Post Carbon Fellow Chuck Collins was interviewed about his book Born on Third Base by Real Change.

From the article:

I haven’t heard anyone else talk about the role of empathy in tackling income inequality the way that you have. Why empathy?
Part of what keeps us apart is we don’t, in an open-hearted way, understand each other’s experience. Privilege is a disconnection drug that keeps you apart. It keeps you from feeling other people’s experience. I think we all feel the gap, wherever we are on the economic spectrum. And the question is what do we do with that emotionally? We could disconnect or we could try to remain as open-hearted as possible. And part of what I try to do for all of my friends in the 99 percent is to say, yes, there are these scoundrels who use their wealth and power to get more wealth and power. But there are also allies, people who are also using their privilege to work toward a world with less- unfair privilege. And there’s a huge segment of people who are anesthetized by privilege and the benefits of having way, way more than they need. But they’re disconnected, and the invitation to the 99 percent is to realize that there are a lot of people who are very fearful and disconnected and who want to be in an authentic community of connection and know that that means greater equality but have no idea how to get there and need connection with other people just like we all do.