This Land is Our Land with Suketu Mehta

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

MS NOW, Chris Hayes

News, Versant Media, Versant, Ms Now, Nbcnews, Why Is This Happening?, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Chris Hayes, Politics, Government, Society & Culture, Msnbc, Withpod

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2019

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Migration is central to the human experience. For as long as we’ve been around, people have been moving from one place to another. Though it’s never been easier to get from point A to point B, the inequality between those places could be as great as they’ve ever been. We’re now on the front edge of a climate crisis, launching the greatest period of human migration that will ever have happened on the planet. The backdrop of this great migration, however, is a political landscape marred by virulent reactionary movements against immigrants. So how do you reconcile this vitriol with the impending climate refugee crisis? Suketu Mehta immigrated to this country as a teenager. Now, he’s written a manifesto about his vision of America and what it means for the country to be welcoming to the stranger. It’s a book he says he felt compelled to write after seeing how Donald Trump stands as a threat to that vision. RELATED READING: This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto Maximum City

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I can completely understand why I once might like to keep Iowa what it is.
0:05.3	But then they also have to realize that these people who want to come to Iowa
0:09.1	from El Salvador and from Guatemala,
0:12.4	they're coming there because we have left them no choice.
0:15.5	They are coming to Iowa and to Illinois and to New York
0:20.6	because Americans have gone into these countries
0:24.0	and ruined their countries for decades now.
0:31.0	Hello and welcome to Wise Is Happening With Me, your host, Chris Hayes.
0:35.0	Well, as long as humans have been on the planet,
0:38.0	they've been doing a few things consistently.
0:40.0	I mean, there's things they do at different periods in history,
0:42.0	but there's a few things they have always done.
0:44.0	Eat, have sex, do some kind of worship of a God and migrate.
0:49.0	Move around.
0:50.0	I mean, we know from the fossil record and that humans started
0:54.0	in one very specific place in this world.
0:56.0	And after enough time, they got everywhere.
1:00.0	And the way they got everywhere was moving around, migrating.
1:03.0	In fact, for a long period of time, I think about 200,000 years
1:06.0	before we get what we call kind of civilization and we settle down.
1:10.0	Moving around is what humans do to survive.
1:13.0	We are hunters and gatherers and what hunters and gatherers do by definition
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from MS NOW, Chris Hayes, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of MS NOW, Chris Hayes and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.