Clara Long
FROM:
This is something of a difficult question. Northern California, mostly. I live in Somerville, MA now and I’ve also lived in France, Venezuela and Brazil.
HEROES:
One is Xavier Plassat, a Dominican monk I used to work for in the Brazilian Amazon. He runs an anti-debt slavery campaign in Brazil. He's been doing if for about 20 years and it's depressing stuff. He told me his secret about having hope: if you want it, you have to cultivate it.
PROUDEST ACCOMPLISHMENT:
The friendships and family relationships that help me construct meaning in the world.
SOMETHING YOU MIGHT TEACH AT THE SUMMIT:
Something about creating and accessing spaces in which we can listen to and hear each other, about deepening political dialogue and creating shared meaning in a world of new interconnections. Something about how the law is and should be part of that process.
SOMETHING YOU HOPE TO LEARN AT THE SUMMIT:
How I'm limiting my thought process by taking on the strategies of legal analysis.
SOMETHING YOU ARE STRUGGLING WITH IN YOUR WORK:
I struggle with striking the balance between broad and specific areas of expertise and cultivating focus and energy.
SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOU HAPPY:
High mountain sage, skinny-dipping, good story-telling, tasty whiskey.
SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOU ANGRY:
The word on the street is that anger is a motivating force for creating change in the world. That may be, but I'm not convinced it ever creates productive change. I try to feel anger - not suppress it - but it's hard to say what makes me angry because I see it as emotional energy that arises (somewhat unpredictably) from a variety of places. I think we can cultivate responses to these emotions. Nothing has to make us feel anything in particular and there is a way in which calling something 'anger' cements that pre-packaged experience within us. Like lots of people, however, I feel deep discomfort upon feeling - or seeing others - silenced or discounted.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR FAMILY:
My dad - a Vietnam vet - is a man of aphorisms. "Happiness is having something to look forward to." "Keep your options open." His work focuses on revitalizing downtown areas in California suburban wastelands by promoting 'mixed-use' development. My mom is a geo-scientist who now tries to light fires under decision-makers about climate change. My awesome older brother shapes wood into art and also studies climate-related oceanography. In general, they are curious and engaged in the world. They are also wonderfully hedonistic, living the good life in Berkeley.
AN IDEA TO MAKE THE 30SUMMIT EVEN BETTER:
I'm not sure what all is on the table. Could it be interesting to try to outline an agenda for future summits and then use it to structure discussion/refinement in a public forum on the website?
BIOGRAPHY:
Clara is the co-producer of Border Stories, an online and feature-length documentary shot on the U.S.-Mexico border. Winner of the Every Human Has Rights media award, Border Stories tries to get at the humanity behind contentious debates about immigration and cultural change. She has worked as a freelance foreign correspondent in Venezuela and with the landless workers' movement in the Brazilian Amazon. As a J.D. student at Harvard Law School she focuses on immigration and human rights law.
