A Conversation with Frances Moore Lappé

By Jan Deremo Lundy

Frances Moore Lappé is author or co-author of fourteen books, including the three-million-copy bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet. She is the co-founder of two national organizations that focus on food and the roots of democracy: Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy (http://www.foodfirst.org) and The Center for Living Democracy. Her activism for three decades has been tireless. Since awakening to the tragedy of global hunger in the 60’s, Frances was determined to share her findings that hunger is needless and that we have the power to end it. Her first book, Diet for a Small Planet, helped millions of people rethink their everyday choices about food and its production. For Frances, her message boiled down to this: “Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but by a scarcity of democracy.”

Frances and daughter Anna founded the Small Planet Institute to bring to light the emergence of “living democracy,” a rewarding, inclusive, learned practice that creates communities that work for all. Their remarkable website, www.smallplanetinstitute.org offers a wealth of inspiration and resources for us to reconnect with one another and make positive choices for a peaceful, healthy planet. Check out “Ten Things You Can Do Right Now (and feel better!)”—it’s eyeopening.

Her most recent book is You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004). A timelier book could not be had considering our international climate. Co-authored with Jeffrey Perkins, it maintains that “fear can be a source of energy and strength, an invitation to plunge forward, and not a signal to retreat.” This “must read” book offers practical and powerful tools for releasing us from our fear and shows us that fear can be a precious resource that can be used to create the lives we want and the world we want. It need not hold us back any longer.

As always, we begin our interview with the centering question, ‘What is in your heart right now as we begin this conversation?’

What I am struggling now with is the sequel to You Have the Power—it’s called We Have the Power. It’s a rewrite of a book I wrote ten years ago called The Quickening of America. It invites citizens to come together to create the world they really want. I’m struggling with how to speak my truth. I see the world differently than I did a decade ago and I want to make my views known but not alienate people or be ostracized. I see there are people now who have tremendous decision making authority over our lives, over the future of our environment, who I’ve come to feel really don’t share my democratic values, don’t share a belief in the diaglogic process which is a core value of the democratic process. Those in control in Washington today see politics as a war, where it’s not just a matter of debate and compromise, but a matter of destroying your enemy. So how, without demonizing them, do we help people awaken to the threat to our values’ core? How do we talk about that without sounding like extremists ourselves? How do I help people stand for democracy without becoming ideologues themselves?

Democracy for me is not an end point, it’s not a utopian future; its a way of living with mutual regard, understanding that we all have something to contribute to it and there is no enemy. Today I’m becoming more and more sobered realizing that those in power in Washington don’t share that view and do see me as the enemy (and see Democrats as the enemy) and are willing to sacrifice to allow the ends to justify the means.

If I am listening to the message of my own book, the things that come up in me as I begin to write today are fear of failure, fear of not feeling like I can be true to myself, not being true to my own goals. Our social nature is our greatest gift and our greatest pitfall. We are so connected to one another and we want to be true to the pack, yet, we fear ostracism and are so vulnerable. This fear this morning has put my stomach in a knot, but that is OK because I am at the edge of where I should be—struggling with exactly what I should be struggling with. The first chapter of You Have the Power challenges us to see fear not as a verdict that we are on the wrong path, but instead as a signal that we are in the unknown, that we are taking a risk. By removing the judgment from it, that begins to free up the energy. Even talking to you about it right now I feel my body relaxing a bit.

Throughout "You Have the Power" are inspiring examples of people the world over who have overcome tremendous fear, walked through very challenging circumstances and not just survived, but thrived. Frankie and her co-author, Jeffrey Perkins, are no exception. Both writers openly share their own bouts with fear and how they overcame it. For Frankie, it was most recently being diagnosed with breast cancer. For Jeff, it was openly admitting to the world he was gay. We asked her what she does personally when the fear begins to overtake.

I was so moved by the people I met on our journey around the world as we wrote this book. I carry these people within me now as I walk through life. I now know that fear doesn’t paralyze me and that I can keep walking with it, sometimes literally. This experience of the last five years has taught me a lesson about myself—that I do have the capacity to keep moving despite the fear and, if I keep moving, then new things happen, new energies enter in.

My all time hero of our journey is a woman named Wangari Maathai who started The Greenbelt Movement in Kenya. Faced with personal, even physical attacks (and imprisonment) for her pro-environment, pro-democracy work, she walked on. She has personally created a movement of village women planting trees throughout Kenya (Kenya has experienced extreme deforestation). Now 20 million trees later, through her persistence and dedication, Wangari is now the minister of the Department of the Environment. When asked how she overcame the fear and adversity she said, “I just came home and started sweeping.” What that means is just move, just do something.

Fear has a tendency to freeze us so that we can’t move. It paralyzes us. I love Wangari’s personal solution of sweeping. She just kept moving. Sometimes that is all we can do, but when we do, things are then in motion. In motion, things shift. Your perceptions shift. Things come to you that otherwise wouldn’t come to you. Do anything to move! Do something different, we don’t have to be stuck.

An additional fear which arises when we begin to attend to our own truths, speaking publicly for what we believe, is the fear of alienating our friends and family, work colleagues or neighbors. This fear often relegates us to silence or engaging in our activism unobtrusively or in secret. In You Have the Power Frankie and Jeff write about “Choosing Our Tribe.” The old thought that is discussed is ‘If I’m really myself, I’ll be excluded; if I break connection, I will be alone forever.’ As we become more truly ourselves, we do risk losing relationships, or experiencing change within them at best. Frankie shares that even in that, we will naturally draw others toward us who will support our journey.

In each chapter of You Have the Power, we offer an “Old Thought/New Thought” idea box. The new thought we proposed to counter this fear is ‘To find genuine connection, we must risk disconnection.’ When we are at this crossroads in our life, we may have to consciously choose our tribe. If we feel we can’t honestly move forward alone, we must ask ourselves who we know, who we can associate with and who will help us believe in our forward energy. We can consciously draw towards us the people who will support us in that and that is what is unique about humans. If there are people in our lives who are telling us to pull back (thus, staying in the fear) then we need to make some different choices. Diane Wilson (her story is in our book), a 4th generation shrimper from Texas who took on the chemical industries who were dumping toxins into the Gulf, stood up against everyone singlehandedly. I think most of us would have a hard time being her so we, therefore, need others to encourage us. And to break the connection with those who don’t support us is often the most painful thing we can do. The light we shine draws others toward us and we become conscious choosers. Support and companions do come. In the end, we are not alone, despite what we feared.

Frankie is one of those bold and energetic individuals who continues to persevere in increasing global awareness on many key issues of our lifetime. What is it that fuels her visionary eyesight and heart? What helps her carry on despite the fact that many situations (especially hunger and environmental destruction) seem to be worsening? And what does she do to connect every day with what is most meaningful for her?

It is the deep suffering that I have seen in the world since my early 20’s that pushes me. This intensification of suffering and the increasing alienation and depression of people on our planet is so needless. We have bought into it; we have gotten off track in a way that is so unnecessary. What drives me to get me up in the morning is seeking ways to continue to articulate to others how we have gotten off course; how to peel away the layers to understand how we have gotten where we are. To understand what is driving this destruction. That is what drives me on one level.

And in terms of my daily life? I don’t feel I need to do something to connect with my path, but I am very physical so I do love to get up in the morning and stretch and do some exercises. I live next to a beautiful pond which I walk around. At different points of my life I have been more or less a meditator. I have a wonderful room with a skylight where I can meditate. Classical music of all kinds makes me feel alive. I am a ‘nightstand Buddhist”—many Buddhist books are on my nightstand and that has been an important part of my understanding of life. The connectedness is always there from moment to moment whether we are conscious of it or not—we are connected to the whole.

Stories of people who are in action inspire me like those in our book. It is found in the phrase we just put up on our website (www.smallplanetinstitute.org), “Hope is not what we seek in evidence; it is what we become in action.” The last couple of weeks I’ve been siting with farmers in Pennsylvania and Minnesota talking to those who are challenging these large corporate hog confinement operations which are so inhumane to animals and are threatening the environment because of the magnitude of the manure. So being with others, sharing a meal with them, people who are out there everyday, acting on their beliefs, is a powerful source of hope for me.

A “hope news diet” is another way to connect. We have to be concerned about what we put into our mouths and we should be just as concerned about what we put into our minds. Five years ago I founded the American News Service which focuses on hopeful news connected with popular developments and forward edge solutions. Stories of people in action. We can consciously develop this concept within our families as well, not a Pollyanna approach to the news, but the idea of focusing on hope in action.

So this summer as news is dished out to us to continue to be afraid, do something different. Push the edge a little. Go door to door and encourage people to vote. Get involved in something you’ve never done. Reach out, risk rejection and talk to people who may not agree with you. Just DO something. What better use of our fear.