investors is that they are comprised of businesses who don't pay the full cost for their production. This is nowhere more obvious than the rapidly shrinking atolls of the Marshall Islands, where the rising sea levels driven by the need to ensure rising stock prices are posing a new threat to the people who endured and survived the largest nuclear bomb the US is ever known to have deployed. In 1987, a stock market collapse known as Black Monday reduced the value of the fund. And even to this day, despite other settlements and agreements, not one single person in the Marshall Islands has received the full amount

of compensation that they were allocated. A great many have received less than half. In 1995, the Island Council learned that the Environmental Protection Agency standard for radiation reduction requirements was a lot lower than those the Department of Energy scientists had been using thus far. 15 millirems as opposed to 100 millirems. Between this and the demand on settlement funds for services that would lift the surviving islanders and their families out of poverty, the cleanup of Bikini Atoll began to lose steam. Today, 600 people still live on Kili, subsisting largely on a US settlement fund. Their children, like many other Marshallese, go to boarding schools in other atolls. But they still can't sail their canoes at home.

Other Bikinians live on one of the islands on Majuro at all, but with no matrilineal ties to their land, they don't have access to that which defines them in their culture. Despite being so isolated that the government thought it could safely nuke the island without damaging the mainland, or really anywhere it cared about, the island's trust fund is still privy to the rising and falling of the stock market, and it took a significant hit in 2008. of the stock market, and it took a significant hit in 2008. In 2017, Trump's Department of the Interior allowed Bikini's mayor and council to supervise the use of the fund in order to, quote, restore trust and ensure that sovereignty means something. When turned over, the fund was valued

at 59 million US dollars. Today, it holds a little more than 100,000 US dollars. The island's mayor, Anderson Jeeves, oversaw the fund at the time of its depletion and has admitted to claiming personal expenses from the fund and spending six-figure sums on his trip to the USA. He's also made more popular purchases, like a small aircraft and two cargo ships to help supply the more isolated Bikinians, as well as construction equipment to build seawalls to protect the islanders against another crisis, rising sea levels, which threatens to swallow their whole country in a few decades. Sadly, the spending has left the fund virtually empty, and the checks Bikinians got, which amounted to about $80 per person per month, have stopped coming. These stipends help feed Bikinians and pay for medical

care, and without them things are even harder. Today, a few caretakers live on Bikini Atoll, and you can visit to scuba dive. But the community that once existed there is gone. Edward Madison, one of those caretakers, was grandson of one of the residents removed in 1946. Madison helped lead dives in the islands, tested cleanup methods, and monitored the pollutants for the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as mapping the lagoon's World War II wrecks. He passed away on March 29, 2020. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, Modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI

to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real

people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On any Wattak Atoll, the cleanup will never happen. Even after it ended nuclear testing, the US tested conventional and biological weapons there. It shot missiles from California at the atoll and tested airborne bioweapons. From 1977 to 1980, the US began scraping radioactive topsoil off the various islands it had tested for both nuclear and biological weapons and transporting that waste, along with some waste from Nevada, to Runnit Island. Once on Runnit, the waste was mixed with concrete and secured in a giant concrete dome. Jeff's family is from that island,

but thanks to levels of radiation, which rival Fukushima and Chernobyl, he can't go back. My grandfather is from this island. Oh, wow. Yeah. That sucks. But I've never been to that island.

Is that where you're like, did his father live there and like his whole, did they live there for a long time, your family before? Yeah. Yeah. That's your traditional. Do you want to go? Not gonna go because the dome is there. Like all the people from that island, they get to test their radiation level. Today, thanks to the other extinction-level threat the U.S. has helped create, climate change,

the dome is slowly sinking and cracking. Hundreds of U.S. servicemen developed cancer building the dome. Six died, and many others have struggled to get full VA benefits. As the ocean rises, the concrete cap could simply slide off the dome, and the 33 Olympic swimming pools worth of nuclear and biological waste could flood out into the ocean. Locally, this dome is called the Tomb. On the 5th of March 2001, the Nuclear Claims Tribunal handed down a decision on a seven-year lawsuit that the

Bikinians had bought against the United States for damages done to their islands and their people during the nuclear testing on Bikini. The tribunal was created by the Compact of Free Association and it always had been underfunded. The settlement and the $563 million it awarded stood in limbo as the islanders sued the federal government for it. $163 million it awarded, it's still in limbo as the islanders sue the federal government for it. On the day we left Majuro, the Republic of Marshall Islands negotiations with the USA over the renewal of the Compact of Free Association had gone on until two in the morning Marshallese time. We ate breakfast that day with Hilda Hine, the first woman to be president of the Marshall Islands and the first woman president in the Pacific. I didn't get great audio there, but she shared with us the ongoing struggle that the Marshallese

people have had to secure adequate and fair compensation. With the US offering $700 million and the calculated costs of healthcare and cleanup closer to $3 billion, there is a long way for the US to come to make the islanders whole. They also, even six decades on, haven't apologized to the people who had no quarrel with them and whose homes and lives they destroyed. The case of the people of the Pacific Proving Grounds illustrates rather well how we can't find financial settlements that are going to offset the kind of disasters that climate change is bringing. This doesn't mean the people who are harmed shouldn't be compensated, but it does mean that no amount of cash can right the wrongs done.

This is why I wanted to anchor this series, which is about the future, with a story about the past. Because in the next couple of episodes, we're going to hear a lot about what might happen to the Marshall Islands, and again, how virtually none of it is the fault of the islanders. That doesn't mean we shouldn't accept their leadership on these issues, though. As we saw at the negotiations that led to the Paris Accords, the Marshall Islands can and should take a place at the heart of global discussions about climate change, because they are the ones most impacted by the constant growth neoliberal

model that makes other people pay for its negative externalities. As we will learn in the next few episodes, we should ask the people impacted how they want to be helped, and not tell them what they need. I want to end today's episode with a poem, and a very Marshallese moment. I tried to meet the poet who wrote this when I was on the island, because I remembered the impact of her poetry at the UN Climate Summit. She was off island while I was there. But it turned out that Hilda Hine, the former president who I was having breakfast with, was her mum. Here's Kathy Gentle-Kidgener reading a poem she wrote for her own daughter

to the United Nations. Dear Montefiore Benham, You are a seven-month-old sunrise of gummy smiles. You are bald as an egg and bald as the Buddha. You are thighs that are thunder, shrieks that are lightning, so excited for bananas, hugs,

and our morning walks along the lagoon. Dear Montefiore Benham, I want to tell you about that lagoon, that lazy lounging lagoon, lounging against the sunrise. Men say that one day that lagoon will devour you. They say it will gnaw at the shoreline, chew at the roots of your breadfruit trees, gulp down rows of sea walls and crunch through your island's shattered bones. They say you, your daughter,

and your granddaughter too, will wander, rootless, with only a passport to call home. Dear Montefiorebeno, don't cry. Mommy promises you no one will come and devour you. No greedy whale of a company sharking through political seas. No backwater bullying of businesses with broken morals. No blindfolded bureaucracies gonna push this mother ocean over the edge. No one's drowning, baby. No one's moving. No one's losing their homeland. No one's becoming a climate change refugee. Or should I say, no one else. To the Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea

and to the Tarot Islanders of Fiji, I take this moment to apologize to you. We are drawing the line here because we, baby, are going to fight. Your mommy, daddy, boo-boo, jima, your country, and your president, too. We will all fight. And even though there are those hidden behind platinum titles who like to pretend that we don't exist,

who like to pretend that the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Maldives, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, floods of Algeria, Colombia, Pakistan, and all the hurricanes, earthquakes, and tidal waves didn't exist? Still, there are those who see us. Hands reaching out, fists raising up, banners unfurling, megaphones booming, and we are canoes blocking coal ships, we are the radiance of solar villages, we are the fresh clean soil of the farmers past, we are teenagers blooming petitions, we are families biking, recycling, reusing,

engineers building, dreaming, designing, artists, painting, dancing, writing and we are spreading the word and there are thousands out on the streets marching hand in hand chanting for change now and they're marching for you baby. They're marching for us because we deserve to do more than just survive. We deserve to thrive. Dear Matafelebenum, you are eyes heavy with drowsy weight. So just close those eyes and sleep in peace. Because we won't let you down.

You'll see. it could happen here is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources thanks for listening you should probably keep your lights on for nocturnal tales from the shadow join me danny trails and step into the flames of right an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new

Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Hey, I'm Gianna Pertenti. And I'm Jamee Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.