Hemp: The New Green Revolution

Ralph welcomes back his old running mate, Native American activist, Winona LaDuke, who has devoted her life to advocating for Indigenous control of their homelands, natural resources, and cultural practices to talk about her latest incarnation: hemp farmer. Then, we’ll speak to Hal Weitzman, from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, about how Elon Musk’s feud with Delaware may transform corporate America. Plus, we tick off Robert Reich’s ten policy prescriptions the Democratic Party should fight for to beat the GOP in the upcoming midterms.
Winona LaDuke is an activist, economist, and author, who has devoted her life to advocating for Indigenous control of their homelands, natural resources, and cultural practices. She is also a two-time vice-presidential candidate with Ralph Nader. Ms. LaDuke lives and works on the White Earth Ojibwe reservation in northern Minnesota, where she runs Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm. She is also a member of the Indigenous Hemp & Cannabis Farmer’s Cooperative.
I’m looking first at seed sovereignty. We’re growing [European hemp] varieties and then we’re growing these feral hemp varieties. They’re called feral varieties (which of course, that’s something that I love) which means that when they eradicated hemp in the 1930s with the Marijuana Prohibition Act—well, they missed some spots. And those guys kept growing. And so 80 years of being illegal—isn’t that great? Something that’s illegal for 80 years is still with us, rocking out. And so I figure if you grew illegally for 80 years, you are really a tough hemp plant…And so we are growing out these hemp varieties and built a cooperative because we want to own the seeds and we want to own the technology (the value-added processing), and we want to use this hemp as a part of our future as tribes.
Winona LaDuke
My grandsons are farming. I don’t know who else can say their grandchildren are farming—let me know. My grandchildren are farming. They’re running the horses. They’re running the farms. You know, that’s a retirement plan. My 401k will be worth nothing, but my grandchildren will feed me. This is my strategy.
Winona LaDuke
Hal Weitzman is Executive Director for Intellectual Capital at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, editor-in-chief of Chicago Booth Review, and host of The Chicago Booth Review podcast. A former Financial Times editor and foreign correspondent, he is the author of Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering and What’s the Matter with Delaware?: How the First State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal—and How It Costs Us All.
There is a race to the bottom. There’s been a race to the bottom for many decades. That’s not new. I think it’s accelerated somewhat. Delaware has joined that race from having been something of a “premium product” in terms of incorporating companies—Delaware has become a bit more “cut-price” I would say, and in that sense has followed Texas and Nevada. So the conclusion that we have a race to the bottom and it may be worse than Delaware—actually I think Delaware’s already there. So it’s not that it’s getting worse outside of Delaware, it’s getting worse including Delaware.
Hal Weitzman
The trend I think we’re seeing is the exclusion of small shareholders completely—regardless of the status of your shares, this is about how big you are. And if you’re a small shareholder there is no corporate democracy for you… It was practice in the past for activist groups, campaigning groups, to buy one share of a company and then to go to the shareholder meeting so they could make the point that they wanted to make. Now that kind of shareholder democracy is being encroached on. And the extent now is to say: unless you have a large position (regardless of the size of the company and the cost of the shares), you will not be allowed to bring suits against the executives for the correct running of the company.
Hal Weitzman
News 7/17/2...