In this month's edition of In My Third Act, Jane Fleishman writes about her conversation with Carolyn Ham of Third Act Minnesota. Ham has always been involved in activism, from participating in the anti-apartheid movement and working as an Attorney General, to her work with 350.org and now Third Act. For her, environmental activism is about finding the joy while acknowledging the struggle.
It’s a hot summer day in Minneapolis and Carolyn Ham, along with other Third Actors, are blocking the entrance to Wells Fargo corporate headquarters to protest the bank’s lending to fossil fuel companies. Carolyn and her fellow activists are trained in Nonviolent Direct Action and are ready to be arrested rather than give up on calling attention to Wells Fargo’s harmful lending practices.
“I’m an attorney and a lot of my career I spent enforcing the law, getting people to follow the rules.” says Carolyn. “I’m mostly retired now and much more willing to publicly challenge authority and even break the rules. I agree with Bill McKibben that we older folks need to be the ones putting ourselves on the line. I keep my Old and Bold button nearby to inspire me.”
Carolyn, a co-facilitator of Third Act Minnesota and chair of their Fossil Free Finance committee, has always considered herself an activist. She grew up in Madison, Wisconsin where there were huge protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960’s. When she was 9 years old her mother, fearing her son would be sent to fight, took Carolyn to the march for the Moratorium to End the War. She recalls being aware of social and political issues from a young age, especially the civil rights movement. She was very influenced by a speaker who came to her third grade class to teach students about racism and stereotypes. At Carlton College and in law school at the University of California at Berkeley, she was involved in the anti-apartheid movement, advocating for divestment from South Africa, an early echo of her Third Act divestment work.
When it came time to choose a career, Carolyn says, “public service was an easy choice.” She remembers being in a powerless situation as a young person and wishing someone with power could have helped her. She was also influenced by her mother’s example, a homemaker who “was always thinking of others and how to help.” Carolyn’s first job was in the office of the Minnesota Attorney General, going after folks who were defrauding the public. Throughout her career she held various public interest positions, including as a district attorney, a trainer of law enforcement officers for a battered women’s justice project, representing kids in foster care, and acting as Inspector General for fraud and abuse in Minnesota’s Aging and Adult Services programs. “Working for a large corporation so I could earn a big salary was never a goal that motivated me,” says Carolyn.
Climate activism became something that did motivate her. “When I learned about the climate crisis, my feeling was that it trumped everything. It impacts every living creature on earth and people are ignoring it,” says Carolyn. “I realized I need to shift to this.” When Bill McKibben’s “Do the Math” tour came through Minneapolis, Carolyn signed up for 350.org Minnesota and helped fight a tar sands pipeline coming through Minnesota. Once she retired, she heard about Third Act and said “This is it. This is where I need to be.”
Carolyn is buoyed by the results she sees being achieved through collective action in Third Act. She keeps in mind that she has just a little piece of what needs to be done to address the climate crisis and that it’s impossible to know the impact her one little piece might have. “Knowing I’m part of a larger movement gives me hope,” says Carolyn. “Being with others who are concerned feels so good, especially since we all came together right after the isolation of the COVID pandemic.”
She tries to keep in mind the positive news, like the amazing and rapid transformation of energy systems around the world. “I like to start with what we can do about the climate crisis rather than starting with a focus on the crisis,” says Carolyn. She makes sure to regularly do things that lift her spirits. She volunteers weekly with kindergartners and first graders at a local school and also makes space in her life for a lifelong passion: dance. As a young person she did ballet and modern. In her second act, she did swing dance and some ballroom. There were times in her life when she didn’t dance but she always came back to it, wondering why she’d ever stopped. Now she regularly joins a unique group in Minneapolis that provides a DJ and a space for people of all ages, gender identities, income levels, and dance backgrounds to freely dance in whichever way they want. “It’s so freeing and a real source of joy for me,” says Carolyn.
“I’ve always been a fairly optimist person and able to access the joy that life offers alongside the struggles,” says Carolyn. “We need to find the joy in this work. Otherwise we won’t want to keep going.”
Read the latest in our In My Third Act series
Jane Fleishman
Jane Fleishman is a Third Actor residing in Nashville, TN who is regularly pulled to NYC where her first grandchild lives and to the Southwest where so many of her other family members live. She is retired from a social work career mainly focused on creating and promoting volunteer and civic leadership opportunities for youth in their First Act.
Carolyn Ham
Carolyn Ham is an environmental activist, mother, lawyer, dancer and fisherwomen. She spent the first part of her legal career advocating for consumers and fighting fraud as an Assistant Attorney General. She also trained law enforcement in best practices in handling domestic violence situations and later, rooted out health care insurance fraud. She finished her career at the State of Minnesota, helping the state with its COVID-19 pandemic response for people living in residential facilities.
Having retired in 2022, she is now advocating for climate justice. She first got involved with the climate fight with Minnesota 350, protesting against various Enbridge tar sands pipelines that cut through her beautiful state. After being on the law enforcement side most of her career, she is now ready to defy unjust laws and take direct action to bring about the change we need. She is currently one of the co-facilitators for Third Act Minnesota.
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