Page 48 - Tom Steyer Issue

building is the kind of economy that will support Amer- icans and American productivity and health. That includes a huge awareness of climate and preserving the natural world, for sure. That’s a definite part of our mis- sion statement and is something I’ve personally cared about for a long time. I think it’s important to having a productive and healthy state, and I know that Governor Newsom feels exactly the same way.
We don’t know how long the health crisis will continue, and therefore we’ll have to manage the assumption that we’re going to be in a world dominated by health con- cerns until we’re not–because we just don’t know. And so I think what Governor Newsom has done instead, first he closed us down—very smart, decisive, early. And he had a very granular plan to phase the reopening of California businesses—which we’re at phase two right now—with protocols to make sure that working people are protected, that the people they interact with are protected, including their customers, for retail opera- tions. And we have to live in that world of dealing with putting health first, as Governor Newsom said, and making sure we open as fast as we safely can, but realiz- ing the economies that do the best are the ones that pro- tect the health and safety of their citizens. Those economies have the most robust recoveries.
Cooper: In the sense of social distancing and with so much moving to the internet, have you looked at what’s happening with the digital divide?
Steyer: Absolutely. Governor Newsom talked about the digital divide in January in his State of the State
address, before COVID had become a global pandemic and a global crisis. But I think that the crisis is bring- ing new urgency and new time pressure to closing the digital divide because if young people are going to learn partially based on their access to high-speed Internet and Wi-Fi, that can’t be something that holds back low-income kids or rural kids. We just can’t have a society where people are prevented from reaching their full capabilities based on their access to Wi-Fi and their economic status. So that’s an equity issue to me; that’s a fairness and a justice issue to me. It exist- ed before this, but this brings a new urgency to it. And isn’t that true of so many of the issues in our society? There was injustice. There was inequity. People swept it under the rug or didn’t pay attention to it, and COVID has made it very clear and put a new urgency to making sure that we close a lot of those inequities, including specifically the digital divide for the kids, but also knowing that telemedicine is dependent on it, that a lot of reskilling and upskilling for unemployed people will be dependent on it. Absolutely, that’s something that’s on our minds.
Cooper: Do you want to talk a little bit about the food supply and agriculture?
Steyer: Absolutely. Let me say that my partner Kat Tay- lor and I have been raising grass-finished cattle, chick- ens, and pigs for over 50 years. We have been aware of food insecurity—a fancy term for hungry kids, for peo- ple who don’t have enough to eat. We started something called California Food for California Kids, which is farm-to-table in public schools in California. We serve
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