30 years ago, in 1994, then-US Labor Secretary Robert Reich issued a prescient warning to all Americans: “We are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society.” Reich also predicted that, as wealth inequality continued to explode in the US, working people would be consumed by righteous populist rage that could be easily manipulated; the rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement decades later proved Reich to be devastatingly right. In this special livestreamed edition of Inequality Watch, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis continue their deep dive into the history and political repercussions of our historic wealth imbalance by talking to Robert Reich himself. In this wide-ranging discussion, the former Labor Secretary explains how wealthy oligarchs have bought off our democracy, profited from dividing us, and smothered serious efforts to mitigate the climate crisis as well as popular progressive policies like universal healthcare and affordable housing.

Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Written by: Stephen Janis

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Taya Graham:

Hello. My name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Inequality Watch on The Real News Network. Now, as you may or may not know myself and my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, normally host the police accountability report. But we also focus our investigative reporting skills on another topic we think is just as important, the explosion of economic inequality in the US.

It’s an issue that affects almost everything we do. It’s why our healthcare system pushes so many into bankruptcy. It’s why working people have been working longer and harder. Yet, the real wages have barely risen over the past 40 years. And it’s why discussions about problems like climate change are submerged, no pun intended, in a tsunami of misinformation. It is in a sense the issue that none of us can afford to ignore.

On our last Inequality Watch, we spoke with legendary economist, Richard Wolff. And we discussed one of the most obvious symptoms of this unequal system, billionaires. We examined not just the impact of billionaires on our election, but how wealth influences and often constrains our political debate and how we approach complex social problems.

I mean, think about the last election and the debates that defined it. Did we hear a word about how our country bankrupts people who get sick? Did we hear anything about living wages or a real and thoughtful debate about how to create affordable housing or fight climate change or really save social security? Of course not.

Instead, billionaires who pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns and super PACs and think tanks have corralled common sense by conjuring false conflicts that prompted us to fight amongst ourselves and they get richer. And the mainstream and social media have gleefully and gainfully fueled our culture wars.

But there is a good reason for this, because the system that sustains extreme wealth is not only flawed, but absolutely constructed in a way that is self-sustaining. And it does so in part by blinding our minds to the truth. It’s like inequality is making us sick. And the political movement that could save us is prevented from revealing a cure.

But today, we’re going to find it and take a healthy dose of economic justice medicine to allow us to overcome the disease that ails all of us. And I will also be in the live chat to answer questions for you when I can. And to do so, we are so lucky to be joined by one of the foremost thinkers on this subject, Robert Reich. The former Clinton labor secretary, has been at the forefront of debates over the impact of inequality on our society, constantly steering our deranged national discourse towards sense and sanity through facts, insight, and expert analysis.

He is a champion of labor and the rights of workers. But he’s also a soothsayer who predicted the rise of our politics of disillusionment merely three decades ago due to, you guessed it, rising inequality. Let’s just watch a brief clip of him talking about it in 1994, almost 30 years ago through the day. I would love to play every moment of this video. But when I get a chance, I will post a link in the chat for you.

Robert Reich:

If American business continues to pursue short-term profits at the price of insecurity and falling living standards for a large portion of our society, it will sooner or later reap the bitter harvests of popular rage. The American public is basically pro-business. But that support rests upon an implicit bargain. And American business betrays that bargain every time it fires an older worker in order to hire a younger one at a lower cost. Every time it provides gold-plated health insurance to top executives, but it cuts health insurance or denies health insurance to its regular workers.

Every time it labels an employee who had been a full-time employee an independent contractor for the purpose of getting that employee off the payroll and lowering various benefits. Every time it discards its workers, rather than investing in their future capacity to produce and produce more and produce better and produce smarter, particularly when profits are booming. What America must do fundamentally is empower every man and woman to earn their way into the new middle class.

Taya Graham:

Okay. You can see we have the right guest for the topic at hand to say the least. I mean, do we have Nostradamus here or do we have an economist who actually took the time to look at the impact of globalization and computerization and automation and rabid corporate profit-seeking and actually saw the impact it would have on people?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. It’s really interesting because when I watch that clip, I have an epiphany because we had been at the Republican National Convention and we had talked to people and tried to push them on like, “What specific policies?” And there was this real sense of nostalgia and angry nostalgia in the people that we talked to.

And I think now when I’m watching the clip, I get the sense that what they were nostalgic about was a time period when this country actually cared about the middle class and working class. I think they were really … They would be angry about immigration or something, but it seemed to me all focused on this idea, we need to go back. But go back to what? Go back to when there were people who were leading this country who actually cared about how policies affected working-class people.

And I think that’s what this clip foretells, that these devices would come forward and just basically define the future, which is what we saw at the Republican National Convention.

Taya Graham:

Stephen, I think that’s an excellent way to categorize some of the grievance that we saw, as well as it was nostalgia as well. And it was nostalgic as well. That’s a really excellent point.

Stephen Janis:

But a twisted form of nostalgia, too, that doesn’t see the future and really doesn’t see any possibilities. And that’s what Professor was talking about there.

Taya Graham:

But before we go back to Professor Reich, I want to revisit some of the ideas from our last show so we can build on them. Now, this is a method we use on the show to add some context to the facts of how wealth inequality impacts all of us. So, last time, we came up with a way of categorizing billionaires to help us understand this idea. We wanted to discuss the relationship between how extreme wealth is acquired and how that process infiltrates our political discourse, shapes public policy, and influences how we vote.

So, I want to take a minute to review these ideas so that we can explore their mechanics, and I want to examine the operating system of our inequality economics. So, Stephen, we came up with three types of billionaires that we argued had an outsized impact on our political discourse. Can you review them for us quickly and tell us why they’re important?

Stephen Janis:

Well, we came up with carbon billionaires who are billionaires that make money off fossil fuels. We had conflict billionaires who are billionaires that make money off creating social media and a media ecosystem that thrives off of discourse, discord and strife and anger. And then we came up with capture billionaires are the people who extract money through private equity or through investment bank or whatever.

So, we came up with those three to say, “Here is a political economy that emerges from these three billionaires.” And especially today, we’re going to focus on the conflict billionaires because of the way their ecosystem has created this public square that is all about conflict and not about solving problems. So, those are the three just quickly overview of how they work.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So, that was a great summation. And so, for the purpose of our discussion today though, I just want to focus on one genus of billionaires, specifically the conflict variety. That’s because I think they have create, what we would call, a conflict-rich environment. And the reason I make this point is because we need to keep this idea in mind as we unpack this subject with our guests. This means the waters, so to speak, are muddied by this so-called conflict environment.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the problem is one thing we saw talking to voters, like I said, they had very little grasp of policy. And I think that’s because we’re all immersed in a conflict, kind of what you said, like a conflict-defined ecosystem of information that makes it impossible to really discuss complex policy. You’re just basically there to dunk on people. And really a lot of the voters seem really misinformed in many ways about their own self-interest. So, we’re trying to create a way of analyzing that and looking through the lens of conflict economics and, by extension, conflict media.

Taya Graham:

I’d just like to add that this very immersive information complex that we’re confronted with daily uses a very specific conveyor to decide what we see and read. So, what rises to the top of the algorithmic ladder gets there because it generates the most antipathy and the most animosity. I mean, social media companies have literally helped fuel ethnic conflict and civil wars, and that’s where the conflict billionaires pave the way for extreme wealth without accountability. You can’t fight the power, so to speak, if we’re fighting each other.

So, we need to remember that as we try to evolve our thinking about this topic of economics, because that system can simply bury the information, bury the discussion, and bury the analysis that seeks to hold it accountable. And that brings me again to our guest, former labor secretary and labor rights champion, Robert Reich.

Let me give or at least try to give a brief introduction. His latest is The System: Who Rigged It, and How to Fix It. He served as the secretary of labor in the Clinton administration for which Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the 20th century. And of course, he has a Substack, Robert Reich, a YouTube channel named after him, and he’s the co-founder of Inequality Media, a nonpartisan digital media company whose mission is to inform and engage the public about inequality and the imbalance of power in our society.

And if any of you watching want to learn more about the economics of inequality, please follow Professor Reich and his colleagues at Inequality Media. Professor Reich, welcome to the Inequality Watch, and thank you so much for joining us.

Robert Reich:

Well, thank you, Taya. Thank you for inviting me. And Stephen, it’s very, very good to talk with you as well.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you.

Taya Graham:

So, first, if you don’t mind, it would be great if you could give us some sense of the historical perspective on the magnitude of inequality at this moment in our history. And maybe even more importantly, what did you see 30 years ago that told you this extreme inequality was on its way? What did you see that no one else could? Or was it that other people saw it but refused to admit the truth? I mean, how did you know?

Robert Reich:

Well, I don’t want to take credit for knowing what other people did not know. I think that, “Oh, Washington, DC has a tendency to exaggerate things that are politically powerful and self-politically like conflict.” But submerge, as you suggested, Taya, a few minutes ago, submerge some of the real important structural issues that we ought to be talking about.

And as secretary of labor, it seemed to me very important to talk about those structural issues. I took some heat for it, but I think it was worth it. You mentioned before that the conflict industry, particularly with regard to social media, tries to sell various time and goods and services on the basis of conflict, and that’s absolutely right. But there’s something else going on here as well, and that is that the more we are angry with each other, working-class people, middle-class people in America, the less we look up and see where all the wealth and power in our society has actually gone.

It’s gone to the top and it’s gone to the top in a fairly short amount of time. I mean, starts in the late ’70s, early 1980s, the Reagan administration and the deregulation of Wall Street, globalization through trade, the ability of companies to put the squeeze and really corrupt and overwhelm their labor unions. And finally, the ability of companies to monopolize their markets all contributed to this extraordinary rise in inequality, which can only be compared I think to what happened in the late-19th century, early-20th century. It was called then the First Gilded Age, or it was called the Gilded Age really is the First Gilded Age.

Because what we’re seeing right now is comparable, the same degrees of inequality, the same robber barons, that’s what we used to call them in the First Gilded Age. There are robber barons. There are people who are abusing their wealth and using it to essentially corrupt our democracy.

Stephen Janis:

Wow. Professor, so is it okay if we refer to this as a Second Gilded Age from on, that would be helpful. There’s this idea, this notion, that politics are irreparably divided. But how much of that divide is a result of the economic inequality and the forces of inequality you talked about? I mean, is it really a divide or is it really just that this sometimes unexpressed notion of inequality is driving us to loathe each other in some way?

Robert Reich:

Well, I think you have a huge number of people in this country, Stephen, who although they’ve worked harder than ever, they’re playing by the rules. They are not getting ahead. Now, the American dream used to be that if you did play by the rules and you worked hard, you would do better and better economically over your lifetime and your children would do better than you. And that was what happened in the first three or four decades after the Second World War.

We created the largest middle class the world had ever seen, larger than America had ever seen. And people did better and better and better, and their children did better than they did. But that all came apart. It came apart in part because of corruption, because the rules of the game changed, because you had a really fundamental shift in the structure of the economy brought about by a few extremely wealthy people and extremely big corporations.

Now, we can get into the details of what happened. But I think the important point for this discussion is that the Republicans effectively used this anger and frustration and disillusionment to go after cultural elites. The Democrats did not use this anger, frustration, and disillusionment to go after, to me, the real culprits, which were economic elites.

Stephen Janis:

Agreed. Agreed by that.

Taya Graham:

Wow. That’s a powerful analysis.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, it really is interesting how the anger has been misdirected quite efficiently by Republicans. They’ve been very, very effective at that, at scapegoating, as I think you’ve talked about before.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. And the Democrats have, unfortunately, missed the vote there.

Stephen Janis:

No. The Democrats have been the recipients of it, because they seem like institutionalists and elitists at this point. And it just does what the Professor’s talking about. All the anger just rises and makes them incapable of articulating a vision of a fair future for people.

Taya Graham:

And it is ironic that they’re considered the elitists, but at the same time you see them with the great celebrities. But then, of course, the Republican Party, you have a cabinet full of billionaires. So, how’s that not elitist? But I actually wanted to address something and I have this clip I wanted to share with you because there had been criticism of a policy that had occurred under the Clinton administration, which is NAFTA with regard to alienating the working class and costing jobs for blue collar workers. So, I just want to play your critique from your Coffee Klatch podcast and just have us all take a listen to it.

Robert Reich:

I was very proud to be part of the Clinton administration. I was a cabinet member of the Clinton administration. But that was an administration that embraced NAFTA and Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization and deregulated Wall Street, got rid of the basic, basic 1930s acts that would’ve separated and did separate investment from commercial banking.

Said to Wall Street, “Go ahead, do whatever you want.” And put antitrust and monopolization on the backburner and said, “Big companies, you want to merge, go ahead.” And did not actually move toward labor law change and reform.

Taya Graham:

Now, Professor Reich, we can’t go back in time and undo NAFTA. But what can be done going forward? Is there any way we can fix the damage that occurred in a meaningful way or is there just no way to put the genie back in the bottle?

Robert Reich:

Well, we can put the genie back in the bottle. In fact, I think the Trump administration, ironically, is talking about very, very large tariffs on Mexico and on Canada. Now, I’m not suggesting this is a good thing. But it certainly goes back to the years before NAFTA. I think the real issue here is developing a set of policies, and I do not expect the Trump administration filled with billionaires and planning to give them even more of a tax break will do this.

But the real issue is how to equip every American, even those without college degrees, with what they need to do well in this new economy. I don’t think we need to take globalization for granted. I don’t think we need to take for granted that Wall Street is going to become the center of the economy. I think that’s been an extraordinarily bad thing for most workers.

We should not take for granted that big companies are going to be as profitable as they are or as big as they are. They should be broken up. We can change the structure of the economy to make it an economy that works for everybody instead of working for just a handful of people at the top.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean to your point there, which is interesting and my next question is, first of all, I’d like to know what you think about things like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act in terms of addressing those issues, but also explain why the voters we talked to seem so unaware of these policies. They’re massive industrial policies, which I would think would be good for working people, but the people we spoke to just aren’t aware of them.

So, for the first question is, is that a good way to address what you’re talking about having these industrial policies? And secondly, why doesn’t it permeate the political discussion and why are voters unaware of these things that could be beneficial to them?

Robert Reich:

Well, they’re unaware, I think, in large part, because the Biden administration did not know how to tell them about it. I mean, voters when they just see Inflation Reduction Act or they see policies or they see an Infrastructure Act or they see numbers attached to these things and their eyes glaze over. They have no idea what they mean.

I mean, to talk about these things in a practical way, you’ve got to go back to people’s kitchen tables and say, “This is what this means in terms of your pocketbook. It’s going to happen not now, but it’s going to happen six months from now.” Or “This is what the goal is and you can check in along the way and let’s see whether you are doing better and your children are doing better and you’re getting better jobs.” But there was no attempt to do that. No contextualizing, no narrative, no story, just a bunch of policies.

Stephen Janis:

No story. Yeah. I’m sorry. Just to follow up. But do you think in terms of addressing the need for people who don’t have college degrees to have good jobs, are those the policies that you would think would be best to do? I just want to make sure to clarify that. Do you support that industrial policy or do you think that it’s not going to work in the long run?

Robert Reich:

I think that those policies are very important. They’ve already started to work, but they’re just the beginnings. I mean, people need, for example, paid family leave. They need help with caregiving to children and to elderly people in their families who need care. Most people need help with housing. We have a housing crisis across the country. I mean, these are kitchen table issues. But the political classes really not directly dealing with them.

Stephen Janis:

That’s interesting.

Taya Graham:

I just wanted to follow up just to try to understand how a system like this develops in DC. I mean, you’re obviously very pro-worker, very pro-labor person. Can you understand how a concept and a policy like NAFTA happens? I mean, couldn’t they foresee the impact it would have on workers? I mean, did it happen because corporations were picturing greater profits and they were influencing the process? I mean, can you help us understand what happens in the DC bubble, so a policy like this gets pushed forward and the American worker ends up hurt?

Robert Reich:

It happened because big corporations and very wealthy people who stood to gain a lot of money pushed the George H.W. administration to negotiate the North America Free Trade Act. And then it was very hard for Bill Clinton and the Clinton administration to do an about-face. In fact, the same forces that actually got NAFTA to be enacted in the first place were still there under the Clinton administration.

Organized labor, now this is important. Organized labor constituted about a third of the entire private sector workforce in the 1950s and 1960s. But by the time of the Clinton administration organized labor was down to about 10% of the private sector workforce. Today, it’s down to 6% of the private sector workforce. So, in other words, you’ve had a total collapse of organized labor as a political force. It’s just not there.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Stephen, we covered the Republican National Convention. I think you wanted to ask him about some of the grievances that we saw.

Stephen Janis:

Well, we asked about that. I do want to ask you something just and delve into the personal with you, because we watched your documentary, Saving Capitalism, which is excellent. And the thing that struck me after going through all your stuff is the consistency in your care for working people, your support of working people, and the idea that government should be effective in some ways, which shouldn’t seem revolutionary, but it kind of is.

But I was just wondering, I was wanting to know your earlier story. How did you come to this philosophy that seemed to guide you through your life? Was it something a book you read at one point or experiences when you were younger? I felt like it left me wanting to know more about you in terms of how you arrived at this worldview that has been consistent.

Robert Reich:

Well, it’s interesting to me that you would ask the question, because this worldview is so basic to me and to everything I experienced, particularly as a young person. The Civil Rights Movement convinced me that government could play a very important part in giving people opportunities and overcoming oppression and bigotry. The anti-war movement, the Anti-Vietnam War movement of which I was a part, convinced me that if people came together and expressed themselves and mobilized and organized, they could change the course of government policy and bring about better consequences.

I was weaned on the notion, my parents and grandparents, that under Franklin D. Roosevelt government really did save the country, that saved the economy, saved the working class, saved the middle class. So, it didn’t strike me as very unusual. What strikes me as unusual is the idea the government is somehow the enemy. It wasn’t until Ronald Reagan was president when he said, “Government is the problem.”

Government is not the problem. I mean, the problem really is the corruption of government by big economic interests that have changed the rules to make sure that they do better and better and better, and everybody else is essentially stepped on.

Taya Graham:

You mentioned something in 1994 and that video just … I really want everyone to watch that because it was so prescient. You mentioned something that few people saw, not only the trajectory that would create a two-tiered system, but that people would begin looking for scapegoats. And it seems that your prediction was accurate, especially in light of the heated conversation around immigration where the loss of American jobs and benefits is blamed on immigrants. Let’s just take a listen to a piece of that clip and then I’ll ask you a question so you can respond.

Robert Reich:

Middle-class families have not been able to regain their footing. They push these coping mechanisms about as far as they can go, and they still feel that they are losing the American dream. My friends, we are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners at a larger group of Americans left behind whose anger and whose disillusionment is easily manipulated.

Once unbottled, mass resentment can poison the very fabric of society, the moral integrity of a society, replacing ambition with envy, replacing tolerance with hate. Today, the targets of that rage are immigrants and welfare mothers and government officials and gays and an ill-defined counterculture. But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?

Taya Graham:

It makes me think of that saying “What’s past is prologue.” I mean, it’s just so prophetic and they seem to predict perfectly, these recent culture wars have been inflamed by social media companies that profit from the outrage. And I do think it can be argued that there are some problems at our border with how immigrants are processed in our country.

But to see that foreign-born people who are producing food or working in fields or working in food processing plants or working in our dairies or harming us, it seems like a rhetoric designed to avoid looking at the real culprits of our economic distress. So, I would like to know what you would say to people who are being inundated with this divisive and arguably inaccurate rhetoric to explain why the scapegoating is occurring and who it really benefits.

Robert Reich:

Well, the scapegoating benefits the people who really are behind the corruption of our American politics, the big corporations, very wealthy and Wall Street. Now, it benefits them because they’re off the hook. They are not seen by anybody as the real culprits, because the Democratic Party is not focusing on them. The Democratic Party doesn’t want to bite the hands that feed them. The Republican Party is basically their handmaidens.

And so, who is it out there who people understand to be the causes of stagnant wages, insecure jobs and lack of healthcare, lack of … well, everything that we’ve talked about that people need. I think it really comes down to a very simple proposition and that is that people understand that there’s a problem. There’s a huge problem that the economy is really not working, but they want to know why.

And if one party is making up excuses, talking about the deep state and immigrants and blaming communists and saying Democrats are socialists and just making up all kinds of scapegoats. And the other party that is the Democrats are not actually talking about the corruption that comes from huge money infecting our politics from big corporations and from wealthy people and from Wall Street.

Then who are you going to believe? Well, you don’t have much choice. You’re only given the Republican story. This is what one of the big tragedies of our time. The Democratic Party has not just turned its back on the working class. The Democratic Party has actually stopped telling the accurate story about why the working class and the middle class are in such trouble today.

Stephen Janis:

Professor, how much do you think that problem is? Because Democrats embraced, and I know this is a fraught word, neoliberalism, because I’ve covered a lot of local governments and state governance and it’s always public-private partnerships. We’re going to solve this with a tax break for a corporation. This will solve everything.

How much of the Democrats succumb to the notion of neoliberalism has made it almost impossible for them to articulate an argument that they really care about the working class so that their policies are focused on the working class? How much is neoliberalism a problem?

Robert Reich:

Well, neoliberalism is at the core of the problem for the Democrats. If by neoliberalism you mean privatization, deregulation, international trade, all of the things that basically the big corporations and the wealthy and Wall Street wants. But the underlying problem has to do with money. Once the Supreme Court began opening the floodgates to big money and politics, and I’m talking about really before the cases that we all know about, I mean it really starts with Buckley versus Valeo in the early-1970s.

Once the Supreme Court begins to open American politics to that corruption, then there’s almost no end to it. Because the corruption changes the rules of the game. And the rules of the game being changed enables the wealthy to become even wealthier, the big corporations to become even bigger, and then they can turn around and use even more of their money to corrupt the process even further. It’s a ratcheting effect that is extraordinarily dangerous.

Taya Graham:

I was thinking about one of the messages that seem to underlie almost all of our political debates, which is the idea that it’s a zero-sum game. In other words, all policies lead to either winners or losers. But you wrote a book that suggests otherwise, called The Common Good. Can you talk about this idea a little and maybe why it seems or maybe just feels almost impossible to really discuss and embrace the common good in the current political environment?

Robert Reich:

I think most Americans, average people, your friends, people in your community understand the notion of the common good. People are generous. I mean, they see somebody who is in trouble on the sidewalk and they respond to those people. They see somebody who is in a car crash and they immediately call the police and they respond.

This is not rocket science. This is not a perversion of the public norms. No. The common good is alive everyday reality. The people who are the first responders, the people who are nurses and nurses’ aides and social workers and teachers, they all understand the common good. The people who don’t understand the common good, unfortunately, are trapped in a system in which big money has corrupted them and big money has corrupted the part of the system that they exist in.

Stephen Janis:

So, that brings up a really interesting point because there’s this internal debate in the Democratic Party about they went to left or they need to go more left or center. But really, it’s about a discussion about policy and how do we get to this point, we’re saying something like Medicare for All, which makes common sense, is an ideological position? Why do we think of policies that make sense, speaking to the idea of the common good, policies that help people are somehow leftist or ideological? It doesn’t really make any sense. Why do we view them way? Is that the wrong way to view them?

Robert Reich:

It’s completely the wrong way to view them. I don’t even know what left and right means anymore. Because people who are associated with the left do talk the language of the common good. People with a right talk the language that is most conducive to the rich, getting richer, to big corporations and Wall Street and very wealthy people doing even better. Why can’t we all speak the language of the common good? Shouldn’t that be the political debate we’re having or we should have?

Stephen Janis:

I think so.

Robert Reich:

I frankly don’t understand it. And it becomes even stranger today because when people say Democrats should move to the center, what’s the center in democracy and fascism? I don’t understand what the center is.

Stephen Janis:

It’s kind of a hybrid, an impossible hybrid. You can’t have a hybrid of autocracy and democracy. But yeah. No. I’m glad you made that point, because I really feel like we get lost the minute this debate starts like, well, they wanted Medicare for all, so they went too far radical for the people of this country. Or they want to have job programs or things that are … It just makes no sense and we can’t get trapped in that. I mean, Professor …

Robert Reich:

Particularly, Stephen, when you look at other advanced nations that are not even as wealthy as we are, that are wealthy, but they’re not even as wealthy as the United States. They have paid family leave. That’s common. They provide their people by law with four weeks or five weeks vacation every year. I mean, that’s the law. They provide medical care to almost everybody. They provide access to college that is almost free to everybody. I mean, these are standard common goods in most other advanced nations. We are the outlier. We are the extremes with regard to catering to the big corporations and the financiers and the very, very wealthy.

Taya Graham:

I was actually really excited because you’re a former cabinet member, so I thought you would have some interesting insights into President Trump’s cabinet picks. And one that I’m particularly interested in is the proposed department of government efficiency, which has been tasked to look for government waste and inefficiency. And in my opinion isn’t a bad idea in theory.

But the fact that not one but two billionaires are in charge is something that I find extremely problematic. I mean, they’re great at accruing capital, but treating something that’s a public good as a for-profit enterprise, from what I’ve seen in my own city, Baltimore, doesn’t necessarily benefit the public. So, I was just wondering, is there any way that a Department of Government efficiency could be useful and what would that look like and do you think this one has any potential?

Robert Reich:

Yeah. The most useful thing that something like this could do would be to look at what are called tax expenditures. Now, when I say that word, people’s eyes glaze over. But I’m going to say it again, tax expenditures. These are things like the mortgage interest deduction or all of the benefits that corporations get from a rapid appreciation, depreciation or all of the other specific tax breaks and loopholes for Wall Street in the tax code.

If you go after them, I mean, look at the carried interest tax loophole that goes really to hedge fund managers and to private equity managers. There is literally no reason for that loophole. That’s inefficient. It means that everybody else has to pay more in taxes. Let’s get rid of it. And look at the mortgage interest deduction. I mean, I can understand for low-income or middle-income homeowners. But why should homeowners who are earning over $500,000 a year and are living in mansions, why should they get a mortgage interest deduction? Get rid of it.

And we could go through all of the special loopholes and tax breaks that have been put into the tax code because big corporations and wealthy people have the clout to get them. Start there. Elon. Elon, are you hearing me? There.

Stephen Janis:

Wait. Professor, I just want to assure you, we did a documentary called Tax Broke, which we did for five years, follow tax breaks given to corporate developers. Any time …

Taya Graham:

Yeah. And if you want to talk about people’s eyes glazing over talk to them about tax increment financing.

Stephen Janis:

Anytime you want to talk about tax breaks for corporate entities, you just call us up. Anytime, because we can talk about it for hours. And I agree. It’s like this invisible economy or invisible landscape that just gives so many benefits to people who don’t need it.

Robert Reich:

It’s huge. Stephen, here’s another thing that Elon and Vivek Ramaswamy are to be focusing on, all of the government contractors, government contracting, and the spending we do as taxpayers for government contractors is so much greater than the direct government spending on government employees. I mean, go after the contractors like SpaceX, for example.

Stephen Janis:

I don’t know if that’s going to happen though.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Stephen Janis:

That would be interesting, yes, to see if he turns on himself. I would be …

Taya Graham:

Maybe Vivek will do it.

Stephen Janis:

And to this idea, because you’re bringing up … I mean, God, I can’t tell you how much corporate tax breaks infuriate me. But that conversation never seems to make it to the surface, because of the media ecosystem we’re in. There are people like you who are doing this. But how do we get of above and beyond? And so, the discussion is about things that you point out that really matter, like tax breaks. How do we get beyond the system we’re in right now of a media that seems to just only provide us with conflict?

Robert Reich:

I mean, you know better than I do. One of the great frustrations of my life, at least, is that the media, the mainstream media and Fox News and Newsmax, whether you’re talking about the right or even the center, they don’t go after what’s really important. They don’t try to educate the public about what the public needs to know.

They just tantalize or they talk about scandals. But they don’t talk about reality. And I don’t know how to change that. I mean, there’s more money to be made in getting people upset and fearful, but you talk about some of these tax breaks that are warranted. You can make people pretty outraged. Why don’t we do that?

Stephen Janis:

It’s a great question. I was watching CNN and they had an expert on social security and he kept talking about how social security was going to be insolvent. But he never brought up the idea that there’s a cap on social security taxes. And I was like, “Bring it up.” And I was screaming at the television set. And doesn’t that stuff infuriate you? I mean, come on. You know that if they lift the cap on social security, we could be much more solvent, right?

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Robert Reich:

Most people do not know. Most people know that they have to pay social security taxes.

Stephen Janis:

100%.

Robert Reich:

But they didn’t know that Elon Musk finishes paying his social security obligations at 18 seconds past midnight January 1st of the year. I mean, this is what people need to understand.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

That’s such an excellent point. I just wanted to follow up because you were the director of the Federal Trade Commission. And please correct me if I’m wrong. But you wanted children not to be targeted by companies selling sugary and unhealthy foods. And it seemed to me your reward for that was having the FTC being starved of money until it shut down. So, I was just wondering if that effect of corporate interest on our government is still that naked or do you think this could happen to other government agencies, especially under the new administration?

I mean, as a reporter, to me, it’s an astonishing story. It’s just they cut the money off because they didn’t like the fact they were going to lose out on their sugary cereal money. So, I was just wondering, is this something that could happen again and what can we do as investigative reporters, journalists, people to try to engage with this?

Robert Reich:

Well, it is going to happen again. It’s already happening. I mean, look at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is really helping and protecting a lot of people. They may not know exactly how they’re being protected, because it’s a little bit complicated. But that’s one of the places that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, they want to eliminate.

Most people don’t know that the federal government provides federal aid to education that’s mostly goes to poor school districts. So, you get rid of the education department and you’re hurting a poor kids. That’s what you’re really doing. Most people have no idea, and yet that’s going to go on as well.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Stephen Janis:

So, you have one final question.

Taya Graham:

Well, I was actually curious about how important you think independent media is right now, non-corporate media, like your inequality media or maybe Professor Wolff’s Democracy at Work. Do you think it can make a difference, because there is so much noise, but how important do you think it is right now?

Robert Reich:

Non-corporate media is extraordinarily important. But here’s the problem. You have to have some way of financing your media. Now, subscription services are useful to some extent, but it’s expensive. It takes a bigger chunk out of the paycheck of a low-income person than a high-income person. So, how do you finance the media you need?

Years ago, we thought national public radio and public television were good things, and they ought to be financed out of taxpayers’ funds. But they’ve been vilified by the right. Well, what’s the alternative? Social media has become too often a kind of cesspool of disinformation. How do you make social media work? Well, you certainly don’t put Elon Musk in charge of what used to be Twitter.

Taya Graham:

I just have to ask you something, and this may seem like an extreme question. But there are billionaires, you can tell I’m a little obsessed with them, who really poured their money into political campaigns. I mean, Vice President Harris received support. I mean, she raised over a billion dollars. But Trump was no slouch, and he had at least 50 billionaires, including Elon Musk, pour money into his campaign.

So, my question is, is that when there are individuals with this extreme wealth and they’re able to influence our politicians, I believe they’re thwarting the will of we the people. So, this may sound radical, but are billionaires, authoritarians, and are they actually actively undermining our democracy?

Robert Reich:

Well, some billionaires are. I mean, I don’t think it’s sensible to simply say every billionaire is abusing his or her status and power and money. But when they put money, their own money, their own billions of dollars, or their own hundreds of thousands of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign or into somebody’s campaign to prevent somebody from getting into office or into a campaign that is an issue campaign, that is a corruption of the political system. That kind of abuse I think has to be stopped.

The Supreme Court has been proven wrong in terms of its series of decisions that said that money is the equivalent of speech and corporations are people. I mean, it’s absolutely absurd.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. But I just wanted to say, I mean, it’s interesting because a lot of times when I was watching some of your discussions, especially in the documentary, you were talking about how money equals power. But that’s a lot of concentrated power in a billionaire. Isn’t that inherently unhealthy to have so much power in like 800 people who can really shape, as Taya said, our system in ways we don’t even understand?

Robert Reich:

It is. And if we had a sensible tax system, the tax wealth, we would not have that kind of problem. But we can’t get that kind of tax system because the billionaires and people who are almost billionaires have too much power. You see, that’s the chicken and egg dilemma we’re in right now. And short of a revolution. And I don’t know what that means. I don’t know how we get out of that chicken and egg dilemma.

Stephen Janis:

I know. I know. I mean, a revolution would be interesting. I’d love to cover it. I mean, it might not be fun. But I often think about that because it’s so entrenched in our political system and that power is immovable or immutable in many ways. It’s made immutable by that. And how we could go back to say the 1950s, when what? I hear this, and I don’t know if this is right, Professor, but there was a marginal tax rate of 92% or something on the highest earners. I don’t know how we get back to that or is it even possible?

Robert Reich:

First of all, it was not quite that.

Stephen Janis:

Okay.

Robert Reich:

Once you include all of the deductions and tax credits, it was more like 52%. But can you imagine 52% tax rate federal on the highest earners would be impossible to enact today. And that was under the Eisenhower administration.

Stephen Janis:

He’s Republican.

Robert Reich:

That was not even a Democratic administration.

Stephen Janis:

I know. I know. Amazing.

Taya Graham:

I just had to ask you one more question because I had recently watched your documentary, Saving Capitalism. And there’s something that you said in there that was haunting me. And so, this is paraphrasing a little bit. But you essentially said that people, regular, non-wealthy people have literally 0% impact on public policy. And to me that is a terrifying statement. Could you elaborate on it a little bit and just help us understand it and if there’s any remedy?

Robert Reich:

Well, that actual conclusion comes from a study done by two political scientists, a very famous study in which they looked at something in the order of 1,800 random public policy issues before Congress during a limited period of time, even before the Citizens United decision. So, this is before we had the degree of corporate money in politics.

And their conclusion was that the concerns of average Americans have an insignificant effect on public policy that corporations and very wealthy people and Wall Street really did determine the public agenda. Now, this was again before Citizens United opened the floodgates to big money in politics.

I think that we have got to have a constitutional amendment that stops big money in politics that restores the notion that corporations are not people and money is not speech. Those two notions. And also, we have public financing of elections so that small donors are matched by a public fund, and that gives an incentive to politicians who agree to limits on their own funding to seek public funding instead.

Taya Graham:

That’s excellent. Professor Reich, we cannot thank you enough for your time. And I do want you to know that in your honor, I did wear my Union Steward pin. I’m a communication worker’s union steward. So, I just want you to know I wore that in your honor, Professor.

Stephen Janis:

This is a union shop here.

Robert Reich:

I appreciate that. And I appreciate the time with both of you. These are big and important issues. They’re not going away. My concern is that they’re getting worse.

Taya Graham:

Yes.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Ours as well.

Stephen Janis:

Ours as well. Well, thank you so much.

Taya Graham:

Thank you, Professor.

Stephen Janis:

And remember, anytime you want to talk about tax breaks, call me.

Taya Graham:

Yes. Tax increment, financing, payment, loop taxes, we’re the ones to call.

Robert Reich:

I want to talk about it all the time. So, I’ll call you all the time.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Great. I look forward to it.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you so much.

Robert Reich:

Bye-bye.

Taya Graham:

Thank you.

Stephen Janis:

Bye.

Taya Graham:

So, first, I just have to thank our guest, Professor Robert Reich. I don’t think there is a more distinct or important voice in the struggle against and search for solutions to inequality. His willingness to take the time to share his insight with us is invaluable, and we so deeply appreciate it.

Stephen Janis:

I just hope he calls me about tax breaks because …

Taya Graham:

I do too.

Stephen Janis:

I feel like I’m out in the wilderness here. No one wants to talk about tax breaks. They think I’m kind of weird and obsessed.

Taya Graham:

I know. We can only talk to each other about tax increment financing. It’d be nice to talk to someone else about it.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. So, maybe I hope he does keep his promise and give me a call.

Taya Graham:

I actually want to go back, maybe get my CPA or something, so I can actually understand the tax code. It seems like that’s where all the money hides.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. That’s where all the action is.

Taya Graham:

Really is. Who would’ve thought.

Stephen Janis:

In this great inequality divide we have.

Taya Graham:

Very true. So, I just want to do a little closing speech here. So, if you don’t mind, we’re just going to jump right in.

Stephen Janis:

Can’t wait to hear it.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So, now, after diving deep into the two forces shaping and breaking the American economy, one thing is crystal clear. Both wealth inequality and globalization are symptoms of the same disease. That disease is a system designed to prioritize the profits of the few over the well-being of the many.

And the stories may differ whether it’s a billionaire dodging taxes or a factory worker losing their job to offshoring. But the results are eerily similar, a hollowed-out middle class, skyrocketing inequality, and a political system that seems incapable or unwilling to fight back. So, let’s break it down.

Globalization in its current form has done more than just shift manufacturing overseas. It’s created a race to the bottom where corporations scour the globe for the cheapest labor and the fewest regulations, leaving American workers to pick up the pieces. Wealth taxation, or rather, the lack of it ensures that profits from this exploitation stays concentrated at the top, untouched by the very policies that could help level the playing field.

Together, these two forces create the two-tiered economy we’ve spent this conversation dissecting, a system where the rich live by a different set of rules than everyone else. But here’s the kicker, it doesn’t have to be this way. The solutions we’ve discussed implementing a wealth tax, we’re writing trade agreements to prioritize workers over corporations, maybe even investing in green jobs and infrastructure. These aren’t just pipe dreams. These are viable evidence-backed policies that could transfer our economy into one that works for everyone.

And the question isn’t whether we have the resources or the tools, it’s whether we have the political will. And that’s where the stakes get even higher. Because as Robert Reich so astutely pointed out, the wealth isn’t just money, it’s power. The billionaires who dodge taxes and the corporations that exploit globalization aren’t just enriching themselves. They’re shaping the very policies and systems that allow them to keep doing it.

It’s a feedback loop that corrodes democracy leaving the rest of us stuck in a system that feels increasingly rigged. So, what do we do? First, we need to change the narrative. The idea that taxing billionaires or reigning in globalization is somehow radical is a lie perpetuated by those who benefit from the status quo.

What’s radical is allowing an economy where the wealthiest 1% own more than the bottom 90%. What’s radical is ignoring the voices of millions of workers while bending over backwards for corporations. And what’s truly radical is thinking we can continue down this path without catastrophic consequences.

Now, second, we need to build power not just in Washington, but in our own communities, whether it’s organizing unions to demand better wages, supporting candidates who will fight for economic justice, or simply having conversations that challenge the myths of trickledown economics and free trade. The change starts with us. The billionaires might have the money. But history has shown us time and again, that people united around a common cause can be an unstoppable force.

So, as we close, I want to leave you with this. The fight against the two-tiered economy isn’t just about money. It’s about dignity. It’s about whether we value people not for the profits they generate, but for their inherent worth as human beings. And it’s about whether we’re willing to demand an economy and a democracy that reflects those values. And the stakes couldn’t be higher.

But I think the solutions are within reach, and it’s up to us to decide whether we’ll keep playing by the rigged rules of the game or whether we will rewrite them entirely. Let’s make the choice together while we still can. Okay. Stephen, you know how I love to speechify. Is there anything you would like to add?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, it’s really interesting having come after. That’s a pretty hard act to follow. But I will say that movement building strikes me as very difficult and a very, let’s say, dicey proposition in the media ecosystem we talked about before, because it’s not structured around accumulating some epistemology or knowledge of a subject like we do with tax breaks. It’s more about emotion and being aggrieved.

And I just worry about that. I worry about the type of system we have to come to some conclusions about specific things we want to. You have to change something specific. You can’t just say, “We’re going to fight for change.” It’s got to be something that looks specific. And we spent all these years, for example, trying to change this horribly unequal system about tax breaks for developers. And it’s been very hard and we’ve been on our own. And we even received pushback from people who I think would actually think it was a good idea.

And the Democrats completely punted on it, wouldn’t even allow a vote on the bill that would’ve shown people what happened. Now, we’ve talked about this before, but I worry about that because it’s hard. It’s really hard to permeate people’s TikTok lives and say, “Okay. This is a very complex issue, but we don’t change it. And I think if we don’t address that, it’s going to be very hard to bring about real change.” So, that’s my opinion.

Taya Graham:

I think you’re right. And I just wanted to speak to some of the folks in the comments and in the live chat who ask about my analysis. And I’ve seen a few people say, “Taya, you’re a criminal justice reporter. The police accountability reporter.” I still am. But my reporting has always at heart been about government accountability and that’s exposing corruption or inequity. And whether that’s blue or red, it doesn’t matter to me.

Right now, I think the greatest inequality and justice isn’t necessarily coming from left to right or Demo-Republican. It’s the top 10% versus the bottom 90%. It’s like the top 1% is driving the car of our democracy and the two parties in the back seat, and we’re the ones being taken for the ride.

Stephen Janis:

So, you’re doing Dave Chappelle.

Taya Graham:

So, my analysis will always be based on searching for policies that do the most good for the most people. And as far as I can tell, that’s not how billionaires think. But as always, I do want to know your thoughts in the comments. You know I read them and I answer as many questions as I can. And I really do appreciate your input and insights. I always have more to learn, and that’s why I love being a reporter. You get to keep asking questions.

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

And I want to thank you all for being patient, for watching us and joining us. And of course, we have to thank our great studio, David and Cameron and Adam and Jocelyn, and Kayla and James and our editor-in-chief, Max. See you all in the comment section. This is Taya Graham and Stephen Janis reporting for The Real News Network.

“During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the US economy almost completely collapsed,” historian Dana Frank writes in her new book, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? “By 1933 a third of all those who’d had jobs were unemployed; another third were scraping by with lesser work. Racism, far from collapsing, festered and metastasized as insecurity rippled through the country, pushing people of color even further downward… As we face our own crises today—a precarious economy, outrageous inequality and poverty, growing racism, climate change—and lie awake at night, facing our own fears, these stories from the Great Depression offer us new and often surprising insights into our own time, our own choices.” In this live episode of Working People, recorded at Red Emma’s cooperative bookstore, cafe, and community events space in Baltimore, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Frank about her new book and what taking a fresh look at poor and working people’s struggles in the dark 1930s can teach us about how to navigate our own perilous moment in history.

Additional links/info below…

• Dana Frank, Beacon Press, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression?: Stories of Ordinary People & Collective Action in Hard Times
• Dana Frank website
• Red Emma’s website, Facebook page, and Instagram
• Dana Frank, The Los Angeles Times, “Trump Says He’ll Expel a Million Immigrants. Believe Him–It Happened Before”
• Dana Frank, History News Network, “Ohio’s Little-Known Fascist Member of Congress”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Max Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

A proofread transcript will be made available as soon as possible.

Hunger. Cold. Thirst. Disease. These are the daily realities of life in Gaza, where for the past 423 days, Israel has unleashed a genocide that will come to define our contemporary era. As Palestinians struggle to meet their daily needs, they are also faced with a battle to preserve their memories and dignity. Over the past year, journalist and filmmaker Ruwaida Amer has produced numerous powerful, heart-wrenching documentary reports for TRNN from the rubble and ruins of Gaza, shining a light on the darkest realities of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians, even as she herself suffers from—and struggles to survive—the onslaught. Calling in from Gaza, Amer joins The Marc Steiner Show to share an honest portrait of her life and the lives of her fellow Palestinians in the midst of genocide.

Please watch and share Ruwaida Amer’s on-the-ground reports from Gaza for TRNN, including…

• “Gaza’s orphans speak: ‘I found [my family] in pieces. in pieces’“
• “Palestinians pray in the ruins of Gaza’s bombed mosques“
• “‘Look at our suffering!’: Gaza’s message to the world after a year of genocide“
• “Life for Gaza’s children during Israel’s genocide“
• “Gaza’s survivors cling to life in Khan Yunis refugee camps“

Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you all with us. The War on Gaza has killed at least 45,000 people. No less than 10,000 have been children. Most of the hospitals have been destroyed. Patients are dying, children are dying. The infrastructure has been obliterated. 90% of the 1.2 million Gazans have been displaced. There’s been no food. People living on one meal a day, if they’re lucky. And still it goes on, as I’ve said for decades, not in our name. This must end, and we must help to end it. Israel just appointed Yechiel Leiter, who was part of the fascist, Rabbi Meir Kahane’s, Jewish Defense League, as ambassador to the United States, with Trump’s approval.

Now here, the war rages on. And many of you have seen the documentaries we’ve published by the amazing and brave, Ruwaida Amer, who lives in Gaza, whose home and family have been torn apart. Ruwaida is a video and documentary filmmaker, writer, and producer. You’ve seen her brave and brilliant work here at Real News, as I’ve said, and also appeared on Al Jazeera, BBC, ABC, CNN, Euro News, among others. And written for The Nation and Slate, among others. And Ruwaida, welcome to the Marc Steiner Show. It’s good to have you with us.

Ruwaida Amer:

Hi.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you so much for taking the time and being with us today. Can you just tell us where you are at this moment?

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah, as you know, I’m in Gaza, okay. And I’m in south of Gaza because I live in south of Gaza. Okay, so it’s my home there. Also, there’s no difference between north and south of Gaza, so anywhere there’s a very hard situation. And everywhere, the bombing, that mean maybe in the beginning of the war. So if you are in the south, you aren’t safe, no. I’m in the south, but I live in very hard situation. Every time I hear the bombing, before a few minutes, I was very scary because I had a very strong bomb around my area. So the situation here is not good and not safe. It’s not better than anywhere in Gaza. All the areas under hard bombing, and the worst war in the world. So no one is safe.

Marc Steiner:

And you’ve lost friends and family personally in this war.

Ruwaida Amer:

I have many stories about the losing of people in my life. In general, I don’t like to talk about this, but because I like to be my works private. Or if I’m working as journalist, so the people know that I’m a journalist. But I have another work, I’m teacher. So as a teacher, I lost my students. My students, they are in five grade and sixth grade, that’s mean they’re age nine years and 10 years. And recently I know I lose more than two or three or four students. I lose more than them. And my student told me we have another one, we lose them. In the beginning, in the war, he killed by a very hard bombing in the north. And all the building, a huge building structure, arrived on his head, with his family. So I lost my student, I lost my friends, I lost my close friend. Also, I lost my cousin. Also, maybe I want to be more negative, but I want to tell you, anyone we lose in Gaza, I consider him or her like one of my family, one of my society, one of my people.

Because all the people we lose during the war, they have a great story. They have dreams. They were planning to the future for their families, their children. And we lose very close people in our life. We know them in our normal life, we meet them every day. So now we don’t have them. So maybe it affected in my feeling, my mind. So when I write my articles or when I produce my stories, I feel very sad about the people in Gaza. So to be more clear, I don’t like to talk about my experience because I don’t like the wars. And usually I told my friends after the war ended, I said for my friends, “I think anyone died in the war, is the one, he won, has life.” Because when you be alive and you remember your family, your friends, your studies, you will lose your mind when you think, “How’s my life without them? How I can go to my school without my students? How I can go to the restaurant without my friends?

How I can go to my work without my friend, also? How I can be strong when I see my auntie, when she back from Egypt, and she will back to Gaza when the Rafah Crossing open, and she will not find his son because he killed by bombing Israel in the beginning of this war? Maybe the best thing for me, during this war, I’m writing everything. I live in this war, so I like to comment it. Everything, every situations, anything happened with me, I wrote about it in my articles, also in my documentaries. Like what I work them for Real News. So when you lose anyone from your people, you will feel like lose your life. So it’s not easy. So you will not be sad for your friend just, or one of your family, no. For example, I used to go to the restaurant, very, very famous restaurant in Gaza. So I have very beautiful moments and memories there. All the people working in this restaurant, they killed by Israel. Who will open the restaurant again after the war?

Last two days or three days, I saw post in this restaurant page, they posted the memory for the owners of this restaurant, because all of them killed by the Israeli bombing. And all the comments asking who will reopen this restaurant. If we will see this restaurant again after the war. It’s not just people or persons, no, the places, the streets. I live in Khan Younis city. If you will come to this city, you will just see destruction. Everything is destroyed, weed. You will not find any building good. All of them destroyed by the bulldozers of them and the bombing of them. So also we have memories with the places, the streets, the sea. I feel like our sea is very sad because there is, near the sea, tents for the people. All the people put their tents near or on the beach of the sea. They used to just visit the sea to relax, now they are living near the sea. And the water attack them because we are in the winter season. So maybe you see some news about many tent destroyed by the water, sea and the raining.

So it’s so sad. Just the situation in Gaza, it’s hard to express about it in the words or sentences, or paragraphs or articles, or by documentaries. Need a lot of documentaries to show the situation in Gaza. Sorry, I’m not speaking like the answer about the question.

Marc Steiner:

No, that’s fine. It’s fine.

Ruwaida Amer:

About all the question. Sorry about that. Really, the lose is not just a person, the lose also places, also streets, sea, our safe, our peace. We lose everything, by the way.

Marc Steiner:

It’s hard, watching all of your documentaries, reading what you’ve written, following it every day, it’s hard to imagine, for you, to be able to keep up your creative spirit and work in the midst of the madness that surrounds you. Living in that death and destruction, maybe lucky if you have a meal a day, and be able to produce what you produce. I’m sorry.

Ruwaida Amer:

Okay, I will tell you something. Every day I say with myself, I will not work. I will stop my work. Because the war, it’s not just one day or two days, or one month or two month, we are under this war more than one year. So every day I say, “No, I will not work. I will not send ideas. I will not discuss with my friends about the ideas, if I can do that or not.” But in the same time I would say, “No, I will keep my working, continue. I will cover the stories because we need to show for the world, the situation in Gaza.” I want to show for the world, or the people out Gaza, we are human. We deserve to live in good situation. We deserve to find food, water, electricity. Our children deserve to go to their schools. Our children deserve to live with their parents. I work in story about children lose their parents. Maybe you watch this video, and I saw that there is tens of thousand on views on this story.

It was very sad story to hear children talk about their family and their parents, and they will not see their parents again. It’s very sad. Also, if I have patience to work, and complete my work, when I go to film the works or the story, I back to my family, my home, with very bad mood, sad. And I come to sleep, and to think, I said with myself, “When this war will finish?” I ask my friends, “There is any hope to finish this madness or this crazy war?” It’s not easy to go to the people and talk with them about their situation, because you know their situation. You live in this situation. You are not different about them. By the way, I live in the same situation with the people. And many times the people don’t like to talk with me. They say, “Sorry, Ruwaida, because there is no people hear us.” I respect them, by the way. I respect them because they told me there is no people hear us.

If there is people hear us, there is people consider the people in Gaza as human, like them, and deserve to life, like them, the war stop for a long time. But we are more than one year in the same situation with. And I will tell you something, the war, it’s not different in the beginning and the middle. The situation, it’s not different. Because I will be not honest when I say, “No, now the situation better than last two months or three months.” No, no, no, it’s the same thing. Now we don’t have food. I live in very hard hunger. So I don’t know what my family eats every day. There is no food, there is no water, there is no electricity. So the war is, every day worse than before. So there is no change in the situation in Gaza. So when you go to the people to make interviews or to film with them, many people don’t like to do that. I’m one of them. I respect them. A lot of time I leave them and say sorry, and go back again, call them.

I support them. I give them positive energy. I told them this is our right to talk about our situation. We need the world to know what we are living. So some people say, okay, and complete the story with me. Some of people told me no, and I respect them. And I stopped the filming with them, and looking for another family, like this. So the people in Gaza live in very bad psychology feeling. So they are very nervous. They are very sad. They don’t hope for tomorrow. Today the war in Lebanon stop, they have ceasefire. But Gaza, no. All the people in Gaza very sad about it, because why we are allowed? Why the people don’t care? The world don’t care about Gaza, to stop the war in Gaza. Why we will live in Gaza, live in this world, many days or many months? We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. So when you work as a journalist in Gaza, during the war, you will live in very hard challenge to complete your work, to continue your work. And also, as filmmaker or producer, before the war, it’s totally different during the war.

So my work, it was totally different. Because before the war, I filmed very hope and happy stories. And the communities, I was so happy when I would film with a music group. And when I film with the sport, the group or teams. Now I film with the people to talk about hunger, about bombing, about losing, about no schools, about no education, about no health, about no life. So it’s totally different. So it’s not easy for me to work like this, but I did it. And when I finish any work, I feel happy. When I saw a good reaction from the people, out Gaza, about their feeling, their support, I feel like I fresh the letter from Gaza, or the message from Gaza. And I told them what’s happening in Gaza. And because there is big thankful for the journalists in Gaza, photographers in Gaza, because they are working very hard to send the real stories in Gaza, about the real happening in Gaza, during more than one year. And they are under the bombing. The journalists are also targeted by Israel. So we are not in safe, but-

Marc Steiner:

Including you?

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah, but we are working, still working.

Marc Steiner:

And it’s amazing to me that you can continue to produce and write just amazing, creative, brilliant work. You’re telling the story the world has to see. No one else is telling it like you’re telling it, because you’re telling it from the perspective, in the eyes of the people of Gaza, what they’re seeing and feeling. It’s not a detached person. And after watching your films and reading your articles, I just was amazed about how you can continue to do it in the midst of the destruction around you. Almost all the Gazans now are homeless. It’s been destroyed.

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah. Yeah. Also, I displaced my home last August.

Marc Steiner:

August?

Ruwaida Amer:

Not August, no, July. And when I displaced my home, I went to my sister home. Also, my sister’s home destroyed. But we live in straight rooms. Just we bought plastic paper to close the walls, because we see the street from the rooms. Her home is not good. You can’t live in it, but we don’t have a place to go there. Also, I have private, my mother, she’s not good. Her health, not good. So we can’t go anywhere with her because she has problem in her walking. So we talked about good place to go there. So it was like just my sister’s home, destroyed. But there’s just one room. It’s good, but we can see the streets, the people on the road, because it was very bombing. And her living room and kitchen don’t have windows and doors. And also the bathroom, like this. And her home, not just destroyed, or so you can see plaque everywhere. That’s affected in my feeling so sad. I couldn’t still there, because I know my my sister home, it was very beautiful. We had very beautiful [inaudible 00:24:18] when visited her.

And she didn’t have also internet. And I wanted to work, I wanted to complete my work. So I were just writing article, and go to hospital to send my work. And under very hard situations, I’m challenged, I work it. I want to work, I want to write because it make me better. When I write what I feel, what I think, it will be good. Also, when I sent in, she left a refuge camp, by the way. And I saw this refuge is totally destroyed. Maybe you can find some articles about this thing. So I want to work and I complete that. I complete my work, and still working until now. Many challenge. If I want to tell you about the challenge I live in, I will not finish, because every second I have a challenge.

Every second living in Gaza, you are challenged. Challenge, the situation, how you want to complete your day, how you want to work, how you want to contact with your friends, or your people, you work with them. It’s not easy to live in this war. I used to live in wars, by the way. I’m not very young. I lived in three wars before, or four wars before. But it’s not like this war. No, this is not war. This is very, very bad thing. It’s not normal war, no, it’s very hard war.

Marc Steiner:

People have called it genocide.

Ruwaida Amer:

Yes, maybe it’s more genocide, by the way. I don’t eat very well for two months. Also, we have people need to take their medicine. To be good, they need to eat very well, because their health is not good. There is no food. I don’t know why there is no food in Gaza. I don’t know, really. I want to tell you something. I told my family, all the time, by the way, I told my family, and give them advice. It’s not advice. It’s crazy advice, by the way. I told them, “Live without think. Stop your mind and live. Just, if you will think about the situation, you will be crazy.” I do that, by the way. I’m trying to be good like this. I don’t like to think about my situation around me. If I will think, I will be crazy, I will not be Ruwaida. No, I’ll be crazy again. So I stop to think.

Marc Steiner:

I was wondering, as you’re speaking, how you have remained so calm, and sound so calm, in the midst of all you have to live in the war, people dying and places have been destroyed. And you tell the story so vividly. The way you tell the story, you almost feel like you’re there, you’re in the middle of it. But somehow you manage to keep yourself calm. I can imagine you as a teacher in school, you were probably a great teacher for the kids. I mean to be able to be this calm.

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah, yeah. I’m still teaching them. I stopped to contact with them a long time, but before one month, I restart to contact with them, because a lot of them in Egypt. So I’m teaching them every Saturday. Teaching them science. So I’m clever girl, but in this war, I’m not sure, still clever, by the way. It make me crazy. When I teach them science, I told them, “Oh, I’m very happy because I’m still saved the information of science in my mind.” I thought I lost all the information, all my study, all my culture and science, but Alhamdulillah, I’m still saved a lot of information, and I can think and I can teach them. So really, really, maybe it’s like crazy words, but this is the real life in Gaza. If you think about what you are life, you will be crazy. Because it’s not normal, it’s abnormal.

If you don’t have a problem today… If you don’t have problem with the food, you will have a problem with the water. If you don’t have problem with the water, you have a problem with the food. Maybe one of your family sick, you need medicine, and there there’s no medicine. And the pharmacies are in the hospitals. We was very sick last three weeks and I didn’t find any medicine on how I can be good, because there is not any medicine supplies come to Gaza. So I feel like I will die by flu. But I’m still stronger, Alhamdulillah. And also, every time I told my friends, I’m trying to be strong until the war finish. I am not sure if I will be strong until the… I don’t know if I can keep my energy until the war finish or not, but still trying to be strong. Trying to save my mind at least.

Marc Steiner:

It seems, just seeing you and listening to you, that you’re tapping into some internal strength, that you probably didn’t even know you had. To see what you’ve been able to do, to make the films you’re making. I can say here, that at Real News, we, and I personally, will do everything possible for the world to see your work. Because you tell the story that is real, that nobody else is telling in the way you’re telling it. Especially when you hear the voices of the children in your documentaries.

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah, so hard.

Marc Steiner:

It’s hard. It must be hard for you. It’s hard living through what you’re living through, but to have to embrace the pain of the stories of the children and families every day on your work, because you clearly are a person who, you take that in. It’s not like a-

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah-

Marc Steiner:

Go ahead.

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah, when I see the children. So if I want to help any family, I help them because they have children. Because the children don’t deserve to live in this world. We lost many thousands of children, babies. Babies, just two days, three days, or month, two months, their age. So when I meet the children… My sister have two children, five years and three years, and they lose their home. Every day they are telling me about their memory in their home. Five years and three years. I think they don’t have big memories in their home because they are very child, but they have. Her son, so Spiderman can come to Gaza and rebuild their home. He wants Spiderman to come to Gaza and rebuild their home. Can you imagine how is the children think in Gaza, because they lose their childhood? There is a lot of children have responsibility, their home, their families. So if you want to go to the market, you will see children sell in the market.

Simple things. They sell simple things just for $1, $2, $3, $5, and they back to their family to buy any food for them. The children live in very hard situation. Our children, their place is in the schools, not in the markets, not in the streets, not in bad tents, not with crying about their parents or their families. So they lose their child heart. So many times when I film it with the children, they are crying. And I hug them and say, “You are heroes. You will be good in the future. And it will end very soon, and you will back to your home in the north. And your mother and father, see you in the paradise. They are in the paradise, and they see us in Gaza and they are very proud of us because we are very strong and still alive in Gaza. And you will complete your family life.” But they are children, and very clever. They know the reality story in Gaza. You can support them, but they know the real story. They know they will not see their parents again. So it’s very hard for them.

So you can’t say anything for child said, “I hope to hug my mother again.” How you can pray her mother to hug her? How you can? So when you work as journalists, or especially filmmakers or produce long video stories, like my works, you will spend more time with the children. Every place or every family in Gaza have children, and you will take your time for them and listen to their words and support them. You don’t know you need to support your family, yourself, your family or the people in your work, or the people you filmed about them. You don’t know. So as I told you, I’m trying to don’t think about my life during the war. Because if I will think, I’ll lose my mind and go to be crazy.

Marc Steiner:

Which is why I am deeply thankful and grateful that you agreed to this today, because I know as calm as your demeanor is, this is very difficult.

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah, so hard. It’s not difficult, difficult is symbol. Word to describe the situation here. No, it’s not easy. You feel like you want to cry every step you walk in the street, every second you meet the people outside. Really, many times I don’t like to call and ask about my friends, because I know the situations. My situation, it’s not good. And their situation, it’s not good, but maybe worse than me, because they are in tent, and they are out their cities. We are living Gaza Strip, there is Gaza City. So they are out of their cities, Gaza, and the cities in the north, in more than one year, it’s a long time. So no one can appear to be away from their place long time, like one year. And we live in the situation our grandfather, grandmother live in ’48.

Marc Steiner:

’48, yeah.

Ruwaida Amer:

1948. Okay? We live in this situation. I remembered when I wrote article about Nakba, I asked my grandmother about how the experience was, that he died for the last two years. It’s good thing to die last two years, because he didn’t like the wars. And I will tell you, they destroyed his grave, by the way, also earlier.

Marc Steiner:

Really?

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah. They destroyed his grave. And if we want to visit his grave, we will not find it, because they destroyed it as well.

Marc Steiner:

I don’t think, in many ways, that the world, this country especially, really understands the devastation that’s taking place in Gaza. That’s part of the reason that your documentaries and your writing are so, so important. And I would encourage the world to watch everything you do, if you want to feel and understand what is going on. Because you do it from the heart and you do it from the head, and you bring that story to all of us. I think it’s unfathomable. Most people can’t even begin to understand what it’s like to have to live in this dystopian hell that you have to survive in.

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah. Many times I feel like we live… The people out Gaza, or anyone support the war in Gaza to be continued, they consider the people in Gaza, not to human. But we are human. We are doctors, teachers, journalists, and very important people. We are people, have dreams, we have plans for our future. We deserve to life, and we deserve to stop this war very soon, like Lebanon. So I hope to wake up on good news like this, stop this war in Gaza. I will be so happy, so very happy. Because we don’t have energy to complete or to live in more days in this war. Not just the young people or the men or the woman, no, the children. Also, always I said, “Please, stop the war, not just for the people in Gaza, just for the children, because they need to sleep. They need to be in their homes. They deserve to back to their schools. This is the second year without schools, it’s too much. They will lose their education. So the schools is their place, is not the road or the markets or the tents.

So I hope the people out Gaza can know more about the situation in Gaza, and support ceasefire in Gaza. Stop the war. And anyone can work to stop this war. Don’t be slow. Just work very hard to stop this war, because the situation is very hard. And day by day, and second by second, we lose a lot of people, a lot of places, a lot of safe, a lot of peace. So peace is the best solution for everything. The war’s not good thing, by the way, because we lost everything. So I hope my documentaries, my articles, my works, can wish for a lot of people, and very important people in the governments, countries, and they can to work hard to stop the war in Gaza. I hope that. Because the war is not good solution, just the peace.

And all the people deserve to live in peace, especially the Gazan people. Because they live in siege more than to 20 years maybe, and they didn’t find any good day. So solution for the life in Gaza. The people in Gaza want to complete their life without wars, so enough. I posted story on Instagram. I said, “Gaza want to stop the war. Ceasefire now.” And enough. Really, enough.

Marc Steiner:

Enough.

Ruwaida Amer:

It’s too much.

Marc Steiner:

Enough. I know. And you’re doing it now, in terms of talking to our audience. And we can just maybe close with this, to continue what you’re saying about this and why it’s so important to watch your work, for people to understand what is going on, to see and feel what Palestinians are going through, and what we can do to stop it, that’s why your work is so critical.

Ruwaida Amer:

I show the humanity sides of the people in Gaza because all the stories in Gaza now about the human people, they lose their life, their safe, their very important things, like food and water. Imagine you live without food for just one day. How will you feel? Okay, imagine to try all your day to looking for water. Measure your life, your children life without schools. Measure your life without home. Measure your life to live and sleep in the roads, in the streets, without blanket, without good clothes, without good water. Imagine your life without medicine, without good health or good hospitals. Imagine to spend just one day, anyone, feel sick and go to hospital, and sleep in the hospital just one night. He will be very nervous, and, “I want to back to my home.” But the people in Gaza live more than one year in the hospitals, and they made tent in the hospitals, and see the suffering of people in the hospitals.

And it’s very important to look to Gaza, because when you see or watch the stories from Gaza, you will see there is no humanity in the world, because they accepted to be the war more than one year. And the people live in that situation more than one year. By the way, I was very positive in the beginning of the war, and make support for my families. And for my family, I told them, “No, no, no, this war will be just one week, two weeks, three weeks.” But it’s more than one year. I’m very surprised, because we are in this war more than one year. It’s too much, too much. So it’s very important to follow the situation in Gaza, and Gaza need the world. Don’t leave us alone, because we need the people support, out Gaza. Maybe their support will stop this war. Maybe. I hope that.

And if I receive any support message from my friends out Gaza, I feel like I am not alone. There is people feel about my situation, and don’t leave me alone. Also, I’m teaching Arabic language for non-speakers. I have students from America, Australia, Holland, and French, and many Europe countries. And they supported me, and still support me, so I feel I’m good. There is people think about Gaza. There is people support me. Sometimes they send me photos, “We are with Gaza. We are in the roads and street, we call it to stop the war in Gaza.” So it’s good. So I’m working to show for the people what’s happening in Gaza. So I hope they are supporting us and working to stop the war in Gaza. I hope that maybe one day we will be in freedom. I hope that.

Marc Steiner:

Ruwaida Amer, we, here at Real News, will be standing by you and with you as much as we can, and help bring your voice and your work out to the world. You need to be heard. And I want to thank you for everything you’ve done, the work you’ve done as a filmmaker, as a teacher, as a human being.

Ruwaida Amer:

Yes. Also, I want to say I’m not working for me. I’m working for the world to see Gaza, to watch what’s happening in Gaza.

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Ruwaida Amer:

I’m working every day to be the people following what’s happening in Gaza. If you want to come for me, many times in depression, many times in bad moods, times very bad psychology, my feelings’ very bad, but I’m working hard to show the situation in Gaza, to be the people know what’s happening in Gaza. My work’s not for me, it’s for the world. See Gaza, to watch what’s happening in Gaza, to know what the people, how they live in Gaza during the wars. What is the situation in Gaza? How they get the water, the food. How is the life for the children in Gaza also? So I hope my work reach the people, and they see that, and they watch that, and they work hard to believe the people in Gaza have right to still alive, and have right to be free, and live in freedom and live in safe and peace, and move in their countries and around the world, as any person in the world.

Because we don’t have right as normal people. No, the Palestinians living under bad situation in the world. So maybe the Palestinians come to live, and safe, come to take their rights because we are under occupation. So I know many people no more about the Palestinian case during this war. So that mean our work reached the world. So maybe it’s good point for the journalists in Gaza, they show the real case of Palestine for the world. Maybe the people now they have more information about the situation in Palestine, in general, especially in Gaza. So I hope that if you like my work, I think the people also like my work.

Marc Steiner:

People love your work.

Ruwaida Amer:

Yeah, thank you so much.

Marc Steiner:

You’re telling the story that has to be told, and we are here for you as much as we can be. And you, Ruwaida Amer, I want to thank you for telling the story of the Gazans, of the Palestinians, that needs to be told, and working with us here at Real News. And we’ll be linking to all of your work. And I promise you that I will do everything I can to spread that work so people see the real story through your eyes, through the eyes of the Palestinian people in Gaza. And-

Ruwaida Amer:

Thanks.

Marc Steiner:

Please stay safe. And we’ll stay in touch.

Ruwaida Amer:

I will try, I hope to succeed to be safe. Inshallah.

Marc Steiner:

Inshallah. Once again, let me thank Ruwaida Amer for joining us today. She joins us in the midst of a war that has taken the lives of people she loves, of her students and her friends. Through it all, she keeps writing and making her documentaries that bring into stark reality what Palestinians face every day in Gaza. I have seen few do it as well. I encourage all of you listening to go to our website, type in her name, Ruwaida Amer, R-U-W-A-I-D-A-M-E-R, and experience the reality of what Gazans face every day. We must do what we can to end the carnage in Gaza. And thanks to David Hebden and Cameron Grandino for running the program today, and audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her magic. Rosette Sewali for producing the Mark Steiner Show and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at Real News, for making this show possible.

Please, let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to be at MSS at therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. And once again, thank you to Ruwaida Amer for your work, for your bravery, for telling the story of the Palestinians in Gaza. And for joining us today in the midst of all of it.

This fact is at odds with a broader excuse-making media regime that assured readers over the past few months that Biden was only backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza because he was compelled to by mysterious outside forces: a bearhug “change things from the inside” strategy, electoral considerations in the lead-up to Nov. 5, the Israel lobby, or a broader assumption he is simply too helpless to do anything. Once Biden was no longer constrained by these factors, it was assumed, the White House would finally make some effort to rein in Israel. But the election came and went and Biden’s support for Israel has only intensified, capping off with a scathing admonishment and delegitimization of the International Criminal Court, which finally issued an arrest warrant last month for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Recently in The Nation, I detailed how this elaborate excuse-making regime emerged over the last year, and how US media helped shape, promote, and disseminate this regime to the broader public. The three major media tropes are as follows:

• Helpless Biden is any report, analysis, or opinion that describes Biden as unable to do anything to stop Israel from committing war crimes or end the war overall. This is typically framed as a “limit” to US power, often accompanied with a picture of Biden looking overwhelmed, sad, or doddering. These are sourced almost entirely by anonymous Biden aides and Biden allies in the think-tank world. 

• Fuming/Deeply Concerned Biden is any report, analysis, or opinion that paints Biden as secretly upset, outraged, or privately sad or anguished about civilian casualties. These articles are also sourced almost entirely by anonymous Biden aides and Biden allies in the think-tank world. 
  
• Third Partying is a variation of an anti-labor propaganda concept whereby corporations treat unions as somehow separate from workers and worker democracy in order to portray unions as an outside “third party.” Just the same, media reports consistently paint the United States as separate from the conflict, despite the United States being the major patron of one side, deploying troops and military hardware, assisting in military operations, providing intel, and protecting Israel at the United Nations. US media consistently frames the United States as a neutral party—even a humanitarian force—always looking (but, mysteriously, always failing) to end the conflict. This is typically done through coverage of largely fictitious cease-fire talks, whereby US media conflates efforts for a short-term pause for the purpose of hostage exchanges with “ending the war.”

To quote the late British theorist Stafford Beer, “The purpose of a system is what it does.” We can say that Biden supports genocide because, for almost 14 months, this is exactly what he has done. Everything else is window dressing, moral performance, unfalsifiable theory of mind assumptions, and collective partisan delusion. These media genres fed into a broader excuse-making regime that also includes popular assumptions about Biden being held back by electoral considerations and being subject to the undue influence of the Israel Lobby.

On the issue of electoral considerations, this excuse, even if true, was never morally useful. If “winning elections” justified everything—and surely genocide would be the most extreme example of a policy that ought not be permitted simply because it could “win” an election—then every single bad thing Trump does could be defended along the same lines. Mass deportations are popular. Does this make Trump campaigning on them and carrying them out justified? Of course not. 

But even accepting the logic of the excuse, it falls apart. Poll after poll shows support for an arms embargo would have helped Harris defeat Trump: The massive reduction in support from Arab and Muslim voters, young voters, and the fact that there were 6.2 million fewer votes overall compared to 2020, clearly indicates that Gaza helped depress turnout. It wasn’t the decisive factor—indeed, no single factor was—but it no doubt was a major contributor in alienating core constituencies and helped doom Harris’ campaign. And we know those running her campaign thought so because her superficial distance from Biden on Gaza was, according to a leaked internal memo prior to Biden dropping out, listed as a major factor in her favor. ”She’s broadly considered to be to Biden’s left on Israel-Palestine, an issue where he has major vulnerabilities,” it read. The day after the election (before the usual scapegoats were settled on), the New York Times reported that campaign officials “conceded that Ms. Harris had paid a price for not breaking from Mr. Biden’s support of Israel in the war in Gaza.” The premise that the general voting public was crying out for more shredded Palestinian toddlers on their social media timeline was always a dubious one. Yes, the public supports Israel in the abstract. But when asked specifically about an arms embargo and ceasefire, the public was—even despite the overwhelming power of bipartisan polarization—opposed to the Biden/Harris policy of unqualified support for Israel’s “war in Gaza.” 

Another popular excuse, which often veered into antisemitism, was that Biden only backed genocide in Gaza because the Israel lobby forced him to do so. While there is obviously an influential Israel lobby in Washington, its impact is largely relegated to the margins of Congress, having recently been decisive in pushing out Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. Biden, a self-identified Zionist for decades, with nothing to lose in the 2024 election, early on supported the genocidal logic of Israel’s campaign in Gaza—and likely never thought much about it beyond that. While backing Israel was no doubt helpful to Biden’s rise in politics (and certainly essential to pro-Israel groups spending millions targeting Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary), pro-Israel lobby groups had little influence over Biden in his final year in office. Even after he dropped out of his ill-fated re-election bid, even after his replacement lost the election itself, Biden continued and continues to this day to do nothing but arm, protect, and justify Israel’s countless war crimes. This is why there is a whiff of antisemitism to this popular line: If Biden had been Jewish, his ironclad commitment to Zionism would simply be seen as an earnest ideological commitment. But because he’s Catholic, there has to be dark and mysterious forces making him do bad things against his will. 

But if the past 14 months have shown anything, it’s that Zionism is a colonial ideology that requires no religious or ethnic identity. It is as American as apple pie, and the simplest explanation—that Biden just agrees with Israel’s genocidal campaign and thinks it’s justified—is all there needs to be. No lobby pressure necessary.   

But these excuse-making regimes aren’t only about providing a moral cover for President Biden. They’re very much about creating—to use a vogue term of the day—a permission structure for liberals to go about the usual work of Professional Politics. They permit compartmentalization, however tenuous. This system, over the past 14 months, has allowed, above all, liberals to enjoy politics. From TikTok memes to MSNBC to the social settings of campaigns and government workers, people develop a parasocial relationship with those in power, especially those leading their own party. Uncle Joe, Joe of the Parks and Rec cameo, Obama’s lovable sidesick, Joe of the AOC selfie, Joe of the “a decent man who has done nothing wrong” fame—surely he can’t back the genocide of Palestinians. This reality is too difficult to face; it offends both our chauvinism and partisan identity which, in key ways, is more essential to people’s sense of self than religion or race. So the incentives to build these excuse-making regimes, to provide thin journalistic legitimacy for them, and to push out into our airwaves and Twitter timelines pat thought memes—“… Biden’s bear-hugging Netanyahu so he can influence him as a friend…,” “… he has to back Israel to win the 2024 election…,” “… It’s the Israel Lobby…,” “… he’s working for a ceasefire…,” “…even if he cut off Israel, it wouldn’t matter…”—is tremendous. 

It is not only essential to ameliorating cognitive dissonance, it is essential to the basic functioning of civil society and our liberal body politic. So it developed, became a career-maker for many, and largely served its function. But this doesn’t make it any less of a lie. There was never any outside force compelling Biden to back the wholesale destruction of a people, and there was nothing compelling liberals to look the other way. There was nothing forcing progressives, nonprofits, labor unions to endorse Biden, or his equally pro-genocide replacement, without conditioning said endorsement on a change in Gaza policy. These were choices they made. And when it’s all said and done—when the legacy of the Biden administration is invariably written about and debated—the choices we make, more than any hand wringing or “change things from the inside” self-rationalization, are all we have and all we are. 

Watchdog critics are sounding the alarm over president-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Kashyap “Kash” Patel to be the next director of the FBI, calling the MAGA ultra-loyalist—who even former Republican colleagues describe as “dangerous” and unqualified—to be running the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

Patel, who served in the previous Trump administration as chief of staff in the Department of Defense and a counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council, was characterized by the Associated Press earlier this year as “trusted aide and swaggering campaign surrogate who mythologizes the former president while promoting conspiracy theories and his own brand.”

Journalist Medhi Hasan, co-founder of Zeteo, said that while previously working for MSNBC he had done a deep-dive on Patel, during which he discovered just what “a deeply strange and alarming and sycophantic figure” Trump’s pick is.

As the New York Times reports, Patel founded a nonprofit that provides legal assistance to individuals prosecuted for involvement in the January 6, 2021 insurrection and also runs a merchandise business which sells flashy pro-MAGA gear under the “K$H” label.

Patel, the Times notes, “sells pro-Trump T-shirts and other items as well as a series of his children’s books that pay homage to ‘King Donald.’ Mr. Patel also collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the 2024 Trump campaign and from Friends of Matt Gaetz, the campaign committee for the former House Republican from Florida, who withdrew from consideration as Mr. Trump’s attorney general after criticism over allegations of sex trafficking and drug use.”

According to the watchdog group Accountable.US, Patel is just the latest unqualified choice by a president-elect will to put “political loyalty above national security.” As the group noted in a statement:

While Patel joined the previous Trump administration in its last year and quickly rose through the ranks thanks to his hard-nosed style and fawning devotion to Donald Trump, other Trump officials reportedly regarded Patel as “dangerous” including General Mark Milley who feared he would break the law for Trump, and former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr who said “Over my dead body” when Trump entertained naming Patel deputy director of the FBI. Recently, Patel has threatened to prosecute journalists and political opponents of Trump. Patel has also reportedly spread baseless Qanon conspiracy theories and “earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from his own business dealings with Trump-related entities.”

Last year, during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Patel vowed that Trump’s enemies would be targeted if the former president returned to power. “We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media,” Patel said at the time.

“Yes, we’re going to come after people in the media,” Patel explained to Bannon, talking about journalists and others who he claimed “help Joe Biden rig elections.”

Tony Carrk, Accountable’s executive director, warned Kash’s nomination to lead the FBI “represents the cronyism that is coming to define the second Trump administration. Loyalty to President-elect Trump is what matters above all else.”

“Even former Trump officials have questioned Patel’s qualifications and ability to adhere to the rule of law after he has threatened to prosecute journalists and Trump’s political opponents,” Carrk added. “Patel’s financial entanglements with the president-elect also present potential conflicts of interest. He has turned his gushing idolization of Trump into a money-making opportunity, enriching himself by promoting the Trump brand alongside his own. It says it all about Donald Trump’s priorities to once again reward a devout political crony even if it means America’s national security interests come a distant second.”

Writing Saturday in The Atlantic, staff writer Elaina Plott Calabro described Kash as “exactly the kind of person who would serve in a second Trump administration,” based on his personality as much as his record.

Why was he seen as “dangerous,” even among Trump administration insiders at the time?

“It wasn’t a question of ideology,” according to Calabro. “He wasn’t a zealot like Stephen Miller, trying to make the bureaucracy yield to his agenda. Rather, Patel appeared singularly focused on pleasing Trump. Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion.”

Longtime Working People listeners will be familiar with Max and Mel’s extended work discussing the supply chain, the workers who keep that system running day in and day out, and the dangerous and exploitative working conditions that many workers labor under. Our global economy relies on these workers to stay running–and bosses around the world use this pressure as a cudgel against the workers.

For today’s episode of Working People, we’re zooming out and taking a look at the global supply chain with Judy Gearhart, research professor with the Accountability Research Center at American University and host of the Labor Link Podcast, a podcast about “the brave individuals organizing the workers who make our stuff.” With decades of experience collaborating with organizers and rights advocates supporting worker struggles in the Global South, Judy is uniquely positioned to bring the stories of these workers forth to her listeners.

Additional links/info:

• Check out the Labor Link podcast here.
• Labor Link Podcast, “S2E4 – Hariyanto Suwarno (Indonesian Migrant Workers’ Union) and Charli Fritzner (Greenpeace USA)”
• Mel Buer, “Corporate billionaires are wrecking the supply chain. Just look at the railroads.”
• Teddy Ostrow and Ruby Walsh, “UPS and the Logistics Revolution”

Permanent links:

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube hannel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music:
Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Mel Buer
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Speaker 1 (00:17):

Hi, I’m Judy Gerhardt. I’m a research professor with the Accountability Research Center at American University at the School for International Service, and I host a podcast called the Labor Link Podcast, which is about workers organizing and global supply chains.

Speaker 2 (00:33):

Hello everyone. It’s your host, Mel er, and welcome back to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership within these Times magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like You Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. If you love what we do and are looking for more worker and labor focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network and please support the work we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, friends and family members. Leave positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and reach out to us if you have recommendations for working folks that you’d like us to talk to.

(01:18)
And please support the work we do at The Real News by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world. Long time TRNN supporters will be familiar with my previous work on the US supply chain and the integral role that railroad workers played in maintaining the network of goods and services that keep our country running as we learned in 2022. Without the workers, these networks don’t run. Bottlenecks happen and the national and global economy can grind to a stuttering halt. If you haven’t read my previous coverage on it, then please check it out at the link in our show notes on today’s episode of Working People, we’re going beyond the borders of the US and trending our focus on the international workers who keep the world’s global economy running.

(02:04)
This is likely going to become a series of interviews with workers from all over the world, but I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. So to start this conversation, I thought it would be important to bring on someone who’s been doing the important work of giving a platform to the workers who make these global industries run. I want to talk to her about her life and research and dig into the important work that she’s doing now. As always, it’s my goal to give you our listeners the context you need as we pull back the curtain on contemporary labor organizing both in this country and worldwide. So with us today to help us get that conversation rolling is Judy Gerhart, research professor with the Accountability Research Center at American University and host of the Labor Link Podcast, a podcast about the brave individuals organizing the workers who make our stuff with decades of experience collaborating with organizers and rights advocates, supporting worker struggles in the global south, Judy is uniquely positioned to bring the stories of these workers forth, her listeners from their website.

(03:01)
The Labor Link Podcast touches on many aspects of the global economy, trade policy, international development programs, corporate accountability, and the international human rights norms meant to protect workers from abuse. The first Labor Link podcast series featured organizers leveraging transnational campaigns to build power. And this second series is on Fisher driven solutions to the seafood industry, featuring interviews with Fisher organizers from around the world who are overcoming challenges and using creative strategies to advance fisher’s rights in the global fishing industry. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Judy. I’m really excited to have this conversation.

Speaker 1 (03:37):

Thank you so much, Mel. I really appreciate you and Max having me on.

Speaker 2 (03:41):

So to start off our conversation, I first wanted to give our listeners a chance to get to know a little bit more about you and your work, your career. How did the last couple decades of organizing nonprofit work bring you to this current research?

Speaker 1 (03:55):

Wow. So I have been working, I think I started about 30 years ago actually doing organizing work in Mexico and I got to know a lot of amazing people who were organizing women in the export processing factories, the macula ladora in northern Mexico. And really that was the beginning. I mean, I went to Mexico knowing that I wanted to work on economic rights. I had done that college study abroad in France when Miran, the socialists were in power, and I had been going to college in Philadelphia where it had the highest per capita homelessness rate. So that had gotten me all thinking, okay, I need to understand economic rights. And when I went to Mexico and met people who were organizing workers and the workers themselves, I fell in love with the movement. I fell in love with these people who are, they’re trying to do good in the world, but they’re also trying to build power for the people who don’t have it. And I really found their campaigns and their struggle compelling.

Speaker 2 (05:09):

So what did you end up doing after you finished that work in Mexico? Where did you go next?

Speaker 1 (05:17):

So it’s a little bit of a meandering story. So I went to grad school and I went and worked for the United Nations. I went to back to Honduras and worked for the International Labor Organization and for unicef, and I realized that international instruments are blunt end instruments. There was a lot of campaigning at the time about child labor in the Honduran export factories. You’ll remember maybe some people will remember the Kathy Lee Gifford scandal. That happened because there were 14 year olds making clothing for her. And being in Honduras at the time, I was really aware of the complexities of what was happening because you had 50% of kids in school got through elementary school, and by the time they were 13 or 14, if they hadn’t finished elementary school, they couldn’t go on to middle school. So they had to work. And our international campaigns ended up pushing a lot of 15 to eight to 17, 15 to 16, 17 year olds out of the workforce because all the global brands said no more child labor.

(06:25)
And then you had this sort of moment of struggle. And for me it meant I could see the power of the international mechanisms, but I also knew that we needed to figure out a way to connect with workers on the ground and what kind of remedy they needed. I then landed back in New York and I got a job with Social Accountability International, working on workplace standard, voluntary workplace standard, the basis for social audits. And in the beginning I thought, this is great because at the time you had a lot of companies putting out codes of conduct that didn’t include freedom of association and collective bargaining didn’t include a living wage. So I was part of a group of people trying to convert international human rights norms into language that was atory for companies basically saying, you should do this, you should do that. This is what it means for what you need to do in your supply chain.

(07:25)
And because it included those core rights, I found it compelling and I thought we could use it as an education instrument, which we did. We did a lot of worker training, we had a lot of trade unions. We partnered with the apparel unions globally, and we used that tool to help them in their negotiations and collective bargaining. But I ran into a bit of a wall at some point because the social auditing was, it was a voluntary mechanism. They reported the results of the audit, but not enough of the details. So it was confidential like so many of these initiatives. And at the time I started realizing I was not going to be able to change those core flaws in the social auditing and the voluntary compliance mechanisms. I was lucky enough to become the executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum, and then I spent 10 years working with amazing organizers and campaigners around the world and doing worker tours supporting, I was part of the team of people who helped negotiate the Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, which is a binding first of its kind transparent agreement. It’s basically a collective bargaining agreement between transnational apparel brands and the Bangladeshi unions and global unions. And that brought me to today where I’m really trying to figure out how do we take those amazing organizers and share their stories with other people so that they themselves can influence policy and also academic thinking to the extent I’m not a real academic, but to the extent that I’m part of the academy at this point.

Speaker 2 (09:13):

So the work that you do with the research center then is really kind of doing these interviews, talking to these workers, gathering this information and trying to present it to not just academic audiences, but translate this into potential policy objectives for the various organizations that you work with. Is that kind of a good understanding of the kind of work that you’re doing now?

Speaker 1 (09:36):

Yeah. Everything we do is trying to bridge between the global policy trade or corporate policies and what the workers on the ground are actually doing. I work with some great colleagues at the accountability research center who they work with health rights advocates in Guatemala or on education reform in the Philippines. Their work is a lot about community driven government accountability, and it was a perfect place for me to land with worker driven corporate accountability, this idea that we need to enable the workers and the organizers on the ground to influence the policies that are affecting them.

Speaker 2 (10:21):

I think this is kind of a good segue to really get into what your current focus is with the Labor Network or Labor Link podcast rather. Your first, or your series, I should say that you worked on was about these transnational campaigns to build power. Before we get into your current work with the Fishers in the fishing industry, was there anything that surprised you as you were interviewing these workers about the campaigns they were engaged in or about the workers themselves?

Speaker 1 (10:53):

So I think the thing that first surprised me is when I started working more heavily on research for arc, I was doing a lot of long form interviews, and when I first sat down to write the report that I had gotten a grant to write, I pulled the transcripts, which I guess many academics do all over the world, but I read the transcripts. I’m like, there’s so much smarter than me. What they have to say is so much more powerful. And that’s where I started saying, wait a minute, how do I figure out a way to put this out? So through the Labor Radio podcast cust Network, I met Evan Matthew Pap, who helped me with the first series through Evan. I met Jules who’s helping me with, who’s producing the second series, and it made it somewhat possible. I really hats off to what you do at working people.

(11:50)
It’s a lot of work. The thing I guess that surprised me, if anything, other than just this realization that I need to find a way to get their voices heard was the things I discovered about people I’d been working with for years. So the first four people I interviewed, I had known for anywhere from six to 12 years at the time, and I had helped them with worker tours. And when I was the director of the International Labor Rights Forum, we had given awards to their organizations for the organizing work they were doing. So that’s why I had wanted to start with them. But it was really taking that time to do the long form interview that I learned things like the organizer from Myanmar from the Migrant Worker Rights Network in Myanmar. He was an activist from Myanmar, and I compare him and I think the show notes, he’s basically like this Mother Jones character in my head because he comes from Myanmar shows up in Thailand, and he’s just trying to make a living. He’s escaping because he was at risk of losing his life or getting jailed in Myanmar. And so then he goes to Thailand and pretty much immediately starts organizing. And one of the big issues in Thailand is migrant workers can’t form a union. They can join a union, but they can’t form a union. But that didn’t deter haw.

(13:20)
And he and another expat who also had escaped cente, they started seeking out the trade unions and SA Karn, who’s another one of the first interviewees, so Sait Karn from the state Employee Relations Committee is a visionary. I mean, he basically said, okay, I may be maybe representing primarily Thai workers from public sector jobs, but we’ve got to help migrants. And he did, and he supported the Migrant Worker Rights Network and he did a lot of other things to try and bridge that gap, which is something I think the US at the time I met SA was really still beginning and improving upon, but it certainly took us a moment to try and bridge between traditional organized labor and migrant workers, and I think the movement’s better for it.

Speaker 2 (14:17):

Right. There are a couple things I wanted to just kind of touch on before we move forward. Really first, to share solidarity with you as a podcast host and a researcher and the realization that you come to that, the people that you interview really are the experts in the industries that they work in. And the job is kind of interviewees to really kind of set and open up a space where these folks, these workers can talk about the experiences that they live every day, whether it be the working conditions, the organizing that they do. And that’s sometimes a tough job. A lot of folks really get uncomfortable when the mic turns on. It’s oftentimes pretty difficult to get folks to feel like they can really talk authoritatively on the experiences that they have because they ask. The same question that we ask often is, how am I a representative for this?

(15:17)
Am I supposed to be here talking about this? And the reality is, yes, working people, a lot of the work that Real News does, what we do is we try to create this space where we recognize that the workers that we talk to are the experts and that they are the ones who are bringing this experience forward for our audience to understand. And that’s a tough job. And so I don’t want you to feel like you’re not doing a good job. I think it’s a really unique position to be in, and it’s a very privileged position to be able to bring these folks forward and provide this platform. And so I just wanted to acknowledge that work that you do and that it’s really important.

Speaker 1 (16:00):

Matt, Mel, back at you. I mean, I really appreciate what you all do, and I would be thrilled if you ever want to interview, I’d be happy to facilitate the conversations in the context. It’s really true what you’re saying. I mean, so Tola Moon from Cambodia, who’s one of the first people I interviewed, I mean, there are many of us in the international community who see Tola as this really incredibly brilliant strategist, and he’s very low key. And his organization, the Center for the Alliance of Human Rights and Labor is currently under threat that the Cambodian government might shut them down for an analytic report that they put out about a program being run called Better Factories Cambodia by the International Labor Organization and by the International Finance Corporation. And it’s an analytic report. They’re not trash talking. They did their research and anyway, so much respect. And whenever I interview him, he ends it by saying, thank you so much. It’s always so inspiring to talk to you. I’m thinking, you’ve got to be kidding me. You’re so much more inspiring than anything I’ve ever done. I’m just some small town kid who’s fascinated by

(17:24)
What other people do,

Speaker 2 (17:25):

Right? I mean, that’s the same thing here. Folks are like, oh, you’re so cool. You do all this great work. And it’s like, oh man, if you could listen to yourself, I hope you listen back to this episode and understand how intelligent and charismatic and hopeful these workers are. And the thing about work, about wage work in any context at any place in the world in this system is that it is designed to make you feel inferior, to make you feel like you don’t belong or that your contribution doesn’t matter and that you’re just another nut and bolt in this giant machine. And that’s it. The reality is that workers in every context are whole people who care a lot about what they do, who care a lot about the contributions that they have, particularly in the global supply chain. I had this experience when I was talking to railroad workers is that from an outside perspective, you wouldn’t think that folks would be able to feel like they can rise above the drudgery, I suppose.

(18:33)
But the reality is, whether it’s railroad workers, whether it’s farm workers in Southern California, in central California, there is this pride in the work that you do and the contribution that you have to keeping the world running. And that’s something that bosses really don’t believe is a reality, which I feel like is kind of like an ace in the hole for us when we’re organizing, is to say, when you assign and really believe in the dignity of your work and you assert your dignity as a worker, you kind of throw ’em back on their heels a little bit. As the organizing continues, there’s such a rich tapestry of how we interact with the jobs that we do, and it’s really beautiful to kind of be in a space and begin to sort of peel back those layers in conversation as we do as podcast hosts and researchers, and to see the moments click where I guests really start to believe what they’re saying, not that they didn’t believe it before, but that they’re coming to this better realization as they’re trying to tell strangers in our audience about the work that they do. That yeah, it is important. There’s no piece of it that is not, and that is a really gratifying piece of what I do and what you do, I’m sure as a host, facilitating these conversations. So

Speaker 1 (19:59):

Yeah, I will say the last one I should shout out from the first series who I didn’t mention yet, is my dear friend Ana actor from the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity. And she is, I mean, she definitely is an amazing speaker. She’s actually quite well known now, amazing organizer. In fifth grade, her dad got sick and she went to work in the apparel factories. And what that woman has done with the fifth grade education, she is just continued to self-educate herself. She just is brilliant. I mean, her capacities on so many levels, and then her ability to inspire is just, it’s pretty incredible. And I have to think about more women leaders to include, although in the phishing sector, I have to get to the processing sector. That’s my next hope, because right now we don’t have a lot of women in live capture phishing.

Speaker 2 (21:03):

Yeah. Well, that’s a good segue actually. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about this second series. You have four episodes out, I believe, right?

(21:13)
Yeah. Hey, that’s amazing given the breadth of work that you’re doing. So this is focusing on Fisher organizers and the advancement of workers’ rights in both large and small scale fishing industries from around the world. I believe your last episode, you were talking to fishers in Indonesia, if I’m not mistaken, maybe a good way to kind of orient our listeners in this research and with these workers. Can you share a little bit about the conditions that they’re currently laboring under? I know that’s a broad loaded question, but can we kind of give them a little bit of context into what the sort of both large and small scale global fishing industry looks like? I imagine a lot of our American listeners may think of global fisheries and may immediately go to, I don’t know, deadliest catch or something, a very unique American sort of fishery that maybe doesn’t look the same elsewhere. So let’s start there.

Speaker 1 (22:21):

Okay. So global fisheries, the majority of them are at capacitor overfished, and they are environmentally, there’s a struggle to make them sustainable. And the environmental, so environmental advocates around the world have been working on this for a long time. However, in 2014, actually even before that, there were some small exposes, but in 2014, major media outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian and the AP came out with a series of stories about forced labor on the Thai fleet. And then there were also stories appearing about forced labor on the Chinese fleet, the Taiwanese fleet vessels showing up in South Africa in Australia, Indonesian migrant fishers just walking off the vessel saying, we’ve been slaves on that vessel help us, or other vessels that were pulled aside for illegal unreported and unregulated fishing, IUU fishing, which to the environmentalists, to their credit, have been working for a long time on illegal unreported, unregulated fishing.

(23:38)
And that has brought some cases in where fishing vessels were detained for fishing illegally, and then the forced labor was discovered. So the story that I have from Hatto from SBMI in Indonesia, the largest migrant worker union in Indonesia, they were asked to go and help the fishers who were stranded in South Africa. And then what they discovered is the Indonesian government, the way the laws were set up, they couldn’t get these fishers, the support they needed. And so then that begat a whole body of work for them. But globally, starting around 2014 with all of these exposes, the one in South Africa, the ones on the Thai fleet, there were other cases all around Southeast Asia, the global community started to mobilize, and they really started reacting to forced labor on these vessels. It is horrific. I mean, there are stories of fishers stranded at sea for 15 years.

(24:52)
That’s probably one of the outside timeframes, but there are others who are out there for more. And then of course there are others who don’t come back who are killed at sea or they die from an illness at sea, and then their body is buried at sea, which is something that’s very traumatic for a lot of these people. For the Indonesians, it’s very traumatic, particularly I talked about that with Hato. And the campaigns that have surged from there have focused a lot on forced labor and illegal fishing, and it really brought a lot more work to support fishers and migrant fishers. I want to stop there. So in case you want to ask another question, but there’s so much work to be done just to address that forced labor. However, the thing I got from talking with people like or SA Karn, is we can rescue forced labor victims for decades to come, but it’ll never stop happening until we organize the fishers, until we enable them to stand up to the captain, we enable them to get remedy when they’re not paid, and we enable them to build the social movement that challenges these laws.

Speaker 2 (26:17):

That’s kind of where I was headed in my own thinking. You talk about these exposes in 2014 on that are trying to tackle one issue and pulling back and peeling away layers of what seems to me to be a wholly systemic industry-wide practice of forced labor, the industry in this region and elsewhere. And that in itself feels like an overwhelming sort of experience in its breadth, in its scope in how many fishermen past, present, future may be affected by this. And so I think a good question to ask then is as this organizing has been happening, more concerted organizing has been happening over the last 10 years or so, have there been some campaigns that you’ve spoken with fishers about that they consider to be successes or effective or moving the needle and in a good direction in terms of these organizing objectives?

Speaker 1 (27:28):

Yeah, so I think the first couple interviews I did are with the International Transport Workers Federation and the Fisher Rights Network in Thailand. So the ITF has been helping to set up at port and at multiple ports in Thailand fisher organizations. And so the Fisher Rights Network is growing. Again, as I said, they’re not able to form a union technically, but that doesn’t keep them from forming basically a worker center and from pursuing negotiations with the employers. What’s happening a lot in this space is you have a lot of funding and a lot of people with goodwill who are focused on the forced labor. And it’s important work. If you have been forced to be at sea for two years and you haven’t been paid, or if you have a family member stranded at sea and you just want to get them back, it’s crucial work, right? It’s absolutely crucial,

Speaker 2 (28:37):

But it doesn’t stop there. We need

Speaker 1 (28:38):

To talk about the also the and the also and right, so I’m not saying yeah, but I’m saying also and right, we need that work, but that work needs to connect in. And you have a lot of NGOs that do that work that don’t necessarily connect in. So there are some efforts now to connect these pieces together. And I think with migrant fishers, it’s a challenge to learn how to organize. They don’t come from organizing backgrounds for the most part except for the exceptions of the people who are leading some of these efforts. And so how do you bring this consciousness of what it means to organize what it means to work with your fellow fishers? I hope that you’ll get to talk directly with John Harto from the ITF who’s been organizing now going on a decade in Thailand, not quite a decade, but to hear it through his perspective as a former teamster, as an American, it’s quite moving.

(29:42)
But the bravery of these fishers who continue to organize, and I don’t want to tell the story that he tells, but to hear him tell the story of the fisher that inspires him every day is just, it’s pretty jaw dropping because the guy should have died at sea and he didn’t, and he continues to organize, but that one fisher is standing up to his boss and continuing to organize. That’s what the movement’s built on. And I think, Mel, I’m not a trade unionist from history. I’ve always been on the NGO side, although I’ve always been in solidarity with and supporting worker organizing, and I’ve definitely been very deeply involved in worker centers and Latin America, but I think a lot of people beyond the labor movement don’t fully appreciate what it takes to organize the day in the day out and what it means to have your momentum crushed by a fake solution. And that’s what’s happening a lot in global supply chain solutions. So yes, absolutely, we want to get remedy for fishers who have been victims of forced labor. Yes, we want to rescue victims of forced labor, but we need to build from there to the next step of enabling fishers to defend each other.

Speaker 2 (31:16):

Right? Well, the industry moves on because the workers are going to be participating in the industry as folks begin to really truly put up that fence that says that forced labor is not the way forward. So then what are the rights of the workers now that they are getting paid now that they have some movement now that they can get off these boats? It moves beyond that and creates a new culture of worker dignity in these industries. And I agree. My experience in union organizing prior to this current job where I actually am a card carrying member of CWA News Guild now was organizing in the IWW as a freelance journalist. And for folks who aren’t union organizers or maybe have never worked in any sort of quote organizing group, whether that’s political organizing, whether that’s union organizing, whether that’s, oh, I don’t know, community meetings, quite a bit of it is, what’s a good way to put it, bureaucratic drudgery sometimes.

(32:27)
It’s a lot of really hopeful, really optimistic, really intelligent, really passionate people butting heads often, at least in the West. And there’s a lot of people on the outside of these organizing groups who really don’t want to see you succeed and will do really horrible things to make your job 10 times harder because what’s that really? Well-known Stokely Carmichael quote in, for example, in order for non-violence to happen, your opponent must have a heart. Essentially. We’re coming up against corporations, we’re coming up against nonprofits even I’m lucky to be at one where folks walk the walk and talk the talk, but that’s not always the case where individuals in positions of power really don’t want to share that power with a workforce. And so organizing is really difficult to try and get the folks who sign your paychecks, who create these conditions in your workplace to see you as a human being is extraordinarily difficult, which is always surprising.

(33:36)
And to also bring people in who have never experienced collective organization before and empower them to make decisions and to participate and to activate them and to keep them activated and to keep their spirits up and to do all of this in order to continue to push forward in what is a marathon, a long game is very difficult. And I cannot imagine what it’s like to be in an industry that I has its baseline as the complete and utter dehumanization of its workers, forcing them into situations for 15 years, forced slave labor, and then to pull these individuals out of this enforced culture of oppression, empower them, and then continue to empower them to assert themselves and the dignity of their work collectively. It’s got to be unreal, both in just the scope and difficulty of it, but also in the sort of payoff. And I can imagine that there’s some serious euphoria of the winds that happen that keep individuals moving forward, right? It’s got to be life affirming, truly, to see that needle move a little bit year after year,

Speaker 1 (35:03):

Even just to build community in migrant communities that are moving a lot. I mean, these are not stable work teams,

(35:15)
So how do you build community? So you talked about layers earlier, Mel, and I think we could talk about the layers of fear factor that happen whenever you’re organizing and you know that your boss doesn’t want you to organize, you feel threatened, but add to that the layer that your identity papers being held by the captain of your vessel. And so you’ve come into port and you’re allowed to leave the vessel, but if you leave the vessel, they don’t give you your papers and then they might report you if you don’t come back. So you have to get back on that vessel, add to that, that you’re indebted to the captain because you didn’t pay the recruiter that brought you over, but instead there’s money coming out of your paycheck that’s reimbursing the vessel owner for you getting over to get that job. I mean, the payment for a job is just another whole crazy level of abuse that happens in this industry.

(36:18)
And then add to that, your language inability in the country you’re in as a migrant, it just keeps adding on. And I’ll say, you said earlier that it’s become systemic. I mean, that’s absolutely true. So Indonesian migrants and they migrant fishers are disproportionately made up of Indonesian migrant fishers, at least all the cases that come in of forced labor and abuse. And the Indonesians that I have spoken with and the organizers I’ve spoken with, it’s standard procedure for them to go abroad, sign a two year contract. So they sign a two year contract on a Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese fleet generally, and then they’re supposed to get paid electronically, and that money’s supposed to go to their family or to them, however they set it up, but then they’re at sea and they don’t have access to wifi, and they have no way to see if they got paid. They have no way to communicate with their families. So our friends at Global Labor Justice, they’re supporting a campaign with Taiwan. The Indonesian fishers in Taiwan got together and started a campaign called Wifi for Fishers now, and they have slogans like No wifi, no wife, because imagine you’re gone for two years. Your wife didn’t get any money, didn’t hear from you,

(37:43)
You

Speaker 2 (37:44):

Don’t know. Might assume you’re dead. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (37:46):

Yeah. And so they really, they’re trying to figure out a lot of these vessels. They have digital tracking, they have satellite, they have the capacity to provide the wifi. In fact, there are even places where they get into range of wifi access and the captain will take their phones away. They don’t want them to communicate. So the fact that they’re on a two year contract, the fact that there’s transshipment at sea so that the fish get off, but the fishers don’t, and then often they will pull into a port and they can’t use port services because they’re not legal, they’re not allowed to go, their documents are held back. So it’s not like they can get off at port and go run to the embassy and say, I need help. I’m being trapped. I mean, that just, it’s not that easy.

Speaker 2 (38:40):

One comparison that I keep coming up in as we’re talking about this, particularly about migrant status, about language barriers, about the barriers to really free movement on these boats, you hear a lot of the same concerns from organizers who are working with United Farm workers and the migrant farm workers who are working in farms in Southern and central California in Arizona along the border, a lot of them will cross the border without the appropriate visa paperwork. They’re taken advantage of by the farms that hire them. They’re housed in these often cramped, scary conditions in the middle of the desert or wherever they’re being housed. They’re subjected to extreme heat. And the farms themselves, if they’re unorganized, because some of the farms are organized and do have a relationship with UFW as a union will really kind of give and take however much they want because there’s no consequences.

(39:57)
Oftentimes the government’s not going to step in a way that’s useful a lot of times because the individuals who could investigate these claims, the agencies are underfunded deliberately or otherwise. There’s just not enough people to go around to show up at these places to investigate these issues. I imagine that a lot of this is the same because you’re in the middle of the ocean and even if you get claims about workplace conditions and being abysmal or abuses happening on these boats, it’s likely pretty freaking difficult for these governments to step in international waters. So you have all of these complications. So the point I’m trying to make is what it comes down to is the workers themselves that they are the ones who are collectively able to address, call out these issues, address these issues, force consequences for these issues. And that is no small feat when you’re talking about fleets of boats in the middle of the ocean

Speaker 1 (41:00):

And the distant water fleet is so hard to police and regulate, and increasingly countries don’t allow foreign vessels in their waters, but that doesn’t mean they’re not overfishing. So the Indonesian fishers, I have an interview coming up with aren’t on from salute in North s Lui, and he talks about organizing at port, both for fishers on the Indonesian domestic fleet and the Indonesians going abroad on the distant water fleet. And Indonesia, a number of years ago, said, no more foreign vessels in our waters. But now you have a domestic fleet that pays even worse, but the conditions are terrible. They’re not well financed. They’re overfishing still the same waters that were, they booted out the Korean fishers to try and let their fish recuperate, but they didn’t. They basically continue to overfish. So it’s really a struggle. And then you have the fishers who would, because you can make so little money on the domestic fleet, they’re willing to take that risk of going abroad for two years and not being in contact with anyone. But listening to you now, Mel, I’m thinking we need to find a way to, first, with all the organizing that’s happening now, enable the fishers to sit down and reimagine how this could be. If we could imagine a world where migrant fishers, whenever the vessel comes into port and the ITF is saying it should be every three months, you should be coming into port at minimum.

(42:37)
And if those fissures in whatever port they’re at are able to access communications and support, it could be a completely different world. It is doable, but it takes an amount of coordination because you’ve got whatever country is flying the flag of the vessel, and there’s abuse of the flag registrations, which the ITF has a great campaign on flags of convenience, it’s worth looking at. But then you also have the port that the vessel comes into, and then you have the market state. That’s generally the US and Japan and Europe where we have some

Speaker 2 (43:14):

Influence,

Speaker 1 (43:15):

But we haven’t really been exerting it yet. There was a big campaign of global buyers and retailers saying, supporting the employer pays principle. And we looked into that. I worked with some students last year and did some research on the employer pays principle and companies support it. They support the principle, but they have no way to implement it, and they’re not financing it. So basically the buyer or the retailer, it’s just like in the global apparel supply chains, they’re saying to the vessels they buy from, go do this, but they’re not helping finance it. They’re not going to be steady buyers from those vessels that change their policies. They’re not really taking responsibility for bega the change in the sector.

Speaker 2 (44:07):

Well, there’s no incentive for that. There’s no incentive for it. There’s no consequences for not doing it, right.

Speaker 1 (44:14):

There’s only organizing pressure really. I mean, we can talk consumers, but it’s not penetrating in the way that we need it to.

Speaker 2 (44:21):

Right? Well, this is the sort of idealist, internationalist, anarchist in me, God forbid, hopefully some of my listeners don’t get mad at me for this, but it’s like, what would be great if we could just get rid of all of these borders that make this shit impossible? Pardon my language. Maybe a truly international community would benefit greatly from not having extra border barriers that make this impossible for individuals to stop off somewhere, contact family, I don’t know, get justice for the abuses they suffer in the middle of the ocean. That’s an extremely reductive idealist position for me to take. But when you hear these kinds of problems, you’re like, why? A lot of these could be solved with the air quotes, relatively simple solutions, right?

Speaker 1 (45:15):

I don’t know, Mel, I’m with you. I mean, capital’s treat across borders. They’re very unfettered. I mean, there are some regulations and some things they need to go through. We could do something if you were to treat migration equally to the people migration to capital, if you created regulations that were as facilitative, things would shift and change. Yes, it’s idealist, but 30 years ago I was working on Latin America and the impact of the US drug trade in Latin American and on human rights, and I never could have imagined we’d see the day that we’re in now with marijuana being legal, if somebody doesn’t rethink migration in a more radical way, I don’t know that we’re going to get there. So keep rethinking it. I’m way out of my depth and all the different repercussions. I mean, not so out of

Speaker 3 (46:20):

My depth,

Speaker 1 (46:21):

But I mean we would need another five hours to even start to hash out all the different repercussions because there’s a big cultural element to how do you mix different peoples and cultures and over time, and that is a segue to something I do want to mention is I’ve been doing this work starting on the egregious abuses of forced labor, but always with this eye too. We can’t just stay there. That’s like just looking at the tip of the iceberg, because the causal factors are really the inability of the fishers to have a voice, to organize, to bargain collectively. The phenomenal amount of discrimination they suffer day in and day out because as migrants, and at the same time, we can’t look at the seafood industry only through the lens of the distant water fleet. What I would hate to see is buyers and retailers finally addressing this piece, the tip of the iceberg, and not addressing the causal factors or the rest of the seafood industry.

Speaker 2 (47:30):

They would treat it as like a checked box. We’ve done our due diligence. Look at this

Speaker 1 (47:35):

Amazing work we did in this one piece, because I will tell you the future episodes I’m hoping to do with Fisher organizers. I’m looking at organizing in coastal fishing in Africa and Latin America, and there you’ve got a lot of tensions coming up between the industrial fleet and the coastal fishers who are really largely fishing for food security. So much of the global movement, the mechanisms we have as a global movement are trade related. And if you only look at what can I change using trade policy or global corporate policy, you’re going to miss this other layer. And with the seafood industry, these two butt up against each other, so you have the industrial fleet that’s further off the coast, that’s mostly is more likely to be doing export. And so we have mechanisms and policies that we can bring to bear on countries to change how that industrial fleet’s governed,

Speaker 3 (48:38):

But

Speaker 1 (48:39):

We need to also be looking at that coastal fleet because those coastal fishers, they’re managing the waters, the fisheries, they’re really providing it’s food security. What they’re doing, and this is where I really get to the cultural rights. Sorry, it was a long segue. It was long. It’s okay. But when you talk to coastal fishers, this is not just about livelihood and food security. This is a way of life for centuries for a lot of these people. And I think a lot of people think, oh, we just have to fish last along the coast. It’s like, well, maybe there’s got to be a different path because this is their way of life and we’re really threatening something much more profound than what we would be threatening if we’re curbing the industrial vision.

Speaker 2 (49:31):

Right? Important conversations and important nuance to this entire topic. I’m actually really looking forward to future episodes that you do, and I think this is kind of a great place where we can kind of close out our conversation. Can you share with our listeners where they can find your work? We’re going to be putting links to the Labor Link podcast in our show notes. Are there maybe one or two representative episodes of the last two seasons that you think our audience would be interested in or an episode that’s a good maybe primer for the second series that any of our interested audience members can kind of start with?

Speaker 1 (50:14):

Yeah. I think for the Fisher Driven solutions this current season, start with the first one with John Harto. As much as I’m really working to enable people to listen to the Fisher organizers, I think John will really get everybody thinking about what these fishers brave they are. This is really choosing among my children here now that’s D, listen to it all. Yeah,

(50:48)
They’re all fun stories. I mean, because then it segues to the Fisher Rights Network where they’re really, I mean, these guys are really, they have to be so crafty because like we talked about the fear factors, these trying to organize when and build trust with people who are so fearful. It’s phenomenal work that they’re doing. And then of course, Hoya, who’s also from Central and Cambodia organizing migrant fishers in Thailand from the Cambodians, and he’s got a fascinating story to tell. He was originally there as a Buddhist monk, and then he left and started organizing migrants. It’s just another amazing story. And then the one that is really fun and most recent is, and people should check this out, so it’s with Harto from SBMI in Indonesia, and there’s a little piece in there with Charlie Fritz from Greenpeace, and they’re talking about a film called Before You Eat that they produce with Greenpeace that really, if you want visuals on this stuff, check out before you eat or check out Outlaw Ocean. But okay, here I am promoting everybody else but my own show, and given that we share a producer, I better get on with it.

(52:09)
So the way to find the Labor Link podcast, we are on Spotify and we also set up a website, so maybe it’s easier for some people. Labor Link podcast.org. You can find us through the Labor Radio Podcast network and on Spotify, and also go to labor link podcast.org.

Speaker 2 (52:31):

Cool. Cool, cool. Yeah, we’ll put all of those links in the show notes so that folks can check out Judy’s work and stay up to date on what’s happening. The process of putting together a podcast is extremely difficult. We make it seem easy, but it’s definitely not. There’s a lot of work that goes into it, and one of those things is really promoting episodes that folks see them. So we’ll be adding a bunch of links to those episodes because they are incredible conversations, and you absolutely will find something interesting and impactful in what you’re listening to. And this will be my final note before we get to the closing paragraph here, but one thing that I learned in the research that I did for the National Supply Chain Network as it relates to railroaders, is that things that seem boring on their face really are pretty intricate, interesting and precarious when it comes to the supply chains, both nationally and internationally. You might go a little crazy going down that rabbit hole to realize just how precarious global supply chain networks actually are. I’m sure folks can remember the ever given Suez Canal disaster and how that completely choked up the global supply chain almost immediately, right

Speaker 1 (53:53):

In the middle of the pandemic.

Speaker 2 (53:54):

Yes. And how long it took to recover from that. Just one small piece can kind of knock the card pyramid down. So if you find that your knee-jerk reactions to say, oh, that boring stuff, then peel back a little bit of the onion there and take some time to look into it because it becomes endlessly fascinating, infuriating, enraging, and ultimately, you begin to see these sort of moments and spaces for productive and transformative organizing when you start to understand these systems. So that’ll be my final little note here. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Judy, please come back anytime. Let’s link up and continue talking and talking with folks and send me all the interviews that you can. I can’t wait to speak to the folks that you speak to. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 1 (54:53):

Yeah, thank you so much, Mel, and thank you for the show that you all produce. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (54:57):

Yeah, yeah. I appreciate the work that you do as well. And as always, I want to thank you all our listeners for listening, and thank you so much for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon and check out the awesome bonus episodes we’ve got there for our patrons. And please go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter so that you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. Once again, I’m Mel er and with much love and solidarity, I’ll see you next time.

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or HR 9495, has passed a vote in the House. If approved by the Senate, this bill would grant the Treasury Department broad powers to label nonprofit organizations, especially those that have been critical of Israel, as supporters of “terrorism” and strip them of their tax-exempt status without due process. What are the chances that HR 9495 will become law? If it does, will it be used as a weapon to target political enemies and quash political dissent under a second Trump administration, as critics fear? Journalists Chip Gibbons and Noah Hurowitz join the TRNN podcast to give a full breakdown of what this bill could empower the Trump administration to do, and how we can fight back.

Noah Hurowitz is a journalist based in New York City and the author of El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Drug Lord. His work has appeared in New York Magazine, Business Insider, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. His latest report at The Intercept is titled “The House just blessed Trump’s authoritarian playbook by passing nonprofit-killer bill.” Chip Gibbons is a journalist, researcher, and policy director of the nonprofit advocacy organization Defending Rights and Dissent. He is currently working on a book titled The Imperial Bureau, forthcoming from Verso Books. Based heavily on archival research and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, it tells the history of FBI political surveillance and explores the role of domestic surveillance in the making of the US national security state.

Post-Production: David Hebden

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  Welcome, everyone, to The Real News Network podcast. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us.

Before we get going today, I want to remind you all that The Real News is an independent, nonprofit, viewer and listener-supported, grassroots media network. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t have ads, and we never put our reporting behind paywalls. Our team is fiercely dedicated to lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle around the world, but we cannot continue to do this work without your support, and we need you to become a supporter of The Real News now. Just head over to therealnews.com/donate, and donate today. I promise you, it really makes a difference.

In a report for The Intercept harrowingly titled “The House Just Blessed Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook by Passing Nonprofit-Killer Bill”, Noah Hurowitz writes, “A bill that would give President-elect Donald Trump broad powers to target his political foes has passed a major hurdle toward becoming law. The House of Representatives on Thursday passed the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act in a 219-184 vote largely along party lines, with 15 Democrats joining the Republican majority. The bill, also known as HR 9495, would empower the Treasury secretary to unilaterally designate any non-profit as a ‘terrorist-supporting organization,’ and revoke its tax-exempt status, effectively killing the group. Critics say the proposal would give presidential administrations a tool to crack down on organizations for political ends.”

Now, the bill is on its way to the currently Democrat-controlled Senate, where its fate is still very much uncertain. But after this month’s elections, Republicans will enjoy majorities in the House and Senate in the coming term, and there’s every reason to believe that they will keep pushing this kind of legislation until they get what they want.

So what exactly is HR 9495? Will it be used as a weapon to target political enemies and quash political dissent under a second Trump administration? How well-founded are these fears? And if they are well-founded, how do we fight back, not just those of us in the nonprofit space, but across civil society?

To talk about all of this today, I’m honored to be joined by two guests. First, we’re joined today by Noah Hurowitz himself, who’s been doing vital reporting on this for The Intercept, which we’ll link to in the show notes for this episode. Noah is a journalist based in New York City, and the author of El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Drug Lord. His work has appeared in New York magazine, Business Insider, Rolling Stone, and many other publications.

We’re also joined once again by Chip Gibbons. Chip is a journalist, researcher, and policy director of the nonprofit advocacy organization Defending Rights & Dissent. He is currently working on a book titled The Imperial Bureau, forthcoming from Verso Books. Based heavily on archival research and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, this book tells the history of FBI political surveillance, and explores the role of domestic surveillance in the making of the US National Security State.

Chip, Noah, thank you both so much for joining us today on The Real News Network. I really appreciate it.

Noah Hurowitz:  Thank you so much for having us.

Chip Gibbons:  Always a pleasure to be on The Real News.

Maximillian Alvarez:  It’s a real pleasure to have you both, but I’ll be honest, I’m kind of crapping my pants right now, as I imagine a lot of us are, pardon my French. But we’re here to talk about this nonprofit killer bill, what it is, what it isn’t, how do we fight it, and you two have invaluable insight into this. I want, as we’re trying to do across the board here at The Real News, I want to help our listeners and viewers and readers move past the immobilizing fear of the worst case scenarios that are coming at us and help us navigate this moment, and understand what we’re really up against, and what we need to do to be prepared to fight it.

So let’s start there. I want to start, Noah, with you, and then, Chip, I want to go to you. Let’s just get the basics out on the table. For those who maybe don’t know about it, what exactly is this bill? What will it do? Where did it come from, and who exactly is pushing for it?

Noah Hurowitz:  HR 9495 was first introduced under a different name, an earlier piece of legislation in November of 2023. It came about, obviously, shortly after Israel’s genocide in Gaza began, and was pretty explicitly targeted at pro-Palestine organizers and organizations. It has been repeatedly linked to that by its supporters. It’s not a conspiracy theory to say that this is about targeting pro-Palestine groups.

As recently as last week, when in a statement about the bill from the House Ways and Means Committee, which is GOP-controlled, it linked to other hearings that had been taking place in Congress over the past year about alleged antisemitism on campus, about the so-called nexus between campus antisemitism and terror funding. It’s very explicitly, and in their comments on the House floor, supporters such as Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, and the bill’s introducing cosponsor, Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York, have both mentioned specifically pro-Palestine organizations, that I think we’ll get into later, those specifics.

This bill was originally not much of a controversy. It was passed by the House under… So let me just back up. The bill itself has two main provisions: One is providing tax relief to Americans held hostage or imprisoned unjustly abroad. That part of the bill is not controversial, and a separate version of it has actually passed the Senate. It could be, as the critics of the bill pointed out, that portion of the bill could be passed today.

The other half of it is what’s controversial. As you quoted from my piece, it empowers the secretary of the Treasury to essentially unilaterally designate a nonprofit group as a so-called terrorist-supporting organization, which is defined as a group providing material support to terrorists. And by designating, the Treasury secretary could then revoke the nonprofit status of that group, which is essentially the kiss of death for a group.

People fear that that might be implemented. People also are worried about that as a tie or restraint on free speech. That organizations and individuals, through fear of being designated under that law, would moderate what they say, would avoid certain topics. So it’s both a fear of this chilling effect on free speech, and also how it could be implemented, which I think we’ll get into, but [that’s it] rather broadly.

So now the bill passed. There was a bill, HR 6408, which was the standalone version of the nonprofit provision in the bill, that passed in April from the House 382 to 11. The only people who voted against it were 10 Democrats, which, mostly members of the squad and a few other left-leaning Democrats, and then Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who’s a Republican, but he’s kind of on a Tea Party Libertarian tip, and he’s actually been fairly good about breaking with his party on its staunch support of Israel.

But obviously, 382 to 11 means that the vast majority of Democrats who were present on that day voted in favor of the bill. It was not controversial at the time. It got tied up in the Senate. There was a separate bill introduced in the Senate, and it languished in committee there.

Then, bringing us up to the present, the current bill, HR 9495, was introduced in the House, combined with the tax relief provision, in September, and it passed the House Ways and Means Committee, and came to a… In the wake of the reelection of Donald Trump, it was reintroduced for a floor vote in the House on Nov. 12.

I got a tip about that vote coming up a few days beforehand. To be honest, at the time, I must say the ACLU, and a number of civil society organizations, have been doing really important work advocating against the bill, but the vote took people by surprise, and there was not a ton of momentum. There was not a ton of chatter about this bill.

So the vote was on a Tuesday, and my story came out on a Sunday. And pretty immediately, there was a really strong reaction to my story, and there was a really… The ACLU and other groups really harnessed a lot of energy and momentum in trying to advocate against the bill.

Now, what had changed? What changed from April, when there was a 382 to 11 vote, and that Tuesday? Donald Trump was elected. Suddenly, a lot of Democrats had a lot of concerns about how this bill might be implemented if it was Trump in charge, if it was a Trump appointee being allowed to designate groups as terrorist-supporting organizations.

Long story short, on Tuesday, Nov. 12, the bill came to a vote under suspension of the rules, which allows for a limiting of debate, but requires a two-thirds majority to pass, and a majority of Democrats in the House flip-flopped against it, many of them citing the election of Donald Trump, and so they were able to block passage. They were able to prevent that two-thirds majority. There were 52 Democrats who voted in favor, 144 who voted against it, and then most Republicans voted for it.

But it was pretty quickly reintroduced for a second floor vote, this won by simple majority. That was yesterday, Thursday, Nov. 20. And this time, significantly fewer Democrats voted in favor, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. The Republicans had the votes, and so it passed.

Chip Gibbons:  I think that’s a really great procedural history of what happened. The only caveat I would make in the procedural history is that, from the very inception of this bill, there’s been a massive mobilization of civil society groups against it. My group, Defending Rights & Dissent, ACLU, Charity & Security Network, a lot of groups have been mobilizing over the last, I guess, year now to fight this bill. I do think the election of Donald Trump certainly helped turn the tide against it in the Democratic caucus, but I do want to make clear that there have been something like 300 civil society groups opposed to this bill, who have, even before Donald Trump was the president-elect, have been really pushing on Congress.

I know that when we first started talking about this bill at Defending Rights & Dissent, we were thinking to ourselves, is there any way we can mobilize people against it because it seems so wonky? We’re talking about (c)(3) status, do most people understand what that is? We started sending [inaudible] to our supporters, and we were shocked by the outpouring of outrage about it. I think this is one of the first few things I’ve worked on where people have actually called us on the phone to tell us how concerned they are about this bill.

So there is a broad sense of concern throughout civil society, throughout the general public. It has gotten a boost from the impending Trump administration, but I do think the fact that we’ve gone from only 10 Democrats and Thomas Massie opposing it, to only 15 Democrats supporting it, I do think that is a story of civil society success and activist pressure.

I do want to talk a little bit more about what the bill would do. The bill does allow for the secretary of Treasury to unilaterally strip an organization of their 501(c)(3) status, which means they would not be a tax-deductible organization, they would not be a charity. They wouldn’t be shut down per se, they wouldn’t be in jail or anything like that, but they would lose the ability to be a tax-exempt organization, which I think, Max, you can tell us how important that is for you and the work you do.

The thing about it is it allows them to do this if you’re terror-supporting. You’re already not allowed to have tax-exempt status if you are a terrorist organization, and you’re not allowed to have tax-exempt status if you promote illegal conduct. The Republicans are trying to get the IRS to take tax-exempt status away from the Palestine Chronicle, from a whole host of pro-Palestine groups using all of this other — And we’ll talk more about the anti-terrorism legislative landscape, or regulatory landscape.

So this is really an escalation. Now it’s not just you’re a terrorist, you are engaged in terrorism, you’re a terrorist-supporting group, and the secretary of Treasury can make that designation.

There’s something in here that’s really, the thing is disturbing to me, but there is something in here about what notice requirement is required by law, and it says, “A description of such material support,” the material support to terrorism, “or resources to the extent consistent with national security and law enforcement interest,” which means that if there’s national security and law enforcement interest, the secretary of Treasury can actually withhold from you what the evidence against you is.

In the jurisdiction of the United States Court section about who has control over adjudicating cases under this case, it starts talking about classified information and the Classified Information Procedures Act. One of the really disturbing things we saw in the ’90s in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which first introduced the concept of material support for terrorism, a foreign terrorist organization, into our legal landscape, is it also allowed for secret classified evidence to be used in deportation hearings. This was disproportionately used against pro-Palestinian immigrants, Palestinians. And it was so abused that George W. Bush, in his debate with Al Gore, criticized the Clinton administration for their racial profiling against Arab Americans in their use of secret evidence.

The other problem I have here — I have many problems — Is that we know Israel routinely falsely accuses charities of being terrorists. We know that in prosecutions like the Holy Land prosecution, that Israel was able to get evidence from Israeli intelligence. In the past, they’ve derived evidence from torture, the Israeli torture of an American citizen, to be used to put OFAC — I’ll talk about what those are later — OFAC sanctions against them.

So we have this provision for secret and classified evidence, and we know that Israel, since the early ’90s, has been repeatedly lobbying successive US administrations to shut down charities claiming they were terrorists.

The other thing that’s really troubling to me is that there is no intent requirement in this bill. Over the last 30 years, the intent requirement in these sorts of terrorism prohibitions has gotten less and less and less. Back in the days of the Communist Party in the Cold War, you used to have to have the intent to further an illegal purpose, then it just became, we’re going to make a list of bad organizations. We’re going to make a list of terrorist organizations or sanctioned organizations. If you have anything to do with them, even if that activity is otherwise lawful, you’ve now broken the law. But you still had to intend to do that.

There’s no mention of intent in this bill, so you could be a terrorist-supporting organization without ever intending to do so, and they could shut you down based off of secret evidence that they won’t show you that they got from our friends the Israelis, which is a nightmare scenario. That is, I think, very probable given how things like the Holy Land Foundation case has played out, given the 30 year history of Israel lobbying US administrations to shut down domestic groups, as well as labeling international groups terrorist.

Of course, we’ve seen this in the Gaza genocide where they bomb hospitals, they assassinate journalists, they attack UN workers, and they say, oh, they were Hamas.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Right. It’s like what we should learn from the harrowing days of the Cold War is that… Because your average person, they hear like, sure, we shouldn’t be supporting terrorist organizations. Organizations that get tax-exempt status should not be supporting terrorist organizations. That sounds pretty easy and basic, and I think we could all agree on that.

But it’s about, as Chip said, what we’re seeing playing out right now is like in the Cold War, and other past periods, it is the redrawing of the terrain that categorizes someone or some organization as a terrorist organization just by nature of who they are or what they believe in, what they do. It’s not about keeping our noses clean and just working harder to not support terrorism, it’s whether or not we’re going to be able to avoid the politically targeted designation as terrorist-supporting organizations because we don’t toe the line of the party in power.

And that leads me to this next question. People, myself included, our supporters included, I’m hearing that you guys are getting the same sort of reactions from your readers and supporters, a lot of people are understandably freaking out right now about the ways that this bill, especially in the hands of Trump and the fully MAGAfied GOP, will be used as a weapon of political repression and a tool to silence political dissent and critics of Trump. You guys started touching on this already, but I wanted to zero in on how well-founded are these concerns? What are the worst case scenarios here, and are there other scenarios that we could be facing?

Chip Gibbons:  Well, I think the concerns are well-founded. I think whenever you have a bill like this, you have to be careful. We don’t want to inadvertently chill speech. It is your First Amendment right to oppose a genocide, and you should continue to use that right to oppose the genocide in Palestine, the apartheid policies that are imposed on the Palestinians.

But we really are looking at a disturbing situation where a bill is being passed that is extremely easy to abuse, and the fact that there are already so many extremely easy to abuse tools to conflate support for Palestine with terrorism and crush speech, and the people pushing this bill are saying, oh, those are too cumbersome. Those are too protective. Those have too much bureaucratic process, that is really very disturbing.

As Noah has said, it’s not a conspiracy theory to say this is aimed at supporters of Palestine — They were very clear about this during the hearings. The United States Congress, the Ways and Means Committee, continues to send letters to the IRS asking them to revoke the 501(c)(3) status of pro-Palestine organizations.

There has been a big panic about a nonprofit news outlet called Palestine Chronicle, because one of the contributors — And it’s not clear if this person was ever paid by them — Was killed in a raid by the IDF to rescue a hostage. The IDF is claiming he was a member of Hamas and he held the hostage in his house. Which, even if that’s true, that does not implicate the news outlet in that action.

In the letters to the IRS, in the reporting, in the right-wing McCarthyite press on this news outlet and on these publications, we continuously see the claim that they promote Hamas or are clearly connected to Hamas because they use the same language of Hamas. They say there’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza and Hamas says there’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza, therefore they’re promoting Hamas. They refer to armed groups in Palestine not as terrorists, but as resistance, and that’s obviously controversial. Even in parts of the left, that’s a controversial point of view, but it is a First Amendment-protected point of view. Many people viewed the Irish armed groups or the South African armed groups as resistance, even though our government or the British government said they were terrorists. So there’s a long sort of history in the United States of debates about who is a freedom fighter, who is a terrorist, and we’re allowed to have them.

The one thing that is, I think, really troubling is that there is a law criminalizing material support for terrorism, but the Supreme Court has been very clear that, as broad as they’ve allowed that law to be enforced, it does not apply to independent advocacy. If you coordinate advocacy with a foreign terrorist organization designated as such by the State Department, you can go to jail, but if you’re engaged in independent advocacy, you are protected by the First Amendment. [Inaudible] of eliminating the intent requirement, I am looking at these letters to the IRS from these Republican members of Congress, I am really concerned we are increasingly seeing a situation where the people are saying, you have X point of view, that’s Hamas’s point of view; You are supporting Hamas.”

Now, if they actually revoked a nonprofit’s 501(c)(3) status on that basis, on the basis of pure political speech that was not coordinated with a foreign terrorist organization, I think there is a legal challenge there. I would say that the courts should uphold the Constitution and block that revocation. You don’t have a First Amendment right to 501(c)(3) status, but you cannot have that status revoked based on exercising political speech.

Do I have faith in the current judiciary? You might find this surprising, but oftentimes I find, in cases of clear cut constitutional violations, myself on a different side than our current Supreme Court and our current federal judiciary.

We definitely do not want to get to a point where we are litigating individual cases, but I do think the worst case scenario is we enter a terrain where the secretary of Treasury, under a Trump administration — Although, I hate to say it, a lot of the Democrats aren’t much better on Palestine and free speech — Are revoking these 501(c)(3) status of organizations based on lawful First Amendment political speech, in no way connected to violence, or even connected to the overly broad anti-terrorism laws we have in this country, and are instead drawing this line, well, you said it was ethnic cleansing, and Hamas was ethnic cleansing. You said it was resistance, not terrorism, therefore you are terror-supporting.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, let’s get concrete here, because all three of us work at or with nonprofit organizations. If this bill becomes law, and if these newly granted powers to go after nonprofits are used to target organizations like ours, what is that going to mean in practical terms? What will that actually look like for the orgs that are being specifically targeted? What effect do you anticipate this having on the nonprofit world writ large? Because it’s a big world, it includes organizations like the three of ours, journalistic, community support. It’s a broad spectrum. So yeah, Noah, talk to us a little bit about, let’s bring this down to eye level and talk about how this is going to impact the world that we’re all working in.

Noah Hurowitz:  I can certainly speak in terms of journalism. When one pursues adversarial journalism, you have to be careful sometimes about how you pursue a story and what you say because you don’t want to open yourself up to lawsuits, to any kind of legal retaliation. Thankfully, there are really strong First Amendment rights, and there are really strong protections against being sued for defamation in the United States, at least. I know it’s different in other places. But in the US when we fact check a story or we send it to legal, if we can back something up, we’re good, and I can reach out to anyone I want to if I can locate them.

What really concerns me about this in terms of journalism is specifically the use of the Palestine Chronicle as an example by the GOP, because, as Chip said, there is no evidence that they had any, first, that they paid this guy, I think his name was Abdallah Ajamal. It’s a little murky what actually happened there, and there’s certainly no indication that they had any knowledge of his family allegedly holding hostages. There was reporting in CNN that his neighbors didn’t know, and I find it hard to believe that he would tell his bosses at a nonprofit in the US.

So all of that is to say that journalists talk to people in other places all the time. The Intercept has done great work talking to people in Gaza. Mainstream news outlets do the same all the time. During the Syrian Civil War, many of the fixers working in rebel-held areas were people who might have had pretty unsavory connections. Are we going to say that CNN working with ex-fixer or ex-contributor was providing material support? I would hope not.

So what this does, I think, is it could add a layer of caution for news organizations in what they’re willing to report on, in who they’re willing to talk to, because it adds a new threat for nonprofit news organizations that you could seriously jeopardize not just yourself, but the organization itself. That’s what we talk about when we talk about the chilling of free speech, is that you might take a step back from certain things.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yeah. Just to add onto that from here at The Real News Network, in terms of just the basics of what it would mean to revoke a nonprofit tax-exempt status, it would mean a big giant bill that you got to pay that your financial structure may not currently allow for. For folks out there who are saying like, oh, that’s not that bad, you’ll have to restructure a bit, but maybe you’ll be liberated from the restrictions of a 501(c)(3), yada, yada, yada, but a lot of our organizations may not even get there because if we get our tax-exempt status revoked and suddenly we’ve got to find the money to pay for that, there are plenty of organizations that may not be able to.

It could be like a poison pill in that regard, to say nothing of the other sorts of ways that a nonprofit organization can get tied up in legal battles that require time and resources that are going to drain their ability to operate. There are other ways that heads of nonprofits could be targeted and have their own taxes investigated.

There are a lot of mechanisms, as Chip and Noah mentioned here, by which nonprofits can be targeted, and squeezed, and repressed. This, as Chip rightly mentioned, is just a significant escalation in the state’s ability to carry that out.

But Chip, please hop back in here.

Noah Hurowitz:  I just wanted to say, too, that that’s a really good point about not just the organizations themselves, but also the donors. Even if a group were to… The GOP and supporters of the bill kept making this point that, oh, but there is due process, there are ways to appeal. There’s this cure process, you can appeal to the independent IRS Appeals Office. You can go to the district court. First of all, most small nonprofits are not going to have… they’re going to eat up all of their operating funds on legal bills trying to fight that. But there’s also going to be a black mark on their name. Most donors are not going to want to be giving money, especially larger foundations, are not going to be wanting to give their money to groups that have this on their record because they could be liable.

In separate but linked hearings in Congress over the past year, the GOP has gone after specifically a group that gives donations to smaller groups, including, I think, SJP, Students for Justice in Palestine, including Palestine Youth Movement, as a sort of umbrella funder of groups that they accuse of being supporters of terrorism.

So we see this is not academic, we see already that they’re going after the larger… They’re going up the stream to donors, not just going after the organizations themselves. You can only imagine the effect that that would have on donors’ willingness to support organizations that have been accused of this.

Chip Gibbons:  I think Noah makes a really good point. Defending Rights & Dissents joined a number of civil society groups in signing onto a letter initiated by the ACLU. The way the letter explains it — I have to confess I’m not wearing my glasses at this moment, so I’m squinting to read it — “The executive branch could use this authority to target its political opponents and use the fear of crippling legal fees, the stigma of the designation, and donors fleeing controversy to stifle dissent and chill speech and advocacy.”

So if you are designated a terror-supporting group, you’re not only getting a big tax bill, which could destroy a nonprofit because you don’t budget for a tax bill you don’t owe, you then also are going to be stigmatized as a terror-supporting group even if no criminal charges ever follow. People are going to say, oh, terror-supporting, that’s a crime. I don’t want to give money to this group. Will I be investigated for doing so? Will I be criminally charged for doing so?

Also, I don’t think most foundations are willing to give money to organizations that have had their 501(c)(3) status revoked or don’t have 501(c)(3) status. So not only do you get a tax bill, you lose your revenue stream. Again, you can fight this in court, you can fight this in whatever. Legal fees are expensive. The government has endless money to burn up fighting you in court. Some of these cases, you might be going to the Supreme Court over this. Imagine how much you’ll have to pay in legal fees to go through the IRS appeals process, the district court, a hearing of a panel of a circuit court, then an en banc hearing of a circuit court, then a Supreme Court, and it gets there like 20 some years later. Imagine the legal bill, it’s going to be even bigger than your tax bill, I fear.

Then on top of that, they say there’s due process, but then there are multiple ways to go after nonprofits for supporting terrorism, processes designed explicitly to do that, and they’re saying those processes — All of which have been criticized for lacking in due process, all of which have been criticized for [inaudible] purely protected speech, all of which have been criticized for using guilt by association — They’re saying those processes are too bureaucratic and too cumbersome.

So they are explicitly trying to do something that they already have processes to do by saying those processes afford too much due process. Knowing how little due process there is in the OFAC sanctions regime, knowing how little due process there is in the material support for terrorism regime, I really don’t feel comfortable when they turn around and say, oh, there’ll be some due process, when the entire purpose of this bill is to eliminate due process so they can revoke the 501(c)(3) status of groups they don’t like.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that was powerfully and chillingly put by both of you. I know there’s so much more to dig into here, and we’re going to be needing your voices for the next four years, and the next 50, so I hope that we can have more conversations like this. I hope everyone listening takes away from this, first and foremost, please support the organizations that you depend on, the ones that you believe are important. You can’t support all of them, and we’re not asking you to.

But if you read Noah’s work, if you listen to the work that Chip has done — We last had Chip on when Assange was freed. Who do you think has been there for years fighting for that? That’s Chip and Defending Rights & Dissent. T.hat didn’t come from nowhere. The Real News has been around for over a decade. We are doing the best we can to bring media that activates people to get off the sidelines, and get into the fight to save this world before it’s gone. All of us are doing our best, but we can’t do it without you. We’re going to need your support now more than ever, especially as we face this potential political onslaught.

Gentlemen, I want to turn that into the final question here. Folks out there are scared. We know that. We are too. So what can we do to fight this? We could take the biggest or smallest means of resistance, but let’s leave folks with a note, not of helplessness, but at least an idea of what they can do to stop, frustrate this process as we face down a second Trump administration.

Chip Gibbons:  Well, I’m going to start by saying that Defending Rights & Dissent was formed in the early 1960s as the national coalition to abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee. A lot of people thought the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, was unbeatable. People were terrified of it. They were afraid to take it on. We ended up abolishing it, and we did so by being unapologetic and opposing it, and standing in solidarity with those who are being victimized [by] it. I think the solution to state repression is solidarity amongst each other.

I know in some of these prosecutions or other sorts of persecutions that fall short of a legal criminal prosecution, sometimes they pick low-hanging fruit, they pick people who they think won’t garner support, or have said or done controversial things in order to set that precedent. We have to be there when they come after them. There’s no saying, well, their First Amendment right is being violated, but I don’t like this pamphlet they gave out about this. No, it is, you are coming for one of us, you are coming for all of us. This is an unconstitutional assault on free speech. It is designed to make our society less democratic, and we will not tolerate it, and we will stand together against it.

Noah Hurowitz:  Yeah, I totally agree. I think I have heard from a lot of readers a certain level of despair or frustration, or anger or fear in response to this, and I hope that my reporting on it hasn’t in any way stoked that fear. It’s always a bit of a delicate balance when you’re talking about scary things, you don’t want to overpower people with fear and despair. Because, ultimately, the antidote to this, as Chip said, is solidarity, and the antidote is to continue to… If they are coming after a certain type of speech, that’s a good indication that they’re afraid of that speech.

I think one thing that has been really striking in the past year is that I haven’t seen the media lie as much about an issue as I have since Iraq, since I was a kid. That’s not to say that the media has been perfect about other things over the past 10, 15 years, but it’s been really remarkable to see how afraid certain sectors of the media, and certain sectors of the political elite are of pro-Palestine organizing. So I think that’s an indication that you continue.

Now, I will say, I think the most important thing is just to not… This bill passed the House, but it was a lot closer than it seemed like it was going to be. When I was watching the initial vote on Tuesday, Nov. 12, I was pretty surprised, and I think a lot of my sources who had been advocating against it were surprised — Not because they hadn’t done work, not because they hadn’t been really strongly advocating against it for a long time, but because there was a really sudden flip. Obviously, that had to do with the election of Donald Trump. I wish that it was more about Democrats suddenly supporting pro-Palestine speech.

But the fact that, in a relatively short period of intensive action, between the time that people widely found out that this vote was going to happen and when the vote actually happened, suddenly everybody was… There was a ton of chatter. I spoke to people in congressional offices this week who said they were getting tons of calls.

I think that, as frustrating as it is that the bill passed, it’s really important to remember that this was one of the… I think this was a really important early mobilizing effort in this new era that we’re in, post-second election of Donald Trump. People really made their voices heard, and it’s really important that they continue to do so.

Maximillian Alvarez:  That is Noah Hurowitz and Chip Gibbons. Noah is a journalist based in New York City and the author of El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Drug Lord. His work has appeared in The Intercept, New York magazine, Business Insider, Rolling Stone, and many other publications.

Chip Gibbons is a journalist, researcher, and policy director of the nonprofit advocacy organization Defending Rights & Dissent. He is currently working on a book that is titled The Imperial Bureau, forthcoming from Verso Books.

Noah, Chip, I can’t thank you both enough for talking to us today on The Real News Network, and I’m sending nothing but love and solidarity to you all as we head into the fray, and we’re going to keep fighting. It’s an honor to be in the struggle with you. Thank you so much for your work.

Chip Gibbons:  Always a pleasure.

Noah Hurowitz:  Thanks so much for having us.

Maximillian Alvarez:  For all of you listening, this is Maximillian Alvarez signing off for The Real News Network. Please, before you go, one more time, head on over to therealnews.com/donate, so we can keep bringing you important coverage and conversations just like this. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.

Not even a month has passed since the presidential election, and the incoming slate of Trump cabinet nominees is already beset with controversy and scandal. But the litany of sex crimes and other misdeeds Trump’s appointees are accused of is just the tip of the iceberg—what’s even more threatening is the agenda they represent. Journalists and returning guests Steven Monacelli and Jeff Sharlet join The Marc Steiner Show for a breakdown of the incoming cabinet.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. While it feels like a lifetime has passed, it’s only been a few weeks since the election. And since then, Democrats have been busy looking for scapegoats to blame for the losses. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is busy making cabinet and administrative appointments at a dizzying speed. Trump has sent shock waves throughout the political world with his jaw-dropping picks, from Fox News personalities, fellow billionaires, and figures from across the far right. Trump has tapped Thomas Homan, an Obama-era appointee to ICE, who is one of the architects of Trump’s zero-tolerance policy for border czar. He tapped Florida Senator, and foreign policy hawk, Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. He’s appointed the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and multimillionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to head the new, get this, Department of Government Efficiency.

Trump also named Florida Congressman, Matt Gaetz, for Attorney General, but that pick was blown up spectacularly last week. As the Guardian reported on Thursday, “Donald Trump announced that he would nominate for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, the former Florida State Attorney General. Hours after the former representative, Matt Gaetz, withdrew in face of opposition from Senate Republicans who had balked over a series of sexual misconduct allegations.” A similar fate may be in store for Trump’s extremely controversial pick of Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard officer and Fox News commentator, to lead the Department of Defense.

The Daily Beast reported, “Pete Hegseth’s chances of being confirmed to lead the Defense Department have sharply declined in Polymarket.” The plunge from 89% chance at his announcement, to a low of 47 on Thursday afternoon came shortly after Donald Trump’s other controversial cabinet appointment, Matt Gaetz, pulled himself from the running. Complicating things for the 44-year-old Hegseth is the recent release of a police report that contains graphic sexual assault allegations against him from 2017.

So it’s very possible that circumstances will change by the time you hear this episode, but this is par for the course for Trump. So it’s very possible that circumstances will change by the time you hear this broadcast, but this is par for the court for Trump. In the last administration it was a burning down clown car of frightening, weird, and dangerous political appointees coming in as fast as they were going out, and we’re already taking the plunge back into that administrative chaos that characterizes Trump’s style of operating. That’s what he does. But Trump is still revealing a lot about his far-right, even downright fascistic political designs and desires with these cabinet and administrative appointments. So what do we know about these figures who are beginning to fill out the Trump administration roster? How far right are their politics?

In this crucial installment of Rise of the Right, I’m honored to be joined once again by two past guests whose expertise and insight we really need at this moment. Jeff Sharlet is the New York Times bestselling author and editor of eight books, including The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. It was adapted into a Netflix documentary series, and his most recent work, which we discussed on the Marc Steiner show, is The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.

Also joining us is Steve Monacelli. Steve is the Texas Observer’s special investigative correspondent, based in Dallas, and a columnist for the digital publication, The Barbed Wire. His reporting has been featured in the Rolling Stone, Daily Beast, the Real News, Dallas Observer, Dallas Weekly, and many more. He’s also the publisher of Protean Magazine, which is a non-profit literary journal. Gentlemen, welcome. Good to have you both with us.

Jeff Sharlet:

Hi, Marc. Good to be with you.

Steven Monacelli:

Thanks for having us.

Marc Steiner:

Oh, it’s great to have you both. I really can’t wait to get started with this. To even know where to begin, when you look at the nominations that Trump has picked out to lead the most critical agencies in the government, what were your first thoughts, Jeff?

Jeff Sharlet:

The turning point for me wasn’t Tom Homan or Kristi Noem, as horrifying as those appointments were, but was Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, who I was familiar with in his capacity as a Fox News host and as the leading advocate for murdering prisoners and unarmed civilians. He’s an advocate for that. He was the man who led the crusade for the defense of convicted war criminals and got them pardoned. SO once I saw that, I realized it was very much all bets off and every appointment since then has kind of confirmed that. I should emphasize, and I’m curious to hear what Steve thinks about this because one thing that’s frustrating to me as a person on this beat, and I think Steve, I know from your work too, there can be all this attention on Matt Gaetz or Hegseth and not as much attention on what’s Linda McMahon going to do at education? The assumption that these folks, that those are the adults in the room when in fact they’re very much a part of the program as well.

Steven Monacelli:

I agree with what you’ve said, Jeff. And for me it was a combination of Pete Hegseth, which ridiculous decision to run the largest bureaucracy in the world, for a TV host with no real experience in this executive position. Setting aside all of the other things that you’ve just said, Jeff in addition-

Jeff Sharlet:

The murder part.

Steven Monacelli:

Yeah. And then the reporting that we’ve since seen about, he has tattoos that indicate he’s well steeped in this Christian nationalist type ideology. And the suggestion of what he may or may not do as the head of DOD, during a time in which a Christian Zionist, Mike Huckabee has also been nominated to a key position as it relates to Israel as a U.S. envoy to Israel.

The other one that really threw me through a loop was someone you already mentioned, Jeff, Matt Gaetz, for the top law position effectively, Attorney General of the United States. No longer in the running, spectacularly blew up. It was insane to begin with, someone who had been begging for a pardon from the president to then be suggested as the top law enforcement official in this country. And the person who’s since been named to replace him I think is, it’s not as controversial on it’s face or not as explosive in terms of ethics probe around alleged sex trafficking.

But Pam Bondi from Florida, former Attorney General of Florida was donated, she received over $20,000 from Trump and then chose to not pursue a case against Trump University. So there’s this perception created that she may or may not have effectively been bribed. And so I think that is an equally mind-boggling choice. In addition to, yeah, Linda McMahon. Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, given what has come out about her connections to some other unsavory regimes globally. So we could really talk a lot about this probably more than we have time for today.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah. And there’s a lot. Kristi Noem has run the border and what that means. And so I’m curious though, given the nature of these appointments, we can go through some of them as well as you just started doing, and the fact that both houses of Congress, Supreme Court, these cabinet picks, A, what do you think that portends, and B, where’s the fightback going to come from? How do you resist this? How do you oppose it? How do you address it?

Jeff Sharlet:

Well, look, those of us out there have been arguing that this is a fascist movement. And people would say, this isn’t like Germany in 1936, which was a statement of the obvious, it being United States in 2024. Of course it’s not like Germany. But also that it was a movement, not a regime. Now it’s a regime. Okay. And it is announcing itself very vigorously with the furthest right most corrupt and most hostile and aggressive elements of its own movement. And we’re seeing actually a tension. Look, we’re in terrible trouble when John Thune is maybe our best hope. And I say that people like John Thune is the Senate majority leader.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah.

Jeff Sharlet:

He’s going to cave. He’s going to cave again and again and again. We also know that he hates Trump and that he comes from a far right movement that wants a right wing state. Trump wants a right wing regime, they’re different things.

Marc Steiner:

Let me stop you for a second. Parse that out for a moment, for people listening to us.

Jeff Sharlet:

So Mitch McConnell, John Thune, that kind of right wing establishment, their differences with Trump are often chalked up to style, how you tweet and so on. There’s that, but it has more to do with exercise of power. And particularly, senators have power in a state in which the vast administrative state is at their beck and call, the millions of federal civil servants. Trump with each one of these appointments is signaling his absolute disregard for the administrative state and rather his interest in ruling from above. So you go back to Hegseth, who has conveniently laid out his vision for the Pentagon in a book he just published called The War on Warriors. And the first step is fire all the generals. And here’s the key thing, because people say, well then how will it run? He says, “And we’re not going to replace them.”

The idea is that a military, a branch of the government should be an extension of the strongman’s will. And so you can see where Mitch McConnell and John Thune and those characters are like, well, we’d like a piece of that power too. But this is no hope. If our hope is in John Thune, we’re doomed. And I’ll just say, where is the pushback going to come from? The one thing that shocked me, because I think like a lot of us on this beat, we’re like, yeah, Trump can come back. I think January 6th, 2021 was, wow, look at that campaign launch. That guy is building something. The thing that has astonished me is the rapidity and the fullness across the left liberal political spectrum of the acquiescence.

And of course we can point to people who aren’t doing that and we can point to activists and organizers who are doing good work, but they are, at this point, the exceptions to the rule. And particularly the mainstream media. And I know, again, the left likes to say, “Well who cares? They’re in the bag anyways.” It’s pretty hard to resist fascism. The New York Times and the Washington Post for all their failings and their weaknesses, they also have some strengths and they also have some resources. And look, me and Steve and you on Blue Sky, we’re not going to be able to do it. We need a bigger popular front and it’s not showing up right now.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah. Steve?

Steven Monacelli:

I generally agree with everything Jeff has said and just building on the point around it’s not just Pete Hegseth’s vision to gut the entire administrative state. That’s the premise of project 2025 or at least one of the key premises. And so the sort of resistance that we saw coming from the federal administrative state, the guide rails that were put in place by longer institutionally minded servants may not be there anymore. There may not be that inherent [inaudible 00:11:44]. And Mitch McConnell and Thune, those folks, they may have more of an interest in preserving some of that institutional power that is already established. And so we might see a little bit of jockeying there. But I agree, I don’t think that is going to be a key source of any resistance to Trump’s agenda.

And I also agree that currently there is not a big enough popular front established to resist this. But we are at least seeing some suggestions of approaches which they mirror some things that have already been done in the past around sanctuary cities. Not to say that that actually really panned out. When I lived in San Francisco and Trump was in the presidency at the time, ICE was still coming into San Francisco and conducting raids on immigration.

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Steven Monacelli:

So the point is that this is the headline that I’m thinking of, “Denver Mayor suggests using Denver police to block mass deportations under Trump.” Now, I don’t want to blow up that particular-

Marc Steiner:

Where was that headline?

Steven Monacelli:

This is in local Denver news. In the past 24 to 48 hours, this has become a thing and it’s already blown up on right-wing news, which is where I actually really first saw it because they’re holding this up as a sign of liberal resistance, and to try to make points around hypocrisy, I’m sure as well. But I think this is an example of federalism and the opportunities that federalism provide for some sort of resistance from the local or the state level in a way that somewhat ironically you could say the conservative movement has had a much better handle on over the past many decades. And so I’m not necessarily saying that this is the way, or I’m not endorsing this as an approach, but I am pointing to it as something that we’re already starting to see bubble up. And other mayors in blue dominated cities, which are pretty much almost every major city, they may consider following suit to some extent, but to have a standoff between local and federal law enforcement, that’s pretty serious, to say the least.

Marc Steiner:

So I don’t make an equivalency between 1930s Germany and where we are now, but one of the things that allowed the National Socialist Party, the Nazis, Adolf Hitler to take power was that the opposition was not united. The opposition was disparate, it was all over. And I look at where we are right now, and the right has been building this before Trump. The right has been building this since the ’70s. They’ve been trying to rebuild power and they’ve been doing a good job of it across the country. And this particular moment we’re in, it requires an opposition. The question is, before we go back to the cabinet picks, where does that come from? How does that get organized? How do people pull that together? Because without that, over half the country doesn’t want this to happen.

Jeff Sharlet:

I disagree with that.

Marc Steiner:

Okay, go ahead.

Jeff Sharlet:

I disagree with that.

Marc Steiner:

Start right there. Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff Sharlet:

Over half the country didn’t vote for it. A good part of that, well, I didn’t vote for it, but okay. And some consciously saying, “I’m going to tune out,” and some saying, “Well gosh, I was wrong.” This idea M. Gessen writing in the New York Times today saying, “This idea, this debate, and Democrats, wait a minute, maybe we should back off on trans rights so much.” And Gessen makes the point you can’t back off on something that you haven’t been there for. And even the term trans rights is misleading. We’re talking about human rights, we’re talking about rights of, leaving aside undocumented folks, U.S. citizens. Maybe we should abandon the rights of some citizens. So look, I’m not a doomsayer, but I do think that we need a kind of hard-headed assessment of where it is because I think we got here by just a lot of fooling ourselves and telling ourselves, for instance, to me this idea like half the country or majority of the country doesn’t want this. Look, majority of the country isn’t paying attention and I think-

Steven Monacelli:

It also doesn’t matter whether a majority or lack of a majority exists when it comes to issues that people view as moral issues. People didn’t organize around civil rights in the past because they were organizing from a majority. They organized because they believed it was right. And you don’t achieve a majority by not organizing. You achieve and you build ground by organizing, particularly whenever you’re coming from a position of not inherently having a majority of people with you. And I think it goes without saying that it doesn’t actually require a majority of people to have an impact on an issue. Small dedicated groups of people can have great impact in their communities if they choose to organize. But it will be challenging. I don’t think anybody should discount how challenging it could be in the next four years if people choose to try and organize any sort of resistance to mass deportation, for example.

Marc Steiner:

Right. Mass deportation, all the appointees he’s made right now have been very clear, they support mass deportation. Anybody who’s involved in that. And what that will look like, physically look like on the TV news, in the press, rounding up masses of people and shipping them across the border to Mexico. You’ve got Selden who wants to tear apart every environmental protection law that exists in this country. That’s there. This is a rabid right radical group of cabinet officers who are prepared to change everything. So coming back to what we just left off, I’m really curious how both of you watching this see that resistance starting.

You’re right, what you were just saying, I’m of the civil rights generation. I was one of those folks down south when I was a teenager in the civil rights movement and we were a minority, but we changed things. We changed things, we changed laws, civil rights bill and all the rest. But it was a battle. People died, people got hurt, people went to jail. So do we have that now? Do we have something that can be built similarly to that to resist what is in our face, to resist for our sakes, for our children’s sakes, for our grandchildren’s sakes, do you think we have it?

Steven Monacelli:

I don’t want to dilute us into thinking that we have exactly what we need right now, but I do think there’s clearly motivation and if people do focus where they can have an impact locally and perhaps at the state level, they may be able to do something. But as I said, it’s going to be challenging and people usually lose before they win.

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Steven Monacelli:

But I would like to add that on the issue of mass deportation, the federal government, it has a lot of resources, but it can’t necessarily conduct that sort of scale of operation on its own unless it somehow is able to use the entire capacity of the Department of Defense. At some level they’re still going to require assistance from states like Texas. They’re going to need land, they’re going to need potentially local law enforcement to support their activities as well. And so people, if they focus, they may be able to organize some resistance to some of those sorts of things happening in their own backyards. But exactly what that looks like is going to vary depending on the context.

Jeff Sharlet:

Let me be the voice of… It is a popular thing now to say let’s not be doomsayers. And I agree. But let us look at the converging forest fire and hurricane that’s coming. And I think one of the things, Steve, I would disagree with you there a little bit just this is from my own reporting, but looking around, I would recommend actually this American life, has got a good episode with an Obama era ICE official who has been gaming this out and lays out says, “Look, yeah, you could do about a million in about six weeks.” And here is… This was a man who knows.

Marc Steiner:

Take a million people in six weeks.

Jeff Sharlet:

Yeah. And so I kind of feel like there’s a little bit of a reassurance narrative of the reassurance narrative of well, they’re incompetent. The reassurance narrative of these things aren’t real. You can’t do them in this order, which is why we need to pay attention to what is a revolutionary declaration. And I don’t mean revolutionary as any virtue, but this is, they’re declaring a revolutionary regime. And look, let’s not sleep on Elon Musk and Vivek with the declaration to cut the government by a third. And that seems absurd. There’s no way to do that unless you really don’t care and you use a wrecking ball.You cut the government by a third, we are talking massive collapse.

I think a resistance is going to come. Look, I’m not a doomsayer, because I think we’re going to get through this or some of us are going to get through of it. But that means us sort of recognizing… Steve, I agree with you, but I sort of feel like right now the left and liberals are leaning on, if we were to organize, we could stop mass deportations. And I’m like, well, we know where the land in Texas is. How come there aren’t 10,000 people there right now saying, sitting in. That if is doing a lot of work.

Steven Monacelli:

Yeah. To be clear, I don’t want to be considered as saying we can stop.

Jeff Sharlet:

We can do it.

Marc Steiner:

Right, right. Yeah.

Steven Monacelli:

If you look at Stop Cop City for example, they’re working-

Jeff Sharlet:

They did not.

Steven Monacelli:

They did not succeed. What did they do? They slowed the gears of a larger operation.

Jeff Sharlet:

Which is important. We can’t overlook the value of slow losing. Right?

Steven Monacelli:

So the point is this, they have a certain number of years before Trump can no longer be the president.

Jeff Sharlet:

I don’t know about that.

Steven Monacelli:

Or hypothetically the constitution would change and he becomes a dictator forever. There’s tons of hypotheticals. But there could be value in slowing down something. If the idea is it can happen in six weeks, what if it takes six months? What if it takes six years? Well, those are the sorts of equations that I think unfortunately some people would have to think about because I don’t think anyone is in a position to convincingly argue that if they choose to try and do this with the full force of the federal government that it can be stopped.

Jeff Sharlet:

So it’s a big organizing challenge, come join our losing fight. And I do mean that, actually, look, the last chapter in my last book is the good fight is the one you lose. That is where we’re at now. And I don’t know how to do that organizing, but it has to happen.

Marc Steiner:

So let me ask in the time we have here, this clearly has to be a fight. Even though in blue cities you have police departments that where many of the officers, not all of them, are on the right. And you’ve got these people in the cabinet controlling different parts of the government who are very right-wing. I think you’re going to see environmental laws torn asunder. You’re going to see let industries just run roughshod over the country and the environment. You’re going to see that taking place. You’re going to see these mass deportations.

And so I’m going to go back to what I originally asked here. I think people can resist. We can stand between the ICE and the immigrants. We can hide people out. We can do all kinds of things. In my generation, we foolishly started blowing stuff up, took us nowhere. And so the question is, I’m very curious about how it gets pulled together, how a resistance to this is pulled together. But it just feels like politically for me that we’re entering a very dark moment. And how do you think we get through that? How do you think that gets organized from your observations and the stuff that you both do so well?

Jeff, you want to start?

Jeff Sharlet:

I think we press the fault lines. That’s sort of what I understand-

Marc Steiner:

What did you say?

Jeff Sharlet:

We press the fault lines. And the good news is as fractured as the left and liberalism is now, the right is always that fractured. I think one of the mistakes that has enabled the right to advance is secular liberalism and a lot of the left failing to distinguish between factions of the right, failing to look at… There’s a fallout now between, what are they, the Catholic new traditionalists and the integralists. And the integralists are the Catholics. And these intellectual leaders, and they are intellectuals, let’s pay attention, those guys are thinking, are fighting viciously over territory in this new regime. So I think as a journalist, my idea is like let’s bring light to that, let’s make that possible. But I also think, and I would say let’s do what we can to start pivoting. So Gates was brought down by three things. Right? Gates was brought down by three things, or really the main thing was that all his colleagues hate him. But he was brought down by the persuasive allegation that he had sex with a 17-year-old statutory rape.

But it was also that he went to a sex party and then he paid for sex. Two of those three things… The problem with Gates is the fascism. Hegseth. Sounds like there’s serious allegations of rape, but that’s the only thing the media’s talking about. The problem is the fascism. We need to start saying, look at what the plan, look at this man’s explicit laid out plan for bringing troops into U.S. cities, which he identifies as like Samarra in Iraq. He says they are indigenous-held territory, and he doesn’t mean indigenous. To him, that’s a good thing. He’s calling them Indian country as in an old Western. Until we can get to that point, we’re quibbling over scandals, which is the politics of the pre-Trump era.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, what were we going to say, Steve?

Steven Monacelli:

So I think from a perspective of accountability, what Jeff is saying is right. We have to highlight these fault lines and press on them as investigative journalists and reporters. But from a sort of positivist organizing perspective, which I can’t claim to speak from a position of expertise, I’m not an activist organizer on a day-to-day basis. But what I am seeing is people talking about a few things. I’m seeing people talk about the labor movement isn’t necessarily building ground, but there is a strategy that at least Shawn Fain has laid out about a longer term perspective of trying to align their bargaining for the future so that they can kind of coalesce around certain things and build power and collectivize their power in that way. But that’s 2028 is what he’s saying. That’s not now. So that’s a long bridge into the future, which is important to have.

In the short term, I’ve heard people talk about, okay, well how do we become more community focused? So building on something Jeff was talking about, secularized America and liberalism. They’ve allowed their civil society to basically decay at least relative to conservatives. Everybody’s civil society has largely decayed, but churches still exist. And the role of churches and politics and sort of centers of organizing and community is really significant and religion is one of the biggest aspects of our political story right now. So at the Democratic Party or sort of liberal and progressive organizers want to work on something to kind of reorient their party and reorient their thinking. They need to figure out how to create community civil institutions that actually bring people together. It doesn’t have to be a union hall, but that would be nice. Something that can actually serve as a connective node for a variety of local struggles that can then build coalitions together.

Because it has to be a popular front and it has to be a large coalition in order to overcome the strength of the right-wing coalition. But then also the burden of apathy and sort of disconnectedness from day-to-day politics that a lot of Americans, they inhabit that space. And political education is a hugely important project that we’re going to have to figure out how to get the messages out as well. So for the state, journalism and communicating messages, that has to be a component of the strategy as well because it does feel like sort of mainstream news is that organ is, it still plays a role, but it is increasingly waning in influence and progressives and liberals need to figure out how to really use the current tools to the best of their ability.

Marc Steiner:

Before I came here today, I was at a friend’s funeral who was a labor leader, organizer, and majority of the audience, not all of it, majority of the audience was African-American. And part of the scuttlebutt in the room before services began was people talking about what we face and how you’ll pull people together nationally, regionally, and locally to resist what’s happening. Now it’s like building a broader coalition. If something like that’s not built, it has to be very consciously built to confront what we’re about to face. In your observation of society and where we are, the complexity of the society, the complexity of the opposition to what we’re facing, how do you see that getting organized? It’s got to be more than us producing stories and you writing articles for it to stop them. It’s very clear they have an agenda.

And when I watch this, I realize they’ve been waiting for a Trump to come along, this kind of anti-social figure that can spit in their eye. And they’ve got him now. And they’ve got his boy wonder next to him ready to take over. So I’m just curious, looking at where we are, how you see the possibility of something larger being built from the ground up to say no and stop it and to resist it. Was that just pie in the sky?

Steven Monacelli:

The last big thing that I think a lot of people on the left saw that gave us hope for something like that was the Sanders campaign. And there’s a lot to learn from that. Obviously it didn’t succeed. But having a positive message that resounds with people’s real experiences and needs is clearly important. But also people are disaffected with our current system. It’s clear that they are disaffected with our current system and they view Trump as an avatar of change regardless of what he really stands for.

We’ve seen interesting examples where people voted in a trans representative, but then a lot of people also voted for Trump. And so squaring those two things is really key. We need to figure out why were people motivated so much to vote for Trump? Was it his outsider message? Was it that they were upset with the collapse of the COVID safety net? Was it purely just the price of groceries or was it a combination of all these things? So we have to understand truly what’s motivating people to even make these choices. And then we need to give them a movement that addresses their concerns and speaks to their anxieties. And the Democratic Party is clearly not in a position to do that. They spent so much time basically defending the status quo that they allowed Trump to become like punk rock.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah. Right. I got that. What were you going to say, Jeff?

Jeff Sharlet:

I don’t know if I have anything hopeful to add. I think, look, I’ll just say, and maybe by being this dark lets other people come and bring the light. I don’t see it. And I’m sitting here at a college campus which is not organizing, where Trump’s vote increased four or five fold. He still didn’t win it from last time. There were no protests after. One of the failures I think is you look is again, it’s like the New York Times, colleges and so on, they’re very inadequate, frustrating, liberal status quo institutions. And so the left, very understandably, can’t stand them, right?

And the right says like, uh-huh, that’s great that the left doesn’t like them because we know… We know from Heritage Foundation, we know from Fox News, I’m at Dartmouth College, Fox News has name checked my college three times since the election and saying, all the professors need to be fired, not because of any leftism on campus or anything. They don’t care because they understand that this is an institution that’s not theirs, right? And meanwhile, the institution is torn between saying, well, we’re above it, we’re neutral. There are no neutrals here, to quote the old labor song, right? And frankly, the campus left sees the enemy as that administration as opposed to understanding they’re coming for us all. They’re not making the distinction between, oh great, you’re teaching a radical class and you’re teaching boring economics. They don’t care. And I think maybe I would say this, the movement, this most positive thing I can say. Right now, we have been captured by altruism.

Liberalism traditionally thrives in altruism. The left has gone over to a two. Well, I am just so upset about what’s going to happen to those other people. This is a historical misunderstanding of fascism and a way of turning away from how the right is organizing because they don’t care. They’re not working by the categories that we work by. They’re not saying first we come for X group. They’ll come for the undocumented. They’ll also come for people who are American citizens. And if you happen to get in the way, they’ll be glad to arrest you too. And the local town councilman, Marc, who hates you because your tree leans over to his yard, he’ll come for you. With Marc Steiner on the top of the list, suddenly now you are.

So then that tells us how do we fight that? Solidarity. Altruism is concern for what’s going to happen to others. Solidarity says, hey, what’s going to happen to you is going to happen to me. What’s going to happen to me is what’s going to happen to you. My body is on the line. This is not us protecting others. This is if we stand in the way of mass deportations, it’s not protecting people, it’s protecting yourself. You put your body on the line. So that I hope is coming. It’s not here yet.

Marc Steiner:

It’s not here yet. And as we close out, I have to harken back to my early days as a community organizer. In a neighborhood that was a white working class George Wallace city neighborhood. And we turned it into a McGovern neighborhood. We turned it on its head. And people did that by organizing, going door to door, fighting bad landlords, bringing people together who never talk to each other, crossing the line and bringing black and white working class people together to fight their common enemy. And it might seem high in the sky, but it’s not. It takes organizing and it takes work. And I think that’s what I think a broad coalition of people has to be brought together to stand up and be able to build something and opposition because we’re going to need it.

We don’t know what we’re going to face. We’re about to find out. But I think that bringing voices together in places like Real News so they interact with each other, going out into the community, helping to organize is the only way that this is going to be stopped. I think we have to realize that this is not 1933 Germany, it’s 2024 United States of America. And it could be just as bad.

Steven Monacelli:

The contexts are different.

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Steven Monacelli:

You might have some strange bedfellows like what would organizing in Texas around mass deportation look like? Or even in Florida. Might you end up trying to convince some suburban single-family homeowners who might be inclined to vote for Republicans that they’re going to be harmed if a bunch of people who they rely on for their yard work as a statistic reality, statistical reality, are they going to be opposed to that? Or are they going to wait until they face the impact of that instead of standing up to say, hey, maybe this is a bad idea. There are contradictions that can be exploited is I guess what I’m trying to say. And the coalitions may end up being strange because-

Marc Steiner:

They will be strange.

Steven Monacelli:

… who is going to be impacted by this. And a lot of these people may not realize that they too are going to face some sort of consequence. Not to compare their consequence to far worse-

Jeff Sharlet:

Steve, I’m going to disagree with you. To compare their con… Because some of them are going to get killed too. That’s what I’m talking about. We can’t do the ranking. You don’t know. Fascism doesn’t have a list and saying, oh, you’re on this. If you have troops marching through a city, rounding up people, and maybe they’re rounding up someone, but this guy comes out and says, “Hey, what are you doing on my lawn,” And some 19-year-old national guardsmen shoots him, it doesn’t do him any good that he voted for Trump. Right? And I think that’s why… Talk about strange bedfellows. We got Rand Paul out there saying, “Hey, wait a minute. No, no. Using troops on American soil, that’s a problem.” I don’t want to have any kind of solidarity with Rand Paul, but if he will help fight troops. Yes. Yes. I don’t know.

Steven Monacelli:

Right. That is the nature of a, quote unquote, popular front. You kind of suspend certain disagreements in the process of fighting a much larger threat.

Marc Steiner:

And I think that the role that you two play, that we play, is really important in building that and pulling that together, pulling voices together, bringing stories together to help fight this resistance that has to take place. So this is just the beginning. I’m going to look forward to having both of you all back to really kind of push this because we have to push it because we have no choice. We have no choice. We have to stand up to it.

And so I want to thank both of you for the work you do and for being here. Jeff Sharlet, Steve Monacelli, great to see you both again, and we’ll be linking to all your work that people can just look at and see what you’re doing and hit the magic thing and read and see what you’re doing. So I really appreciate you both taking the time today. We have a lot more to talk about. We have a lot more fight to do, and I appreciate your voices and you being here today.

Jeff Sharlet:

Thanks, Marc. Thanks Steve.

Steven Monacelli:

Thank you both.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank my guest today, Jeff Sharlet and Steve Monacelli for joining us, and we’ll be linking to their work here on the Marc Steiner show site at The Real News. And thanks to Cameron Grandino for directing and running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for her work and her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing the Marc Steiner Show and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at Real News for making this show possible.

Let me just say that we’ll be covering this with some intensity. It’s no longer just about the rise of the right, but how to resist a neo-fascist takeover of our world. So we’ll be bringing you voices and stories from across the country and around the globe of people who are resisting and working to build a more equitable future for all of us. So please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover, what’s happening in your community and your story ideas. Please just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. And once again, thank you to Jeff Sharlet and Steve Monacelli for joining us today. So with the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner, stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

This story was co-published with In These Times on Nov. 22, 2024.

For all his promises to deliver for US workers, Trump’s political agenda poses an existential threat to organized labor. Project 2025’s planned assault on the National Labor Relations Board, which governs collective bargaining in the private sector, for instance, could put a screeching halt to unionization efforts across the country. “A potential Republican trifecta, along with Project 2025, will be catastrophic for unions, including my own,” Jimmy Williams, general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), said in an official statement released after Trump’s electoral victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. In this special installment of The Real News Network podcast, produced in collaboration with In These Times magazine, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Williams about the threat Trump’s agenda poses to organized labor, and why now more than ever the Democratic party has to embrace working class positions.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Welcome everyone for a special installment of The Real News Network podcast produced in collaboration with In These Times magazine, The Real News and in these times are both founding members of the Movement Media Alliance, a coalition of grassroots aligned social justice driven journalism organizations committed to accurate, transparent, accountable, principled, and just media and to working collaboratively to amplify our impact. Follow the link in the show notes to learn more about the Movement Media Alliance and please subscribe and donate to The Real News and to in these times because we can’t keep doing this work without you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez. I’m the editor in chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us. Donald Trump is headed back to The White House in two months and now that the GOP has won a majority in the House of Representatives, the fully magnified Republican party will effectively control all three branches of government, the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary.

So what room does that leave for? Organized labor to affect policy in the coming years and is the very existence of organized labor in this country at risk. Today we’re going to discuss what a second Trump administration will mean for unions and for the labor movement writ large. Looking back at the first Trump administration and looking at the political appointments Trump is already making for his second administration, what should we be preparing for when it comes to workers’ rights on the job, the right to organize the makeup and functions of the National Labor Relations Board and the general living standards and working conditions for working class people around the country. And what about the Democrats outgoing President Joe Biden famously said he was going to be the most pro-Union president in American history, and I make no apologies for it. So was that true? And even if it was true, has the uptick in pro-union rhetoric from Democrats in recent years actually corresponded to concrete policies that put working people union and non-union?

First, is it time for a labor party in the United States and will it be possible for that to be anything more than a pipe dream as we confront the realities of a Republican trifecta and an entrenched Democrat Republican duopoly in a statement released after Trump’s electoral victory over vice President Kamala Harris. Jimmy Williams, general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades stated plainly and powerfully working people deserve a party that understands what’s at stake and that puts their issues front and center when campaigning and governing a potential Republican trifecta along with Project 2025 will be catastrophic for unions including my own. But if the Democrats want to win, they need to get serious about being a party by and for the working class. So for in these Times Magazine and the Real News Network, I’m honored to be joined now by none other than Jimmy Williams himself. Jimmy, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Jimmy Williams:

Yeah, and thanks for having me too. I appreciate it as well.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, we need your voice now and we need to get folks’ heads and hearts right for the fight ahead, and I’m really grateful to you for making time for this. So let’s dig in here. I know we only have a little bit of time with you. I want to start by talking concretely about what a second Trump administration will mean for labor and for you and your union specifically. So can you tell our audience a bit about your union, your members, and what you guys are preparing for with Trump coming back to the White House and a Republican trifecta controlling the federal government?

Jimmy Williams:

Yeah, we’re primarily a construction union, but we also represent folks in the manufacturing sector. We also represent public employees around the country. And so we’re a pretty diverse union, but primarily a private sector construction union. And in preparation for an incoming Trump administration a second time around, we’re going to see a tax on every front. We’re going to see it in the private sector through the NLRB. We’re going to see it in the Department of Labor through weakened standards when it comes to things like apprenticeship programs, prevailing wage in Davis Bacon. And we’re going to see it literally in everything we do oversight is not going to be there out there in the Department of Labor. So we’re preparing for an absolute all out attack on every level. You can’t take anything off the table with this group. Project 2025 laid out an absolute destructive path for labor unions, specifically public unions, but private unions as well. And so we’re just sitting here as wounded ducks, but the attacks are coming and they’re going to come fast.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Can you say a little more about Project 2025, right, because there’s been a lot of talk about this master plan, right? And Trump himself on the campaign trail tried to distance himself from project 2025 at least rhetorically because it was deeply unpopular in the public sphere. But there’s a lot in Project 2025 that appears like a corporate CEO’s wishlist for remaking American society like to be the exploitable kind of well of cheap labor with no rights that every boss wants. So I guess for folks who are afraid of project 2025 but don’t know specifically what’s actually in there, is there anything specific in the plans laid out in Project 2025 that you want to stress for folks are going to have deep implications for workers and for unions?

Jimmy Williams:

Yeah, I mean the labor movement itself represents so many different industries, but it literally is going to be an attack on the federal employees, public employees first stripping them of collective bargaining rights, limiting what you can and can’t negotiate. There was even things in there about setting up corporate controlled unions to compete with the already existing unions. There’s the all out call for repeal of Davis Bacon and absolute attack on the apprenticeship programs allowing corporations and business to construct their own apprenticeship programs. And all the guardrails that the labor movement has provided for working people for generations are all on the chopping block. And my father always told me, show me who you hang with and it’ll show me who you are. And Donald Trump has surrounded himself with believers in this agenda with the folks that wrote it, and he’s appointing people already in positions of power that believe in this approach to government. And when somebody shows you who you are, you got to believe them.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I think one thing that is really important to stress for folks watching or listening to or reading this, that we’re talking about labor policy and labor law specifically and how that’s going to impact the labor movement and working people, but of course so many other kind of policy plans or stated intentions from the Trump administration, even if they are not focused on say the National Labor Relations Board, are still going to have deep impacts on the lives and conditions of working people around the country, including Trump’s most infamous campaign promise to wage, the largest mass deportation operation in this country’s history. Now, Jimmy, this as you know, is going to impact your industry a lot. I mean, we even saw examples of what happens when an industry that does have a lot of undocumented workers in it that does have a lot of contract labor, non-union labor mixed in with union labor, right? When you have these harsh anti-immigrant policies like Ron DeSantis does in Florida, you’re going to end up with a lot of construction sites that are empty or filled with folks who don’t know what they’re doing. So I wanted to just kind of get your perspective as an expert and a union leader in this industry. How is the attack on immigrants and these plans for mass deportations? How do you expect that to impact the construction industry as such?

Jimmy Williams:

It’s going to have dramatic impacts on our ability to organize, and both parties have gotten immigration wrong throughout the course of my time. As an organizer, I’ve been in my role as president of the union for the last three years, but prior to that I was our organizing director. And I can tell you under an Obama administration, under a Trump administration, under a Biden administration and in the upcoming future, both parties have gotten it wrong. The workers that come here are being victimized dehumanized. They have no path to organize, there are no rights in the workplace. And this idea that a mass deportation program is going to somehow solve the problem that this country has had for my entire lifetime and for two generations of preying upon immigrant workers, it’s just the wrong approach. And quite frankly, both parties have gotten it wrong and I cannot see any pathway where this is somehow going to be helpful for the construction industry and for union workers and union employers because workers are just going to go further and further into the shadows. They’re going to have less and less rights. We have members within our union that have been members of our union for over a decade that are going to now have the right stripped away and are going to be working under the fear of deportation. I mean, this is just the wrong approach to how this country should handle the working class, and it has been wrong for quite some time.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I want to, in the few minutes we’ve got left, I want to kind of zero in on what you’re saying about both parties getting this wrong and also circle back to your statement about what Democrats have gotten wrong in terms of serving a working class base and building a sort of class politics, a populous politics that could counter the corrupting impact of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. But just to kind of pick up on that last point of yours, I wanted to ask what role unions can and need to be playing in defending our fellow workers, especially undocumented folks, migrants the most vulnerable in our midst and in our ranks. As you know, unions have not always been great on this issue. I mean, there are really encouraging signs from your union, from unions like the laborers local 79 up in New York where construction and demolition union workers have been reaching out to non-Union undocumented workers, workers who were formerly incarcerated. And instead of seeing these low wage exploitable workers as the enemy of union workers, they’re trying to bring them into the fold. They’re trying to organize ’em, defending their rights. So how do we keep our union brothers and sisters and our fellow workers out there from falling into the trap of seeing this attack on our fellow workers, particularly immigrants as somehow beneficial for American born union workers here?

Jimmy Williams:

Yeah, it starts with we have to continue to organize in their workplace because if you stop, the labor movement can never turn its back on the working class regardless of what political landscape we live in. Secondly, in my opinion, we have to be able to tell the story in a much better fashion. I mean, Donald Trump has controlled the narrative that all immigrants that come to this country are here to sadly commit crimes, take jobs away from you. I mean, all the fear and things that were said during the last 10 years, quite frankly since he stepped on the political world, we have to push that back with the real narrative of workers are here, they want to work, they need the rights to organize. And I think that’s where the Democratic party has missed it from the get go and trying to put together an approach that sounds like the Republicans only lighter. It doesn’t work for working people. And during this time, if the labor movement and if unions turn their back on the folks that are here working and want to work and don’t provide defensive comfort, defensive relief, then we’re going to miss it for generations.

Maximillian Alvarez:

The last time you and I spoke was three years ago when organized labor and its advocates and many within the Democratic party, were trying to pass the Pro Act, the protector right to organize act right. I wanted to ask if we could just sort of use that as a springboard to kind of talk about what Democrats could have been doing and should be doing more to yet really appeal to and serve a working class base. What was the Pro Act, right? What would it have meant and how would it have changed people’s lives if it had actually become law? And why did it fail? Why didn’t Democrats kind of push it harder or was it not fully up to them?

Jimmy Williams:

Yeah, it wasn’t fully up to the Democratic slim majority in the Senate. You needed 60 votes in order to pass the Pro Act fully, and there’s zero Republican support for the Pro Act. So you can’t fully blame the Democratic Party for not being able to enact that law during Joe Biden’s time. But what you can blame the Democratic Party is for missing the tone and realizing that the Democratic party has to be about movement building. And the story about how broken our labor laws are hasn’t been told by the Democratic Party. We get little crumbs on the edges here and there. And truthfully, what’s needed in this country is to organize a movement about giving workers more rights on the job. The Pro Act does that it fixes 80 years of lost labor laws in this country. It fixes all the wrongs that have been done over the course of my lifetime and others.

And that story needs to be told to the American public as a whole, people don’t realize that the basic rights they have right now in their workplace and let alone how difficult it is to organize your workplace in the wake of how screwed up our system is. Look, I can tell you just in the construction industry currently, the model that’s used in the non-union sector is to misclassify everybody as an independent subcontractor. Well, those workers don’t even have rights to organize a union in their workplace because they’re being abused and victimized as self-employed independent contractors to pro act fix that the Pro Act made elections and corporate interference illegal to where currently if you wanted to organize your workplace, you have to go up against your boss in a way that is totally weighted towards management and it equaled the playing field to get to elections quicker, to get to bargaining quicker. And those are the things that workers need in this country. And the Democratic Party has failed to tell that story to the 80% of the world that doesn’t come from a union household.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I know I’ve only got you for another minute or two. So by way of rounding out, I kind of want to zero in on the last sentence of the statement that you put out after Trump won the general election. You said, as I read in the beginning, if the Democrats want to win, they need to get serious about being a party by and for the working class. Now again, the last election just sent a very big sign to all of us that they don’t want to do that. So I wanted to ask you, what would that look like? What should that look like? How do we get there concretely? And for folks out there who are maybe just done with the Democratic Party, what role can they still play in advancing this movement through their unions and through other forms of engagement outside of the Democratic party?

Jimmy Williams:

I mean, I think the question is right in front of them right now as far as the party goes, and are you willing to allow the labor movement to set your economic agenda for the working class? Or are you going to continue to try to woo over corporate interest and blend them with a message that somehow is supposed to help build out the working class? Because this last election was an absolute refusal to think that the Democratic Party actually works on behalf of the working class and going forward, if the labor movement isn’t allowed to set the agenda for what the Democratic Party’s message is for working class people, they’re going to continue to fail. They’re going to continue to lose. They need to really take it serious as they figure out how to rebuild a message that is going to be attractive to working class people. Quite frankly, at this point, I don’t have much faith that the corporate interests that are still involved in the Democratic Party are going to see that power either, and that’s the fight ahead within the Democratic Party and the Labor movement needs to call balls and strikes, needs to be independent of either party. It needs to know when and how to engage in our electoral politics the right way.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So that is general President of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, Jimmy Williams. We’ve been speaking with Jimmy for this special we collaborative report by in these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. Jimmy, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time, and thank you again, brother, for all you’re doing for the movement.

Jimmy Williams:

Thank you, my man. Take care.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So that is Jimmy Williams, general President of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. I want to thank Jimmy for joining us today for this important conversation. And as always, I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. And one more time before you go. If you want to see more reporting like this from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world, then we need you to become a supporter of the Real News Network and in these Times Magazine. Now follow the links in the show notes and donate today. I promise you it really makes a difference for the Real News Network. This is Maximilian Alvarez signing off. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.

Taya Graham and Stephen Janis examine the recent election through the lens of wealth inequality and how it affects our democracy in ways both extreme and unseen. Joining them is noted economist Dr. Richard Wolff, who will help them unpack the ubiquitous tendrils of rapacious wealth and how it allows billionaires to manipulate us in ways that are often unacknowledged.

Studio: Adam Coley, David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Written by: Stephen Janis

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Real News Network, livestream special inequality watch edition. Today, me and my reporting partner Stephen Janis and I will review the recent election results through a particular lens, the evolving business interests and the resulting political economy surrounding billionaires. We’ll examine how this small group of people have impacted the perceptions and vibes of voters, and ultimately how it influenced the outcome of our recent presidential election. It’s a particularly important discussion because there are many theories floating around at the moment about why Donald Trump won and how progressives can address this. That means that first, though, we must understand what determined how people voted. In other words, we have to go beyond finger pointing and posturing and examine the underlying influences that created the atmosphere that made this election so confounding. Let’s remember up until election day, the race between Harrison Trump was considered too close to call, and yet as it stands now, Donald Trump will be the first Republican to win the popular vote since George Bush in 2004.

And what’s even more intriguing is that since his victory, the old debate that has consumed the Democratic Party since 2016 has reemerged specifically, do Democrats need a kowtow to the more moderate wing or embraced the progressive movement? Each is claiming they have what this party needs to win. But what if, and I’m asking what if that debate is wrong at its core? What if it’s not just incomplete, but rather Mrs, the whole point entirely? What if the election was decided before it happened? What if unseen unacknowledged forces set the terms of the debate in such a way that even a billion dollars in campaign spending, which is incidentally what Harris raised, doesn’t really matter? Well, that’s exactly the idea we’re going to explore today. We are going to give you our audience a different way of thinking about what just happened. Hopefully a fresh insight into how to define and perhaps examine the politics of the present.

It’s a little cultural primer that we hope will give you an analytic foundation to build upon, to talk about how we can fight back, not with rhetoric, but with reason. It’s a way of thinking about the politics of the present, which seems unable to address ongoing threats like climate change, lack of affordable housing, or fair wages for working people. And to help me unpack all of this, I will be joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janice, who normally hosts a police accountability report with me. But we have also in the past produced a show called The Inequality Watch, which is what we will be doing today. Stephen, how are you? And can you talk a little bit about why we also focus on inequality?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, as many people have pointed out, well, first of all, I’m very happy just to be on YouTube.

How can I complain? But as we pointed out before in the past in our inequality reporting, inequality defines the world in which we play out these ideas. Inequality defines how we vote. Inequality defines so many aspects of our life, and it touched on so many things, including our main topic of policing that we really just can’t avoid it. So that’s why today we’re going to be breaking it down and looking at it not just as a phenomena, but the mechanics that make it work, right, the things that make it happen, how it produces the results, how it produces the sort of literal media mechanisms that define the debate. So we’re going to be unpacking and pulling apart this system and trying to examine it in a way that will maybe bring fresh insight as said to our viewers.

Taya Graham:

And I want you to remember, we will also be talking to you, the people who are watching us live right now, like Lacy r and Rosie Rocks and Noli D. Hi guys, good to see you. So please make sure to like the stream and post a question or a comment in the live chat, and we will try to answer as we go along and you might even be able to ask our guests, the economist, Dr. Richard Wolff, a question two now to start this conversation about what we’re going to do today. I want to begin with a few thoughts on what we will not do. This show is not about discussing or blaming a specific constituency or political strategy. We are not going to point fingers and definitely not at voters. We are not going to discuss what the Harris campaign could have should have done differently. No. Instead, we’re going to focus on the aspects of this past election that are quite different. So Stephen, can you talk about how this angle is a little different than your typical mainstream media coverage?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, it’s kind of looking at the field as it were in terms of how, like we said, the media political economy is constructed around us, how we are immersed and how we’re like fish swimming in water. We don’t recognize the water, but the water actually defines how we think, feel, perceive ourselves. So we’re going to go a little bit beyond saying maybe if the Democrats said this, or maybe if the Republicans had done this or that, we’re going to go into the pretty much the epistemological, for lack of a better word, or the foundations that create a media kind of circus that we’re all immersed in sometimes not totally aware because it’s become so ingrained into our personal lives and who we are, how we think about ourselves. So we’re going to go into that and look in depth in detail and come up with some ways of thinking about some tools to analyze it and some ways to think about that maybe people haven’t considered yet. So that’s kind of the point of this whole thing.

Taya Graham:

Well, I think you make a good point and it’s going to raise a few questions which we can break down in the moment. But first I would like to give those of you who are watching us a little bit of a preview of the format of the show. So we’re going to make what I hope is an interesting argument about the election we just witnessed, and we’ll do so by examining the uber rich or billionaires in a way that I hope will help us understand the role in all of this better. And then after we do this breakdown of the topic, we will be joined by an exceptional guest, Dr. Richard Wolf. He really needs no introduction. Other than that, he is one of the four most thinkers on economics, social justice, and equitable society. And he will have the opportunity at his thoughts. He’s also a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and he’s the author of several books such as Capitalism Hits the Fan, the Global Economic Meltdown, and What to Do about It. I also feel pretty that he will have something to say about our breakdown topic, which is billionaires.

Now, I think we can’t talk about electoral politics and economic inequity without starting with the phenomena that represent both. Of course, again, I’m referring to billionaires, the class of people who live amid unimaginable abundance with super yachts and private jets and guarded bunkers and personal islands while the world crumbles around them. They’re the type of people whose power makes ’em pathological to the point where the amount of wealth they possess and how they obtain it literally turns our social and economic system into toys for their amusement. Let me review some of the mind boggling statistics and facts about billionaires wealth inequality and its outsized impact on electoral politics. Let’s just consider some of the relevant facts. So since 2020, almost two thirds of all new wealth went to the top 1%, according to Oxfam, the richest people in the world make six times more than the bottom 90% of humanity.

Collectively, that’s 2.7 billion a day. America’s 806 billionaires are now richer than half of the population combined a lot richer according to Mother Jones. Billionaire wealth in the US has collectively doubled since 2017. The rest of us, not so much, and the rest of us that’s over 65 million households. Billionaires emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average person does in a lifetime according to a 2024 Oxfam report. It really does make you feel a little bit annoyed when you take your time to actually sort your recycling. And a billionaire is casually riding a private jet, undoing your efforts to conserve your planet. I mean, you’re trying to make sure to keep your local river clean, taking items to the dump. You donate old electronics, you’re trying to save a tree by recycling your cardboard. I even cut the plastic rings of my six pack so I don’t kill dolphins, but one private jet full of Kardashian undoes the whole work of my entire neighborhood. So, so much for our recycling program.

Now, this is a statistic I like attacks of up to 5% on the world’s multimillionaires. And billionaires could raise 1.7 trillion a year enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty. And so that’s why I have trouble understanding why many people don’t agree with me that this would be a worthwhile thing. And instead they take the time to defend billionaires who exploit our tax code instead of giving back anything to the country and the people that made their wealth possible. But perhaps some of you folks can comment in the section and help me understand there might be some Elon Musk supporters out there who can help educate me. Yeah, of course. But the pathology of this unimaginable wealth is of course not the only issue here. It’s how they extract extreme wealth and how that process has evolved. That’s critical to our discussion. I mean, perhaps we should be thinking about their role in our electoral politics beyond the more obvious consequences of a wealth imbalance, political donations and dark money alone, a way of classifying them that will shed new light on exactly how their power shapes us and by extension and how we vote.

And so Stephen, I think you’ve developed a way to make a point about billionaires.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, because I think we’re living in what I would call the conflict industrial complex, and I was kind of curious as to why, because it’s not just a matter of Facebook, it’s a matter of how people have profited off it and thus created a political economy around it. We came above the way of thinking about billionaires, and we have three classifications for sort of a new form of billionaire thinking. The first one would be we have the carbon billionaires who are the Koch brothers, for example, for top or people who make their money off petrochemicals oil or whatever they are the first classification of billionaires. The Koch brothers, for example, have spent $145 million trying to convince people that climate change is a hoax. So that’s the first class of the new form of billionaires who are informing how we think about ourselves. The second one who be conflict billionaires, and those are the people who have made their money by sowing conflict, by destroying democracy, by using social media to make us all hate each other and not really think about that we’re being treated unjustly.

And that would be like a Mark Zuckerberg who’s worth like $140 million or even now Elon Musk, who has stepped into the conflict arena and feels like to a certain extent, he wants to be part of this massive project to undermine us with conflict driven social media. They literally make money off our anger towards each other, and that’s pretty extraordinary. And then the last would be capture billionaires who are like hedge fund managers or private equity who do use extractive processes to take wealth out of the community and hoard it for themselves. And those processes themselves of extraction create anger and resentment because they leave communities, companies hollowed out by extracting the wealth, not building something, but rather just taking money that would otherwise go to the community or resources. I think it’s important all these processes create psychologies around them that are really important to think about because if you’re working at a store, you’re working at a company and suddenly it’s totally in debt and a bunch of private equity investors have taken the money out of it, it creates resentment and anger, it creates inequity and the same thing.

And then you have, you go home and you get on Facebook and the conflict billionaires are selling you ads and pushing content that makes you paranoid in some sense or makes you mistrustful and I think take the empirical side out of our lives. So all these three kind of different billionaires I think create a different class or a different political economy that you’re going to talk about that make us sort of unable to have discussions about or unable excuse, have discussions about some of the more important issues, more of the complex problems. It’s very hard to do collective complex problem solving when your entire reality is conscripted by conflict entrepreneurs or conflict billionaires or carbon bill use who are literally intentionally getting rich off distortion. And so we are in this distortion media complex, this social media conflict media complex, and these billionaires are the ones who are profiting off it, and I think they have an outsized influence on how our electoral process goes. So that’s why I wanted to kind of outline that for people.

Taya Graham:

I thought that was a great outline. And just so you know, there’s been a really, what I think an interesting conversation about it in the chat.

Stephen Janis:

Oh, really,

Taya Graham:

Life under the microscope said, let’s not forget UPS, newer CEO Carol Tom gave Amazon $1 every and any package deal robbed UPS enforced layoffs that haven’t happened in over 30 years, built a Frankenstein’s monster, a dollar a package at a time by selling out union later. And I want you to know life under a microscope that hits my heart right here I am a union steward myself. And blue Unicorn gave, I thought a really interesting response when everyone’s businesses have to close, but the government gives monopolies to Amazon, et cetera. That’s called fascism and not capitalism, just saying.

So let’s get back to you, Stephen, and your breakdown. So let’s review. For those who are watching, you’re saying that these billionaires, the carbon, the capture and the conflict are critical to how we think about the election. In other words, how they make their money actually affects our how we think. So maybe I can try to break this down a little bit here. So one way I thought about this is in every massive wealth extraction business, we use a term to describe and analyze how it influences governance, and that’s what we call a political economy. So in other words, economic power translates into political power causing a feedback loop that perpetuates all the worst aspects of it. As a billionaire makes more money in a specific industry, then they use it to gain more political power and influence, which in turn enables them to extract even more wealth. And then the resulting system becomes captured to the point where the political and financial system sort of fuse into a perpetual moneymaking machine that needs and

Stephen Janis:

A misery

Taya Graham:

Machine

Stephen Janis:

Too.

Taya Graham:

That’s a really good point. It’s a misery making machine too, but the worst part is that it leads to ineffective regulation and it puts working folks into dire straits. So if this political economy is based upon the industries we’re discussing, and if it’s particularly pernicious, well, you can see the results. A fractured democracy soon to be staffed by people best known for generating means. I mean, I think our hometown, Baltimore is a good example of this.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, and you’re right. Oh, go ahead with that.

Taya Graham:

Well, because I would just say, I mean for decades, our city, for those of you who don’t know in Baltimore city, Maryland, we’ve struggled with poverty and doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives to developers to build luxury housing. And all that generosity has been funneled back into the campaign coffers of certain local officials to the extent that the city council actually voted down a $30,000 study just to see if it’s effective. And that’s not the end of it. Stephen and I actually testified in our state capitol to urge leader there to approve a transparency bill that would’ve been paneled a group of experts to study their effectiveness throughout Maryland. And guess how much this work group would’ve cost taxpayers $0. But that bill failed because for some reason it never came up for a vote in our house of delegates. Isn’t that interesting?

Stephen Janis:

That’s very true.

Taya Graham:

So I think that’s a really good example of the power of money. I mean the power would

Stephen Janis:

Of political economy. Yeah, the power of political economy and how it changes the entire landscape of a city, a city that’s poor, that gives tax breaks to the rich and then won’t even study them. It makes for a totally ineffective policy. What happens in these conflict economies with these conflict billionaires is that the ability to effectuate good policy becomes absolutely impossible because the inequity becomes ingrained into our media, into our discourse, to a point where we can’t really even begin to continence complex policies and come up with collective solutions, whatever they are. And I think that is really one of the biggest problems that we’ve kind of identified because we talked to voters. You and I were in Milwaukee, we were covering the election. We talked to voters who were young, who weren’t aware of student loan, some of the student loan things that the Biden administration had done, a plethora of programs trying to reduce the student loan debt.

They didn’t seem cognizant, a young woman who didn’t seem cognizant of the problems with not having a national right to abortion and a lot of things, it really struck me and I’m saying, how is it possible that they’re voting in this way? They seem totally, in some ways, not informed in a way that is beneficial to them. They’re informed in a way that is beneficial to billionaires. To me, that was like, wow, how did they achieve that? Now, I don’t want to sound naive or pollyannaish, but that really was an amazing revelation to see a lot of voters who really had been somehow convinced to vote, in my estimation against this is not criticizing the voters.

Taya Graham:

No, not all.

Stephen Janis:

I’m saying some media ecology that they’ve been immersed in, like I said, like fish and water.

Taya Graham:

Michael Willis liked that comment, by the way. Hi, Michael Willis, and I’ll say also hi to friends and code out there. Now, before I get too involved in the live chat, I think this might be the perfect moment to have our guests weigh in on the topic of billionaires and their role in our current state of both our political and economic affairs. His name is Dr. Richard Wolff and he’s one of the most popular thinkers on YouTube and beyond, and he has been a singular voice in the debate over economic policy, workers’ rights, rampant inequality, and of course our topic today, the vast wealth of billionaires. Professor Wolff, thank you so much for joining us.

Richard Wolff:

Well, thank you very much for inviting me. I’m honored by it and I’m very glad to participate.

Taya Graham:

Thank you so much.

Richard Wolff:

If I may, I think you’ve been bringing up a point that I would like to take even further.

Speaker 4:

Please do that.

Richard Wolff:

The existence of the billionaires in shaping to take your analogy, the water that we as fish swim in

And that shapes us even though we’re not aware with each little moment where that happens, I want to review with people what it means that we even have billionaires. It means that those 800 odd folks, and I mean the word odd in all of its senses, that those 800 odd people dispose of purchasing power. That’s what it means to have a lot of wealth. They can buy, they can buy the way none of us can. They can buy a television station or a dozen, they can buy an advertising agency or a dozen. They can do things that shape the discourse that we all engaged in and nothing exemplifies it so beautifully as Elon Musk buying Twitter. Absolutely, there you have as naked, but it wasn’t. It is Mr. Bezos buying the Washington Post years earlier, and we could all go on what would be necessary in the United States and what those billionaires make sure we don’t have would be a proper accounting of what portion of the airwaves that are all around us like water around fish. One portion of all of that movement, electronic and otherwise of ideas and thoughts and positions is under the control of a handful of people in the way that they operate their wealth.

How many economists, or a couple more statistics, the 10% richest people in the United States own 85% of the stocks and bonds. What does that tell you? It’s a very small community within our population that holds all the strings. It’s not just the billionaires, it’s them too. We might call them aspiring billionaires. They just haven’t got there yet, but they are already behaving in a way that will make them fit in to be as polite about this as I can. Let me give you a couple of examples that might not have yet occurred to folks. I would argue, and I mean this very literally, that the three most important economic realities crashing in onto the lives of the American people in the years leading up to this latest election and continuing as I speak, were not part of the debate. Were not part of the election.

If I can quote famous philosopher, here was the powerful presence of an absence. One are the three topics. Well, let me give you the one in order as I see it, of importance. The United States came out of World War II in 1945. King of the Hill, every other conceivable competitor of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan. I’m not pretty much exhausted if you want put Russia in there, but Russia was never an economic competitor of the United States. They were all decimated in and by the war, their finances were gone. Their railroads had been bombed. Their people had suffered in a way that the United States simply did not. One group of bombs fell in Pearl Harbor and then never again throughout the rest of the war, et cetera. That meant that in the 70 years afterwards, roughly 1945 to the early part of this century, the United States prevailed in the world.

It dominated its products, went everywhere, the one currency that could be used on any corner of the globe, the US dollar. Where did you go if you were a poor country to borrow money? You went to Washington or New York? On and on and on. Why am I telling you this? Because I have to be the bearer of the bad news. So please remember, you do not shoot the messenger even if you don’t like the message. Our empire was profound, was as global, if not more so than the British empire that preceded it. But like every empire it’s born, it evolves and then it passes away. We are in the passing phase. It’s all around us. The dollar is not the reserve currency of every central bank across the world as it was. The dollar is not the agreed international currency the way it was. The role of America’s exports is much smaller in world trade than it was. I could go on, but you get the picture.

Stephen Janis:

Well, professor Wilson, I wanted to ask you a quick question. How much did inequality have to do with this diminishment of the empire? Just to generalize

Richard Wolff:

Question. I’m getting to that. I would

Stephen Janis:

Argue. Alright, my fault.

Richard Wolff:

No, no, not understandable. I’m getting to that.

Speaker 5:

Go

Stephen Janis:

Ahead.

Richard Wolff:

In every empire of which we have a record, and it’s quite a few ours, the British, the Dutch, the French, the Persian, I mean we do know a good bit about it. It’s been part of human history to say the least. One of the things that happens when empires begin to decline is that those people at the top, the 10% to 5%, if you like, the 1% who occupy the positions of the CEOs and of the political leadership and so on, they are in the best position to hold on to what they have, which means that the costs of the declining empire are offloaded onto the middle and the bottom. We are living through that offloading, and again, the examples are all around us. Once you’re willing to see, we have in the United States as a struggle won by the working class, a minimum wage begun in the depths of the depression back in the 1930s. The current minimum wage federal level is $7 and 25 cents an hour

Upon which you cannot live. It was last raised to that lofty level in the year 2009. It is that today. That means that for the last 15 years, every year prices went up sometimes just by a little 1%, sometimes by a lot last few years by six, seven, 8%. But for every one of the last 15 years without changing or raising the $7 and 25 cents an hour, which remained the same, you were salvaging the livelihoods of millions of people whose minimum wage was never raised, not by Republicans and not by Democrats. What kind of a society would do that to the poorest people of among you who are working. That’s why they get the minimum wage. It’s extraordinary. The social security distributions have not kept pace with inflation. The cost of our groceries have not kept pace with what are we doing? We are whacking the middle and the bottom, the vast majority of people, and one big explanation is the change in the world economy. Let me give you a second statistic. In economics, we have a statistic called the GDP, the Gross domestic Product. It’s a very crude measure, but it’s what we have to give you roughly the size of the footprint of an economy.

The United States used to be the biggest GDP in the world. It still is. It still is, but it has now a new reality. If you put together the GDP of the United States right now and those of its major allies called the G seven, that’s the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. If you put it together that total GDP is less, a lot less than the GDP of the People’s Republic of China and its allies in something called the bricks. This is a world changing reality. This is a new world economy that has in it two big blocks, the US and its allies and China and its allies. One of them is falling in relative wealth and the other one is rising. And the American people have to understand they’re in the one that’s falling and you’ve got to come to terms with that. And we just went through an election that pretended none of this is going on.

Stephen Janis:

That’s a really good point. And Dr. Wolff, I want to ask you a question because you were, as I was listening to you, I kind of had a question.

Richard Wolff:

Please.

Stephen Janis:

Are you saying to a certain extent that inequality is bad for growth? In other words, the furthermore inequality gets its roots in an economy, the less economy is productive and growing, it’s actually antithetical. Even though the elites will get more wealth for themselves, they’re actually hurting themselves in this process by creating a more unequal economy. Is that what you’re saying or am I understanding that?

Richard Wolff:

Well, I wouldn’t put it that way. What I would say is inequality,

Speaker 6:

Which

Richard Wolff:

Has often been used as a justification, it’s a necessary thing to allow if you’re going to have economic growth. Well, if that was the strategy we lost,

Speaker 5:

Okay, interesting.

Richard Wolff:

I would argue that the link there is a very dubious

Speaker 5:

Understood

Richard Wolff:

Link.

Speaker 5:

Understood.

Richard Wolff:

And it’s more scary for the American people because the difference between the United States and China is not the difference that Americans keep talking to each other about the difference between a so-called private enterprise economy, US Britain, so forth, and a fill in the blank state run economy. China has a hybrid by intent. They are 50%. A private capitalist economy equally run partly by Chinese businesses and partly by foreigners that have set up there including a big chunk of American business. And the other half is the government. So they’re not like the Soviet Union where everything was government or almost, and they’re not like the United States where everything’s mostly private. They are a new thing in the history of the world, a hybrid. Now why is that important? Because over the last 30 years, that system that they operate has grown faster than the United States or Britain or the G seven or anybody else. Every time I have to explain this to the American people, I have to stop and say, I am not endorsing Xi Jingping. I’m not celebrating China. They have a host of problems.

Speaker 5:

I’m stating

Richard Wolff:

A reality of fact. I’m arguing only that the United States is behaving like a three-year-old child confronted with a barking dog who puts his or her little hands in front of their eyes in the hope that if you can’t see the dog, it won’t be there and you know that a mature child will grow older and a year or two later we’ll have understood you can put your hand there, you can not see it, but the dog will probably be there just so much. We are not doing that. We conducted an election in which the two candidates acted like none of this was happening, whereas those of us who are by profession spend our time studying this. We’re looking at each other and I’m talking about my conversations with right wing economists, folks in the center, not just my leftwing colleagues, and we all look at each other. What is going on here? There’s a level of what psychologists call denial that is frightening.

Taya Graham:

I would have to agree and Professor Wolff, someone in our comment section once upon a time, I think summarized our conversation really well so far. They wrote, billionaires are dragons hoarding their gold for themselves and no one else, and they rip through working class people to keep it. Thank you so much for that comment Once upon a time, I think they made an excellent summation. Professor Wolff though I do want to ask you what influence you see on how billionaires impacted our most recent election? I mean, I think there’s a pretty obvious example of Elon Musk, but I know this topic has a lot more facets just than him. Maybe you could describe for us some of the ways that you saw billionaires influence our election.

Richard Wolff:

Well, for me, it was all about the subtle ways in which you do or do not pay attention to candidates. I mean, the choice is made in a little moment of a reporter’s behavior or a little moment later when the editor works over what the reporter submits. I mean, we all know that if you have anything to do with journalism, how that works and the mood is created and in our country we find it very worthwhile to enjoy the latest antics of Elon Musk. What is this about? What is this heroism that is applied to this fellow? I mean a mature, and I don’t want to insult anyone, but a mature look at our economy, especially aware that the automobile, the gas powered automobile is the single largest cause of air pollution in the world. This fact that we all have this automobile whose major function is to sit on the street or in the garage most of the hours of every day, a level of inefficient use of resources that dwarfs all the other ones. We typically talk about, and we have known for decades that we could do a major job on improving our health and saving this planet. If we went from the private automobile to a system of high quality, rapid well done mass, transportation,

Buses, trains, trolleys, all of that well known, the engineering has been done, the economics have been done. So what we needed in the world was a transition from the private oil driven car to mass transit, but we didn’t get that. We got something else and Elon Musk gets the credit or if you allow me the blame, what did he do? He figured out how he could make the kind of money a production of a private vehicle can get you to earn

If he could just get rid of the bad pollution from the gas. So he gave us the electric private vehicle which will sit in the garage and on the street for eternity being wasted in terms, it’s unbelievable. We should have had a social response to this saying, that’s not what we need, Mr. Musk, and we’re sure as hell not going to reward you by being, which he currently is. Let me remind you all, I keep track of these things. His current estimated wealth is 350 billion, an amount of money that you ought to wonder given to him because he replaced one efficient, inefficient system of transportation with another one and has made sure that we don’t have mass transportation and we could remove from him 300 of his 350 billion. He would then have 50 billion. He’d still be among the 800 billionaires of this country, Richard and everybody else, but we would have $300 billion with which we could attack half of the problems that are now judged to be beyond the reach of our solutions. It’s level of self delusion that we are going through as a nation that historians will look back on, shake their heads with wonder.

Taya Graham:

That’s such an excellent point. And so I just have to follow up because Elam Musk, along with Vivek Ram Swami, who’s a multimillionaire, who on multiple levels has defrauded his investors, his shareholders in the American public with the accident Alzheimer’s drug that fell through, and then of course he practically ran Rovan, his company into the ground, lost $926 million for that company and he’s going to be helping Elon Musk run the Department of government efficiency. So I’m just curious from your point of view, as an economist, what might your concerns be and what would you expect to happen when these two folks get a hand off the federal government and they’re controlling another facet of our lives,

Richard Wolff:

It’s part of the creation of the notion of the hero as the person who has a lot of money. I mean, it’s just an amazing mental leap, which smart people as most Americans are, wouldn’t do that. They know better than that. It’s bizarre. But look, we have a president who ran around becoming an important politician by telling everybody he was rich and telling everybody they ought to equate the fact that he’s rich, not with the fact that he inherited a ton of money from a father who had buildings in Brooklyn, but no, no, he was some kind of smarty, even though he’s got a dozen bankruptcies. It’s extraordinary. And you see it now with Ron Swami and with Elon Musk so far, by the way, they have announced only the following that I’ve been able to glean. They are going to make the government efficient and their initial plan is to lay off all the workers that are working from home, alright, just between you and me and the lamppost, that is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. Cruel. What kind of rational? You’re not going to investigate what each of these workers does, how it could be done in some other way. What would be No, no, no. They have a quick and dirty rule. That’s how they lost all that money making decisions like that. The opposite of what we teach people in university don’t ever make a sweeping decision like that unless of course what you’re doing is posing for the camera rather than solving a social problem.

And when you have billionaires, that’s what they do. We are going to watch Elon Musk standing next to the rocket ship over and over and over for the next five years and half of them won’t get off the ground, the other half will crash and he’ll have a good excuse for each one and he’ll be on the evening news. And this goes back to the question you asked earlier, that decision by the TV company to put Elon Musk standing next to the X rocket that he is going to send into the moon. That’s a choice. And you’re not going to show what’s happening to the average diet of the American people, what’s happening to the housing crisis. You’re not going to see that every now and then you’ll get a report, but you know what we’re going to hit the people with. Here’s the billionaire, and you’ll see ’em doing something sexy and dramatic and maybe driving off in his expensive car. And you don’t have to be a genius to understand that at the very best. That’s a mixed message that’s not helping us solve our social problems. It’s escapism.

Stephen Janis:

That brings up an interesting question, professor Wolffe, because I was thinking about that. I mean, it seems like during this past election that healthcare never came up, that climate changed, never came up. The student loan programs how we finance higher education never came up. Why do you think that is? Is that part of this billionaire? I was noticing today when I was watching CNN, they were talking about social security. They had an expert on, he never mentioned the fact that they could pretty much cure social security’s financial ills by just raising the cap on salaries and what people have to pay at what level they don’t pay anymore. But why was healthcare and these really important issues that affect every American not part of debate in the last election? I don’t really remember hearing it and people didn’t seem to be aware of it. What’s driving this sort of avoidance of real policy?

Richard Wolff:

Here’s the way it works. The politicians take an enormous amount of money which they can raise, and they hire professional pollsters. They set up groups all around the country, composed carefully of people from different walks of life, people with different religions, different jobs, all of that. And then they ask them, what question are you excited about? And they advise the candidate what to speak about based on where the, but you know what this is. You are now taking the pulse of the people to whom the billionaires direct all of their opinion. So you’re not

Testing people’s opinions, you’re testing how well the billionaires have done their job and they do their job perfectly well, and you can’t do that because what’s going to happen then is that the subterranean issues, the ones that are really affecting people, the sinking feeling when you can’t have eggs in the morning because the price of the eggs went crazy, or you can’t stay in your apartment because the landlord is upping the rent next month. And all of those moments, those are kind of gone. Those are somehow put without anyone saying it into the realm of your personal life, your personal dilemma, your personal failings.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Richard Wolff:

And you know what happens? People are bitter. They feel it, but it’s not the allowable conversation. You can’t talk about sex and you can’t talk about other topics that are taboo in our culture. Those become taboo as well. And so there’s a bitterness and when it shows up when people who know they’re being screwed vote for Donald Trump because they’re voting for that other thing that they think is socially acceptable, a rich man living in a penthouse in New York and the bitterness doesn’t go away. It’s like learning that you can go to the mall 50 times. The bitterness that drives you there doesn’t go away no matter how many packages are in your garage.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I mean it’s almost like a spiritual crisis, but somehow fused with policy and it’s just odd. I think you made some great points about that because I just feel like there’s been a growing and growing disconnect between actual policies that affect people’s lives and the ability to discuss them. And I think, I mean, it is kind of metaphysical. The billionaires come out and they set the tone of the bait and they distract you and force you to consider issues that really don’t impact your life. And that was how people were making decisions this election tell you,

Richard Wolff:

And you’re teaching them the last point. You’re teaching them, you really are without meaning to and without having the title of teacher, you’re teaching them, these are the important issues that you really should be thinking about. There’s something wrong with you if you’re dwelling on the price of the eggs in the supermarket, you should be really excited pro or allowing trans people into certain bathrooms. Our society is falling apart and I have no disrespect. I want the trans folks to have all the rights. Everybody else does. However, the sense of proportion here is craziness. There were, I think 80 bills introduced in state legislatures as well as in the federal one about trans people’s rights to access public toilets. What are you teaching people? I could give you many, many other examples there. What are you telling people? It’s extraordinary. The billionaires are very crucial in that decision making.

Stephen Janis:

I think. So what’s anything in the chat state?

Taya Graham:

Oh my gosh, the chat is great, and I just want to mention one thing dark Earth said must took over Tesla to make money not to help humanity. He exploited our desire to improve environmental issues. We have to line his pocket. He’s a conman, not a philanthropist. I love our viewers. Those an let’s

Stephen Janis:

Remember, he got four $56 million from the Obama administration too. Oh,

Taya Graham:

That’s right. Democrats helped make

Stephen Janis:

Him a coordinator. I think. I mean, professor Wolf corporate socialism is actually thriving right? In America.

Richard Wolff:

Absolutely. They all, and the beauty of it is each one of them when they go to the Congress, because I’ve been involved in this because go to the Congress, the argument that usually clinches it, they refer to another billionaire who came last year or two years ago and got a big chunk of subsidy. Why not me? And everybody nods poor me. Why not him?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Wow. It sounds like badly when billionaires out.

Taya Graham:

It sounds like tips and Baltimore tax

Stephen Janis:

Increment financing. Any comments in the chat or

Taya Graham:

Anything? Oh, we’ve got great comments in the chat,

Stephen Janis:

But Oh, you want to ask a question? Go ahead.

Taya Graham:

But let me just ask sometimes I just want to point out something. So the Biden administration saved Teamsters pensions. They released roughly 36 billion to preserve roughly 360,000 retirement payees. But the Teamsters didn’t endorse Vice President Harris. And the reason why I think of it’s because you mentioned those cultural war issues. So I’m just wondering, even when Democrats do something that ostensibly seems good, saving teamsters pensions and they still don’t earn an endorsement, does that mean the culture war issues are transcending self-interest or is maybe there’s something else going on here?

Speaker 5:

Good question.

Richard Wolff:

I would argue very strongly with you that this is not a problem of culture issues. This is a problem that what’s ailing the teamster, the truck driver or whoever you’re talking about, they organize lots of people beyond truck drivers.

Speaker 5:

Yes, true.

Richard Wolff:

If they are facing existential crises over the last 40 years as the American economy ran out of its empire gas, you had enormous social changes. One of the most important was the end of rising wages. By that I mean what we economists call real wages. That is the money you get adjusted for the prices you have to pay. Our working class has a real wage now about where it was in the 1970s. Let me give you an example just to shock you. Over the same period the last 40, 50 years, the real wage of the average Chinese worker has quadrupled.

This is again, nothing to do with celebrating China. China has lots of problems. I’m aware of them, but that’s a fact you have to deal with, it explains something about politics in China versus politics Here you have denied those workers the rise that the previous a hundred years had given them in this country. It’s one of the things made United States special. It gave workers rising real wages every decade for over a century. No other capitalist country did that. That’s why Americans feel that they live in an exceptional, they did for a long time, but that stopped in the 1970s and suddenly the advertising to the American working class family didn’t stop. You were still given the notion of what the American dream should be for you. You should have your own home. You should have one or two cars. You should send your kid to college.

How in the world are you going to do that if your real wage is stagnant? Well, we found the answer and the answer is, and people have to try to get their heads around this. The answer transformed the lives above all of women. Because the women, particularly the white women, but to some degree the non-whites as well, they left the home. They weren’t anymore the housewife, the homemaker, the mother, the care. They had to, they did all those things, but on top of it, they went out and got a job. They had to because the men’s wages were not going anywhere, but they kept the social network alive. They kept the emotional nexus going in the family. It’s mom who did that? Not bop. Very rare. And when you put the women under that stress, you blew up the family. We have a level of divorce in our country that’s among the highest in the world.

Our women no longer have children. They’re not going to go back to what they had before. All of these things are creating anxieties in the men that is extreme tensions between men and women, which you could see exploding. I mean, we have a vice president we’re about to have, who wants the women to go back inside the house, have babies and shut up and says so that that’s a sign of something. Those are the issues that have to be addressed. And the drivers in the teamsters who support Trump, I want to take my hat off to them. They have half of what they need, a recognition that the conventional politicians and my humble opinion on both parties are not there for them. They haven’t solved their problem, haven’t changed any of this. They’re interchangeable. They want something different. And Mr. Trump, by his very crudeness, offer them something different. I don’t think they believe in him, it’s just that they don’t believe in the conventional bushes or Clintons or bidens or unfortunately what came after.

Stephen Janis:

How much do you think Trump’s appeal is a product of the conflict media industrial complex? We talked about not just responding to the anxieties of people, but actually fueling or playing off the anxieties created by a conflict media system that makes everything seem dysfunctional. I mean, I would think if I were a teamster and a Biden administration saved my pension, I would be very supportive. But it seems like this is a psychological thing, like there’s a ops that makes us actually think even when things are good that they’re really bad. I, and I feel that frustration as a reporter when I interview people because I really feel like they are not being communicated with effectively in any way to understand what maybe their self-interest, I don’t want to be arrogant about it, but how much is Trump really a product of the conflict media industrial complex, not just the anxiety, these anxiety of voters?

Richard Wolff:

Well, I think it is not either or my understanding, really. My understanding is that all of these things are going on.

Speaker 5:

They are.

Richard Wolff:

I would caution you though, even when the teamster, and we can pick the W worker or teacher or anybody else,

Speaker 5:

Absolutely.

Richard Wolff:

When they’re aware that the Biden administration voted to do something good for union pensions,

If you talk to them for more than five minutes, you’ll discover they know that. But they have no confidence. They don’t have any confidence anymore. That won’t be taken away either by a Republican or a Democrat next week because they’ve become an interchangeable group. They want, look, Mr. Trump, in all due respect had two big ideas. He said to the American people, you’ve been screwed for 40 years, which is true, and you are upset about it, which is true, and I am going to protect you from any more of this, and I’m going to take us back to before this bad stuff happened, mago, we’re going to go back and I’m going to protect you from the two dangers. The first protection is I’m going to put up a steel wall against all of those immigrants and the second protection is I’m going to put up a tariff wall against all those Chinese products. And look, these are very dramatic images. I can tell you as an economist that he can’t do any of that. Or to put it another way, if he does any of that, he’ll come to regret it and fast because it will loose economic chaos in this country that will then be blamed on him.

Stephen Janis:

Well, can you drill down that in the tariff part? Because Howard tariffs, that is such an axiomatic thing, and just give us a little bit about tariffs because a lot of us don’t know how they work, but a lot of economists say that’s a disaster waiting happen. Can you talk a little bit about that for us?

Richard Wolff:

Sure, sure. First of all, what is a tariff? Tariff is just a given to a particular kind of tax. It’s a tax that is applied when an object is produced outside the United States, but brought inside to be sold. So a bottle of French wine that is sold in your local liquor store, that’s an import. And the duty used to be called import duty, is a tax on that import. So first of all, enjoy with me that a Republican leader, that’s the party that has been anti-tax all its life, is now proposing an enormous facts, but hopes that you won’t notice it by calling it a tariff. So here’s how it goes. Mr. Trump has variously suggested he’s going to throw a tariff against everybody. He has mentioned rates that go from 10% to 60% and possibly more in the case of China because he wants to punish them.

Then he says things, which by the way, if an undergraduate said this in any economics professor’s class, he would immediately flunk. But the president calls around and he says, I’m going to hit the Chinese with a tariff. Well, that shows he’s either a hustler or an ignoramus and I don’t know, I’ll let him choose which one he wants. Why? When I’m going to use the example, a real example. 15 years ago, the world began to compete every car company to compete to produce an electric car. And we’ve all heard about Mr. Musk and Tesla. They did it, but the best car, the best electric car and truck in the world today, best quality and also the lowest price is a electric vehicle produced in China and by a corporation whose name you will learn even though you’ve never heard of it. It’s called the BYD corporation, B as in boy, Y as in yellow, D as in dog.

The BYD corporation makes the best cheapest electric car. Let’s suppose you can get one of those for $30,000, which you can. Alright, if there’s a tariff and you are an American and you want to buy one, you would have to come up with first 30,000 bucks that go to China to pay for the car. Then you’d have to pay a 100% tariff that was imposed on these cars by Mr. Biden, a hundred percent means another 30,000. So you would have to pay $60,000, 30,000 go to China. They get their money with or without a tariff. It’s Uncle Sam who gets the tariff. You are an American, you pay it and it goes to Uncle Sam. But because of that, you’re not going to buy a Chinese car because it’s 60 grand for you. You’re going to buy a less good car made by Ford or Tesla or GM or whoever you buy it from. They’re going to charge you say 50 grand, not what you ought to pay, but at least it’s less than the 60, which you would have to, that’s how it works. Here’s the irony. It’ll make the inflation in this country go crazy, which is why he can’t do it, because the price of everything will go up. I mean, in the morning you have cup of coffee that comes from abroad. We don’t grow coffee in quantities in this country that has to be imported. You put sugar in it, that has to be imported also. Okay, get ready for $25 lattes in the morning. That’s going to hurt.

Speaker 5:

Wow.

Richard Wolff:

Talking about that. Who’s going to get to blame Mr. Trump and his nutty way of thinking? You can’t do it. But it is a wonderful, and here I come, the media again, they take all this seriously. President elect Trump is going to whack the Chinese with a tart. It’s all nutty that this is Madison Avenue advertising gone crazy, distracting people from all the real issues that are changing and threatening their lives, and they go into this zone of make-believe. It’s like in an amusement park when you’re in the dark tunnel and the world isn’t the way it really is.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. See, I think you want

Taya Graham:

A professor Wolff, I think as reporters, although we are local independent reporters, I think it’s only fair to note the role that wealth plays in influencing and perhaps in some cases even controlling what our mainstream media teaches us about our electoral politics or even the politics surrounding capital wealth. So there was this post I found from existential comics that I found it online and it seems like it summarizes it perfectly. And it says, the billionaires who own the news have the millionaires who report it, sit there and tell you with a straight face that you don’t deserve $15 an hour. Professor Wolff, could you share some of your thoughts on the role that the media plays in influencing us? For example, like policies like advocating for a $15 per hour minimum wage, which you cited earlier, it hasn’t changed in decades.

Stephen Janis:

Well, yeah,

Taya Graham:

The federal minimum

Stephen Janis:

Wage. The federal minimum. Minimum. Some states have said like Marilyn has said, higher $20 an hour minimum wage,

Richard Wolff:

By the way, right? There is a wonderful story. In other words, you don’t need a leftist economist like me to point out that $7 and 25 cents is an outrageous to a working person.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. We

Richard Wolff:

Have more than half the states in this country have found it so odious that they have raised the state minimum wage way above that. The last time I looked, the state of Washington on the west coast had the highest state minimum wage at about $19 an hour. Okay? That’s almost three times what the federal government, what in the world is going on. That is a chaotic reality. It means that a worker in a state enterprise in Washington has as a minimum three times what a worker governed by the federal law has anywhere else in the same country. So yeah, I mean, it is outrageous, but it is only one of many, many, many outrageous, how many folks know really in their gut how much money has been spent on the war in Ukraine. Put aside what you think about the issues of the war itself, but just are you as an American ready to forego what those hundreds of billions could have done for the problems of this country in order to fight that war in that country?

And remember, more than half of Americans polled, could not tell you where Ukraine was on the map. Couldn’t find it. So what exactly are we doing? We have a media that is full, not so much of what it does, but what it omits from doing. Why are we not told about the housing crisis? Let me be an economist with you. That’s the worst thing about the inflation. The cost of housing has gone crazy in this country. True. You probably know that just from your own friends and family. But if not, let me assure you, the numbers are incredible because the top 10% decided in the pandemic that it’s important to have a house in the country. And so that’s what we have produced houses in the country that are second homes for people and we have concentrated the rest of what we build in high rise luxury housing in a dozen cities that have become enclaves.

Let me give you a dystopian vision of what the United States is becoming. We are becoming what we used to call a third world country. We have pockets of wealth, certain cities and the suburbs around them, and they exist in a sea of misery of people who cannot access health. If half of what is a promise to be done to Obamacare is going to be done by Mr. Trump, they will not access healthcare. They are already being priced out of the education system. They can’t afford that. They can’t carry those loans. I mean, what are we doing in Germany and France? My background is French and German. I speak those languages I have since I’ve been a child in Germany. Higher education is free. Let me just explain. It’s free. No tuition, no fees. You cover your food and your room and board that you have to take care of, but you do not pay. And not only is that available to all German citizens, it’s available to anyone. There are 25,000 Americans getting their college degrees in Germany. They don’t have to go into debt. And the same is true in half a dozen other European. What’s going on here? Americans in tone to themselves. We live in the greatest country. We live in the grid. We aren’t doing that anymore. That’s over. That’s with the empire. Bye-Bye.

Ought to be discussed.

Stephen Janis:

It’s interesting because I was an adjunct for like 12 years and I never made more than three or $4,000 to teach a 16 week class with 22

Taya Graham:

Students. If I remember, you were being paid $2,500 to teach a class.

Stephen Janis:

So even in our higher o’clock

Taya Graham:

Class,

Stephen Janis:

Even in our higher education system, we have this kind of caste system and it seems to just, but Professor Wolff, I’m just curious because you’re bringing all these things up historically. Is there any historic perspective? I mean, how egregious is our economic inequality right now? What level are we in terms of from historical standards? Are we unequal in our basic economic system here? I mean, how bad is inequality here? Historically speaking,

Richard Wolff:

It’s very bad. But the picture of our history, and I’m glad you brought it up. The picture of our history is remarkable. In the 18th century and in the 19th century, we were stable for a good while and then we began when we were an independent starting in the 19th century, when we were independent, we began to have a trajectory in which real wages, as I mentioned earlier, went up every decade. It was extraordinary from around 1820 to around 1970s, 150, really

Speaker 5:

That long,

Richard Wolff:

150 years of a steadily rising standard of living.

Stephen Janis:

So I clearly missed the boat.

Richard Wolff:

What

Stephen Janis:

I said, I clearly missed the boat.

Richard Wolff:

No, so to speak. Wait a

Stephen Janis:

Minute,

Richard Wolff:

Profits rose even faster. So you had a slow steady inequality, but it was very bearable because you were giving the working class a rising standard of, so they were willing, the working class, I mean I’m generalizing obviously, of course, but they were willing to tolerate the inequality which wasn’t growing quickly because their situation was improved. They could have better housing, better diets, better clothing do for their children, all of that. Then the first world war comes the 1920s and the 1920s are a period of rapid inequality without a rising standard of living.

And that blew up in the Great Depression and the anger, and this is so important for Americans to understand the working class revolted in the 1930s against not just the unemployment and all the horrors of the crash after 1929, but in a delayed reaction, they reacted against the inequality that had become so stark in the 1920s. And then we had, and this goes to your question, a compression, we went the 1930s were a period where inequality not only didn’t get worse, it got much better. Interesting. The gap between rich and poor narrowed. Now partly this was because the rich really got wiped out by the stock market collapsed and all of that. But meanwhile, the gap and that developed after World War ii and that’s when I grew up, and I assume you did too when we developed this idea that the United States is a magical place where everybody is in the middle class. Sure, we have a few rich ones and we have a few desperados, but we are the great example of a classless middle class. We all have our home, we have our car Saturday, we wash it in the driveway, blah, blah, all of that. And it was true.

Stephen Janis:

It

Richard Wolff:

Was true. We had compressed it. United States was exceptional in all of that.

Stephen Janis:

And we even had like a 92% market

Richard Wolff:

Starting,

Stephen Janis:

Starting

Richard Wolff:

In the seventies. The good jobs were moved to China and elsewhere and the immigrants came in and the real wages stopped going up. And we have now become wildly, we are now more unequal than we were way back when. But it’s been an up and down ride. And the importance of that is when people say, well, there’s nothing you can do that’s not correct. Let me remind you not to make a hero out of Franklin Roosevelt, but here’s the facts. Here comes a guy who comes from the elite of the United States whose family had had a president earlier, Thedo Roosevelt and so on. What did he do under the pressure of the unions and of two socialists and a communist party? He created the social security system in the middle of the Great Depression when the government had no money, we passed the law that says if you reach the age of 65, the government will give you a check every month for however long you live, an extraordinary act. Then we pass the unemployment compensation. We had never done that before

Speaker 6:

Because

Richard Wolff:

Your job through a layoff, we’ll give you a check every week for a year or two. And where did the money come from? He taxed corporations and the rich, I enjoy that so much. I have to repeat it. He taxed corporations and the rich to pay for a program for the middle class and the poor. So no one should listen to people who say, you can’t do that. We’ve been there, we’ve done that.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, didn’t we in the fifties have a 92% marginal tax rate?

Richard Wolff:

That’s right.

Stephen Janis:

And I heard recently that some of this was because Roosevelt and then subsequently even Eisenhower felt that if we didn’t provide a higher standard of living if comparatively to the Cold War countries we were fighting, then it would seem like we were a failure. That’s right. So there’s people like economists like Thomas pti who say inequality is not a natural outgrowth of economic growth. And also said, it’s been a symbolic what in the seventies? How do we come to this change where suddenly we don’t care about the middle class collectively and we get on this ever-rising inequality, what changes? Is it political, cultural? I mean what really gives us, is it Ronald Reagan? I mean, what really starts this change on this armored trajectory towards where we are now?

Richard Wolff:

I would argue, to answer your question, I would argue that the experience of the 1930s that I just summarized

In which corporations and the rich were taxed in order to provide social security benefits, unemployment compensation, the first minimum wage, it was passed in the 1938 and a government hiring program, the biggest program of all 15 million people put on the government payroll paid that. Where did all that money come from in a depression when nobody was paying taxes anymore? It came from corporations in the rich. And I would argue it traumatized that class in the American political system. And they said in 1945 when that war was over and when that president died, they were going to roll back the new deal. And that’s been your lifetime and my lifetime. We are going through what I believe is the final stages of literally getting back to what it was that blew us up the 1930s. And it is a nice round number a hundred years ago. And here we are about to go right back into the same scenario unless this time we got other people giving us the leadership to go in a different direction.

Taya Graham:

It’s really interesting that you started speaking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt because I actually have a clip that I picked out from Senator Sanders that I would love for you to react to Professor Wolff if we could just roll that for him.

Speaker 7:

Thanks, KA. It’s not just Kamala Harris, it’s the demo. In other words, let me read you something if I might please. What I think is one of the most interesting speeches ever given Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inaugural speech in 1936, middle of the depression. So he starts his speech. He says, look, these are the things we did. These are the obstacles that we had to overcome. And then he says, after being president for four years, he says that, I quote, I see millions of families trying to live on income. So Omega, that DePaul of family disaster hangs over them day by day. I see millions of night education, recreation and the opportunity to better their lot and a lot of their children. I see one third of a nation ill housed, ill cloud, ill nourished. In other words, what Roosevelt did is said, look, we are making progress, but I look out all over this country and I see tens of millions of people who are hurting. Instead of doing that, when the Democrats said, well, we passed the inflation adjustment act, and I understand the economy is pretty good and Donald Trump’s a bad guy, and we all defend the woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. There was no appreciation, no appreciation of the struggling and the suffering of millions and millions of working class people. And unless you recognize that reality and have a vision of how you get out of that, I think you’re not going to be going very far as a political party.

Taya Graham:

So professor, building off what Senator Sanders said, how does a party communicate that they understand the struggles of working class people? Now I know the Republican party seems to understand how to amplify their anger and understandable outrage, but is there another way to do this? And beyond just rhetoric, what sort of policies could Democrats offer to prove they really do understand what people need? Or are there any recent policies that they could expand on or try to improve?

Richard Wolff:

Good question. Well, I think the answer is easy and readily at hand. They have chosen not to pay attention, not to try, not even in part, and instead of speculating, let me give you an example of what other capitalist countries, our allies in Western Europe, what they do for the working class and they don’t have a Trump and they’re not about to get a Trump either. Even the people that they think over there are like Trump are light years away from what Trump is or what Trump is about to do. Okay, so let me start. Part of my family is French. When I visit them in France, we talk, they have a health insurance that covers them from the day they are born to the day that they die. If they are injured, if they get sick, they have a health program to go to that does not cost them anything.

You don’t meet people carrying around a load of medical debt. I already gave you the example of higher education. They don’t have student debt either. They have a vast array of subsidies in France, if you have more than one child, you get a subsidy from the government to help you pay for the cost of that child for 18 years. And they’ve been doing that for decades. Bernie likes to give examples of Denmark. Oh, that’s one place. But there are a lot of programs. Lemme give you another one to shake you up because my guess is your audience hasn’t heard it. In 1985, a legislator in Italy named Marcora got a law passed by the Italian parliament. Here’s how the law works. If you become unemployed in Italy, you have a choice. You have a plan A and a plan B. A plan A is you go on what they call there the dole. That’s like going out unemployment here, you got to check every week, et cetera, et cetera. But you can choose plan B. What’s plan B? You got to get at least nine other unemployed people like yourself. Then the 10 or more of you go to the government and you get from the government by law the entirety of your unemployment compensation a year or so worth as a lump sum, each of the 10 of you get it on condition that you use it to start a worker co-op business.

Taya Graham:

That’s amazing.

Stephen Janis:

That is amazing.

Taya Graham:

I’m sorry, I’m just flabbergasted.

Stephen Janis:

No, we’re saying that’s an amazing policy. That’s incredible. Yeah, we were just where I can do it.

Richard Wolff:

By the way, the business community in Italy has tried more than once to get rid of it. They have failed. It’s on the books as I speak to you, it was passed in 1985. Incredible Americans don’t know it. Guess what? Italy has more worker, co-ops than most other countries in Europe for this reason. They have supported this. If you go to Bologna, if you go to that area of Italy known as Emelia, Romania, 40% of the economy, there is worker co-ops, they teach how to set ’em up in the university. The greatest worker co-op is in northern Spain in a place called gon the GON Corporation is a family of 200. It’s the seventh largest corporation in Spain. This is a new way to organize work, work and those people don’t pay a few people millions while everybody else can’t send their kid to college because the workers themselves decide on the pay scale.

And so inequality is way less than what we have. Okay, why aren’t we trying that? Why isn’t the Democratic party saying, and by the way, just a footnote, Bernie’s platform, when he ran in whatever it was 2016, had in it supporting co-ops, but it was a single line and most people didn’t know what to do. It looked like a throwaway line, but it isn’t. It’s a very serious, what would you say if you said to the American people, we’re going to get rid of this crazy quilt of medical insurance where every time you have a claim, there’s a fight between the doctor and the insurer. Are you covered all of it? Part of it stop. We’re going to give you a blanket that no one is going to have to pay. If you have a baby, no one is going to have to pay. If you get injured, you’re not going to go into debt. We’re not going to do that and we’re going to go, I don’t have to go to Europe, go to Canada as a perfectly functioning system. And by the way, the people fight very hard in all of those countries to keep that.

Even the conservatives in Canada did not dare come out against their single payer system.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, no, no, I know. So Professor Wolff, as we get to the end of our discussion, I wanted to ask you a question because I’m thinking it’s like we live in Thomas Friedman’s world or whatever his name was, Milton Friedman, excuse me, Milton Friedman. But how can we collectively fight inequality? I mean, it’s such an abstract concept yet seem so ubiquitous. Is there a way to actually fight it on a collective basis? I mean we see the products that unions have made in other organizations. Can you reverse inequality? It will take some sort of social calamity like the depression to actually reorganize our economic system. Is there literally a way you or I can actually battle against it besides speaking out about it? I mean is there anything concrete you can think of besides the neoliberal project, which seems to have failed at this point? Anything you think can think of?

Richard Wolff:

Yes. I mean I do think that at this point, given everything else going on, and I agree with the way you’ve rendered it, the most important thing is what I would, and I mean this in all honesty, what you’re doing, the two of you, the kind of program you’re designing, the kind of conversation you’re organizing, the materials you gather, these are very, very important. You are changing some minds who will in turn change other. That’s how this works.

But I would say yes. And the example I gave you a minute ago, I think could stimulate the American people in ways little else could. Let’s talk about worker corp. An enterprise that is not run by a tiny group of people, a board of directors or the owner, whatever you want to call them who make all the decisions, what to produce, how to produce, where to produce, and what to do with the product and the revenue from the product. Why is that not a democratic decision? Why are we not all the janitor who cleans up at the end of the day, the machinist who works by the machine, the clerk who keeps the come on. We are all affected by what happens in that business. Why is it not run democratically? If we vote for a mayor because what the mayor may do affects us as residents, then why are we not voting for the people who run the enterprise since everything they decide affects us as employees?

I mean, I think a reconstruction is that bold. You bet. But you know something. I think we’ve run out of all those proposals that aren’t bold or if I may dare say so that aren’t radical. Yeah, we need radical because the reformist idea, look, we just had a demonstration. Kamala Harris said, let’s give $25,000 to a family buying a home for the first time. Good idea. Let’s not tax tip income. Good idea. Let’s improve the childcare tax credit. Good idea. But these are small. They’re very important. They’re good ideas, but you’re not dealing with what the people are upset about. Even if those things came to pass, the people know, yeah, it might help a bit, but it’s not dealing with what we have gone through for 30 to 40 years.

Speaker 4:

So

Richard Wolff:

Why are we not, why are we not? What are we afraid of? Bernie proved, I have my disagreements with him too, but I think we’re all in his debt. He went out into the public arena, did not get rid of the label. Socialist kept it, accepted it, and millions of people came to support him. I believe currently he’s listed as the most popular mainstream politician in the country. This is more than I thought we had to work with.

Stephen Janis:

And I think he also played into what not played, but actually he had the one sort of quantity that is essential when you’re going to go into the current social media battles, which is he had authenticity. And I think that resonates more than almost anything. And I think that’s some of the reason people like Trump because they think he’s authentic, because he’s willing to say anything. But Bernie Sanders was actually a counter that it’s just unfortunate that the Democratic party neoliberal him out of the

Taya Graham:

Absolutely

Stephen Janis:

With the neoliberal hip check. Got him out of there. So

Taya Graham:

Why

Stephen Janis:

Don’t you wrap this up?

Taya Graham:

Sure. And as a matter of fact, I’m just going to mention I saw a comment from one of our folks here. Kat Cleric said Democrats were more scared of Bernie than Trump. I trust none of them. Which I thought was an interesting comment, but before I let Professor Wolff go, I know we have five minutes left with him. So I just, I feel like if we didn’t address immigration that we really would be remiss in this conversation

Speaker 5:

Point. Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

Now I will say I personally believe that there will be an incredible humanitarian cost to deporting 11 million people, but I’m hoping that the cold, hard economic facts of enacting this policy might cause people to reconsider their support for mass deportation. So I was hoping maybe you could share some of your thoughts on the economic impact of this policy, what it would cost for the US government to try to do this, what the repercussions would be on the average American. I mean, if people are worried about the price of eggs and bacon deporting the people who work in agriculture and food production, doesn’t seem to me to be the way to lower those prices. But what would you say would be some of the economic consequences?

Richard Wolff:

Yes. Before I do, let me also say, and maybe I’m wrong here. I hope not for better or worse, and often it’s worse, but sometimes it’s better. America is a very religious place and all of the major religions here, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, they all say that what Allah or God or whatever it is you believe in wants you to do is to welcome the refugee, to open your arms, to open your heart, to give him a meal, to do all the things that the Bible and other holy books tell us to do. I think you’re going to see maybe sooner than you imagine an immense reaction in this country, which will be driven by a well-deserved guilt on the part of this population for what they are doing. And I feel that as strongly as I feel the guilt that will descend on the Jewish people for what has happened in Gaza.

But putting that aside, here’s the economics that you’ve asked about. The Department of Homeland Security says there’s somewhere between 10 and 12 undocumented, a million undocumented immigrants in the United States. So as an economist, let me make one thing clear. We are a rich country of 330 million people. The economic problems we have, which are severe, could not ever have been caused by 10 to 12 of the poorest people on the planet. The notion that the immigrants are a cause of the problems we face is stone cold, ridiculous. It may be a clever scapegoating, it may work to get you votes, but it has nothing to do with reality. Number two, there are certain industries that concentrate undocumented immigrants. Agriculture is a big one. The restaurant business is a big one, construction is another big one, and then there’s a whole host of other industries, but those are the big ones in those industries.

Undocumented immigrants are a major part of the labor force. Not only that, they are a more important cause of the profitability in those industries than their mere numbers would tell you why. Because an undocumented immigrant can be and is regularly abused by the employer for the obvious reason, which if you have any contact with these folks, they’ll tell you 10 different stories. I’ve heard ’em all. It’s Friday afternoon. Everybody’s going to pick up their check at the front office before they go home. Jose arrives, he stands in line, waits for his check. The boss says, Jose, we’ve had a terrible week. We didn’t make the money. I can’t pay you this week, but if you come back next week, I can be sure to pay you. What is Jose going to do? Answer nothing. He dare not go to any government office

Because he is an undocumented, he can’t show a paper, he can’t show a residence allowance, nothing. He’s terrified of going anywhere near the labor office. There’s nothing he can do. And the employer knows it. The employers look for these people because of this, and I’m not going to here take your time and mine to talk about the abuse sexual and other that this situation invites in all the ways you don’t need me to tell you about. Okay, now let’s imagine you deport them. First of all, that costs billions because you’re talking about 10 to 12 million people. You have to house them, you have to move them, you have to feed them in the process. You have to deal with the mte million lawsuits that will immediately crop up around all of this. This is going to take time and it is going to cost personnel and it’s going to be an immense expense, but that’s the least of it.

Here comes the big one. Every one of those industries is a crucial player in the inflation level of the United States. Who’s going to pick the lettuce? Who’s going to pick the fruit? Who’s going to do all that work? Who’s going to clean the dishes in the back of the restaurant? Who’s going to clean up at the end of the evening when the patrons of the restaurant go home? Well, the answer is you close the restaurant and that has economic consequences or you close the farms and that’s really not an option. Or you’re going to have to hire Americans and Americans won’t be afraid to go to the labor office if you don’t pay them. So you’re going to actually have to pay them and you’re probably going to have to pay them a good bit more than the immigrant for all the reasons you normally pay immigrants less than native workers, which means the cost structure of these industries is going to take off.

And you know what? They’re all going to do. Those employers. They’re going to raise their prices, they’re going to want to do that to recapture the extra costs that will come. And the government has not proposed anything that will substitute here. I’ve heard one professor tell me, oh, we don’t have to worry. AI will take care of this. You know what AI does? It makes people like you and me superfluous, but are we ready to go and wash dishes at the back of the restaurant? Are we ready to pick apples? Really? You’re going to cause social upheaval going to cause inflation. Mr. Trump can’t do that. Inflation is half of why he got elected.

Speaker 5:

True.

Richard Wolff:

How can he turn around and then be the person who has to go on TV and try to explain why he promised to deal with inflation only? It’s gotten worse and he won’t be able to tell the truth. I’m deporting everybody because then the argument will be as clear as day for people. So you’re going to have to watch now as the various cabinet secretaries bizarre though. They have to undo what it was he’s promised.

Speaker 5:

Well,

Taya Graham:

Wow. What I’m just going to say is what someone in the comment said, it’s the hiking enthusiast, and they said, I wish Professor Wolff would get on the news and yell at all of us. We deserve it bit. So we’re going to have to make sure somehow you get on that mainstream media. I think it would be interesting to see you on CNN in between those prescription commercials you’d love to hit us with.

Stephen Janis:

It’s usually because listening to him, especially not talking like you’re not here, but this long expansive march of inequality, it feels like it’s created a drought in this country and then social media conflict media comes in and just lights it on fire. Oh gosh, it’s such a great service. But it feels good because it’s great to hear his historical perspective on how equality has had this slow march and just you can kind all the kind of social problems we’ve had kind of mirror that kind of growth and that sort of rise and fall and then rise of inequality. I think it’s really important that we understand historically where we are, which is really on the precipice I think as he says, or as you say Dr. Wolff. So

Taya Graham:

I just have to ask you, Dr. Wolff, before you leave us, I’ve been looking at our commenters and I would say that people here, they come from a variety of political affiliations and I think

Speaker 4:

Whether

Taya Graham:

You’re a Democrat or a Republican or a libertarian or a socialist, people care about the undue influence of billionaires and money in our government. And especially I think the new appointments by the President-elect have set off a new set of fears, but can we actually trust any politician to stand up to them? I mean, I saw Delaware Democrat, Senator Coons on Fox News saying that the department government of efficiency could be constructive and should be embraced. So if we take this as a sign that Democrats and Republicans won’t push back, what can we do to push back against billionaires? What can our friends in the comments that are watching you right now, what can they do to help fight this?

Stephen Janis:

Don’t buy a Tesla.

Taya Graham:

Don’t buy a Tesla. Okay. Step one. Other

Stephen Janis:

Than that though, don’t

Taya Graham:

Waste $60,000 on a Tesla.

Richard Wolff:

Yeah,

Taya Graham:

Okay.

Richard Wolff:

I think the best advice I can give you, I wish I could say more, but the best advice I can give you is tune into programs like this.

Become somebody who pays attention to the Real News network and to the others that are trying, including me and the team I work with trying to get this out. I would give you this hope, if that’s the right word. Things are becoming clearer. All of us, myself included, are seeing more clearly than we have most of our lives, what is in fact happening to us. And we had to learn the slow and hard way to explore the other arguments to see that they didn’t do the job. But that, for example, the historical, which has been crucial for me to understand

How we got into the rut I think we’re in helps you understand, but also to navigate that rut because you have a sense of where it’s been. You have a sense that the working class in America went to the left the last time the system collapsed. It’s not impossible at all. That’s what happened. That’s why we have a social security system and it hasn’t been able to be gotten rid of, even though George Bush for sure made a major effort to do that, that you may remember. So I think there are parts of the society that are there are wondering with us. I think that the only way Mr. Trump won was because the promise of Mr. Biden that he would be somehow a big difference from Trump never materialized and that people held him accountable and went back to Trump. But I don’t think Mr. Trump’s first race nor Mr. Biden’s, nor is there any reason to believe the upcoming Trump has even an idea of the problems they have, let alone how to solve them. Which means my best guess is we will be running Mr. Trump out of town, figuratively in four years, at least as enthusiastically as he came in this time.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Speaker 5:

Well,

Stephen Janis:

Words of wisdom.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. Professor Wolff, we appreciate you so much and I know our viewers did as well. We just really appreciate your intellect and your insight and of course your vast knowledge of history, which really gives us some context and the idea that we are in the waning days of American Empire. Well, I might have to have an adult beverage tonight. That’s a lot to take in Professor.

Richard Wolff:

Yes. I think Glasss of wine is more or maybe even two.

Taya Graham:

Yes, maybe even two, maybe even three. Honestly, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you.

Richard Wolff:

My pleasure. I look forward to this and I’m glad that we were able to get together.

Taya Graham:

Yes, absolutely. Me as well. Thank you so much.

Richard Wolff:

Thanks.

Taya Graham:

And I just wanted to say thank you Moffitt Studio for your support. That’s really kind. We got a donation.

Speaker 5:

We got a donation. Nice.

Taya Graham:

Really appreciate it. So Stephen, if you don’t mind, I know that we have a little bit of limited time here, so is it okay if I, do you want to share some final thoughts? No, go

Stephen Janis:

Right into your

Taya Graham:

Thing. Are you sure?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, yeah.

Taya Graham:

Okay.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, I think we’ve all said enough

Taya Graham:

That’s true.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, I could talk about economic inequality all the time. There’s so many other facet ways of looking at it, but it was just fascinating to hear him lay it out historical, like I said. So we got to keep reminding ourselves,

Taya Graham:

Right. Well, that’s why we have to

Stephen Janis:

Present,

Taya Graham:

Start doing our inequality watch show on a more regular basis because there is a lot more to talk about. We’ll, that

Stephen Janis:

We are going to do more inequality reporting in the coming months and year, hopefully. So.

Taya Graham:

All right, I’ll hold you to that and I think they will too.

Stephen Janis:

Okay.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So again, I just have to thank our amazing guest, professor Wolff for all his insight and his very provocative thoughts about our topic today. And I really hope he’s going to be back on the Real News Network with us soon. And I also want to thank everyone who commented and asked questions. I wish I could have engaged with every single question and comment, but of course I couldn’t. But I’ll try again next live stream. And we really do appreciate you taking the time to contribute to our discussion. But I would just ask before you go, just hang in there with me for a few minutes longer. I understand that sometimes we just want to tune out that the challenges we face seem simply too overwhelming. These are historical existential problems that require collective action, but can seem almost impossible for us to address individually.

We are too divided and too distant from each other. And I understand that feeling. I really do. But this is not the time to disengage. I know it’s cliche, but this really could be the most important historical turning point in generations. I mean, 2024 might be hotter than the hottest year on record, which was 2023. If that doesn’t trouble you, then how about the fact we’re facing an expanding war in Ukraine and extremist pro Netanyahu administration that will only make the humanitarian crisis in Gaza even worse, and a new justice department that was going to be run by Mac kids, but not anymore. So no comment on that. But what makes this worse is after listening to Professor Wolff and my discussion with Stephen, we are hurdling towards these disasters at the behest of a few rich people Ill-equipped because of their ill-gotten wealth. We are literally forsaking our future and the future of generations.

So a few people can buy a bigger yacht, but it’s not just the extravagant and extreme wealth that disturbs me. There are other aspects of this discussion of inequality and the people who drive it that I find truly troubling now, namely how we rarely connect the inequality with the irrational assertions that pervade our debates over who should have power and how they should use it. And what bothers me even more is that instead of having a political discourse around accountability to power, much of our discussion simply amplifies cruelty. I mean, just think about it, whether it’s the anti-immigration rhetoric of people eating pets or calling into question the candidate’s racial identity or calling government programs that help working people handouts, almost all of that rhetoric seems to revolve around how cruel we can be, how we can admonish someone or dunk on them or discard them.

It’s like we’re becoming kind of a Roman circus where the most derisive statement or the least charitable characterization or most bad faith argument always wins to day. Where a person’s intellectual medals determined by how much you own someone, not by understanding them, and a general discourse that rewards and emphasizes mockery and ignorance and worst of all, the constant chaos and discord these platform engenders is making someone rich enough to literally own us. So it reminds me of a chapter of a book I read in high school called The Invisible Man, where rich white businessmen tossed small denomination coins at black men who fought viciously for these mere pennies. And then when they would reach to actually grab the coins, they would be electrocuted. And this was all for the delight and entertainment of the powerful who sat back and watched with glee. So fast forward to now, and I have a question.

Just set aside the racial aspect of the novel for a moment and consider this. How different are toxic platforms like X, meaning Twitter or Facebook from that scenario I just described? I mean, just remember, Facebook whistleblower told Congress that the executives at the conflict media firm were told that by simply making posts appear chronologically would make the platform less destructive, but they declined to do so. Choosing profits over people and commerce over community, which led to ethnic violence and civil war in Myanmar and Ethiopia, and some might argue is encouraging a civil war here in our own United States. And the reason I reiterate this question about media ecology, which the billionaires have used to enrich themselves is because as we discussed during the show, they have literally manipulated us to act against our own self-interest. They have genuinely pitted working people against each other to advance an agenda that not only harms us, but the entire world we all live in.

My point is, is that we have to disentangle ourselves from this conflict-ridden malice machine. We have to ignore its underlying message that nothing can be achieved and that people’s lives cannot be improved through concerted action. Now, the way we do this is not just to fight, but I would say fight for something specific, fight for Medicare for all, fight for climate action now. Fight to strengthen unions and to raise wages, fight for a policy that would improve life for everyone, even it’s just a local ordinance that might only impact a community where you live. The point is to fight for something specific, tangible, concrete, not imaginary, not to be the king of Twitter or the dunk master, be the instigator of change in the world we actually live in. Now, I know all of these ideas are complex problems with sometimes even more complex solutions, and they don’t always lend themselves to the simplistic kind of exchange that typifies Facebook or TikTok, but it is incumbent upon us to try and it’s our job as journalists to help you by investigating for people like Stephen does, or by holding discussions like these and listening to the expertise of brilliant thinkers like Dr. Wolff.

I think collectively we can all bring about real substantive change. And I know we can because we have before. So let’s put the billionaires of the world on notice that we’re not going to fight amongst ourselves anymore. We’re going to fight you. Well, that’s my little speech. I hope you enjoyed it.

Stephen Janis:

I did,

Taya Graham:

Because I certainly meant it and I hope it inspires you. I feel a little fired up right now.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I just canceled my Twitter account because of you. So thank you, Taya.

Taya Graham:

See you on Blue Sky.

Stephen Janis:

Right.

Taya Graham:

And of course, thank you all for being patient with us and joining us again, and we do have to thank our awesome friends in studio, David Cameron, Adam and Jocelyn, Kayla, James, and of course our Editor in Chief Max. And thank you out there for joining us. We appreciate you. This is Taya Graham. And Stephen Janis reporting for the Real News Network. Thank you so much.

On Nov. 12, unionized nurses at Ascension St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore held a rally in front of the Marriott Hotel downtown, where the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was holding a meeting. St. Agnes nurses rallied with supporters from around the city, and they were even joined by fellow Ascension nurses who traveled from Wichita, Kansas, and Austin, Texas.

According to a press release from National Nurses Organizing Committee / National Nurses United (NNOC-NNU), the purpose of the rally was to “highlight how Ascension has failed to follow USCCB directives to Catholic health care organizations to both serve and advocate for patients ‘at the margins of society’ and ‘treat its employees respectfully and justly.’… Baltimore nurses have been in negotiations since Feb. 2024, following a successful union election in November 2023. Ascension has failed to bargain in good faith with Saint Agnes nurses on language that would improve safe staffing and protect patients from cuts to services, lawsuits for billing disputes, and surprise billing or excess charges.” In this on-the-ground episode, you’ll hear speeches and chants from the Nov. 12 rally, and we speak with Gideon Eziama, a registered nurse with over 20 years of experience who has worked at Ascension St. Agnes for the last six years, and Lisa Watson, a registered nurse at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, who traveled to Baltimore to stand in solidarity with her coworkers at Ascension St. Agnes.

Additional links/info below…

• National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United website, Facebook page, Twitter/X page, and Instagram
• NNOC/NNU Press Release: “Ascension nurses call on US bishops to hold Catholic hospital chain accountable to church directives”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “Baltimore nurses at largest Catholic health network in US fight on for first contract”
• Aleja Hertzler-McCain, Religion News Service, “Ascension nurses receive tepid response from Catholic bishops after rally”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…
Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Max Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Crowd Chants:

What do we want? Safe staffing! When do we want it? Now! What do we want? Safe staffing! When do we want it? Now! What do we want? Safe staffing! When do we want it? Now!

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like You Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast network. If you’re hungry for more worker and labor focus shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network and please support the work that we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, your friends and family members. Leave positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, which helps people find the show and reach out to us if you have recommendations for folks you’d like us to talk to or stories you’d like us to investigate and please support the work we do at The Real News Network by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world.

My name is Maximillian Alvarez and we’ve got another important on the ground episode for y’all today. As you guys know, back in July, we published an episode in which I reported on the ground from a rally that was held by unionized nurses at Ascension St. Agnes Hospital here in Baltimore. The rally was held outside the hospital in an effort to raise awareness of the union’s fight, to secure a first contract, and to show management that they’re not backing down from their core demands for safe staffing levels and an operational model that puts patients and patient care first. Now, in that episode, you heard Chance and sounds from the picket line, and you heard me interviewing Nikki Horvat, a registered nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ascension St. Agnes, and a member of the bargaining team. Today’s episode is an important follow-up report on that struggle, and it’s a struggle that doesn’t just concern nurses at Ascension St.

Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, but healthcare workers across the Ascension network as the National Nurses Organizing Committee slash National Nurses United has stated the Catholic Hospital system is one of the largest in the country with 140 hospitals in 19 states, and also one of the wealthiest with cash reserves, an investment company and a private equity operation worth billions of dollars. And because of its nonprofit status is exempt from paying federal taxes. So last week on November 12th, Baltimore nurses and their supporters, which included fellow Ascension nurses who had traveled from Wichita, Kansas, and even as far as Austin, Texas, held a rally near the inner harbor downtown in front of the Marriott Hotel where the US Conference of Catholic Bishops or the U-S-C-C-B was holding a meeting according to a press release from the union. The purpose of the rally was to quote, highlight how Ascension has failed to follow us CCB directives to Catholic healthcare organizations, to both serve and advocate for patients at the margins of society and treat its employees respectfully and justly.

As a proud Catholic, I’m deeply saddened to see Ascension’s mission disintegrate. In the years I’ve worked at St. Agnes Hospital, said Melissa Rou, a registered nurse in the intensive care unit and member of the bargaining team. The church teaches that all human beings should be treated with dignity, but at our hospital we see indignity on a daily, even hourly basis with rampant unsafe staffing and workplace violence due to ascension’s relentless pursuit of profits. And as the press release continues, Baltimore nurses have been in negotiations since February of 2024. Following a successful union election in November of 2023, Ascension has failed to bargain in good faith with St. Agnes nurses on language that would improve safe staffing and protect patients from cuts to services, lawsuits for billing disputes and surprise billing or excess charges. So on the morning of November 12th, I went down to the rally and I spoke to some of the workers there about what they’re fighting, how that fight is going, and how things have developed since the last action that we reported on back in the summer. I got to speak with Gideon Isama, a registered nurse with over 20 years of experience and who has worked at Ascension St. Agnes in Baltimore for the last six years. I also spoke with Lisa Watson, a registered nurse at Ascension via Christie St. Francis Hospital in Wichita who traveled all the way to Baltimore to stand in solidarity with her coworkers at Ascension St. Agnes. Take a listen.

Bradley Van Waus:

What do we want? What we want it. Thank you, Gideon. Thank you to all of our community allies here today for the Catholic Labor Network. Thank you to the city council President elect. It’s a great day here in Baltimore. Good morning, Ascension Nurses. So my name is Bradley Vanis and I’m the Ascension director and it’s so great here to have nurses from Wichita, Austin and Vol are from our four Ascension hospitals and Washington Hospital Center altogether today. So today we’re calling on the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, the highest authority of the Catholic church in the United States to hold ascension accountable for their state and mission. They are an arm of the Catholic church and the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops needs to exercise their authority over them. Today the bishops are discussing a text called Dignity Us in Pita, highlighting the indispensable nature of the dignity of the human person. How do we feel as such a health has done in this department?

Does Ascension Health treat patients with dignity when they short staff their hospitals? No. No. Do they treat human life with dignity when Asension closes labor and delivery unit than inner cities at rate higher than any other hospital corporation? No. Does Ascension help treat its workers? Its nurses with any shred of dignity? No. Do they treat you with dignity when you miss your meal breaks? No. Do they treat you with dignity when their electronic medical record goes down and they still expect you to work? No. And did they treat nurses in Austin or Wichita with any dignity or they force you to swipe twice to get what you deserve? No.

Say Agnes nurses. Is there a lack of movement at the bargaining table making you feel dignified? Yes. No, no, no, no. They’re not making the field. So Ascension likes to hide behind the veil of Catholicism. They like to throw around the word ministry even though they run a venture capital operation worth billions. That would make some folks in Silicon Valley quite jealous. But nurses of patients alike within Ascension hospitals know the truth. Catholic social teaching is very clear about the dignity of the rights of workers, including the right to organize even within Catholic health there. Ascension should be setting the standard for how hospitals should treat workers and patients, but they see that 10 are lowering that standard. Nurses, you are the moral compass of this hospital corporation. Are we going to let them abandon their mission for profit? No. Are we going to make sure that nurses and patients are treated fairly? Yes, absolutely. We know one thing here. When we fight, we win. And our fight is one of moral imperative. We’re pulling the veil out over a CI’s greeds. We can’t stop until we win what we deserve. When we fight, we win. We fight, we win, we fight, we win.

Fr. Sinclair Oubre:

Now the leadership has to listen and act and give you a fair contract. It is by far, far too long. Now you deserve this contract. You deserve to walk back into that hospital with the security, the staffing, the pay, and the care and concern you deserve as sisters and brothers, as siblings united in the workforce as human beings. So we’ll be with you every step of the way. We’ll continue to call on bishops to come down and listen to your workers and listen to the voice of justice. They know that you’re a new and unsettling force. That unsettling will lead to something. I like to think it’ll lead to victory. It may not look like it now, but trust one another and trust in the movement you are building. And Baltimore deserves to give you all not just a huge amount of thanks, but also deserves.

We need to also take our obligation to walk with you and ensure that if retaliation takes place, we will be there. We will be there to call it out and to call this hospital administration to change their ways. They are not acting in a holy way. They’re not acting in a just way we’ll be. And we’ll be with you every the way. Who’s got this power? Jesus power. What kind of power? Union power. Word and power. Moses Power. Jesus Power. Catholic power. Church. Power. Justice, power. Keep it on. Keep fighting. You are going to win. And we will love to celebrate that when that happens on a day very soon. God bless you all and make peace. Speak on you, your families, your workplace, and especially the people you bring. Healthcare, your arts, your skills as healthcare providers. God bless

Crowd Chants:

Who got the power? We got the power! What kind of power? Union power!

Gideon Eziama:

My name is Gideon Eziama. I work at Ascension S in Baltimore. I’ve been announced there for almost six years now. I started working in 2019, June past June again to six years, but I’ve been in nurse for 24 years now and I worked almost different hospitals, butch union and non hospitals.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, Gideon, thank you so much for chatting with me today. I really appreciate it, man. We are standing here in the inner harbor in downtown Baltimore, out in front of the Marriott Hotel. Y’all just held a rally here and we were actually there with y’all at St. Agnes Ascension Hospital here in Baltimore when you and your fellow coworkers were demonstrating in the summer, and that was about six months into the bargaining campaign after you guys successfully unionized. So I was wondering if we could just catch listeners up on what’s been happening since that action that took place in the summer and now

Gideon Eziama:

Actually during that summertime, we have already given them by then among the beginning team. By then we have given them everything they needed from our own union side. Since then, the management side have been stolen. Whatever we have given them. That’s why we came here because the bishops of USA are having conference. So we can energize them to give them a call to facilitate and move fast so that whatever we’re looking for, so they could fasten up the contract and we can get a fair contract for the union.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And can you remind listeners a bit about what you guys are fighting for in that contract? I know that we heard chance about safe staffing levels, right? The union has strongly pushed for patient first like policies. So can you just tell listeners a bit about the key areas that you’re fighting for in this contract?

Gideon Eziama:

The key area actually the first one is the first self staffing. Self staffing is the key. When you have a safe staffing, have less what I call the outcome of that hospital will be great. When you have a safe staffing, the input, the safety of the patient and the safety of the employees, both nurses, everything but the doctors and everything is less. But when you have no safe staffing, everything becomes risk. When the patient is not well treated, the family becomes an issue. So that’s what we’re looking for. The first thing we’re looking, and that’s what we’re looking for is self staffing. Any other thing follows. But the first thing is just self staffing. Yes.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And you’ve been, you said working in healthcare for over 20 years, 24 years. 24 years. I’m wondering if you can put this struggle into perspective as someone who has worked in healthcare while healthcare in this country has changed since the time I was born. So can you tell listeners a bit about what you have seen change in the healthcare industry from a worker’s perspective in your 24 years working here?

Gideon Eziama:

As I said, I’ve been working in the healthcare department for 24 years. More than that. When we were working there, it used to be patient care. Now, Ascension as an example. Patient is normal patient. Patient becomes a commodity. It’s replaced. It’s like when you go to a shopping center, you go to inside the, let’s say you go to Walmart. When a commodity is taken out of shed, something else is place. That’s what it’s always productivity. That’s what they’re looking for. They’re always talking about less product, less productivity, more productivity. So it’s not more about how many patients, what is the outcome of the patient we are taking care of. It’s always patient is treated as being a commodity. So when we say safe staffing, that’s what we’re looking for so that the patient will not be treated as commodity. So we’ll be treated as a patient and being taken care of.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And given this sort of larger change in the industry that has been happening at private healthcare companies, but also not profit healthcare, this sort of industry wide shift towards understaffing, piling more work onto fewer workers, treating patients like commodities and getting them in and out as quickly as you can, what does that translate to for you on a day-to-day level? How does that change your working conditions?

Gideon Eziama:

I’m giving you as example of ascension. It becomes a profitable, they call it profitable environment. They always talk about the profits. He can’t believe how much the ascension is sipping in up, how much they’re making millions, billions. If you read articles, if you can go to articles, check Wall Street, you check ascension, see how much they’re making. And it’s not something I can start to explain here. It’s more in detail on this. So when they treat patient as a commodity, so what they’re looking is for what is the profit we’re making? It’s no more about how many patients are taking care of the outcome of the patient. What is, it’s always like the productivity. What is the profit, what is this, what is, it becomes a profit making ventures as of now. That’s what it is.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And can you tell folks out here listening in and around the city of Baltimore, I guess where things stand now in your contract fight and what folks listening to this can do to stand in solidarity with y’all?

Gideon Eziama:

When we study Union Ascension hire is a law firm. The law firm, they specialize in Boston, the union, and they kept this firm in our contract negotiation. And this law firm doesn’t care about negotiation. All they care is to store everything. So they will keep making their money and they’re making millions. So essentially Steve giving them millions because they know they have access. Instead of spending that million to the nurses and to the patient they’re taking care of. No, they’re just giving it to the lawyers and spending their money wrongly. That’s what it is.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And for folks listening to this, is there something they can do to support the union to make their voices heard to the hospital?

Gideon Eziama:

Yes. All we’re asking for is a fair contract. When we have a fair contract, we have a safe staffing. So anybody that can come over, what are we doing? We’re not getting, I worked last night and I’m working this night again, I haven’t got my sleep. I’m doing this. I’m not getting paid for it. Yes, we are all here, cold chilling. We did this, we’ve been doing it for almost a year now, getting to make sure that we have what we call self staffing and our patient is taken care of. That’s what we’re looking for. We’re not looking for something else. That’s what it is. So people that will see when they see us, they think that’s what it is. When I became a nurse, I became a nurse to take care of the patient. And when my patient is not taken care of, when the management ascension is staffing to make sure the gain is coming into them, not the welfare or the wellbeing of the patient we are taking care of, it gets meall. It looks like he cry by the bedside. So that’s what we’re crying for. Give us self stopping so we can take care of our patients. That’s what we’re looking for.

Lisa Watson:

My name is Lisa Watson and I’m a nurse at Ascension St. Francis in Wichita, Kansas for 19 years.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well Lisa, thank you so much for talking to me today. We are standing here on the inner harbor of downtown Baltimore, and you’re a long way from home, but you came out here to stand in solidarity with your fellow healthcare workers. I was wondering if we could first just start by having you tell us a little bit about why we’re here and what brought you out here to Baltimore today.

Lisa Watson:

So I am here to stand shoulder to shoulder with my union brothers and sisters. These nurses have been met with terrible acts from ascension of union busting and instead of taking this money that they have for their union busting and pouring it into their patients, that’s why we’re here. It’s very unfortunate that patients are not put over profits in a Catholic institution. They have all of these values and this mission that they boast on TV and what is happening inside these walls is the exact opposite of that.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Can you tell us a little bit about what this looks like over there in Wichita? Are y’all dealing with the same issues that workers here in Baltimore are raising?

Lisa Watson:

So Ascension nationwide has been cutting staff to maximize their profits. Actually, there was a New York Times report a few years ago about how they do this all over the country. So what they’re doing here has definitely been happening everywhere. The nurses in Wichita and Austin have contracts. So we are able to push back and exercise our federal given rights not only to unionize, but to make things better for our patients. This has never been about money. This has been about being advocates for our patients. And so we could do that a lot better with a union contract. Baltimore nurses have put their contract on the table, they have given all their proposals, but Ascension refuses to bargain with them and are dragging their feet.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I’m wondering if you could help our listeners put this into historical perspective as someone who’s been working in the industry for years. I think for a second the country’s attention was focused on the crisis in healthcare. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, folks realized that how understaffed, overworked, overburdened our healthcare workers are, how burnt out they are. But I don’t think folks understand how that has been building over time. How have you seen that change take hold over the course of your time working as a healthcare worker?

Lisa Watson:

So my unit was covid for a couple of years and it was the hardest years of my life. But when Covid was over, the hospitals staffed us like it was still Covid, like it was still a pandemic. We are not in a pandemic. There are more nurses now with licenses in the United States than there ever have been. There is not a nursing shortage. There’s a shortage of nurses who want to work under these conditions. It is unfortunate that Ascension continues to put us in these situations. These are our licenses, these are patients’ lives and we have got to put them first. So I work in an intensive care unit and we are supposed to have two patients. We have three patients a lot of the time, and that’s what’s happening in Baltimore too. We cannot be in there to notice those subtle changes in our patients. We have got to be at bedside to take good care of our patients and we cannot be when Ascension staffs us the way that they have been staffing us there. Staffing grids are all about maximizing profits and keeping less people at the bedside, which does not align with their values of the dignity of life.

Maximillian Alvarez:

How does it change struggle when you’re going up against a explicitly Catholic kind of institution? I guess because one of the things we’ve been hearing from events like these is workers challenging ascension to live up to its own stated principles. So what does the struggle look like within the largest Catholic healthcare network in the country? How is that a positive and a negative for this struggle here?

Lisa Watson:

The struggle with Ascension is really disheartening. As a Catholic, I believe that every life is important and I want to take care of my patients. I want to go home. At the end of the day, I want to lay my head on my pillow and I want to know that I did right by them. And I can’t do that every day at Ascension. These nurses in Baltimore can’t do that every day. So it is very sad that the largest Catholic, not-for-profit organization hides behind their Catholicism and does the exact opposite. That’s why I’m wearing a shirt that says Act Catholic. I have worn this to numerous events because Ascension is not acting Catholic. It is degrading the faith. It is absolutely against every moral teaching of the church. Even the Pope has said that he believes in unionization and the right for workers to stand up for themselves and to have a livable wage. And ascension is doing the exact opposite. So they’re hiding behind their Catholicism. And that should make every Catholic mad. It should make every Catholic question what Ascension is doing and stand behind these nurses and especially these bishops. I mean, they’re here having a convention and they should be looking at the big picture. This is a national convention, this is a national corporation. This is a national problem. And they should see problems with what’s going on at Ascension.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And just one more question. I know I got to let you go. You’ve had a long week, you’ve traveled far and wide. I want to let you get some rest, but I want to just kind of pick up on that last point. Like you said, this is a national issue and it’s going to take national and international worker solidarity to confront, and you physically standing here are living proof of that. Could you just talk a little bit about the importance of showing up for each other? I mean, maybe not everyone has the ability to travel across states for something like this, but what can folks out there do to stand in stronger solidarity with their fellow workers? And why is it important at this moment right now?

Lisa Watson:

So we are taught to stand up for our friends and to be there when people are sick and to do the right thing. So we need to do it here too. We have got to stand up for other unions and for people who are trying to unionize. We have federal rights and we will exercise our federal rights. I will be here every day exercising my federal rights. My husband is union. I understand the importance of unions. I understand how things are supposed to work and if we have federal protections, we should not let a hospital stand against us. We should definitely be standing up every day. So we have to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters. We’ve got to show up. We’ve got to do the right thing every day. We got to do the right thing even when nobody’s watching. And so I am very proud to be here standing up for my coworkers, for my brothers and sisters.

And if we don’t do this, everybody loses. All of these patients lose across the United States. We have got to stand up every single day everywhere because we will all need healthcare at one point in time and people should not be dying in the hospital because things are missed. It’s very unfortunate. We are here to show solidarity with St. Agnes and let the bishops know that the Ascension Hospital change is making a mockery of the church doctrine in Baltimore, I have witnessed firsthand how Ascension focuses on profits over patient care. I have experienced their disrespect for nurses. When we advocate for our patients and ourselves, we have to stand together to make a difference. We want a strong contract in Kansas and we use this as a tool to improve our conditions at the hospital. And that is what we want for the St. Agnes nurses

Crowd Chants:

Who got the power? We got the power! What kind of power? Union power! Who got the power? We got the power! What kind of power? Union power!

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright gang. That’s going to wrap things up for us this week. As always, I want thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network Daily. We’re doing grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you’d never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

There are a lot of similarities between the 2016 and 2024 elections, but the media ecosystem we have today is fundamentally different from the ecosystem we had in 2015-2016, during the first stage of Donald Trump’s political rise and the MAGA-morphosis of the Republican party. The Twitter and Facebook of that time are long gone, as are many of the methods of digital resistance that people employed on those platforms during the first Trump administration. The power and visibility dynamics on multiplying digital platforms, from TikTok to Truth Social, have rearranged dramatically since then, the “public sphere” is way more splintered, and our shared digital (and physical) spaces are decreasing. Moreover, the Big Tech oligarchs and private tech companies that profit from surveilling us and siloing us in algorithmically curated echo chambers have thrown their full weight behind Trump, and they will have even more power in a second Trump administration to shape our digital present and future.

How are corporate, independent, and social media changing the terrain of politics today? What does digital activism look like in 2024, and can it be an effective means of resistance during a second Trump administration? TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez digs into these questions with world-renowned science fiction author, activist, and journalist Cory Doctorow.

Cory Doctorow is the author of many books, including recent non-fiction titles like Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back, which he coauthored with Rebecca Giblin, and The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation. His latest work of fiction, The Bezzle, was published earlier this year by Tor Books. In 2020, Doctorow was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  Donald Trump is headed back to the White House after decisively defeating Kamala Harris in the 2024 general election. Like we saw in the weeks and months after Trump’s first electoral victory in 2016, a cacophonous chorus of finger-pointing pundits, politicians, and political consultants are once again frantically trying to explain how the hell this could happen and what will happen next. And commentators across the liberal and left side of the political spectrum are drawing on a lot of the same talking points from 2016 to make their case.

Senator Bernie Sanders recently blasted Democrats for abandoning the working class and kowtowing to the demands of corporations and the wealthy donor class. Democratic representatives like Tom Suozzi from New York and Seth Moulton from Massachusetts say Democrats “have to stop pandering to the far left” and need to move even farther to the right, baselessly trying to pin the blame for the party’s political implosion on things like accepting trans people as people. We had these exact same debates almost verbatim in 2016 — I know, I was there participating in them.

But the similarities between the 2016 and 2024 elections and the candidates and the parties involved should not obscure the fact that we are in a fundamentally, qualitatively, and experientially different reality than the one we were in eight years ago. And you can see that most clearly when you compare the mass media and social media ecosystems of 2016 and 2024.

This is not the same media ecosystem we had in 2015 and 2016 during the first stage of Trump’s political rise and the MAGAmorphosis of the Republican Party. The Twitter and Facebook of that time are long gone, as are many of the methods of digital resistance that people employed on those platforms during the first Trump administration. The power and visibility dynamics on these multiplying and changing platforms, from TikTok to Truth Social, have rearranged dramatically since then.

The public sphere is way more splintered, and our shared digital spaces, and even our shared physical spaces, are decreasing. Moreover, the big tech oligarchs and private tech companies that profit from fracturing our shared sense of reality and siloing us in our algorithmically curated echo chambers, that profit from surveilling us and scraping our data and from filling our feeds with misinformation and AI-generated slop, those oligarchs threw their full weight behind Trump. And they will have even more power in a second Trump administration to shape our digital present and future.

If we are going to properly diagnose how we got here and how we must proceed, we need to have a clear-eyed understanding of the terrain that we’re actually on today. And too many people right now don’t seem to understand that we’re on very different digital terrain from the one we were on in 2016.

So to help us understand the terrain that we’re actually on in the year of our Lord 2024 and how we can navigate it in this perilous moment, I’m honored to be joined once again by the one and only Cory Doctorow. Cory is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He’s the author of many books, including recent titles like Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back, which he co-authored with Rebecca Giblin, and the The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and his most recent title, which has just been published, is called The Bezzle, which everyone should go and read because it is incredibly relevant for our times. And as always with Cory, it is beautifully written.

Cory, thank you so much for joining us on The Real News Network today. I really appreciate it.

Cory Doctorow:  Thank you, Max. It’s a pleasure to be on.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Just wish we were connecting once again under better circumstances, but here we are and here we go.

Cory Doctorow:  Yeah. When life gives you scars, you make sarsaparilla.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Exactly. So let’s dive right in because you have been an invaluable voice for many years, helping folks navigate the digital wilds as they’ve been changing all around us.

And I wanted to pick up from where I left off in that intro there and ask if you could tell us a little bit, from your vantage point, how we can compare the media ecosystems that we were swimming in eight years ago and the media ecosystem that we’re in now. What are some of the big key differences that you want to emphasize for folks so that we don’t just run into the fray as if this is just 2016 all over again?

Cory Doctorow:  Well, I think the good news is that people are a lot more focused on the real problem with digital monopolists, which is the monopoly. The fact that tech platforms have us locked in is the right way to consider what we should do next. People often say, well, you should just leave Facebook or you should just leave Twitter. It’s morally repugnant to stay there, and so on. And what they ignore is why people are staying.

To the extent that anyone historically considered why people stayed on platforms that they professed not to enjoy, you had people on the right who said, oh, well, this is just revealed preferences, which is right-wing asshole economist speak for you actually love having your privacy invaded, we can tell, because you didn’t leave Facebook. It’s a similar argument to you like your husband hitting you because you didn’t leave your husband. It’s an argument that only works if you assume that power doesn’t exist.

But more progressives were captured by another idea that is, in its own way, as wrong, which is the idea that tech platforms had somehow built a mind control ray and that the reason that grampy is a QAnon is that Mark Zuckerberg did what Rasputin and MKUltra and Mesmer and the pickup artist all turned out to be wrong about: He finally built a mind control ray. And he built it to sell your nephew a fidget spinner, but then Rupert Murdoch or Robert Mercer stole it and turned your relatives into right-wing jerks.

And this is something that really helps Mark Zuckerberg when one of his salesmen makes a sales call to an advertiser and the advertiser says, why should I pay a 40% premium to advertise on Facebook? He’ll say, well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but our critics will tell you we’ve built a mind control ray. Which is a great reason to give Mark Zuckerberg extra money if you’re an advertiser.

It’s far more technically correct and politically astute to note that what Mark Zuckerberg has done is locked us in with our love of each other. That if you’re on Facebook and a couple hundred of your friends are on Facebook, it’s hard to leave, not because you don’t love your friends and not because you don’t hate Mark Zuckerberg, but because all of you are there for different reasons that are hard to get unstuck from.

If you’re there because that’s where the people who have the same rare disease as you are meeting, and your best friend is there because they emigrated from another country and that’s where all the people back home are, and there’s someone else who’s there because that’s where their customers are, and someone else who’s there because that’s where they organize the carpool for their kids’ little league game, you don’t have to just convince those people to leave; you have to convince all those other people to leave as well, and it just becomes exponentially hard.

Now, this is a problem we’ve faced before. When Facebook first opened up to the general public, Mark Zuckerberg had quite a compelling pitch. He said, look, I know that everyone who wants to use social media already has an account on a service called MySpace, but has it occurred to you that MySpace is owned by an evil, crapulent, senescent billionaire named Rupert Murdoch, and he’s spying on you with every hour that God sends? If you come to Facebook, I will never spy on you. That was the 2006 Facebook privacy promise.

And rather than make you choose between privacy and your friends, Mark Zuckerberg, or his engineers, built a bot. And you gave that bot your login and password for Myspace, and several times a day, it would go to Myspace, grab all the messages that were waiting for you there, put them in your Facebook inbox, and you could reply to them there, and it would push them back out to Myspace. You could have the best of both worlds.

What Mark Zuckerberg and the other big tech platforms have done in the years since is made that kind of interoperability, that adversarial interoperability, that guerrilla warfare, they’ve made it illegal. Every pirate wants to be an admiral — And when they did it, it wasn’t piracy. When you do it, it is. And so if you tried to do that to Facebook today, they would say you violated Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that you’d violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, you were a tortious interferer with their contracts, that if you used some ex-Facebook employees, that they were violating their non-competes or their non-disclosures, that they were accessing trade secrets, all this stuff we call IP law.

And so what that’s done is it’s given these platforms a monopoly over our social graph, one that is wholly artificial and a creature of law, that it’s not about the technology. It’s not hard to build another scraper to do unto Facebook what Facebook did unto Myspace, it’s just illegal.

And I think more people now understand that. That’s the biggest difference between now and 2016 is in 2016, you had all these prodigal tech bros, as Maria Farrell calls them, tearing their hair out and beating their chests and saying, I was an evil wizard who hacked your dopamine loops for the Kremlin. Now I’m a good wizard, and you should pay me a lot to come speak at your conference about how I’m going to unhack your dopamine loops for you.

And instead, what we’re getting now is things like the European Union mandating interoperability for these platforms, and people really looking at what’s stopping them from going to obviously better platforms like Mastodon or Bluesky where they’re finally moving away from this my friends are too lazy to change platforms, and just understanding my friends are glued to the platform by lock-in and switching costs and that lock-in and those switching costs are legal, not technical, and to really start to demand those changes.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let me ask you about that last point, the social flow of people to the platforms where their friends are. Because I want to ask how real this premise is that we are still living on the same physical plane, like the United States as a country hasn’t physically expanded in the last eight years, but the reality planes upon which we think we’re living in have seemingly fractured. I guess that’s my hypothesis.

That’s something that was really sitting with me a couple months ago when I was sitting in my grandfather’s living room as he’s dying from Alzheimer’s, looking at a TV that only plays two channels: Fox News and OAM. And seeing the world from his screen, the world that outside of his window, it was so different from the world that people who watch The Real News will see, or people who watch different news channels or follow different social media platforms will see.

And it feels like more than just a perception, there is a reality fracture and a social fracture that these tech platforms are catalyzing here. Would you say that that is a fair assessment? Am I being Chicken Little about this?

Cory Doctorow:  Well, I think that you’re overweighting the role of the social platforms and underweighting the role of monopoly here. That when we talk about Fox News particularly, Fox News, if you want to look at the material conditions, not the ideological conditions, but the material conditions that produce Fox News, if you watch Fox News for any length of time, you’ll see that they have no advertisers to speak of. It’s the most bottom-feeding nonsense you’ve ever seen. It’s like the Taboola ads at the bottom of a shitty blog: This person had terrible teeth implants, click here to find out more. Lots of people have made fun of this. I think John Oliver did a whole thing about the catheter ads on — I almost said Facebook there — On Fox News.

So how is it that Fox News manages to survive, and even have the capital to pay Dominion Voting Systems, an $800 million libel settlement, and still turn on the lights the next day? Is Rupert Murdoch supporting it out of his pocket as an ideological project? No. What’s actually happened with Fox News is that everyone has only one cable operator. The cable operators divided up America like the pope dividing up the so-called New World.

And so when you buy cable, you get the basic package, and the basic package includes Fox News. And it includes Fox News because there is a small rump of extremely vocal angry people who, if Fox News were moved out of the basic tier and into the premium tier, would go nuts, and maybe even show up with an assault rifle at the cable company. And that means that every time you pay your cable bill, Fox News gets money whether or not you turn on Fox News — But not just some money. They get about six times more money than any other show on your dial, any other channel on your dial.

So what you have is monopoly begetting monopoly, where you have this monopolistic control, these effectively unregulated telecoms giants. And then an epiphenomenon downstream of them is that Fox News can have an unviable business that is subsidized by this perverse monopoly effect.

One of the things our friends on the right like to talk about is market distortion. And I think that on the left, we turn up our nose at this kind of idea of a pristine market that has market forces that act. But there are some market forces. Like if you could choose whether or not you are going to pay for Fox News, Fox News would go broke. If there was a tick box on your cable bill that said save $6 and lose Fox News, everyone would tick that box. Fox News would be broke in a month. You see this all over the economy where you have monopolies that produce these weird effects that we often reach to ideological accounts for.

And it’s true that the people involved are greedy, but they’re not greedier now than they were 10 years ago. They’re the same sociopaths they ever were 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago. What’s changed are the conditions under which that greed manifests.

For example, we’re like, why are hospitals so terrible now? Why is the medical industry in such a pickle now? And we have all these ideological accounts of it, but what actually happened was we took the breaks off pharma monopolization. Pharma companies monopolized, they started to screw hospitals. So hospitals formed regional monopolies to get buyer power against pharma companies, and then started screwing the insurance companies. So the insurance companies monopolized so that they could push back against the hospitals.

And what you end up with is a medical sector where everything: pharmacy, benefit managers, med tech, pharma, all of the incidental pieces are sewn up with these big monopolies. And the only thing loose and disorganized at either end are doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers and patients.

And so you have medical workers getting paid the worst wages they’ve ever seen under the worst conditions, and you have patients paying the most they’ve ever seen and getting the worst care. And everyone in the middle has got the things sewn up and we go like, oh, it’s greed. It’s something that’s changed. It’s private equity. What it is is taking away the constraint that competition imposes on firms. And when you take away that constraint, you not only get monopolies, but you get regulatory capture.

So our regulators have always been far from perfect in America, but there was a time when, for example, the Sackler family couldn’t have killed 800,000 Americans with opioids and then kept the money. And the thing that changed was consolidation in pharma that made it easier to capture regulators. The same thing happened with the FCC and the telecoms companies, which is how you get this nakedly corrupt arrangement.

And so this not only creates the circumstances in which people’s lives become materially worse, it also makes them vulnerable to certain ideological accounts of what’s going on. Because if you’re Trump or one of these other so-called right-wing populists — I understand enough history to know that right-wing populism is like water that’s not wet. It’s not really populism. It’s more of a kind of conspiratorialism — But when you have these people who say elites are screwing you — Of course they are. And when they say the government is letting them get away with it — Of course they are.

Now, the Biden administration had aspects of the agencies that were quite good on holding back corporate corruption: the FTC, the DOJ, even the Department of Transport got a lot better after, basically, they sidelined Mayor Pete and put Lina Khan’s chief of staff in charge of that department with him as just a figurehead. But these are long-run practices.

And people, if you lost someone to the FDA’s malfeasance and curbing in opioids and then they tell you, oh, there’s someone new at the FDA, but all they manage to do is negotiate cheaper drug prices that don’t kick in until 2026, it’s easy to believe RFK Jr. when he says, hey, there’s medicines on the market that are there because pharma companies don’t care whether you live or die. And the government agencies that are supposed to keep them honest are in their pockets, that sounds very plausible.

And so I think that we have an ideological dimension to what happens to people and the realities they inhabit, but that ideological dimension has this material root of monopoly capitalism that, no matter how you feel about capitalism, is very different from competitive capitalism in terms of the impact that it has on workers’ lives and people’s material conditions.

We wouldn’t have had packaged good bosses and grocery store bosses doing investor calls where they boasted about how people expected inflation, and so they were able to do above inflation price rises and keep them there even after supply chain shock stopped. If there had been hundreds of SMEs in each of those sectors who were willing to eat each other’s lunch, or sell you a cheaper lunch, and move in and sell those same goods at a lower price, we wouldn’t have had the rage about inflation to the same degree.

So I don’t think capitalism is going to solve our problems, but I also don’t think our comrades do a better job of fighting capitalism when they’re being immiserated by monopolies. And I think that if we can make capitalists fight each other, it gives us and our comrades a better chance of fighting them.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I want to end this conversation by looking ahead at the incoming Trump administration and the role that big tech is playing both in buoying his second run for president and what they hope to get out of his next administration. So that’s where we’ll end up. But I want to hover on this point for a second because I feel like we’re talking about it without saying it, but it is, after all, a phrase that you coined, or a term you coined: the enshittification of things.

I want to bring that in here first to introduce folks watching to the term, and then see if we can zoom out and talk about the social enshittification of this society under the capitalist regime that you’re talking about and the chaotic ideological effects that that prompts in people as they feel shit just collectively getting worse, whether it be the quality of service in the consumer range, whether it be the monopolization of things like their internet provider.

All these sorts of anecdotal things that people tell me are signals that life is getting worse for working people. It feels like your concept of enshittification can really help us understand that.

So could you just say a little bit about where that term came from and what you were applying it to when you first came up with it?

Cory Doctorow:  Sure. I’ve been talking about the salience and urgency of good digital policy for like 25 years, and I work with a nonprofit called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I’ve got their sign there. It’s hard to do this with a mirror finger. There we are. EFF there. And at the start of this, the fight was to convince people that it was important at all. There was this dismissal of digital policy questions as being like the narcissistic self-regard of sad nerds who think that the place where they argue about Star Trek matters.

And then as it became more obvious that digital technology had a really critical role to play in justice struggles. And I think I owe my own sense that this would be important to an adolescence and young adulthood spent doing things like riding a bicycle around the streets of Toronto with a bucket of wheatpaste and a bunch of handbills and sticking them up on telephone poles to get people out to anti-war demonstrations, and just understanding that if your adversary has the internet and you’ve got a bicycle and some wheatpaste, you’re going to lose.

And so we needed to, as I say, seize the means of computation. We needed to make sure that this would be a system of liberation and solidarity and not of control and surveillance.

As people started to wake up to the importance of this, the tone changed and people started to say, oh, the reason the internet is terrible is that digital rights activists didn’t understand how bad it could get, and they were asleep at the switch. That they thought that all we had to do was give everyone the internet and everything would automatically be fine.

And that techno-utopianism may have been present among some people, but not among the people involved in the struggles I was in. No one I know thought that all you had to do was give everyone technology and everything would be fine. We were all very alive to the ways that technology could go horribly wrong. That’s why we devoted our lives to it.

And a few years ago, as I say, we started to really recognize the gravitas of this and start to have a serious discussion about it that wasn’t about the metaphysics of mind control and was about the material conditions of how digital networks worked, how the economics of them worked. We got past these, started anyways, to get past these foolish ideas like if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product, like respect for your human rights as a customer loyalty program, and if only you give these callow assholes some money, they’ll suddenly start treating you well, which is a thing that everyone who owns a John Deere tractor and can’t fix it for themselves already understood was not the case. That you don’t get a free ad-supported John Deere tractor. You give those motherfuckers $600,000 and then they still screw you.

So as we started to get more serious about it, we started to get into the more esoteric technical parts of this discussion, and I’m just always coming up with metaphors and words and different ways of describing it. And one day I used the word “enshittification” on social media to talk about, and everyone was like, hey, I like that word. It’s fun to swear. And so I started to use it to label this complicated hairball of factors that produce it: The fact that we can see platforms have this characteristic life cycle where they’re good to their end users, then they make things worse for their end users to be good to their business customers, then they’re worse to those business customers. They take all the value for themselves, and then they turn into a pile of shit that we somehow can’t seem to leave. Although, by all accounts, and historically, that would’ve been when they died.

And then I started talking about what’s going on inside, the way that digital technology is uniquely well suited to playing the shell game where that value is moved around very quickly. Uber, for example, practices this form of wage theft called algorithmic wage discrimination. It’s a term from Veena Dubal, the lawyer and activist. And algorithmic wage discrimination is that when you get a job as an Uber driver, your labor is priced at a different rate based on whether you’ve recently been picky. So if you’ve turned down jobs recently, you get a higher wage, but if you’ve accepted jobs, you get a lower wage.

And the idea here is for Uber to gradually ease you, but with these higher wages, into jettisoning whatever else you do in your life that allows you to be picky, and then you have to accept the lower wage, and it’s a very effective tactic. It’s not effective because it bypasses people’s critical faculties. It’s effective because computers are good at being attentive to small differences over long time scales. And humans are trying to live their lives, right? They’re trying to figure out how to squeeze a bathroom break into an 18-hour workday. And so you get distracted, you aren’t perfectly vigilant, the computer is.

And that’s not a new insight. And if the black-hearted coal bosses in a Tennessee Ernie Ford song could have screwed their workers’ wages on every shovelful of coal based on how willing or unwilling they’d been that day to work, they absolutely would’ve, and I’m sure they thought of it. They just gave up because you couldn’t fill a boiler room with enough guys in green eye shades to adjust the pay packet a million times a day.

And so these are people who are as mediocre and awful and thuggish as any 18th century robber baron. They just have faster hands because the computer is giving them the speed. And if you’ve ever seen Penn and Teller do the cup and balls really slowly with transparent cups, it’s not a complicated trick. It’s just that they do it fast. If you do it fast and smooth, simple tricks can be very effective. And that’s what tech’s got going on.

So I described that internal mechanism, and then I addressed myself to why it’s happening now, because these guys could have done it at any time in the last 20 years. They had computers that gave them fast hands 20 years ago. Why did they start doing it now? Why did Facebook used to show you a feed full of stuff that you’d asked to see, and now that’s dwindled to a homeopathic residue that’s left a void they can fill with crap someone will pay to show you, like boosted content and ads?

And the reason they’re doing it now is they don’t face consequences. Because they used to be disciplined by competition, and the competition used to also make it possible for regulators to do their jobs, so they were disciplined by regulation. And because regulators were doing their job, the regulators couldn’t be used as proxy mercenaries by the dominant firms to attack smaller ones with IP law that shut down scrapers and alternative clients and all the stuff that stopped the lock-in: third-party ink cartridges, independent mechanics’ diagnostic tools for cars, all the things that could bust out of these technical rent extraction systems. So we lost that. We saw IP metastasize and get used to attack new market entrants, cooperatives, tinkerers, and, of course, the users that they served.

And then finally, tech workers were able to hold the line for quite some time because they were very scarce and they didn’t like breaking the things that they busted their humps to make. Their bosses motivated them by saying, hey, you’re a hero of a digital transformation. Come sleep under your desk. I’m going to pamper you with a whimsical campus full of free kombucha and massages and a surgeon who will freeze your eggs so you can work through your fertile years in order to achieve our mission.

And then your boss turns around and says, by the way, that thing that you missed your mother’s funeral to build, I need you to stick 100 times more ads in it. And you’re like, fuck you. The guy across the street will give me a job in a heartbeat. You can’t make me, and no one will be able to do this job except me.

And so tech workers held the line, but they didn’t do that through solidarity. They did it through professional pride, but not through a union. And because they didn’t have a union, because they thought that their power was durable through scarcity, as soon as scarcity went away, they lost their power. So when tech fired 260,000 workers in the US in 2023 and another 100,000 in the first two quarters of 2024, tech workers found themselves no longer able to resist their bosses’ imprecations.

And so, all of this implies a remedy: Restore competition, figure out how to reregulate these firms once they’re competitive and they’re a rabble that doesn’t have the unity of purpose that allows them to capture their regulators; Restore interoperability. Let tinkerers unilaterally alter how services work so that if the boss changes it in a way that you don’t like, you can change it back; And then unionize tech workers, which they’re going to have to do because, as you said, every tech boss in the sector lined up to kiss Trump’s ass last week. And we know how those guys treat their workers when they don’t fear them, because we see how they treat the workers in the warehouses and the workers who drive the delivery vans. These are people who don’t even get to pee when they want to.

If you’re a tech worker who’s been showing up for your job at Amazon every day with a green mohawk and a black T-shirt that says something your boss doesn’t understand and facial piercings and thinking that you could just get to pee whenever your bladder is full, you just have to look at those warehouse workers to see what Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos do when they’re not afraid of you anymore.

Tim Cook got the job to succeed Steve Jobs because he figured out how to offshore Apple production to China. And the way that he did that was by getting Foxconn to operate factories in a way that was so brutal they had to install suicide nets because workers were jumping to their death after a day on the line making iPhones. That’s how Tim Cook will treat you if he’s not afraid of you.

And so tech workers need a union. They are workers, even if they’ve been historically well compensated. And I think that those four forces: competition, regulation, interoperability, and worker power are our only way out of this with tech.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I really appreciate you breaking that all down, and I could talk to you about this for hours, but I know we’ve got to let you go in a couple minutes, so we’re going to have to have you back on to really unpack this even more.

Cory Doctorow:  Happy to do that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  But what I think is so profound and important and telling about the concept of enshittification when you apply it to the same kind of historical arc of the past two to three decades, under which working people were also working longer, working harder, being more productive while their wages were stagnant, while all that new wealth was getting sucked up to the 1%, while corporate consolidation was happening in industries across the board. All of this has been compounding over the past couple decades, and I hear it in the stories of the working people I talk to.

But it comes out as a woven together mix of grievances where people are picking things that have just started sucking more, whether it’s like, hey, Twitter used to be good, Musk bought it, now, it fucking sucks. Hey, the retail stores that I used to go to used to be properly staffed and have stuff shelved the right way, now I go in and it looks like bedlam, and that’s by design.

Cory Doctorow:  Or it’s all locked up.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yeah, or it’s all locked up, and these companies are still making record profits. So it’s like the enshittification, if I may use it even more broadly, of the conditions under which working people are living their lives have really been catalyzing this sort of response, this malaise, this anger, this righteous anger that can be capitalized on and seized by someone like Trump and turned into a more fascistic desire for retribution and for return to a time when things didn’t seem as bad.

You guys watching this can at least see how vital this kind of diagnosis is to understanding the complicated political and emotional plane that we’re on right now and how Trump has managed to capitalize on that.

But as I said, we’re going to return to that when we can bring Cory back on with more time. But with the few minutes I’ve got you, Cory, I wanted to look ahead to the next four years and talk about the monstrous ball of big tech oligarchs that are really excited about a second Trump term. What role did you see big tech playing in this election, and what do you think we have to expect from the coming four years in a second Trump administration?

Cory Doctorow:  Well, I think that we saw over the last four years some unprecedented antitrust action on tech firms. And so some of that has come from the public sector. So you had the DOJ winning a landmark case against Google that could still, even at this point, lead to Google being broken up. We’re entering the remedy phase now with Google, but also private cases against Google that I expect to go forward. Epic won a case against Google. There’s another one coming on ads.

So we’ve had this pretty unprecedented antitrust action. Stuff that looks a little like the early days of the cases against Standard Oil at the turn of the 20th century, which were brought forward because of mass political discontent. The Sherman Act that ultimately broke up Standard Oil was passed in 1890, but Standard Oil didn’t get broken up until 1912.

It wasn’t that John Sherman broke up Standard Oil, Ida Tarbell did. She was a political activist. She was the first woman in America to get a science degree. Her father was a Pennsylvania oil man who’d been ruined by John D. Rockefeller. She became an investigative journalist. Colliers paid her to write a long-running serialized history of the Standard Oil company with the very catchy title The History of the Standard Oil Company Volumes 1 and 2. It was so popular that it set the world on fire, and an otherwise reluctant Congress and administration took on Standard Oil and smashed the fortune of the richest and most powerful man in the world.

So I think that we will continue to see lots of private action against it, and also state action. Ironically, GOP state attorney generals love antitrust law against giant companies from big coastal cities because if you’re committed to not raising taxes but you don’t want to convert your state highways into gravel roads, you got to get the money from somewhere, and you can only screw people with regressive sales taxes to a certain extent before that taps out.

And so, one of the things you can do is get hundreds of million dollars out of “woke” coastal companies and stick it in the state coffers. I think that’s why we saw Ken Paxton, the lavishly corrupt attorney general from Texas, bringing so many antitrust cases against big tech. Partly it’s motivated by grievance, but also this very practical consideration.

I think we’re going to see big tech hoping to buy off the Trump administration, and I think that the Trump administration is probably going to do a fair bit of antitrust. And they will do antitrust against companies that are guilty, because all the companies are guilty. Every merger that is being teed up for the next four years violates the plain language of the Clayton Act and the Sherman Act, and the pricing strategies violate Robinson-Patman. They’re all facially illegal.

And so any company that he chooses to, he can bring an existentially threatening legal case against, and it will be a perfectly justifiable case. But he will only choose to do this to companies that challenge his hegemony. And so companies that are disloyal to him will face the full might of the US government.

And there is a trap for progressives and leftists here, which is to assume that any company that Trump goes after must be a good company because Trump is going after them. This enemy of my enemy shit is going to destroy us if we fall into it. This is like when libs were like, Robert Mueller is great. I love the FBI. They’re a force for progressive power. They would never tell Martin Luther King to commit suicide again. That must’ve been a rogue agent. COINTELPRO is in their rearview mirror, it’s like a witch burning or something. It’s not something they would ever do today.

So do not let yourself get suckered into thinking that the terrible criminal enterprises that Trump goes after are good merely because Trump is going after them. We have to understand that he’s going after bad companies, but not because they’re bad. He’s going after bad companies because they’re not sucking up to him and because he wants to make examples out of them.

I think, globally, we’ll see a lot more happening. So the European Union has basically said, we don’t give a shit about American big tech. We don’t care if they live or die. Nick Clegg, who is the sellout deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom under the Tory coalition government of what’s his name, David Cameron. He’s now on $4 million a year as Facebook’s head of Policy and outreach in Europe, going around to his former colleagues in European governments and saying, we are going to keep Europe safe from Chinese Communist Party cyberspace, whatever that means. No one believes him. They don’t give a damn about American big tech and they’re happy to see it die.

And so they’re making some pretty muscular regulations. Some of it very good, some of it not great. Again, don’t fall into the trap of thinking just because they’re going after terrible companies that they’re doing good things either. You can go after terrible companies in bad ways. Like if we say, oh, well, terrible companies have to spy on everything their users do and censor things that might be harassment, we are also saying terrible companies have to spy on everything their users do and censor anything that they don’t like.

And so if you want to be able to stand up a little social media server, you and 50 of your friends or your affinity group or people who have the same rare disease as you don’t want Mark Zuckerberg spying on you when you talk about it, you don’t want a rule that says you have to spy on everyone and you’re responsible if one person insults someone else enough that they say it’s libel or harassment or whatever.

That’s a terrible rule. We want to make them smaller and weaker, not more important. And so if we force them to defend their users, we have to make them more important and stronger. They still will suck at it, they’ll just be stronger and harder to fight.

So the European Union is going to go after these companies. And what’s going to be really interesting about this is that these multinational companies commit the same crimes everywhere. It’s not like they have a different set of business logic in South Korea than they do in Belgium. And so when the EU won a case against Apple, the South Korean government basically translated it into Korean and successfully brought it against Apple in South Korea. And then the Japanese government translated it into Japanese and did it again.

So in the same way that you have these red state attorneys general going like, yeah, I’ll happily take 300 million bucks out of Google for breaking the law, you might get Ghana saying, yeah, we’ll also take $300 million out of Google for breaking the law. And we already have the exhibits, the arguments, the discovery. It’s all sitting there in a docket in the European Commission.

And so I think we might get a global set of antitrust enforcement. That will be magnified by whatever kind of trade war and xenophobic nonsense Trump gets up to. Europeans more than ever, and everyone else in the world more than ever, are going to be like, under no circumstances should our national security or our national thriving be dependent on an American big tech firm that answers to Donald Trump.

And they’re not going to want Chinese tech firms either. Not because Chinese tech firms are necessarily worse, although some of them are, but because fool me once, shame on me. If you’ve already seen what happens when you let a foreign great power control your national digital infrastructure, you’d be very stupid to let a different foreign great power control your national digital infrastructure.

So I think we have the space opening for open source, free software, publicly maintained, federated, decentralized technologies that have an enormous amount of global public subsidy, but that are able to be implemented on servers that are your own so that you aren’t vulnerable to the whims of distant corporations or the governments they answer to. And you can have some national self-determination on this.

So in some ways, we’re entering a period where there’s a lot of tactics available to us. It doesn’t mean we’ll automatically win, but there is no reason to give up here. There’s all the reason in the world to think that other countries can pick up some of the slack. And Americans can use that code. There’s nothing that says that you won’t be able to pick up and run the software that’s being maintained by the European Union or by a coalition of nations from the Global South, or both together, and run it here as an alternative to Facebook, Twitter, and the other giant tech platforms.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So that is the great Cory Doctorow. You guys need to follow Cory on every platform he’s on. You need to read everything that Cory has written. I implore you.

Cory Doctorow:  Thank you.

Maximillian Alvarez:  You will not have a bad experience. Every book is incredible and worth reading. Cory, I want to thank you so much for giving us so much of your time today.

Cory Doctorow:  I appreciate that, Max. Thank you.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I appreciate you, man.

Cory Doctorow:  I appreciate it.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And I guess, final 30 seconds. To the digital rank-and-file folks out there watching this wondering where the fight is and what they can do to help, any closing words to folks out there watching?

Cory Doctorow:  Yeah. Tons of unions suck and union bosses are often terrible people. And that means that you have to take over your goddamn union and replace them like we did with the UAW. The worst union can be reformed and made accountable to its workers. An atomized group of workers who have no union have no opportunity to reform it and have a solidaristic impact on their employer. So if your union sucks, fix your goddamn union. We’ve got four years till the general strike, and it’s going to happen in the middle of the next election, and this is your time to get cracking.

The future of Jewish identity is at a crossroads thanks to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. The question facing millions of people is whether to take the path of solidarity with Palestine or the road of Jewish supremacy trodden by the leadership of major Jewish institutions and by the Israeli government itself. Rabbi Cat Davis of Beyt Tikkun joins The Marc Steiner Show for a discussion on how the best of the Jewish tradition equips progressive Jews to opt for solidarity over supremacy.

Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on the Real News and to another episode in Not in Our Name. Since October 7th, this war is still going on and we see maybe 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza alone and the entire place being destroyed and many Jews across the globe standing up saying “not in our name”. And today we speak with Rabbi at Cat Zavis, who is spiritual leader at Beyt Tikkun. She’s an innovator in Jewish rituals and has deep connections in spiritual, personal and political activist over the years. She’s also a lawyer, co-editor of Tikkun Magazine, which she’s written many articles, shaped the magazine that we’ve just lost. Executive director of the National Network of Spiritual Progressives and is trained over a thousand people in prophetic empathy and revolutionary love, and joins us today to share some of that with us. And welcome, good to have you with us.

Cat Zavis:

Thank you for having me. It’s lovely to be with you.

Marc Steiner:

When I read your bio and … the concept of revolutionary love is a good one.

Cat Zavis:

Yeah, we need some radical revolutionary love in our world. We seem to have a lot of Hallmark love.

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Cat Zavis:

But not a lot of what love is really about, which is moving the needle toward a more loving and just world. It’s not just the personal interactions between people, but it’s really about how do we … for me, obviously, it’s about interpersonal love, but also how do we manifest collective love?

Marc Steiner:

How do we raise it and how do we do that at this moment? I’m very curious after having read what you’ve written, some of the interviews you’ve done before, the work you’ve done … is the moment that we face as Jews and Palestinians face, that Israelis face, that the world faces in this vicious, horrendous war that’s taking place in Gaza and Palestine and Israel. Just for you personally, I’m just curious, what does it do to you? What do you see it doing to other people around you?

Cat Zavis:

What does it do to me? It knocks me out. It knocks me out on the ground a lot. So, I had set aside some days to write my sermons or drosh for high holidays, and I joked with the community … it wasn’t such a joke … that I woke up that morning of one of those days and I mistakenly read the news in which another Palestinian journalist was … in this case, he wasn’t killed. He was stolen, kidnapped from his home by Israeli soldiers and beaten in front of his wife and children. His wife was also beaten, at the time, trying to hand him shoes so he could take with him. And then he was sent to one of the … we’ll call them concentration camp prisons, where we know that they’re torturing and killing Palestinians. And I read that and I literally collapsed on the floor and just screamed and cried for a while, until I could pick myself up and write or try to write a sermon.

And I know I’m not alone. And maybe that’s the saving grace in all of this, but it’s a horrible thing to have as a saving grace, that the blessing, of course, is there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of Jews around the world who are standing up and saying, not in our name, never again for anyone, never again now. And unfortunately, the Jewish establishment and the Jewish leadership, both here around the world and in Israel, are choosing a path of domination and power over and militarization and war. And it’s not making anyone safer here in Israel, certainly not in Palestine, and certainly not Jews anywhere in the world. And this is the moment in Judaism where we have a choice. We can choose to be a blessing or we can choose to be a curse. And the way I read … That’s all in the Torah. I’m not pulling this out of thin air.

And the way I read this in the Torah, it says, if you choose to be a curse, there’s all these negative consequences that happen. You eventually get kicked off the land. If you choose to be a blessing, then you get all these positive consequences. But what exactly is the curse and the blessing? The curse is losing your moral center. The curse is forgetting to love the stranger and care for the needy and the vulnerable and building a loving and just society. The curse is not living a moral life. The consequences of being kicked off the land isn’t the curse. That’s the consequence. The blessing is to live a moral life, to choose to be a nation unlike all other nations, to choose to be a people that doesn’t embrace militarization, that doesn’t embrace imperialism and empire, that embraces love and kindness and generosity.

Stay on the moral path, walk in God’s way, if you will. That’s the blessing. Then from the blessing, turns out you get to stay on the land. You get all these beautiful things. You flourish. And we could debate what it means to be on the land, of course, but that’s how I … that’s the choice we have right now. Will we uplift Jewish supremacy, or will we uplift solidarity and the dignity and humanity of all? That’s the choice in Judaism right now. And unfortunately, I think the ones with power are making a choice to lose our moral center as a people. And so it’s really important to me as a rabbi and a Jewish spiritual leader to stand in the voice of Judaism of love and liberation of a Judaism that stands in solidarity with the most vulnerable and most needy and oppressed in our society.

That is Judaism. What Israel is doing is what empires do. What the United States is doing is what empires do. Our Torah is all about what empires do and how we critique and stand up to empire, and they’re choosing empire. They’re choosing imperialism. They’re choosing domination. That is not Judaism. And it’s really important, I think, for Jews who believe in a Judaism of love and liberation to distinguish between Judaism as a religious, spiritual tradition and practice that’s thousands of years old and nation state imperialism and oppression and domination and power over. And Israel is a nation state. Has a lot of Jews. It’s not a state embodying Jewish values. It’s not a Jewish state.

Marc Steiner:

It makes me think about a lot of things, but I’m curious how you think we got there. I mean, there’s a poem I wrote, I guess, 54 years ago called growing up Jewish. And one of the lines I used in that poem was, “We, the oppressed, have become the oppressor.” Talking about what’s been going on in the earlier days of the occupation. And I think about that and reflect on the fact that when I was very young, and I was a civil rights worker, 70% of all the white civil rights workers in the South were Jews. And I know as a person who reflects deeply on things, as a rabbi and a leader, a spiritual leader, how do we get to this place? How do you go from being one of the oppressed for thousands of years that the world tried to annihilate and they could not annihilate us to a place where we’ve become the oppressor?

Cat Zavis:

Right. It’s a great question that I actually posed in one of my teachings during the high holidays. How did we go from being a people of the book, right? Like, Jews are like the people of the Torah. That’s what we value and do is we read this book and we are starting again this Shabbat to read Bereshit. And every year we read the book and we read all the books of the books. And how do we go from being a people that value the book to people that value machinery and mechanization and war? And I have my story … or my thoughts about that, that is informed by writings and teachings from many, many other people. So, when the Jews led by Bar Kokhba, right, the Bar Kokhba Revolution. I’m sure you’re familiar with that, right?

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Cat Zavis:

In 131 to 135 of the Common Era, they stood up and fought Roman imperialism and oppression. As a result, they were tortured and killed.

There were others who counseled surrender, who did not want Jews to stand up, because they knew the consequence would be not only would the leaders be tortured and killed, but as it turned out something like 500,000 to 600,000 Jewish people were killed, and then many were expelled, and it was a tragic, tragic loss. We can see it unfolding, right? On the other tables … tables are turned, and it is those that counseled surrender that became the spiritual heirs, if you will, of the rabbinic tradition. So, the rabbinic tradition became one that wanted to ensure the longevity and survival of the Jewish people, and that meant getting along with the empire, the ruling elite, and Jews have played that middleman role for centuries. It was often because it was the only role we were allowed to play, but organized Jewish community became part of the establishment that wanted to get along to stay alive.

You can see this in immigrant communities. This is not something particularly unique to the Jewish community. We want to pass, if you will. And then in Nazi Germany, there were, of course, Jewish leaders that worked with the Nazis to try to save themselves and some Jews. And the Jewish story is … the Jewish shame story is that we walk like sheep to our own slaughter. And there was the Warsaw ghetto uprising. There wasn’t a massive amount of uprising and we could hold … as we look back on that time, I can certainly hold a lot of understanding and compassion for that. What else were people going to do in that situation? But there’s a lot of shame about that. And so in response to this shame, part of the story is never again for us. That’s the first place that started was … We’ll never walk like sheep to the slaughter again. So, how do we do that? We become a nation state. We get arms. We become powerful, just like all other nations because nobody protected us, which was true.

We tried to go to America. We tried to go here and there, and they all sent us back to be killed, to be slaughtered. So, that’s my perspective of how did we go from a people of the book to a people of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. One step is we will never ever walk like sheep to our slaughter. Then October 7th comes. Hamas through its horrific act and killings and murders and slaughters, and … they essentially made Israel realize that they don’t have all the power they think they have. This amazing might of the state of Israel could not stop Hamas from breaking down a fence and slaughtering their people. Now, we can understand that, actually, Israel had been warned by soldiers and women soldiers that they ignored. But that’s what the state of Israel, Netanyahu and other leaders, are now drawing on to whip up people’s trauma and fear and to whip up, like, we will never walk like sheep to slaughter again. We will never do that, right? And this is what’s happening as a result of that.

Of course, that denies the fact or minimizes the fact that, of course, ethnic cleansing, Nakba, slow wiping off of Palestinian people off of the land and denying people in Gaza enough nutrition to actually live and thrive has been going on for decades and decades. So, Netanyahu and his gang have utilized this moment, have manipulated this moment to carry out what they’ve always wanted to carry out, which was to have an Israel from the river to the sea, which is literally in Likud’s platform. That’s where that phrase comes from.

Marc Steiner:

Right. Likud being the very right-wing party in Israel that-

Cat Zavis:

That’s ruling right now.

Marc Steiner:

Right. Right.

Cat Zavis:

Right. So, the other thing that I think happens psychologically and spiritually to Israelis and Jews is that in the face of the Palestinian, we see two things. We see the Nazis. We see those who slaughtered us because the story was that … they’re antisemitic and want to wipe out all Jews, as opposed to the story that they’re resisting imperial empire and oppression. Palestinians stood up to the Ottomans, they stood up to the British, and now they’re standing up to Israel. It’s not antisemitic. It’s Algerians standing up to the French. It’s Palestinians standing up to their oppressors. But if we frame it as antisemitism, then October 7th becomes the most violent acts against Jews since the Holocaust, and it was against Jews. It wasn’t against Israelis. That’s the discourse we’re hearing. So, in the face of Palestinians, we see the Nazis who are trying to wipe us off the face of the earth and all Arabs has become part of the discourse. And we also see in the face of the Palestinians, I think potentially, ourselves, and what do we see in ourselves? We see the parts of ourselves that did not stand up and fight, that did not resist in Nazi Germany and throughout history, and the Palestinians are standing up and resisting. And so we see in that face, the shame of ourselves, and the only way to get rid of our shame is to kill off that other that we see as ourselves.

Marc Steiner:

So, that’s very powerfully said. I can see why your congregants like to hear you speak.

Cat Zavis:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

I wonder … in all these conversations I’ve had, and I have been at this anti-occupation struggle for a long, long, long time. In ’67, I wanted to go fight in Israel against … I wanted to go join the Israeli army in ’67.

Cat Zavis:

Wow. Wow. I was three years old.

Marc Steiner:

I was a little bit older.

Cat Zavis:

That’s amazing.

Marc Steiner:

And I … then I met left-wing Israelis and Palestinians, and I began to shift. I’m only saying that to say that this has been a long time now, since this oppression has existed. Also, having kind of grown up with the ethos of a tough Jew, which was in our family, that you don’t stand down. That’s one of the books I was given when I was … at my bar mitzvah was They Fought Back, about the Jews who fought back against the Nazis. And so that becomes a tradition in many ways, not to allow yourself to be taken away. That you’re going to fight for who … you’re not going to allow them to attack us, not without a fight.

Cat Zavis:

Right. Right.

Marc Steiner:

But now it’s become what you’ve described. So, how do we as a minority of Jews who say no … a growing minority, but minority of Jews … really affect this and begin to make the change that has to happen, that stops what’s happening in Israel?

Cat Zavis:

Right? How do we walk us back from this cliff?

Marc Steiner:

Yes. Yes. You said it better than I, in fewer words. Thank you. Yes.

Cat Zavis:

How do we walk ourselves back from this cliff? I’m going to reluctantly say I don’t know that we can, and I think we have to try. This cliff that we’re at isn’t just the Jewish cliff. It’s not just the Jewish people’s cliff. It’s the empire cliff. It is the cliff of imperialism. It’s, like, when empire and imperialism are challenged, what do they do? They grip harder. They become more oppressive. They’re afraid of losing their power, and so they hold onto it more firmly, more violently, more insistently. And I think it’s really important to say this isn’t just a Jewish cliff, because if we say it’s just a Jewish cliff, then it’s really easy to slip into antisemitism, that Jews are causing all these problems, and this is all a Jewish thing. Western imperial powers want Israel in the Middle East. They supported the establishment of the state of Israel for their own interests, and the US still wants Israel doing its bidding.

Marc Steiner:

They wanted us to go there. They didn’t want us to come here or anywhere else. They wanted us there.

Cat Zavis:

Exactly, right? That’s the solution to the quote, unquote, “Jewish problem”. I mean, Biden just said, how many months ago, Jews are safest in Israel. It’s the only place you’re safe. I’m like, are you kidding me? You’re the leader of the United States. I live here. Are you kidding me? You’ve got to be kidding me. That should have been … everyone in Jewish power, in Jewish establishment should have just completely had a field day with that. They should have been outraged. It was as if it didn’t happen. It’s horrific to say that. I don’t live in Israel. I’m not moving to Israel. I would never move to Israel. I’m not taking land from Palestinians. That’s happened enough. I live here.

And, yes, people have said to me in critiquing me, “Well, what about the fact that you live on stolen land here?” True. I do. I live on stolen land here. I give money to taxes to support the rematriation and reclamation of that land for Native American peoples. And I do what I can here. So, both are true. And I live here. The President of the United States should say, “Jews are safe here, and you’re safe here. Not because we love Israel, but because we care about our citizens. Jewish Muslim, Christian Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, whatever gender, whatever skin color, you’re our citizens. You make up the beauty and diversity of this land.” But the United States and Western countries have a great interest in having Israel be the face of imperial power in the Middle East. And that’s what we are. So, that’s why when I said, I don’t know how we can walk back from that cliff because it’s not a cliff of Jewish establishment or the Jewish world. It’s a cliff of geopolitical power of empire and imperialism and capitalism.

So, that on one hand. On the other hand, I’m not just going to crawl under my covers and pretend that a genocide is not being perpetuated in my name and walk away from it. So, what can we do? We can do things. Like I said, we can make it very clear that there is a distinction between Judaism and the nation state of Israel, and we can show what we believe a Judaism really stands for and looks like. What does it stand for and look lik? Many, many beautiful exquisite things. Speak truth, challenge injustice, stand up for the vulnerable. I mean, these are core teachings in Judaism that those of us who are Jewish, we know them. Even if we didn’t know that they were Jewish teachings. For years, I had no idea these were Jewish teachings, and yet they were in my cells. They were in my bones. I’ve been an activist and involved in this work all my life, and I didn’t … until my much older years, I didn’t even know it was Jewish. So, we know this. This is why, like you said, the huge percentage of people who went down to the South during the civil rights movements were Jews. I bet a lot of them didn’t identify as religious Jews.

Marc Steiner:

No.

Cat Zavis:

But their Jewish teachings, their Jewish traditions, were instilled within them. And that’s the beautiful thing about our tradition. And all other spiritual traditions and religious traditions also have beautiful teachings in them. We’re not unique in that way. So, that’s, to me, one of the things that we can do, is we can continue to stand up and speak truth to power, challenge injustice. One of the things that I’ve been teaching lately is there’s a teaching in Pirkei Avot, the teachings of the fathers, right, the ancestors that says that, “The foundation of the world rests on three principles. Truth, justice, and peace.” And so when I originally thought about that, I was like, “All right, there are like three pillars.” But actually I think that they matter in order. In other words, you can’t get to peace without justice, and you can’t have justice unless you understand the truth. Because justice requires that you repair the harm and injustice from the past. And you can only do that if you are willing to really look at and understand the truths.

And this is what’s so painful right now, is we are taught, and Zechariah teaches us, speak truth. Onkelos said … an Aramaic translator of the Torah … translates, [foreign language 00:22:26], which is translated in Hebrew as “justice, justice you shall pursue”. He actually translates it as “truth, truth you shall pursue,” which is very interesting. And Zechariah teaches us to speak truth. And those of us who are trying to speak truth right now are being dismissed and called antisemitic and not Jewish. And all sorts of … ways to-

Marc Steiner:

Self-hating Jews.

Cat Zavis:

Self-hating Jews. Ways to dismiss us, because the truth is so painful. And I want to also hold compassion for that. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to challenge it. But let’s think about times in our personal lives where we’ve been confronted with truths. Maybe our child challenges us on something, right? Maybe a good friend does, maybe a partner does, and we protect ourselves. We don’t want to hear it because we feel shame and embarrassment. And unfortunately, most of us, when we feel shame and embarrassment, we hide, we run away from it because we don’t have a way of integrating that and processing it in a way that’s kind and loving and self-caring. So, I could hear something that’s hurtful or painful about something I did, and I could, instead of going to shame, I could go to, oh, thank you for this opportunity for me to look more deeply at how I’m behaving in the world and act more in alignment with my desires and values.

But that’s not what we do in our society. We point fingers at people and tell them how awful they are, and usually we shame children. So, I want to have compassion for the fact that it’s hard to hear these truths. And it’s particularly hard when you’ve been raised with a particular story of you and your people. And we can see this in white nationalists. They don’t want to look at the history of the birth and creation of this country, both the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of the African-Americans, and the racism and sexism and classism that has been the very foundation of this country. Rather than hear that they want to still believe that they can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps and that we live in meritocracy and they will be successful and, yahoo. That’s easier. That fallacy and lie is easier to embrace than looking at the truth of the foundation of this country.

So too in the Jewish world. It is very hard for us to look at the lies that we’ve been told and be willing to jump off the cliff, if you will, into an unknown abyss and start to hear the truth. So, this is back to your comment about revolutionary loves. The training I’ve done has been in prophetic empathy and revolutionary love, and the prophetic empathy … well, both parts of it, but, in particular, the empathic side of it, is to recognize that if we are asking people to reevaluate the histories, they’ve been told. Now, think about this. This is the history they’ve been told since they were born. It’s the way that they are embraced and loved in their family, or, at least, think that they’re embraced and loved in their family, in their community, and who they identify themselves as. That’s a big lift to ask people to reevaluate all that.

So, if we’re going to ask them to do a big lift, if we’re going to invite them on this journey, then I believe it behooves us. It’s important to us, to our success and also to our love of other people, to our seeing the divine in the other, to treating people with dignity and respect and care, is to do it with love and compassion. To hold them compassionately as we invite them to embark on this journey with us. To acknowledge that when we embarked on this journey, it was hard. When I first started to unpack the lies I had been told, it wasn’t like it was a joyful journey. It was hard, but I had inner resources. I knew that, no matter what, my parents would still love me. Even though we don’t always agree on these issues. I knew that I had people I could turn to and build new community if that was necessary. I wasn’t as steeped in a Jewish world at that point. So, it also probably was easier because of that. But we can’t just expect people to jump off into this new world view if we don’t offer them a ramp and a safe landing because it’s scary.

Marc Steiner:

It is.

Cat Zavis:

And it’s unknown and it’s hard. And so, to me, that’s the work. The work is to engage in this work, invite people into conversation with compassion. That doesn’t mean you hide the truth or you pretend it’s not a genocide or not an ethnic cleansing, or … It just means that you hold people with compassion along the journey. And some will come and some won’t. And all we can do is keep trying to push that envelope, but we have to do it with softened hearts. I always say our hearts are tender. If you’ve ever had your heart broken or hurt, like, you know, it’s tender. You kind of end up in a ball for a while. So, our hearts are tender, so let’s hold our hearts with tenderness and kindness as best as we can. And speak truth and bring in that prophetic voice.

Marc Steiner:

And our work is tikkun olam.

Cat Zavis:

Tikkun olam. Amen. Yes. Healing and repairing of ourselves in the world.

Marc Steiner:

Yes, exactly.

Cat Zavis:

And you can’t do one without the other. We can’t heal ourselves in a broken world, and we can’t heal the world if we’re broken. So, that’s why our movements have to be places that allow for healing and compassion as we work to heal the world.

Marc Steiner:

I deeply appreciate the conversation we’ve had and it’s clear the work you’re doing and the passion and intellect and fearlessness that you bring to the work that you do.

Cat Zavis:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

It means a great deal.

Cat Zavis:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, I look forward to coming up there and seeing just how you run your service as well.

Cat Zavis:

You can actually join us online.

Marc Steiner:

I’ll try that.

Cat Zavis:

We do hybrid still. So, yeah, come any Shabbat you’d like, we’d love to have you.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you, Rabbi Cat. It was a pleasure to have you with us.

Cat Zavis:

Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Marc Steiner:

Look forward to staying in touch. Thank you so much.

Cat Zavis:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Rabbi Cat Zavis for joining us today, and we’ll be linking to her work and writing so you can all enjoy and read what she’s doing. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program, producer Rosette Sewali for making it all happen, and the tireless Kayla Rivera for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please, let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at MSS@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you Rabbi Cat Zavis for joining us today and for doing the work that you do. So, for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

A new bill in Washington, DC seeks to end the district’s use of solitary confinement in jails. Rattling the Bars‘ Mansa Musa speaks with two formerly incarcerated organizers: Herbert Robinson and Cinquan Umar Muhammad of the Unlock the Box DC campaign, which advocates for an end to the barbaric practice of solitary confinement around the country and to pass the ERASE Bill.

Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.

Oftentimes we hear about Unlock the Box, and it’s almost becoming cliché. It’s an organization called Solitary Watch that monitors solitary confinement throughout the world and the United States in particular, and they’re real strategic in highlighting the torture and abuse that solitary confinement is.

What we have with us today, people that’s in this space right today. And guess where they’re operating out of? Our nation’s capital. They’re operating out of Washington DC, and they’re organizing to Unlock the Box. But guess where they’re trying to Unlock the Box at? In DC jail.

So why would you have solitary confinement in an environment where the nature of the environment is a transitory environment? The people in that environment, they’re pending conviction, they haven’t got convicted, they’ve only been charged, but yet they’re being treated like they’re doing severe time, and they’re being subjected to solitary confinement.

Joining me today is Herbert Robinson and Cinquan Umar Muhammad. Welcome, men.

Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. How you doing today?

Herbert Robinson:

Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us.

Mansa Musa:

I’m doing all right. So let’s start with you, Herbert, because we had you on before talking about Unlock the Box. I was recently at an activity that y’all was doing, y’all sponsored, about Unlock the Box. That’s where I met brother Umar. And y’all was talking about some of the things that y’all was doing, some of your initiatives y’all was taking, but more importantly, y’all was in the space of educating people about Unlock the Box and what exactly that is.

Tell our audience what exactly is Unlock the Box, and where y’all staying at right now in terms of the coalition that y’all building to Unlock the Box.

Herbert Robinson:

Got you. Again, I thank you for letting me be on and appreciate you, Umar, for joining. The Unlock the Box DC is the coalition here in DC that’s trying to end solitary confinement. It’s built up of transformative justice advocates and a lot of the organizations in DC that look at solitary confinement as torture, along with the United Nations. United Nations had what they brought about as the Mandela rule that says 15 days or more in solitary confinement is torture.

And solitary confinement is often described as torture, and involves isolating individuals for 22 to 24 hours a day inside of a cell.

So the Unlock the Box campaign is here to end that. And we are offering a different change into the community. Because it’s in DC jail, it’s being looked at as a judicial issue, but we’re looking at it as a public health issue.

Mansa Musa:

And one of the things that y’all, I recall at the conference that y’all was having on it, y’all had got someone to introduce a bill to do what?

Herbert Robinson:

Yes. So that bill was introduced by a champion, and that’s council member Brianne Nadeau.

Mansa Musa:

From Washington DC?

Herbert Robinson:

From Washington DC. Yes. Brianne Nadeau introduced the bill for us, and the bill is to abolish solitary confinement. We are seeking the in solitary confinement, and we’re asking that each person housed in DC jail is entitled to eight hours a day outside of their cell.

DC jail uses solitary confinement, but they have named it with different names. They have a mental unit that they use for solitary confinement, they have protective custody, they have safe cells, they have disciplinary. They house the LGBT community in solitary confinement because they don’t have nowhere else to put them. And they do the juveniles like that at times on different units.

So with this being said, it’s like the jail that’s lacking the programs and the resources, and that’s what we seek, to figure out how to implement these programs and resources inside the jail. Because there’s a lot that could be done, man, to help the people adjust and better themselves under them conditions, especially when it comes to social and emotional learning and cognitive thinking and things like that to deal with problem solving and be aware of their anger and how they respond and react to certain situations.

And these are things that’s stripped away from you when you locked in that cell by yourself. You become possessive of your own material and things like that. And then the dignity of rewashing clothes that the whole unit then wore and then giving back to you to put on. These things, they take away from you, they strip you down.

Mansa Musa:

Right. Yeah. And I did 48 years before I got out, but I did four-and-a-half of them years in the super max, which was solitary confinement. I did a lot of time on segregation, which is solitary confinement, but I never looked at it like that.

But when I got to super max, I really realized that the impact that isolation had, because sometimes it was like 24 and none, 23 and one, or 24 and none for the most part. And everything was designed around how you would do your due diligence with yourself in your cell.

Umar, talk about your experience. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself and some of your experience and your experience dealing with solitary confinement. I recall your speech at the conference that the Unlock the Box Coalition was having, and I’ve been in this space for a minute, but I was really impressed. That’s what made me approach you about coming on and educating our audience about solitary confinement.

Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:

Yes sir. Well, first I want to thank you, brother Mansa Musa, for having me here today. I also want to thank my brother Herbert Robinson for always bringing me along. Brother Herbert is my mentor, has been my mentor for some time, so I always try to get in any space that I can with him and get involved with any campaign he’s a part of because we both have some of these shared experience.

At the age of 16, I was sentenced to juvenile life in DC Superior Court, and I was fortunate that at some point in time, roughly around 2017, 2018, the DC Council came up what’s called the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act. What the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act does it affords our juveniles who committed crimes before the age of 18, the first version, second version, the age of 25 and under who have served a minimum of 20 years or 15 years to petition the court for release.

And everything is predicated on your conduct while you’ve been incarcerated throughout these years since you were a juvenile. I petitioned the court for release after 29 years, 10 months, and I was released. I was released back into society.

And I made it my top priority because while I was incarcerated, I knew that if I should ever be released, the one thing that I wanted to work on and I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to was working first and foremost just criminal justice reform in general, but more importantly in this solitary confinement period. But it has to be a starting point. There had to be a starting point. And I’m from Washington, DC, so what better place to start but in Washington, DC?

But over 29 years and 10 months, I roughly spent about six years, six-and-a-half years consecutively in solitary confinement. And one thing that I always say, and I shout it from the rooftop, solitary confinement is 100%, make no mistake about it, torture.

Mansa Musa:

Come on.

Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:

It’s mental torture. It’s physical torture, it’s psychological torture. It’s emotional torture.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:

This is torture that needs to be ended because these are the same citizens that will be returning back to the community at some point in time. Who do you want living next door to you: Somebody who has been reformed, who has spent years in incarceration, who has reformed himself, bettered himself when he’s coming back out, back into society as someone who’s a better person.

Or do you want someone who is batshit crazy? Who has practically lost his mind because he’s been sitting inside of a cell alone counting bricks on a wall? I mean, this is a public safety issue. And if this is a public safety issue, then we got to treat this in a manner where this is an emergency in solitary confinement. Who would want to lock somebody in a room the size of your bathroom and leave them in there for years on top of years on top of years, but expecting them to still come out in the same conditions that they went in? That’s insanity. That’s insanity.

So Unlock the Box. I’m involved with a lot of organizations, Free Minds writing workshop and book club, building communities in our prisons. Currently, I’m a BreakFree Education hour 2024 fellow. I’m a fellow, that’s where I’m working at right now. But I just was hired for a job with Dreaming Out Loud, which is an organization that works to end the food inequities in the greater Washington DC area.

But whatever my brother Herbert Robinson is involved in because we are passionate about these same issues. But the top one being, the top one being, first and foremost, is erasing solitary confinement, unlocking the box. And that’s what I’m here to talk about.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Hey Herbert, because Umar made a good point. And this is his mantra. That’s his mantra. He said it at the conference, the coalition, that solitary confinement is 100% torture. When we think of torture and we see the forms of torture that take place in the movies, we see torture as more physical. Why are y’all saying that solitary confinement?

And he outlined the different reasons what’s behind, emotional, social, physical, mental. But why do you say it’s torture, and how do you get people to understand it being torture? Because when you say someone is being tortured, they waterboard people they falsely accused, they locked up in Iraq, named them illegal combatants. They waterboarded them and the US say, well, that’s torture. They did a lot of physical things to them and they claim that’s torture.

So most people might think say, well, when you say torture and it ain’t got no physical element to it, you just putting somebody in a cell, feeding them, giving them a shower, some food, break them out maybe once in a while and give them some rec, how is that torture?

Herbert Robinson:

So as the brother spoke, because when he said torture, he broke it down from psychological, emotional, mental, physical. This torture happens on every level. You come from being in society with your family to being incarcerated. Now if you’re incarcerated on population, you might have access to the phone and things at a regular basis.

In solitary confinement, you don’t get that. You might be put in a position where you can only send one letter a month, have one 15-minute phone call a month. That’s torture. Sitting there wondering what your family doing for 30 days before you could send your next letter or receive your next letter or get your next phone call.

Again, having them collect everybody’s under clothes off of the tier and wash them in the same laundry basket and then come and pass them back out. Not you, your personal stuff, but just, this your size, this yours. This the stuff the man next to you could have just, man, shitted in in or whatever the day before. But this is what you got to wear now because they feel as though it’s clean enough for you to wear, that you still see hairballs and stuff in it. Like this is torture.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, that’s torture.

Herbert Robinson:

But on the flip side, just imagine being trapped in your bathroom, but there’s COVID. For the people that was trapped in their house during COVID felt as though they was being tortured. They couldn’t handle being stuck in their own home. But just imagine people that’s incarcerated as being trapped inside of something the size of a bathroom, that is considered a bathroom because they have a toilet and sink in it as well. Some have showers too.

Mansa Musa:

Right there in the cell.

Herbert Robinson:

And you’re being trapped in it. So you have some that complain about that, say it’s not solitary confinement because in some locations you have a celly. But I think at times that make it worse because now when this person has to relieve themselves or go take care of any personal hygiene or washing themselves, you are within arm’s reach at all times.

I don’t feel comfortable and could never get comfortable being trapped in a cell with a man right there that’s washing his complete body naked in the shower. But this is what you’re forced under. These are the things you want to know about torture. I call that torture, sir. That’s torture to me.

Mansa Musa:

That would be torture. Umar, how did you deal with solitary confinement? Because you say you did six in all years. And like I said, I was regimented. I was real regimented in everything I did. But when I came out of that space, when I got released from the super max in Baltimore and they send me to Jessup, which was known as the cut, and I was standing in what they call center hall, which is where all the traffic goes.

And the whole time, this was my first time ever being out and about and around people. And I knew a lot of people in that institution, and they was coming by hollering at me and everything. They hadn’t seen me in long. But I was paralyzed. My back was against the wall and I was paralyzed. Literally I was paralyzed. And a friend of mine seen it and said, come on man, let’s go outside. No one recognized that I was paralyzed from not being around people.

Umar, how did you deal with it?

Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:

No, you was traumatized because you were tortured for the period of time that you was in solitary confinement. That’s called trauma, brother. That was psychological trauma that paralyzed your limbs.

Listen, listen, it’s like being sick. It’s like being sick. And you become so ill and sick that your limbs won’t even function properly no matter how much you want to move those limbs. Brother, that’s trauma.

And see, the thing is this when you ask the brother, well, some people going not see it as torture. Okay, well, go lock yourself in your bathroom without no food. Go lock yourself in your bathroom without no clothes, no TV, and no phone, no radio. And then somebody bring you what they want to give you as food three times a day. You stay in there for three, four, five, or six years and then tell me, still tell that that ain’t torture inside of your bathroom.

Tell me that ain’t torture. Somebody to come around and, at will when they want to, yank you off your cell and beat on you with not only their fists, but with instruments. Tell me that ain’t torture. Somebody that come around where you trying to sleep and hawk spitting through your tray slot or kicking your door won’t allow you to sleep every time they see you falling asleep. Tell me that ain’t torture.

Because if I’m not mistaken, what they have in the Geneva Convention also deems torture is that at a certain period of time when they continuously turn on lights and when they continuously try to, it’s called sleep deprivation. That, sir, is what torture is. And that is what’s going on not only in Washington, DC, not only in Baltimore County, but in the state prisons across the United States and in federal rural prisons.

Now you ask the question in specific, how did I deal with it? See, I dealt with it because I knew I didn’t have any other choice but to deal with it because I’m a resilient young man, first and foremost. I had already suffered so much emotional loss, so much physical loss because I’m an only child. My mother and father already died. I didn’t have brothers and sisters. So all I had was myself.

So I knew that if I wasn’t strong for me, who was going to be strong for me? So what I would do is I would get up in the morning and I would offer salat. I would offer the early morning fajr prayer. Bright and early before breakfast even came around, I would pace the floor a little bit, read the Quran, and then I wait for breakfast to come, eat my breakfast, straight back out to the salat.

Then I would work out. I work out to the zuhr prayer, which is the midday prayer. I will work out to that time, pray, get back to working out after prayer and get my food at lunch. After lunch, get back to working out again.

And I’m giving you this regimen because here’s what it entailed. It entailed every hour that I was awake that I had to be doing something that my mind could grasp onto. That I wouldn’t be looking at these walls, that I wouldn’t be trying to count the bricks on the walls or trying to count the spots on the floor. Or I may see a stain on the floor and I’m saying, oh, that look like Jesus on the floor.

Because I had almost got to that point, make no mistake about it. You see a spill on the floor, but the spill may have been on the floor so long that it takes a certain design of somebody that you may have known, right? That’s when you know you’re losing your damn mind. That’s when you know that what you are experiencing is torture. Because now what it does is it’s starting to alter your perspective on how you see the world. That’s torture, brother.

So I had to do things, man, that my mind could physically identify with, that I could grasp onto and that would keep me sane, which is prayer, which is working out, but also which was getting inside of the vents, the vent that blows out, they controls the air to the cell. And I would talk to other people in the other cells because I wanted to make sure that they was all right.

Here I am damn near losing my mind, but I wanted to make sure other brothers was all right. Why? Because we all in the same struggle. We all in the same fight and I don’t want to be the only one up here sitting like, I’m all right. But then that’s what was giving me a peace of mind, so I wouldn’t lose my mind, talking to somebody else. So I know that they needed it too.

Mansa Musa:

And Umar, that’s real succinct. And I’ve been in that space. Like I told, I said earlier, I was regimented. So I had a regimen that I had set up and everything was based on whatever I wanted to do that day. But it was a regimen. I worked out, studied law, read books, went to sleep, woke up, ate, boom, bam, boom, bam, boom.

That was a regimen to keep me from going crazy, keep me from pacing the floor, keep me from looking on the floor and seeing something down there and saying, oh look, that’s Michael Jordan shooting a jump shot. Or keep me from wanting to cut my wrist with a spoon.

But Herbert, talk about where y’all at right now, what the campaign look like in terms of, one, trying to get the legislation passed at the DC City Council. That’s what you’re talking about when you say the councilwoman, that was the councilwoman at the DC City Council. Talk about where y’all at with the Unlock the Box campaign and what’s y’all upcoming initiative around Unlock the Box.

Herbert Robinson:

So right now with the Unlock the Box campaign, the fiscal year is ending. So we have a push till December to try to get a hearing this year, but if not, we’ll be looking to secure a hearing next year, the beginning of next year. And that task is through the judiciary chair, Councilmember Brooke Pinto here in Washington DC. Right now we have nine councilmembers that have signed on in support of the bill.

Mansa Musa:

For the benefit of our audience, what’s the bill number?

Herbert Robinson:

It’s the ERASE Act 2023. I will have to go…

Mansa Musa:

That’s good enough. Just so let them know that when you say the bill, they know it is an actual bill.

Herbert Robinson:

Yeah, it’s ERASE Act 2023. And so out of the nine that we have signed on, it’s only 13. One is being voted into office next month. But we do have, throughout one of his campaign forums, we had him actually verbally say that he agrees that solitary confinement is torture and he wants to support us ending it.

So in that sense, we have 10, we are only missing three. And that’s the chairman, Brooke Pinto, the ex-chairman, Mendelsohn, and Trayon White. Trayon White asked us to set up a conversation with him so we can explain a little bit more about the bill, and that’s where we at with that step and the process of scheduling meetings with Mendelsohn as well as Brooke Pinto.

Mansa Musa:

In terms of work, because y’all did a nice thing with organizing the coalition. So in terms of getting people involved with the coalition, what are y’all doing around that?

Herbert Robinson:

So ERASESolitary.com is the website and you can go on, there’s links on there to ask for those that want to join the coalition, want to do any volunteer work for the coalition, bring in your organizations, and we take individuals. We go out and do canvassing. It’s always something that can be done, especially when it comes to social media posts and editing, things like that, website work. We always got a space where we can find help and need help. So one could go onto the website, ERASESolitary.com, and check that out.

Mansa Musa:

And Umar, you have to answer this question. Why you think they so resistant to recognizing this torture and doing something about it? When I say they, I’m talking about the system, the state, the government, the powers that be. Why you think it’s such a resistance on their part to recognize this is torture and enact legislation to eliminate it?

Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:

I’ll give you a scenario better. I give it to you in the form of a scenario to help you understand it. I kill somebody in the street, but the state that got the death penalty want to kill me. That’s retaliatory in nature. But this is supposed to be a government for the people and by the people.

But now somebody killed one of my brothers in the street, I go back and kill them and they give me life. I mean what makes it right for them to kill me for killing somebody, the state, but then I kill somebody for killing somebody, the same thing they done, and you give me a life sentence? It’s retaliatory in nature.

And that’s the way that the Americans judicial system functions. You do something we don’t like… Because listen, you know, Herbert know, and many people that been in solitary confinement that hear this know, and those that haven’t been that need to be educated need to know this. Do you know that you could be put in solitary confinement because you got an extra tray out the chow hall line because you was hungry? You were hungry, so you wanted seconds, and you got in the line to get seconds, and they locked you up and put you in solitary confinement because you were hungry.

Do you know that the officer can not like you and shake your cell down because they can anytime they want to do what’s called random searches, but they’re not so random. Search in your cell and plant a knife, drugs, or whatever they want to plan in your cell just to get you in solitary confinement so that when he does his overtime mandated shift, he can be working in solitary confinement so that he can physically abuse you outside of the purview of the camera.

So what we need to do more is we need to not only educate people about solitary confinement, what solitary confinement really is, we need to educate them about how they get people into solitary confinement and for what reasons they get them in solitary confinement, so they can do torturous things to them that they couldn’t do within the sight of the camera. But when you put them in solitary confinement, they say, oh, they got a camera on the hall. I don’t live in the hall. I live on a cell in the hall where there’s no camera at. And this is where the torturous activities go on at.

Mansa Musa:

You rattled the bars that time, Umar. Took a tray. Somebody hungry, they put him in solitary confinement. Police say man disrespected him, put him in solitary confinement. Man walking too slow, solitary confinement. Oh, better still, look. Got a tray, torture you. You talk back, torture. Not walking fast enough, torture.

Herbert, you got the last word on this here. Tell our audience how they can get in touch with you and how they become involved in the campaign, and some of your other initiatives that you might be involved with.

Herbert Robinson:

Got you. So again, ERASESolitary.com is a way to get in touch with the Unlock the Box campaign and you go on there and there’s links to sign up and join the coalition and all that.

As far as me, I have a website, and on my website you could check out a lot of what I’m into, from Growing Pain Solutions to AGG transportation. I’m trying to build out one in the transportation industry and the other is in this advocacy sector.

But I have what I call Building Inclusive Communities, where I try to bring in brothers like Umar and a lot of those that I’ve worked with. And we sharing our voice, we trying to be heard, we trying to fight for what we believe in and what we feel as though the community needs and what we feel as though, when we go out into the community and talk to the community, what they tell us they need. We ain’t just doing this for ourselves and we ain’t just bringing the information that we feel, but nah, this is stuff we bringing out from the community. We out here, we in the community, we do these rallies, as you seen, and we engaging all those around us.

Mansa Musa:

Umar, how can people get in touch with you and some of the things that you’re doing, some of your initiatives you’re taking, as we close out?

Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:

I’m actually, excuse me. Yes, sir. I’m actually on Facebook and I’m on Instagram ,and my Instagram and Facebook is basically tied together. Cinquan815, and Cinquan is spelled with a C. C-I-N-Q-U-A-N 815. You can find me on Facebook or you can find me on Instagram, the same thing.

You can see what I’m into on a daily basis. You can see the type of work that I advocate for. You can see pictures of different conferences and canvassing that we have done, and you can find out how to get involved also.

But thank you for having me, brother. I really appreciate this. This really needed to get out. People need to understand what solitary confinement is, what’s really going on. You know what I mean? And how they can help the movement. And man, anytime you need me, brother, anytime, and I know Herbert feel the same, call on us, and we going to be there because this a fight that we got to keep on fighting as long as we walking this earth.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right. This is a fight that we got to keep on fighting. Y’all rattled the bars.

And we want to encourage our listeners and our viewers to look at this particular episode of Rattling the Bars and ask yourself, just ask yourself when you get your plate, you take your plate to the bathroom, sit on top of the toilet stool, wash your hands, sit on the toilet, and start eating it. Then you wait for somebody to open the door and take it out.

Ask yourself, did you wait for them to come open your door and tell you that you got 15 minutes to take a shower? And then on top of that, they tell you that the laundry is coming back and they’re giving you some underwear that you got pick of the litter, doodoo stains in them, nut balls in them. And then they tell you that at the end of the day when you get up out of there, after doing six years in that environment, oh, you all right. Ain’t nothing wrong with you. And by the way, you wasn’t being tortured.

Y’all rattled the bars, and we thank you for y’all coming on today. And we ask our listeners to understand this and understand this real clearly. It’s only from The Real News and Rattling the Bars, you get this kind of information. All three of us have been in solitary confinement. We’re not talking about this as a theory. We’re talking about this from actual practical. We all lived this experience and we are campaigning against it. And this is why these men are on here today to talk about it.

Thank y’all for joining us, and we ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars, because guess what? We really are the news.

On Aug. 9, the body of a 31-year-old trainee doctor was discovered on the grounds of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkota, West Bengal. Evidence of sexual assault on the victim’s body was quickly reported, setting off a national firestorm across India. For months, women and medical professionals around the country have protested to demand justice for the victim and workplace safety. The Real News reports from Kolkota, West Bengal.

Production: Belal Awad and Leo Erhardt
Videography: Mithun Pramanik and Reek Baruli 
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt

Transcript

Chants: 

From Kolkata to Bengaluru, how many more Khudirams will you kill? 

Narrator: 

In the regional Indian capital of Kolkata, West Bengal, a brutal case of rape and murder. Unclear details around the killing of a trainee doctor, known to her friends and colleagues as Dr. Abhaya, has ignited a mass protest movement – that has spread across the entire nation. 

Chants: 

Your voice, our voices are the justice for RG KAR Hospital. 

Narrator: 

Dr. Dipanwita Sarkar is from Kolkata, and is a member of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front, who are leading protests in the city. 

Dr. Dipanwita Sarkar: 

Right now we, the civilians of Kolkata, are on streets protesting against a heinous crime that has happened in our city. On 9th of August, 2024, a lady doctor who was on her duty in our check, our medical college and hospital, which is also in Kolkata, got raped and murdered in her workplace during her work hours. 

Chants: 

Police, what are you afraid of? What’s your relationship with the culprits?

Narrator: 

Dr. Abhaya was found dead the following morning and her family was initially told by police that it was a suicide. It later became clear that she was, in fact, violently raped and murdered. Other details of what happened, where, and who was involved, remain murky. Dr. Tauhid Momen is also a member of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front. 

Dr. Tauhid Momen: 

We as a whole, as a city, medical fraternity are shook by it. Everything possible was done to cover it up and pass it off as something very trivial. Initially, it was also tried to pass off as a suicide. And the parents of the victim were made to wait for a long time before they could see their daughter. After that, there were alleged accusations of money being offered to them. So basically, what we could see is that this murder and this rape was tried to be covered up by the machinery of the state and the officials of the medical college involved. 

Dr. Tauhid Momen:

So this is why our protest has shook the nation, and that’s why we are protesting. Because we want justice. We don’t want this issue to be swept under the rug. We want this to be brought up, and we want justice for what happened. And we want the real culprits to be, so that they come out because, till now, so initially one arrest was made, one arrest was made. 

Narrator: 

That one initial arrest that was made, was of Sanjay Roy, a volunteer who worked with the police, who was caught on CCTV in the area on the night of the murder. Since then, though, questions have been raised by activists who believe that this was a crime not only premeditated but with more than one person involved — and on an institutional level. 

Dr. Tauhid Momen: 

He was a civic volunteer. He was set to perpetrate this crime and done it. But, apart from that, the principal, the principal of the medical college and hospital was very, very, very deeply involved in this. That’s why now he, along with the officer in charge of the police station where this incident happened, both of them have finally been arrested on, accusations of alleged rape and murder of the beloved sister. 

Narrator: 

As well as the principal, a number of other arrests of hospital administration staff have now taken place, lending credibility to activists’ claims of an institutional conspiracy. 

Dr. Dipanwita Sarkar: 

Because the heinous crime that has happened has, like a backstory. We believe that it has a backstory because, it is not possible that a doctor is getting raped and murdered on her workplace, like, just overnight. It’s not possible. This is a planned murder… It was done, like, with more than 3 to 4 people. We are guessing about it. 

Dr. Dipanwita Sarkar: 

We are saying that they are literally hiding the criminals. And to save them, what they are doing, they’re tampering with the evidence, they are giving false statements to the media, and they are lying about us. That’s why we are just fighting, like, together. 

Interviewer: 

Who do you think is responsible for this crime? 

Dr. Dipanwita Sarkar: 

See, we can’t tell one particular name because we don’t believe this is the work of one person.

Chants: 

RG Kar Hospital Demands Justice! 

The office hub has called, let the Tilottoma receive justice. 

Narrator: 

Since the murder, women and doctors have been leading protests demanding transparency and justice in the death of their colleague. 

Chants: 

The people have risen, the administration is afraid. 

Narrator: 

The mega-city of Kolkata is home to an estimated 15 million people, and the R G Kar hospital was one of the city’s busiest. 

Dr. Tauhid Momen: 

Kolkata throughout its history has been actively involved and has been at the forefront of movements like this movement for justice, movements which have had national significance, movements which have shaped our country. 

Dr. Dipanwita Sarkar: 

If you read the history, you will see that Kolkata had the biggest number of freedom fighters while fighting with the British, the East India Company. So yeah, we have a big history of fighting against injustice. And we are still fighting against injustice. 

Dr. Tauhid Momen: 

It has no comparison in history. The kind of support we’ve had from the masses. So it’s unprecedented. So this is a one-of-a-kind moment. 

Narrator: 

Unprecedented perhaps, but this isn’t the first time, that a sexual assault has stirred huge controversy in India. Back in 2012, nationwide protests broke out after a 23-year-old student was gang-raped on a moving bus in the capital, Delhi, and though reports of sexual assault have significantly increased in recent years, conviction rates remain very low. 

Today, protests have once again spread across the entire nation, with rights activists demanding not only better facilities and protections for medical workers but accountability for rape crimes in a country where, according to the latest figures, an average of one woman is raped every 17 minutes.

Dr. Dipanwita Sarkar: 

The protest started with Kolkata, but eventually all our fraternity joined us across India to be with us. For this protest. They are supporting us. We are really getting support all over from all over India because not exactly like this, but similar kinds of things have happened in almost everywhere in every state in India. And we do not want this to repeat. We do not want one more Abhaya or one more victim to happen. Never, ever. 

Narrator: 

At the time of production, activists from the Junior Doctors’ Front were still protesting nearly 90 days after the murder, whilst simultaneously coordinating partial and full working strikes and a “fast until death” hunger strike which has resulted in at least 6 hospitalizations. 

As well as the removal of senior officials of the State Health Department and increased security for workers, they demand an end to the so-called “threat culture,” which they say is a culture of coordinated and systematic intimidation present in medical and state institutions. 

Dr. Tauhid Momen: 

Third is we want to end the threat culture which has been going on in medical college and hospital throughout the years. We are demanding the resignation of people involved in tampering with evidence and who have obstructed justice. 

Dr. Tauhid Momen: 

Sexual assault or this rape culture has been prevalent, it’s been increasing in numbers, and so many cases we don’t get to know because it’s happening in the periphery, in small villages or maybe people have been threatened not to come up and talk about it. And they’ve been silent. They’ve been literally threatened and blackmailed not to come up with this. 

Dr. Tauhid Momen: 

It’s not only about Kolkata or West Bengal, but it’s all over the country. It’s not just a rape and murder anymore. The main problem is justice is being denied. 

Dr. Dipanwita Sarkar: 

Also, we have to shout for justice and we have to demand justice because they are denying us. They are denying our sister from getting her justice. That’s why we are on the streets right now, and the protests are going on. It has started since 9th of August and it’s still going on, and we are still fighting, and we will not stop until we get justice.

Sacrifice zones are areas where people have been left to live in conditions that threaten life itself, from toxic industrial pollution to the deadly, intensifying effects of man-made climate change. In a more just and less cruel society, the very concept of a “sacrifice zone” wouldn’t exist. And yet, in America, after decades of deregulation and public disinvestment, more working-class communities are becoming sacrifice zones, and more of us are being set up for sacrifice at the altars of corporate greed and government abandonment.

America’s sacrifice zones are no longer extreme outliers; they are, in fact, a harrowing model of the future that lies in store for most of us if the corporate monsters, corporate politicians, and Wall Street vampires destroying our communities aren’t stopped. And residents of different sacrifice zones across the country, fellow workers on the frontlines of all this reckless and preventable destruction, are connecting with each other, learning from one another, and working together to fight back. In this Working People liveshow, recorded on Oct. 19 at Red Emma’s worker cooperative bookstore, cafe, and community events space in Baltimore, we speak with a special panel of residents from four different sacrifice zones in the US about how the situations they’re facing in their own communities and their struggles for justice and accountability are connected.

Panelists include: Hilary Flint, communications director of Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community and a former resident of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, a few miles from the site of the Feb 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine, Ohio; Melanie Meade, a community organizer, educator, and life-long resident of Clairton, Pennsylvania, the site of US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works, which was named the most toxic air polluter in Allegheny County in a 2021 report by PennEnvironment; Elise Keaton Wade, a real estate attorney by trade, longtime environmental justice activist, and a native of Southern West Virginia; Angela “Angie” Shaneyfelt, a resident of Curtis Bay in South Baltimore, who lives just blocks away from an open air coal terminal owned and operated by rail giant CSX Transportation, which has been polluting her community for generations.

Special thanks to Dr. Nicole Fabricant and the South Baltimore Community Land Trust for organizing this live show.

Additional links/info below…

• Coal-Free Curtis Bay Facebook page and Instagram
• South Baltimore Community Land Trust website, Twitter/X page, Facebook page, and Instagram
• Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community website, Facebook page, Instagram, and Twitter/X page
• Hilary’s Instagram
• Nicole Fabricant’s Instagram
• Melanie’s Facebook page
• Angela’s Facebook page
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “South Baltimore residents on the toxic reality of living in a ‘sacrifice zone’“
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “East Palestine residents demand fully-funded healthcare“
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “One year later, East Palestine residents want Norfolk-Southern held accountable”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “‘Towns are gone’: In Helene-devastated Asheville, NC, volunteers battle misinformation and ‘apocalyptic’ wreckage”
• Maximillian Alvarez, In These Times / The Real News Network, “Scenes from a sacrifice zone: South Baltimore residents fight back against industrial pollution“
• Maximillian Alvarez & Molly Crabapple, In These Times, “Wasteland warriors”
• Laura Gottesdiener, The Nation, “You can wipe out coal, but you can’t bring the mountains back”
• Nicole Fabricant, University of California Press, Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore
• Nicole Fabricant, The Real News Network, “Opinion | CSX explosion in Curtis Bay should alarm Baltimore City and accelerate real change”
• Adam Willis, The Baltimore Banner, “A state-backed report found coal dust across Curtis Bay. CSX isn’t convinced“
• Melanie Meade, PublicSource, “Family history, loss and hopes for a bright future fuel my fight for clean air in Clairton”
• Daniel Shailer, PublicSource, “The Mon Valley holds its breath as the latest U.S. Steel settlement promises a fresh approach”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…
Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Max Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Hilary Flint:

Hi everyone. My name is Hilary Flint. My pronouns are she her. I am from Enon Valley, Pennsylvania that is a town of less than 300 people that borders East Palestinian, Ohio. I have a background of chronic health issues and I’m a young adult cancer survivor, and I’d always been very conscious of the environment and very conscious of health issues, but it wasn’t until the East Palestine trained derailment and chemical disaster did I start organizing full-time in this work. So I’m director of Communications and community Engagement at Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community. And we really work around fracking and the Shell Plastics plant in Beaver County and also around the East Palestine trained real as well. And then I also work with Clean Air Action Fund. It’s a C four. And the reason I do that is so I can put on a different hat and do things like lobby and help write bills that would prevent these types of things from happening.

And then I also just started working for Center for Oil and Gas organizing around the issue of LNG, which is kind of the next big thing that we need to be working on. But a lot of the work I do is through a lens of disability justice, solidarity building and trying to change the way nonprofits work. So getting more mutual aid, getting money directly to grassroots instead of big green except food and water watch, they can have all the money. So yeah, just figuring out a different way to do the work because I’ve seen that the system currently just does not work.

Melanie Meade:

Hi everyone. My name is Melanie Meade. I’m from Clairton, PA, and I came into this work in 2013 when I was burying my father, when six months later I buried my mother. And from the span of 2011 to 2020, I buried all of my immediate family. I live next to one of the largest plants, USX coing plants in Clairton pa, and I’m so thankful to have sisters like Hilary and everyone on the panel to stand in solidarity with.

Elise Keaton Wade:

Hello, my name is Elise Keaton Wade. I am from Southern West Virginia. I am a real estate attorney by trade, but I got started in my activism 25 years ago on Payford Mountain with Larry Gibson, looking at mountains being blown up for tiny seams of coal through the process of mountaintop removal, strip mining. And that is how I came to my environmentalism. It’s how I became a lawyer trying to find out why it was legal to blow the tops off mountains to get coal. Turns out it’s legal because we made a law allowing it. So it’s a policy issue, right? So I lived in Colorado for a little while. I was licensed to practice out there, and I came back to West Virginia in 2011, reconnected with Larry Gibson in 2012. He passed away shortly thereafter, but I was involved with the organization where I met Dr. Fabricant. And so she and I, 13 years ago sat on Payford Mountain and dreamed of a regional coordination of efforts. And here we are today with multiple states in this room, and we’ve spent two days together talking about how we’re all interconnected. So I’m honored and pleased, and I’m so grateful for each of you being here.

Angela Shaneyfelt:

And I’m Angela Shaneyfelt and I am a community member of Curtis Bay here in Baltimore. And I got started in this in December 30th, 2021 when the CSX Coal terminal had their explosion. And the reason why I am here is just when you look into your child’s eyes and they’re mentally checked out and you don’t know why. So that’s why I am here.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, welcome everyone to this special live show of working people, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today, brought to you in partnership within in these Times Magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and I cannot overstate how much of an honor it is to be sitting here with all of you here in this room here at this table. As those of you listening just heard, we have a really special installment of our ongoing series sacrificed where we have been talking with working class folks, living, working and fighting for justice in different, so-called Sacrifice Zones around the US and even beyond. And we are sitting here in the great red Emma’s cooperative bookstore and cafe and organizing space here in Baltimore. Shout out to Red Emmas, thank you for hosting us.

And I also wanted to shout out and thank the great Dr. Nicole Fabrican for bringing us altogether, everyone at the South Baltimore Community Land Trust for bringing us together. And thank you for all the incredible work that y’all do, and thank you all for being here. And yeah, as listeners of this show, no, I didn’t expect to be doing this kind of work. I’ve been doing this show for years, mainly talking to working people about their lives, jobs, dreams and struggles, but within the context of their workaday lives and labor shop floor struggles. And that’s why I was interviewing railroad workers a few years ago, nonstop, all of whom were telling me that there was a crisis on the freight rail system. I talked to engineers, I talked to dispatchers, I talked to the folks who maintain the track, right? And all of them were saying some version of the same thing, which is that corporate greed has destroyed this vital element of our supply chain, and it is putting all of us workers, residents, and our planet at Hazard, and they were screaming for someone to listen to them, and they were demanding of those companies and of their government and of the public that we support them.

And instead, as we all know, a little over two years ago, Joe Biden and both parties in Congress worked together to block railroad workers from going on strike, forced a contract down their throats and basically told them to shut up and go away. Two months later, east Palestine happened, a Norfolk southern bomb train derailed in Hilary’s backyard, and then three days later, the Norfolk Southern pressured local authorities to make the disastrous and unnecessary decision to vent and burn five cars worth of toxic vinyl chloride, spewing a massive black death plume into the air that we all remember seeing Hilary and her neighbors lived it, and they are still living in it. I mean, I think one thing that we want to emphasize here and that’s going to come out in the stories of our incredible panelists is that maybe you heard about the issues that they’re dealing with in the past, and then it faded from the headlines.

That does not mean the issue has gone away. In fact, quite the opposite is true in most cases. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been wins and struggle, and we want to make space to talk about that as well. But I really want to emphasize first and foremost that when communities are sacrificed for the sake of corporate profits or government negligence or what have you, I mean, these are people’s lives. These are communities that are destroyed and then forgotten. And as a journalist investigating and talking to folks living in these areas, what I’m realizing is we’re going to run out of places to forget. And so it breaks my heart going from East Palestine to South Baltimore to communities around the country talking to folks who feel so forgotten yet who are dealing so many of the same problems caused by the same villains. And so really, we’re here to talk about what we as fellow workers, as neighbors can do to band together to put a stop to this, to get justice and to build a world in which this kind of thing is not only unthinkable, but it sure as hell isn’t as normalized as it is today.

And so with all that upfront, I want to shut up and really just have you all listen more to the incredible women I’m sitting next to. I want us in the first half of this to just sort of talk a bit more for listeners and folks here about your story, about where you come from, about the kind of issues that you all are dealing with in your own respective communities. Because each has its own specificities. Every community is different. And then in the second half, I want us to talk about the significance of all of us being here together, of what y’all have seen in Baltimore, what discussions you’re getting into and what we can do to fight these corporate villains, wall Street monsters and corporate politicians who are destroying the planet upon which we all depend. So with all that upfront, Angie, I wanted to turn it back over to you since you are home based here in Baltimore. Tell us a bit more about yourself and about the struggle going on in Curtis Bay for folks who maybe haven’t heard about it yet.

Angela Shaneyfelt:

I grew up not in Curtis Bay or Brooklyn, I grew up just a little bit south of there in Anne Arundel County in Pasadena, a suburb of Baltimore City. And honestly, when I was younger, I said I would never live in the city, ever. And here I am 16 years later in the city that I said I would never live in. When I first moved to Curtis Bay, I never even thought about the coal other than it’s getting in my house. And I opened my windows the first year I lived there. And then after that first year, I was like, what is this black dust in my house and where is it coming from? And so we figured out that it was from the coal pile that’s two blocks, three blocks, city blocks down from where I live, just wafting into my house any way it could get in.

And so that’s when I just didn’t for 15 now years that I’ve not opened my windows at all. And then never, still didn’t pay attention to it honestly. And then December 30th happened, 2021, and literally I felt the sonic didn’t know what it was, did the mental checks looking around, and my kids were in the living room with me. My husband was on his way to Dunking Donuts. I had Covid, my daughter had covid, so we couldn’t go outside. He was going for coffee and we felt the pressure from the boom, didn’t hear anything yet. And I’m just looking around, what is it? My kids are looking at me for direction they didn’t know. And then we heard it and it shook our house. There’s neighbors that had windows blown out from this explosion. And then I looked at my daughter and she, one doesn’t, even before this, never really dealt well with loud noises or balloons.

And I’m looking at her and she literally wasn’t there. And my kids were around seven or eight at the time, so I had to tap on her chin three times to get her to come back to normal. And in that couple minutes time, I had to do the checks. The electricity’s still on. My windows are intact, and I live in Baltimore, so there’s nobody shooting outside my house. So we’re okay, but I don’t know what happened. And so then after the explosion, initial explosion happened, I go outside what we do here in Baltimore, go outside and talk to neighbors.

We didn’t get any alerts at all from any government agency, but word on the street what we go by a lot of times in South Baltimore because kind of the forgotten part of Baltimore City word on the street was there’s no threat to the community. But if you go outside and we found this out hours later from news and whatever, if you go outside, wear a mask, now it’s 2021 and we’re in the middle of a pandemic, of course we’re going to wear a mask, but why are you telling me to wear a mask if I go outside if there’s no threat to the community, like one plus one equals two in my world and that doesn’t add up. So with C, I lost my sense of smell and taste, and I had a mask on anyway, I was coming back inside because it was don’t go outside.

I had the worst suer and rotten egg smell that I’ve ever smelled in my life without a sense of smell and a mask on. So I don’t know, I can only imagine what a normal person at that point would’ve been smelling in our neighborhood. And so then my husband comes back and I literally was shuffling him inside because go inside, don’t be outside. And he had no clue. He was driving up the hill when the initial blast happened to the point where he felt like the car tires were lifting up off the ground and he stopped when he made the turn off of the street right next to ours and to check the tires to make sure there was still air in the tires. And that’s just one explosion. There’s been a history of explosions from CSX and they initially didn’t know it wasn’t us.

We’ve heard different things like it’s not our coal that is in our neighborhood, that is in your neighborhood. It comes from across the water in Ock, but your coal doesn’t leave the terminal. We’re breathing in somebody else’s coal. They tried to say it wasn’t coal. Well, what is it? Black dust. And now the community with the help of some scientists from John Hopkins have done the research, which we shouldn’t have to do. Honestly, we shouldn’t have to do that. The MDE and EPA should be doing their job. That’s their job, not our job to protect us as a community and as a city.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And just to clarify for folks listening, y’all heard the episodes that we’ve done in the past with Angie and her neighbors in South Baltimore, and what we’re talking about here is the massive open air like coal terminal that is owned and operated by CSX rail, multi-billion dollar rail company that these uncovered coal cars have been coming in and out of that terminal for decades over a century. So we’re talking about the explosion that happened at the cult pier that Angie was referring to, but as you’ll hear later on in the conversation, and as y’all remember from our past episodes based on South Baltimore, this is sadly only one of many polluters poisoning Angie and her community.

Elise Keaton Wade:

So my name is Elise Keaton again, Elise Keaton Wade. It’s tough when you get married later in life, confuses things and complicates things. I said in my introduction that I got started with my environmental activism in college because I had to go away to college to learn about the environmental degradation happening in my backyard. And imagine my surprise at 19 years old when I’m sitting in an Appalachian studies course in Virginia Tech and I hear the words mountaintop removal for the very first time in my life, and I’m like, what are we talking about? And that visceral reaction to something so wrong, and that journey over the last 25 years has landed me in places where really tragic things are happening. For example, I graduated law school the year that Katrina happened. I was in the evacuation from Houston, from Rita where more people died in the evacuation from Rita than died in Katrina.

And that’s a little known fact, right? The entire city of Houston tried to leave within 36 hours and we sat for 28 hours going nowhere. But my policy mind was always at work in those instances, what is the policy that got us here? What is happening? Why am I staring at a bridge? And I was naive. I don’t know who said it earlier about being a naive high school student, but I thought it was a great statement that I’m a student. Of course I’m naive. I don’t know what’s going on right in my naivete, I thought this hurricane was going to be something that’s shone the light on all of these policy issues. This hurricane was going to show that we weren’t able to evacuate in a big way very quickly from some mass event. What if it wasn’t a hurricane? What if it wasn’t explosion or a chemical plant or some trained derailment with deadly chemicals going into the air?

We are ill-equipped across the board to deal with those types of things. That was in 2005, right? What the hell have we been doing? What have we been doing? Where is our plan? Right? So now, okay, it’s 2014. No, it’s not today. You’re glad I drank the espresso, I’m telling you. So it’s 2024 and in West Virginia right now what we’re dealing with is poisoned water in Indian Creek in Wyoming County because the coal companies are going back into the coal mines for the methane, the coal bed methane that’s down there. And one way they’re trying to figure out how to get it out of there is to flush it out with water.

Well, they’ve found out pretty quickly, that’s a terrible idea, but they continued to do it and continued to pollute. It’s been about a year and a half, maybe close to two years that this community has been aware of this, and they’re just now acknowledging that they have an issue. And yesterday they withdrew their permits to continue this practice. It was because hashtag Appalachian living on TikTok, my girlfriend Lindsay Riser who’s out there beating the drum every day, calling out the hypocrisy, telling people, why are you not talking about the industry that’s poisoning us? At the same time, we have a solid candidate coming out of that district. This is my Senate district, my state Senate District nine. She is a 35 year member of Teachers union. She started teaching right out of high school. She is from our community. She’s been a teacher for decades. She is pro West Virginia. She got involved in politics because one of her children is transgender, and she had to sit in our legislature and listen to them abuse transgender individuals with their legislation. It triggered her into action. The UMWA United Mine Workers Association, the union that we wear our bandanas to remember and to support supported her candidacy in the primary. They’re supporting her Republican opponent in the general.

Now out of respect for her, I’m going to wait until after the election to address this issue, but this issue will be addressed because of East Palestine. East Palestine is the reason that I am involved again in these issues. When Nikki brought me to East Palestine and I heard what really happened and the fact that very few news outlets were actually telling us the real news about what was happening up there, I realize it’s never going to stop. They are never going to stop doing this to us. The only people who have ever shown up for our communities are the people within our communities. And unless we’re there making other people show up, they don’t come. They’re not trying to help us and find out what’s going on. It is up to us every single time I’ve been around long enough to know Katrina, Rita, name your disaster, right?

It’s not changing and it’s unacceptable. It is disastrous and unnecessary to quote our host. And so when you find yourself in these systems and these situations where you are somewhat powerless as an individual, right? I can stand up and scream all night long and it’s not going to get anything done, but I can work in regional coordination and support the people who are in these different areas because those trains roll through my community. The coal in your bay came from my mountains in West Virginia that we have stood on as activists. They’re blowing mountains apart. Those mountains filter clean water. That’s a very shortsighted plan, don’t you think? So everything that happens in Appalachia, in West Virginia, in East Palestine, in Baltimore, this is all coordinated together and us talking to each other and having in these gatherings and committing to supporting each other regionally is their biggest fear because we’re recognizing our power and we’re using it. So I don’t know, that’s exactly the question you asked, but it felt good while I was saying it, so I’m going to stick with it. All right. Alright, with

Maximillian Alvarez:

Nah, sister, preach. Everything you guys say is incredible and important. I only picked the mic back up just to note and make a very grim footnote for listeners, because we just published another installment of this series where I spoke to two folks on the ground in Asheville, North Carolina providing mutual aid and trying to repair their destroyed community, their destroyed region, and something that Byron Ballard, who’s there working at a church and doing great work, said that really stuck with me. If you’re trying to see the connections here, not only through manmade climate change and all the ways that that is making these massive hurricanes bigger, more destructive and going and destroying parts of Western North Carolina for Pete’s sake, but what she said, because we’ve seen those pictures of towns that have been wiped off the map, mudslides that have taken towns off the map that have killed families. She said mountaintop removal made those mudslides a lot worse. So just really wanted to drive that home. If you think that these are distinct issues that aren’t going to come back and combine in monstrous ways they already are. Melanie, please hop in.

Melanie Meade:

Thank you Max. In Clariton. In 2005, I was successfully working at American University in Bowie State. I was part-time adjunct professor in Spanish. I was so proud to have my job. I went home to a Clairton reunion we have during Labor Day and I woke up the next morning in the hospital being diagnosed with what is called nocturnal epilepsy. That emergency doctor did not tell me what it came from and no other doctor could find it whenever they did scans of my brain. But then in 2013, when I came home to bury my father, I met a gentleman named Dave Smith and he was working for Clean Air Council and he had taught me about the campaign leaders of 10 and he said, Melanie, get 10 friends and tell them to each get one friend and let’s start talking about our shared issues. In 2018, fires burned the size of three football fields for 17 days before the mayor and Health Department informed us little black boys because they’re typically outside and want to be outside and play outside. We’re five times more affected according to a doctor’s report. Then we came to find out months later that everyone’s health was harmed who live within 10 miles of the USX Claritin K works.

And we didn’t get the right help, nor did we know what kind of help we needed. So there were people who came in to say they were helping, but we never really found out the truth. And it disturbed me to find out that those fires burned again in 2019 total of over 100 days, and it wasn’t on the news anymore. Hilary and I are very close, so we’re not in competition, but I felt like USX was in control of the media. There was a stop and desist with USXK works to talk about the trains, and those trains come through clariton as well. I can hear them all through the night and day.

That’s where I realized we have to remain connected. We have to tell our stories, we have to have real news. We have to have real journalists that report the truth according to what we have experienced because it can’t be done any other way. And I’m just really encouraged to have you all to look, to call on and come together like this because this is helpful and it’s healing to know that our work is meaningful and it will result in something. So I just continue to thank you for real news. I continue to thank Curtis Bay for sharing your stories. I continue to thank Hilary. I continue to thank Elise, Dr. Fabricant, all of you who are here because you are the wind beneath my wings, not having my parents or siblings. It can be a lonely place, but you fill those voids for me and I’m so very grateful for you all and I’m so very grateful that we can say let’s blow stuff up.

Hilary Flint:

I just want to start off by something I feel like is not spoken about enough is that East Palestine did get a lot of media coverage, especially in the beginning, right? We were on all the news stations and it was this big plume, but I genuinely think it’s not because USX is not allowing media to do things. I think it’s because we’re a predominantly white community, and I’m going to be super frank about that. Myself and two other community members were able to meet President Biden within a year of the trained derailment. And I have to see black leaders in Louisiana and in Texas who have been doing this fight for 40 plus years, 50 years, and they do not get proximity to the White House. They get nowhere near it. So I just want to start with that because I think we talk about East Palestine a lot and it’s like, yeah, we got the media coverage because it was a white community and it was not only that, it’s a very conservative area.

So it was a flashier news story than, oh, we’ve been poisoning people for 40 years. It was different. And that’s what was different about it is that we were a white, small rural community. And I try to do the work that now we can bring people with us because one thing about your whiteness is I can’t get rid of it, but what I can do is utilize it to then make sure that now the White House is contacting other communities because it’s disgusting to me that you feel this guilt that day that myself and other community members met with President Biden, I had the most extreme guilt because it was like we did this in a year and through that year I was connecting with communities all over the United States that went through environmental disasters. And I had to think like, oh, you expect, oh wow, that’s so cool.

You did that in one year. And so part of it, you do have that little bit of pride and you’re like, yeah, that’s awesome. And then you’re like, but why could I do that? Watching these other women, and by the way, it’s usually women, it’s usually female activists. I’m watching them and I heard Melanie speak one day and I was like, that is a fierce woman. And if Melanie Mead isn’t getting the help that she needs, then there is something wrong with the system. And that’s what this solidarity building is. It’s so important. But I did want to talk about the day of the derailment and how people think it is the derailment. That’s the problem. I refer to this as the East Palestinian trained derailment and chemical disaster because the derailment is just a piece of the puzzle. And yes, there was all these chemicals and there was fires, but it really wasn’t until a couple of days later when they burned the vinyl chloride that my community was affected.

So we know this as the East Palestine trained around it, but it’s directly on the border where this happened. Pennsylvania is right there, and other communities outside of East Palestine were affected and will be affected down the line, but it would not be as bad as it will be that vinyl chloride changed the game. So that’s the mushroom cloud that everyone saw. And I remember that day very distinctly because I was convinced I was glued to the news thinking they’re going to evacuate us. Of course they are. East Palestine at that point had been under evacuation. It was a one by two mile radius, but where I lived, you could see the smoke. So I’m thinking they’re going to have to evacuate us. And so then I’m watching the TV and I see, oh, my little brother’s school, they’re sending the kids home and our school is way further away from East Palestine than our physical home.

So I’m thinking, oh, okay, they’re sending the kids home so then we can evacuate as families. He gets home and we’re waiting and we’re waiting and we’re seeing, I’m watching the press conference on the news. They’re saying, alright, at three 30 we’re going to blow this up. And the call that we were looking for never came. We were never going to be evacuated. It was just a one by two mile radius. Now we’re over a year out and there is proof that this plume traveled to 16 different states. So imagine a one by two mile radius. Us, my family chose to self evacuate. We did it very last minute. I had my go-bag prepped. My Italian grandma was like, I’m not leaving my house. So last minute we got Mimi. We got Mimi in the car. She was the last one. But as we were driving away and we had no idea where we were going by the way, it was just like, you just have to get away.

And I look in the rear view mirror and that’s when they blew it up. So it felt like I was a storm chaser running away from a tornado or something. That’s what it felt like. And you see it. And at that moment, my dog just started barking like crazy, just barking like crazy. And I think they have a more sensitive smell and things like that. And we just kept driving and I’m like, where are we going by the way? So I don’t know. I had family in another town. So we went and I was sat in my cousin’s driveway for hours. She wasn’t home. And then I was like, well, I guess we’re going to have to get a hotel. Because once we saw what it looked like, some of my neighbors that had stayed behind at the farm next door to me and took pictures, I was shocked.

People were alive. It was black. The whole area was just black smoke. I couldn’t imagine that was safe to go home to. So we did end up getting a hotel. It was the last hotel book. We are small communities. Guess what? We don’t have a lot of hotel rooms available and the National Guard there. And we were checking in kind of at the same time. And so I had asked this man in full uniform, I said, we weren’t supposed to be evacuated, but we did anyway. What would you have done in that situation? And he said, ma’am, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t even be here right now. So this is someone in full uniform who came to respond to the crisis, who understood how dangerous it was. And at that point we were like 15 miles away and he didn’t even want to be there.

And the next day they say everything’s fine, everyone can go home. And I remember I had a business trip that I had to go back, pack my bag, and then go to the airport. The minute we opened the door of our home, I knew everything had changed. It was a smell that I had never sm smelled before. I couldn’t even find the correct words to describe it except sweet bleach. It was a chemical smell, but it also smelled sugary. And within a few minutes we had health symptoms. I mean, it did not take long. So I have some preexisting health conditions. I have chronic illness, and one of the diseases that I have is called rainy odds. And in rayons it causes blood vessel constriction. So you turn purple. Now, I’ve always had rayons since I was little. My hands would turn purple, but I’d never had it go beyond that.

And all of a sudden I look down, my feet are purple, everything is turning purple. And it wasn’t until later I find out that their vinyl chloride is one of the known triggers of that particular disease. And when we’re told it’s safe to go home, my question is, who is it safe for? It’s not safe for everyone. It’s not safe for people with asthma. It’s not safe with for people with preexisting conditions, but that is what we operate off of. It’s a blanket statement of, oh, it’s safe. That’s not true. It wasn’t safe for me. And then I had to get on a plane and leave my family and say, oh, I had to go to work. And so I was on this work trip and just, I smelled, there was a smell that lingered. So I get off the plane, I was flying to California and my boss and I are meeting at the airport and I go to hug him and he goes, Ooh, why do you smell like that?

It came with me to California. And that smell traveled with me for a full year. I had to leave all my clothes behind. I had to leave mattresses. You couldn’t take anything that was a soft surface because this chemical smell lived in it. And no matter how many times you washed it, it didn’t matter. And it got to the point where it became embarrassing because you had a smell. My partner also has chronic illness, and the smell would make him sick just from me being in his home. And it got to the point where when I would go over, I would have to get completely naked at the door, get in a shower, shut my clothes in a basement. I would have to shower, I would’ve to put on different clothes that I had to buy to keep there. And it was so I didn’t feel like a human.

And I remember at one point I was crying. I was so upset, I was so tired. And I was like, I can’t believe I have to go through this whole ritual, this decontamination ritual. And I just remember him saying, it’s not you, honey, it’s the chemicals. I’m like, I don’t know that. That makes me feel that much better, right? Yeah. He would get nosebleeds just from being around my suitcase. And so about six months in, I ended up, I worked two jobs until I could afford to move. Because when they tell you to just move, it actually doesn’t work like that, especially if you were exposed to a chemical. So now all of your belongings, you can’t take them with you. And so when I did move, I finally got a place, I was on an air mattress. Me and my grandma were sharing an air mattress on the ground.

There was no furniture. I just got a couch. And I’ve been there for over a year at this point, because you are rebuilding, you were starting over again. And so I’ve had to work from the crack of dawn until it’s dark out. And that’s what I had to do to move. And that’s a privilege, right? Not everyone even has that privilege. That’s pretty shocking. I can do that as a disabled person. But I look at people with families. My family is a small, well, small business owner, but we own a lot of acreage. And my parents want to move. But when you have 10,000 acres and you have a business based on tourism, and guess what? You can’t sell it. So where are you going to go? And you can’t pull equity out of your house. So they’re stuck. I could just up and move.

I didn’t have the business. I didn’t have this and that. So now my grandma and I, we lived in the home. My great-grandmother built on the land that my family originally lived on. My parents built a house in the backyard. I had moved back home because I had cancer. And I was a young adult and I couldn’t financially recover unless I did that. My plan was I live back with my grandma and then I build a house in the backyard. Cause we have 40 acres, we have our own little commune. That can’t happen now. There’s no way we used to lease farm land. And how can we ethically do that? How can we ethically, if you have farmers who want to farm that land, is that ethical? Is it ethical to sell your home? So right now, we just have our home sitting there because we don’t feel comfortable selling it.

And I had someone who was a lawyer be like, oh, actually you can, it’s okay. And I said, I’m not actually asking about the law here. I’m talking about ethics. Can I sell this home so that some little kid someday gets angiosarcoma, which is the cancer that vinyl chloride is tied to? So in the beginning, I was kind of the person behind the scenes organizing, I don’t really like to do stuff like this. I’m the person who likes to prep people for these things. And about six months in, I realized I was going to have to do this and step up. And so we had a grassroots group that we started just like a volunteer. We weren’t a nonprofit, we weren’t anything. And people always said like, oh, why didn’t you become a nonprofit right away? And I said, oh, because we didn’t want the rules.

So we did have some civil disobedience in the beginning. That’s how I met Robin and David. They went to the Ohio State Capitol with us. And we didn’t storm the capitol, but we had people go sit in a session and stand up and say, remember he is Palestine. My kid’s nose is bleeding. And let me tell you, once you go back to your community after you do something like that, things don’t go well. Small, rural conservative communities aren’t really into that kind of thing. But it was effective. And the reason we went when we did was one thing we thought that could help us was a major disaster declaration because we didn’t even get a state of emergency. It opened up this problem that because there was a company who was the reason this happened, the liability was with that company and it wasn’t a natural disaster.

So there was just so many things behind the scenes that they couldn’t figure out how to classify the disaster essentially to give us the government services we needed. But we thought a major disaster declaration would help. In the beginning had started a petition. We had over 20,000 signatures. And then it was the next day it was, if the governor didn’t ask President Biden for that, then you could never get it. And so we went because we knew we had to put pressure on Ohio’s governor to win Pennsylvania’s governor. I found out couldn’t even call that disaster declaration because it physically didn’t happen. So where an accident happens is really important apparently. So we went and we put the pressure on, and guess what? The next day DeWine did ask for the disaster declaration. So it worked to the whole community hated us after that. And I mean, still to this day, Facebook groups terrify me like what they’re saying about us, but it’s what we had to do.

And that’s what I’ve realized. Some of these decisions I have to make in this work is like, I have to do this and I’m not going to be liked after, and I have to do this in a way that I can stay in the work too. So maybe sometimes that means not organizing as close to home. I learned that federal policy actually can help us a lot more than talking to my representatives when they tell you, oh, talk to your representatives, talk to your counsel. That is true in some cases, but in this case, that wasn’t true. So a lot of my work has been about going to the very top and figuring out what we can get from the government. And unfortunately, it doesn’t happen quick. It does not happen quick. And so by the time we are going to get the things we’re fighting for, people are going to be sick.

There’s already people sick. There’s people with rare forms of breast cancer. There’s young girls getting their period super early. There’s respiratory issues. I was hospitalized multiple times. My sibling was life-flighted multiple times. My three-year-old sister has obstructive sleep apnea, which only happened after the derailment. So the system was horrible. And that’s kind of what I’m trying to change. And we found out when we did get to meet at the White House, something I had asked later, I said to them, what got us here? What was the difference maker? And they actually said, we noticed you were working with other communities and other industries. And they talked about the fact that we were working with labor, we were working with unions, and then they found out that we’ve been working with the Gulf South and we were working in West Virginia. And that scared them. It should.

And that got us in the door. And that’s why I think what we’re doing here is more important than anything we could do because this is what scares them. People coming together and realizing it’s not left versus right. It’s not Republican versus liberal. It is us versus them. And we are the people. We’re the everyday people. It’s us versus the billionaires in the systems and that’s scaring them. So we have to keep doing this in other communities because this is what gets the attention. Sometimes it’s not the rallies or the op-eds, sometimes it’s them simply understanding your network. So anytime I go to another community, I was in Louisiana at a public meeting and someone from industry said, oh, who are you and why are you here? And I said, oh, we all work together. And they were like, oh no. So letting industry know like, oh yeah, I know Elise in West Virginia. I know Nikki in Baltimore, and that’s really scary to them.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, let’s talk about that. Let’s go back around the table before we open it up to q and a. And I want to acknowledge that as y’all had laid out, and as Hilary, you were talking through some of the gains that you made by not going away. And I know that that has happened in your respective communities. Y’all are true heroes, love warriors for justice because you refuse to go away. And in that way, you were also an inspiration to all of us. So I want to acknowledge the fact that here in South Baltimore, y’all got together high school students, folks from Johns Hopkins doing community science to provide the proof that CSX without which CSX could keep on saying, no, that black shit in your home is not us, must be something else. So that’s a victory. But yet they’re still denying culpability. Their operational permits still up for renewal in coal country, right?

It’s like, oh, well, we stopped mining coal, now we’re fracking the shit out of everything and still poisoning the water that way. So I say this by way of asking if in our final turnaround the table, if y’all could say a little bit about what the communities have been doing and achieving through struggle, but also what this week has shown us in regards to as valiant and essential as those local efforts are to take on these international corporations. We need solidarity that’s operating at the level that they are and what we can do working together, building on what Hilary kind of got us started on. So yeah, could you say a little bit about what y’all and your communities have achieved and have been working towards, but also where you’re seeing that that’s not enough and that we need to band together to take this fight to the higher level higher.

Elise Keaton Wade:

So I want to start this. Can you hear me okay? I want to start this because their fights are more current in time than mine, and I want to kind of build on what Hilary said and then hand it to them to talk about their current struggles. But now you understand why Palestine at Palestine set me back on fire right now. You understand that I got there and realized that everything I’d seen wasn’t true. They were misleading the rest of the world about what happened there. And it wasn’t until I sat in the room and heard these people talk about why the people with no marks on their skin or their hair falling out were the ones who got to go into the White House, how they divided the community. And I stood next to my friend Dustin White who is here tonight with me.

He was at that meeting and the entire time they were talking about how that community and how the officials responded in that disaster. We were looking at each other across the room. That’s exactly what they did in 2014 at the Elk River Chemical disaster in West Virginia. The leak spill, whatever, nearly verbatim responses. And then the split, you have a coalition of people and we cobbled ourselves together. And now they’re going to pick and choose who they bring into the room so that when you leave that room, there’s division within your community. They did exactly the same thing to us. And I sat there with my jaw on the floor and they’re going to keep doing it to every community. There’s their standard playbook. So yes, what scares them is that we talk to each other now that we stand in solidarity with each other, that I go and raise hell with the union in West Virginia for our railroad brothers and sisters in East Palestine who stood for two months and screamed about the safety issues on this railroad, screamed to the people in this country about what was happening and what was going to happen if they didn’t shut it down and address it.

And we told ’em to sit down and shut up because our economy needed those trains to roll. Now, if you’ve been with me for the past couple of days, I’ve been on a bit of a diatribe about the failed economic theory of capitalism. Happy to go into that more on another podcast Max. But this is a great example.

This is a great example of why it doesn’t work, because if it worked in theory, they would’ve taken as long as they needed to clean up that mess because it would’ve been what was safe and best for the community and for making sure that the altruistic idea of what happened happened. That’s not what happened in West Virginia. If they cared about the community and the long-term effects, they would’ve addressed the issues that caused that chemical spill, which are mountaintop removal and contamination of local water sources from coal mining and chemical production. If they care, they don’t care. The only people who have ever shown up for us are us. The only people who have ever shown up for us are us. And then we have to support each other. Don’t let them divide us. Don’t let them go back and forth. So I want to step back and just say that the fact that it has become more egregious, they are pushing that boundary, right?

They are pushing it constantly and they will continue. Every community in this country has a train rail through it. This could be Hinton, this could be any town that has a railway through it. And what are they going to do? They’re going to destroy your lives with their contamination and they’re going to point fingers at each other and they’re going to point fingers at you and tell you it’s really not as bad as you say it is, because how do you know it wasn’t the nail polish you were wearing that caused the toxicity in your body?

Yeah, that’s what they told me. Do you wear nail polish? Do you color your hair? Well, how do you know you didn’t poison yourself? Do you smoke cigarettes? Do you drink soda West Virginia? Maybe you’re the problem. I want to say one thing about the myth of the inbred hillbilly, because this is one of my favorite things to talk about in broad groups, and I think it goes back a long time in our history, and I know everybody’s heard about the inbred hillbilly. If you haven’t heard about the inbred hillbilly, raise your hand. This is so diffused throughout our culture, right? Well, I went into the world carrying the identity of the hillbilly that had to do better. I had to prove that we’re not all inbred, that some of us aren’t. So I let them tell me who I was. I accepted their identity of who they told me I, I carried it with me into the world espousing it.

I came back to West Virginia because I love my state. I wanted to come back and do the good things that I’d learned out there that nobody taught me here, come back here and do those good works. And when I got back here with a little bit of perspective and context and some world experience, I realize that may be the biggest hoax of the 20th century. Because what happens when you live next to unregulated pollutants? You have high instances of birth defects, cancers deadly diseases. You die young, you die sick. You have offspring that are compromised and sick and young. And 150 years ago, all of these toxins were going unchecked into the community. And what better way to marginalize that community than they say, well, don’t look at that ugliness. They inbred and they changed the narrative and they framed a region for decades. The myth of the inbred hillbilly is still carried forward.

So it is on purpose. It is deliberate. If they can tell you who you are and what you’ve done to f your life up, then they’re not responsible. So don’t let them gaslight you. Stand firm and speak your truth to power because you’re right at the end of the day. You’re right. And what did Larry Gibson teach us? Teach us while we stood on Payford Mountain? If you’re telling the truth, what are you afraid of? Speak your truth to power and stand firm. And you’ve got brothers and sisters in West Virginia standing with you and you’ve got brothers and sisters in Pennsylvania standing with you. You’ve got brothers and sisters in Curtis Bay standing with you. So thank you for standing up East Palestine, we are with you in this. Thank you.

Angela Shaneyfelt:

Thank all of you. And I’m so, so glad that we’re sitting all here in this room together tonight because Curtis Bay, we’re at a point right now. We’re pushing. We’re getting the attention that East Palestine got. And I mean, I said it two years ago at a rally. Let’s take this to Annapolis and to dc. We’re so close to DC that we can’t stop fighting the fight. And it’s not for us. It’s for my kids who are in middle school right now. And my daughter joined us today for as long as she could hang, and she got up on the steps and she said her, she was awesome. And we have the higher cancer rates in Curtis Bay, like asthma rates. I never had asthma growing up. And I found out I had asthma in 2020 in the hospital for surgery. And they’re like, this is your breathing treatment. And I’m like, breathing treatment for what? Nobody ever told me I had asthma.

And we have been fighting. We’ve been going to city council. And at one point they didn’t listen, but then we kept fighting and we kept calling the news. And Max, thank you for starting the whole podcast thing and just getting the word out. I’ve gone through times. I mean, the fight is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. And I’ve had my own thoughts. What am I doing this for? I doing it. And I just, I’m so grateful right now that I’m sitting in this room with you guys because we’ve gotten to a point where what is our next step? And I’ve even said it along the way. There’s this lull of large numbers, and I see it happening right now. I didn’t know any of you guys before today. So I knew Nikki for a few years and I never would’ve ever imagined before 2021 that I would ever be sitting in circles that I’m sitting in now. And now I’m 16 years ago, I wanted to be out of Curtis Bay as fast as possible no matter what. And then kids happen. And Curtis Bay is where I can afford to live in all honesty. And in two years, I’m like ready to, the plan is to buy a house. Is it going to be in Curtis Bay? A hundred percent, no. But I’m invested now. So even if I move out, I’m still coming back to keep the fight going and keep the story going, to make the change because that’s what I need to do.

Melanie Meade:

My father taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Thomas Vme. He passed in 2013. And the reason he stayed in Clariton is because the family land that we had called Randolph Hollow was taken over for mill housing and he felt like it was worth it to sacrifice his life and his health so that our history could not be forgotten. And so when I hear Hilary stand in solidarity, and the new friend I have in Curtis Bay stand in solidarity, Elise and Dr. Nikki standing in solidarity with me, I know that I’m on the right path. I know that I have not forgotten my history, who I am and what I’m capable of. And I think each and every one of you are fierce in your own way. And it is so wonderful that we have this opportunity because we need it. We need to check in with ourselves, check in with others, because we are the ones showing up for ourselves, as Elisa said. And I need each and every one of you for the long haul. So thank you again, and let’s keep doing the work.

Hilary Flint:

To go off of what Melanie said, it’s stuff like this that keeps me in the work. So that’s a question I ask myself a lot, and I see other activists and I think, what do they need to stay in the work? What do I need to stay in the work? And every once in a while it’s going to a community and getting inspired by their wins. I noticed how closely the communities here, the EJ conversation is happening with housing injustice and you’re talking about racial justice, and we don’t see a lot of that in our corner of Appalachia. That type of solidarity building doesn’t happen. And so I get to leave and be really inspired by that. I have been working with a group of folks from the Gulf South, and we’re talking about creating an area where climate refugees can live. So I’m looking at the passive housing and I’m thinking, oh, interesting. And I bet a funder would fund something like that. So I get to think about those different ways of doing the work. And we just don’t celebrate joy very much in Appalachia, unfortunately.

And to see the positivity and the solutions, I got to see solutions to problems instead of just problems where we are just stuck in the doom and gloom. So for me, coming to this, this is what keeps me in the work. It keeps me going, but then as most people know, I’m a homebody. So I’ll go home and you won’t see me for three weeks now because this social battery, but we all have, that’s such an important lesson. As an activist, what are your boundaries? What keeps you in the work? What are you comfortable in and what are not? What type of hate are you willing to put up with? What’s going to cross the line for you? It can get really bad. I always say being an activist is choosing to be a target, and not only to industry, but sometimes community, sometimes politicians.

So again, it’s like what’s going to keep me in the work creating solutions to some of those problems? So something we’ve been trying to do is, again, bring mutual aid into the work. Because what we found out is in East Palestine and Beaver County, they go, oh, well there’s not property damage and there’s not this and there’s not that. So no one’s coming to help you because you don’t fit in a box. And mutual aid is the answer to that, right? It’s community care. It’s, we’re not looking for a box to check off on a grant. You tell me you need a mattress, we get you a mattress. And so how do we make sure that that’s present in the nonprofit industry? So we are fighting really hard to get mutual aid funds set up at small grassroots nonprofits that are just meant for answering community need, peer support.

So something that we’re working on is building up mental health resources within the movement. And what does it look to make sure other nonprofits are trauma informed, because what I saw was a lot of groups coming in and taking advantage of people, and I was expected to tell my story of my battle with cancer, and then I turned purple and I wasn’t getting paid for any of that. So something that I’ve been doing is I call people out and I say, you can build paying community members into a grant. And so we do it with everything. We build that money into a grant. And I did a video project where I made sure we paid everyone and paid them well. And this one funder said, that’s revolutionary. We don’t do that. And I said, paying people for their work is revolutionary. I said, and we are the progressive industry.

No, we’re not. So thinking about what does care look like in every aspect, because we are not going to stay in this fight. And as we’ve seen it as a long fight, if we don’t think about those things and we’re just, I’m an action oriented person, I’m like, I got to keep going. I got to keep going. And so that gets tiring. And it’s like sometimes I need Melanie to be like, Hilary, have you checked in with yourself today? Are you doing your self care? And we don’t always get that in our own community because when you’re fighting so closely together, people want to do the work differently. And there’s just so much division going on. The minute I decided that I was going to meet the president and then continue a relationship with politicians, it was, she’s been bought off.

We can’t trust her anymore. And I had to be okay with that and say, that’s fine. I’m going to work silently. I’m going to get done what I know is going to work because I have been with all of these people now for a year. I know what the needs are and I don’t need to be liked anymore, but I do need to be liked by someone. So that’s where activists come in. They remind me, okay, Hilary, you’re loved and respected in some just not your own home right now. So, okay. So it builds that friendship. And when I get to come and be with Melanie, or even I work very closely with Robin at home, and just to have people that keep filling you up, even if it’s just a couple people in the community, a couple people in different neighborhoods, or when you go through a really heavy situation and no one in your community can relate to it, I can say, Hey Melanie, have you ever experienced this?

What does it mean? Can you just be my friend right now and talk me through it? No one else gets it in the community. So again, there’s nothing more important than the solidarity building that we’re doing right now. It’s what scares them. I heard it from the highest up mouth that I could find in the United States. This is what scares them. So the more we do it, the more we win. Especially when it comes to public hearings, public comment periods, vinyl chloride, the chemical that ruined my home on October 23rd, you have until October 23rd to submit a public comment about what you think about that chemical, should it be banned. They’ve known since the 1970s that it was a carcinogen. It was the reason the EPA started something called tosca. Yet it has yet to be banned by tosca. This is the first year it’s up to be banned.

Just letting each other know, Hey, I have a public comment period. I would really appreciate it. Because then guess what? They look and they go, oh crap. They got all these public comments from Pennsylvania. They’ve hit every state. Now we’re going to have to do something no longer. Oh no, we poisoned this one community. We poisoned this one community. And they talk to this other poison community, and they talk to this house that has these people that have been dealing with racism. And then they talk to these people that are dealing with transgender rights and they go, oh, so reminding each other, we have some group chats that’ll be like, Hey guys, public comment period here. Submit. And just finding ways to engage with each other outside of this stuff is really important. Mutual aid fundraisers, some people I meet will have a chat where we’re just like, oh, here’s a GoFundMe.

Everyone send $5. And it doesn’t ruin my day to send someone $5 at this point. So it’s like, it’s so simple. But if you keep building out these networks and someone has a crisis, and I know people all over the United States, we can get a lot of money. I think we got $3,000 and not even 24 hours. And that’s just like us being random people. It wasn’t a part of our work. It’s just like you can get it because your network is big and your relationships are the work. And if people trust you, they’re going to donate to that. They trust you. So this is how we win

Melanie Meade:

In all aspects. Relationships are the work is powerful. And hills is,

Hilary Flint:

It wasn’t me, my colleague Andrew Wooer said it the first time, and I’ll never forget it because I don’t like emotional labor. I am someone who I don’t feel often. I just want to do. I want to solve problems. I want to keep going. And so I was getting so upset that people would be crying and I didn’t know what to do. I’m like, I don’t know what this means. I’m like Googling. I’m like, why would someone cry about this? So I was getting so frustrated and it was going to take me out of the work. It was because I was so bogged down and people would want to have two hour long conversations to tell me about their feelings. And I’m like, I am not the one I truly wish I was, but I’m not. So then you have to find your person who’s the one who does

Melanie Meade:

The feeling.

And I think what I learned here in Curtis Bay is education is important and valuable, especially for our youth in Clariton right now in 2024, we do not have climate change or environmental justice spoken of, nor will they allow me to go in and volunteer to talk to the youth. Our newest superintendent, who is an African-American woman, would not allow us to prepare a lawyer clinic because there are three remaining class action lawsuits for the 2018 and 2019 Christmas fires. So our youth are disengaged. Our little league football team practices directly across the street from the industry. And the coaches say to me, who are sickly, this is not harming us. It hasn’t harmed us. We did it when we were little. And that is what must stop aligning with Hilary, aligning with Elise, Dr. Nikki and Curtis Bay gives me voices to now take back to those coaches to say, look, here it is a problem and let’s stop it.

Let’s unite. Let’s stop allowing them to divide. Because our youth in Clariton are winning football games for 40 years and dying at the age of 20, overdosing on Fentanyl or other drugs less than 30 years. And we don’t have the time. We’re 50 years behind in the conversation. So we need to pick it up. And I’m able to pick it up because I have Hills, tiktoks and Curtis Bay and you Max real-time news. So that if you don’t understand, take a moment to listen here, check in and let’s continue this work. We are not defeated because we are together. Give it up for our incredible panel.

While Democrats are looking for scapegoats to blame for their losses on election day, Donald Trump is busy making cabinet and administration appointments. When it comes to US policy on issues ranging from the climate crisis to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, from public health policy to reproductive rights and labor rights and civil rights, from trade wars to mass deportations, one thing is clear: a lot is about to change. But between Trump’s own contradictory statements and a corporate, independent, and social media ecosystem overflowing with conjecture, misinformation, propaganda, and partisan hackery, it is difficult to know what exactly is coming, how we should be preparing for it, and how we can fight it.

So what are we facing, really? How do we get ready for the fight ahead? What tools do we need to parse fact from fiction in this critical moment, when talk is everywhere but truth is in short supply? What lessons from the last Trump administration can we use to effectively navigate the very different political terrain we’re on and media ecosystem we’re in today? In this livestream, we dug into these questions (and answered yours!) with independent media makers Abby Martin of Empire Files, Francesca Fiorentini of “The Bitchuation Room” podcast, and Kat Abughazaleh of Mother Jones.

Studio: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley
Production: Maximillian Alvarez

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  Donald Trump is headed back to the White House in two months, and with the news this week that the GOP has won a majority in the House of Representatives, the fully MAGAfied Republican Party will effectively control all three branches of government: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary.

The election was just over a week ago, and since then, Democrats have been busy pointing fingers at each other and looking for scapegoats to blame for their losses. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is busy making cabinet appointments and administration appointments. Trump is already sending shockwaves with jaw dropping picks, tapping Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general, for instance; Thomas Holman, an Obama-era appointee to ICE, who was one of the architects of Trump’s zero tolerance policy for border czar; Florida Senator and foreign policy hawk Marco Rubio has been tapped as secretary of state. And the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, are going to head up a new Department of Government Efficiency.

Listen, when it comes to US policy on issues ranging from climate change to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, from public health and social security to reproductive rights and labor rights and civil rights, from trade wars and tax codes to mass deportations, one thing is clear: a lot is about to change.

But between Trump’s own babbling contradictory statements and a corporate, independent, and social media ecosystem that is just overflowing with conjecture, doomerism, misinformation, propaganda, and partisan hackery, it can be really difficult to know just what exactly is coming down the pike, how we should be preparing for it, and how we can fight it.

So what are we facing, really? How do we get ready for what’s coming? What tools do we need to parse fact from fiction in this critical moment when talk is everywhere but truth is in short supply? There’s a lot of sound and fury out there, and it’s only going to get louder and more confusing as we rumble onward into the dark unknown of the next four years.

And we need to get our heads and hearts right for the fight ahead. We need to have a clear-eyed understanding of the political terrain that we’re actually on and the media ecosystem that we’re operating in, both of which are decidedly different today compared to what they were in 2016 when Trump was first elected.

And that is exactly why I could not be more excited for today’s livestream, where we’re going to talk to three brilliant independent media makers who have so much to teach us about how to fight and win on that terrain. I’m truly honored to have joining us on the stream today the one and only Abby Martin, independent journalist, host of the Empire Files, a vital interview and documentary series which everyone should go watch. She’s the director of the 2019 documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom and the new documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy.

We’ve got the one and only Francesca Fiorentini, correspondent, comedian, host of The Bitchuation Room podcast, the former host and head writer of the web series Newsbroke on AJ+, and host of the special Red, White and Who? on MSNBC.

And we’ve got the one and only Kat Abu, video creator and TikTok Powerhouse who started her media career at Media Matters for America monitoring dangerous narratives on Fox News, and who now produces video explainers for Mother Jones, Zeteo, and her personal accounts, which have gained tens of millions of views over multiple platforms.

Abby, Francesca, Kat, thank you so much for joining us on The Real News Network. I really appreciate it.

Kat Abu:  Thanks for having us.

Francesca Fiorentini:  Yeah, woo! There’s a lot of questions I don’t know if we can answer.

Kat Abu:  I think the three of us can solve everything. That sounds right.

Francesca Fiorentini:  Yeah, sure, sure. Give us some time.

Kat Abu:  An hour.

Maximillian Alvarez:  [Laughs] Listen, man, I got a lot of confidence in this brilliant group, so we’re not going to be able to figure everything out, but we’re going to be able to figure some shit out. And we have so much to learn from the three of you, and I’m so grateful to all of you for being on this stream with us together.

And I did want to just give a note to the audience real quick here at the top that we are going to have an audience Q&A section later in the hour. I can’t promise that we’ll be able to get to everyone, but if you’ve got questions for our guests, please put them in the live chat and we’ll get to as many of them as we can at the back end of the hour here.

So let’s get rolling. We got a lot to dig into here. Abby, I want to come to you first, but this question is going to be for everyone. So we’ll roll into Francesca and Kat after Abby. So I want to toss you guys this opening question here. Like I said in the intro, the past week has just been a dizzying avalanche of bad news amplified by a constant doom dump of panicked reactions to that news.

So I want to ask, how are you reacting to and processing all of this, and what’s your message to folks out there watching about the reality that we are actually facing with a second Trump administration? And are there specific cabinet appointments or policy changes or political battles that you are especially focused on right now?

Abby Martin:  Thanks so much for having me, Max. It’s great to be on this panel. I’m a little less shocked than I was in 2016, let’s say. I think I was resigned to the inevitability of a Trump presidency for about two years, ever since I found out Biden was sticking it in and not giving up his seat. I think we all got tricked for the last a hundred days when Kamala was anointed that we actually thought that it wasn’t maybe an inevitability, that Kamala did have a chance at winning. So ultimately, I’m just pissed off that the Democrats failed so abysmally and paved the road for this to happen, because it really does all fall on their shoulders.

But I think that when we take a step backward and look at the playing field and Democrats and Republicans and the ruling class here, Wall Street executives and a lot of billionaires and millionaires did resign to that ultimate Trump presidency far long ago, Max, and they already said, Larry Fink from BlackRock, the CEO already said nothing will fundamentally change because at the end of the day, it’s about capital accumulation whether or not you’re a Democrat or Republican. Yes, they may differ on religious zealotry and how much that has infiltrated politics, but ultimately they would much rather have a Trump, have someone who is fascist. Because we already know that, ultimately, it doesn’t matter for them. Their pocketbooks will still be lined and the capital will still be gained. They would ultimately much rather have Trump than someone like a Bernie Sanders.

Now, that’s not to discount the fears, the very real trepidation, obviously, from minorities, from trans people, from leftists. Trump ran on a very openly fascist platform where he said he was going to deport pro-Hamas sympathizers while there’s this upswell of pro-Palestine protests against the country. Obviously the environment is going to be completely gutted. Every last vestige of regulation and protection are going to be thrown out the window.

So it’s a very dystopian time that we’re entering into, the fact that Trump has been able to dial into this not only conservative hegemony when you’re looking at mainstream media, because even though the conservatives paint it as the liberal media dominates everything, we know the power, scope, and reach of conservative media, and then he folded in all of the alternative media as well. And so that was a very smart strategy for him. We’re in for a very tough road ahead.

And somehow the Democrats failed to such an extreme degree that they even gave Trump an opening to seize on again this populist rhetoric and anti-war rhetoric. So amidst the Gaza genocide subsidizing this on behalf of the Democrats, Trump was able to seize and capture a huge swath of the populists who are rejecting status quoism and antiestablishmentism somehow, even though we’ve already had this man as president for four years and he gave nothing but whatever the ruling class wanted. But here we are again, facing down a second Trump presidency, and it’s going to be a long fight ahead and long road ahead.

Two cabinet appointees that I’m especially concerned about, obviously secretary of state, Marco Rubio, little Marco couldn’t have been a worse pick. When you’re looking at foreign policy, especially Latin America, this guy’s a maniac warhawk who wants to just destroy Cuba and Venezuela, he wants to destroy Iran. All of these people are China hawks. So even though they might have good rhetoric time and again on somewhere like Ukraine, they all want the ultimate prize, which is war with China.

And then, goddamn, this guy Pete, Pete Hegseth — Sorry, his name is a doozy — Secretary of defense, this Fox News guy? I mean, this guy still supports the Iraq War in 2016. He’s still promoting the Iraq War and defending torture. So it’s a slew of the worst of the worst. Mike Huckabee, the list goes on. It’s just a nightmare.

Maximillian Alvarez:  You mean the guy with the white nationalist tattoos [laughs] who’s going to be secretary of defense? Yeah, not worried about that at all. Jesus fucking Christ.

All right, Francesca, let’s keep the good times rolling with you. How are you processing and responding to this moment? And are there specific appointments, policy changes, or political battles where your eyes are especially focused right now?

Francesca Fiorentini:  I just want to give it up to Abby. That was an amazing roundup, and she hit, somehow, all of the questions, and I super agree with it. And everything she said is just on the money. And especially the last part I just want to pick up on. The idea that Trump could endear himself to a very real cry for an end to the sending weapons to Israel and end to this genocide, giving some, complete window dressing: I’ll be the candidate of peace. Oh yes, I’m going to embrace this one Muslim American group in Michigan and all of that. And then turns around and appoints all these neocons who are, I mean, I think we’re going to be probably going to war with Iran, I think within a year, if not sooner. It’s incredible the amount of obvious misdirection switch around that he did.

But guess what? That’s all you had to do. All you had to do was speak to the very real pain and anger at the status quo, at the status quo of, again, genocide. And look, it’s not necessarily what got him the election, but it sure as hell captivated, captured a moment, and he took advantage of it. And so a certain part of the electorate did vote for Trump despite [that making] everything [becoming] worse in Gaza, if you ask me. And yes, there will be a wider war.

So I just want to name the Democrats’ unwillingness to even offer window dressing as to change. It is not that Kamala didn’t say the exact same thing that Biden did, but just a little bit of a hint. Here’s what I would do different. This is how we were going to change on that. That’s important to understand just how unwilling they were to even on a surface level try to appeal to what most people were saying, not just Democrats.

And then the other thing that Abby said, look, I wish I had her foresight, that two years ago I saw this coming [Martin laughs]. Because what’s happening to me, you know the scene in Memento where he starts to figure out that he’s lost his memory and he’s piecing it all together? That’s what I’m doing with the Biden administration, where you’re like, oh, shit. Not raising the minimum wage, we got fucked. Relying on the Senate parliamentarian, giving Joe Manchin everything he wanted, and he still tanked your Build Back Better Bill. All the ways. And then him running again. We should have seen this coming.

And even though, yes, it’s eight years since 2016, not a lot has changed, not a lot has changed. And our fight against MAGA and Trumpism and the Republicans writ large should not change. And so it is about, you hear, I’m sorry, but when I hear that they got a trifecta, it actually makes me laugh. It makes me smile. Because there’s a little bit of me that’s like, good for them, good for them. You know what I mean? They got a vision. It’s fascism. They took over every single court. They got what they wanted. Why? Because they had a plan.

So what’s the plan? That’s what we need. What is actually the plan for Democrats to win? And again, I’m in this moment, clearly I’m mad, and I don’t know if in four years there will be a plan that actually will gain, not just gain these voters back, but I think, more importantly, gain voters who didn’t go out to the polls or didn’t vote for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump who feel disaffected, who are legitimately disenfranchised in various ways.

And so for me, look, there’s too much awfulness to stare directly at. It’s like, don’t look at it all like Trump did at the eclipse. You got to take your own corner, your own piece, and fight on that level, whether it’s locally, whether it’s in a community organization, whether it’s you getting involved in something, whether it’s a movie night, documentary month. Everyone, I love a good doc.

So I’m just like, however you can feel productive, generative, and helpful, and hopeful rather than trying to… If you take it all on, you’ll never get out of bed.

Maximillian Alvarez:  The notification fatigue is very real. This is one thing, hopefully, that we learned from the last Trump administration is that immobilizing people in constant fear with an endless barrage of bad news is part of the strategy by which we become demobilized and easier to defeat. And like Francesca said, you got to give it up to these fascists. They are, at least we can say, good planners. So there’s something to learn there.

Kat, I want to bring you in here. Same sort of questions. How are you processing this and what are you focusing on right now?

Kat Abu:  When he won, I thought I expected it, or I at least knew it was a possibility, but I really thought I’d wake up and be ready to go to Mexico. My mom straight up told me, she was like, I will help you move to Mexico. We’re from Texas. So we spend a lot of time down there. She was like, I will be there. I will help you move. I will take the cat.

And honestly, I woke up and I was just so energized, ridiculously energized [Fiorentini laughs], particularly because of what Francesca said: we need a plan. And I am someone who, as a job, I am immersed in right-wing media constantly, which means A, I know Trump’s entire cabinet right now. Pete Hegseth, oh my God, don’t even get me started.

But also I think it’s time you talked about people pointing fingers. When you’re pointing fingers to blame, to find someone to say, this wasn’t me, or it was your fault, that’s not productive. But what’s really productive is being able to say, fuck y’all who didn’t listen, who didn’t listen when I and 20 other people were sleeping outside of the DNC, when we tried to play ball just to get a Palestinian American on stage, when I had a super PAC reach out to me and ask me to run an entire pro-Palestine voter initiative over the last month of the election in Michigan and Wisconsin, and my only condition was speaking to Kamala Harris on camera for 10 minutes, talking to one Palestinian person, and instead she did a tour with Liz Cheney. So we know what went wrong.

And the way that we fix this is we get these people out. They don’t listen, and the only way they will is if we threaten their power. There were so many districts where Democrats didn’t even run a candidate. There were so many districts when the incumbent who had been there for 3, 5, 10 terms didn’t have anyone try to challenge them in the primary.

Because that’s the big issue with the Democratic Party, is that it fears dissent. And I think that’s healthy to have dissenters, dissenting supporters in your party. That means that there is freedom of speech. That means that you’re getting different ideas. That means if you are being corrupt, people will call you out.

And so what we need to do, like Francesca also said, on the local level, but also the state level, the national level is get people in communities to run for every possible office. And anyone who’s watching here and had that inkling in the back of your head and you were like, maybe I could do that. No, that’s insane. You can. Especially at the local and state level, you can absolutely do that. Even if you don’t win challenging that power will make them fucking sweat. They are terrified of losing power.

But as far as what’s going to happen for the next four years, we don’t know. I find a little bit of solace in the fact that there are so many incompetent buffoons being appointed that they will definitely wreck stuff. But it takes a little bit of competence, like a Dick Cheney type maniacal plotting, to be able to accomplish everything they want to do. And appointing both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to one role for efficiency. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. They’re going to hate each other. And just these egos on the right, especially in these far up positions are just too big to balance with one another.

But things will get bad, and we don’t know… The best time to challenge authoritarianism is at the start and at the end of that regime. And we are at the start. It’s up to us, especially during the midterms, which are going to come up way faster than you think — Two years is not that long — To try to disrupt this while we can. Sorry, I’m so pissed off.

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, let the rage flow, baby. That’s why we got all three of you here. We need to channel that shit because if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. And I want to, in this second section, I really want to focus in on the work that y’all do in the media and what we can learn from that work.

But just a quick, rapid fire run around the table one more time. I want to pick up what Kat was putting down there. We should also emphasize that there are weaknesses, critical weaknesses in the MAGA movement, in the Trump administration, in the way Trump operates. And I wanted to ask if y’all had any of those at the top of your mind that you wanted to remind viewers of, things where all hope is not lost, all territory is not gone, the struggle needs to continue.

But I think Kat hit upon a really important one. What we do know from the first Trump administration is that it was a clown car of clowns coming in, clowns going out. People were in the administration for a week before they ran afoul of Trump and got the boot. I’m fully expecting Elon Musk to outwear his welcome with Trump in the next 10 minutes or something. Something may go wrong there with these two massive egos clashing against each other. So there are pressure points within the MAGA movement in Trump’s administration that we can put pressure on.

But I wanted to start with Abby and go back around, if there are other weaknesses or areas of struggle that you want to remind folks are still there. We can’t give up on everything here.

Abby Martin:  Well, it does seem to be, curiously, less of a vehicle for Christian Evangelicals, which, obviously, the first tenure was certainly that. Delivering the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem, that certainly was just giving the Christian Evangelicals exactly what they wanted.

This one is a little bit more, it seems, stage managed Trump is a total buffoon. He’s like Grandpa Simpson yelling at the clouds. I don’t know if anyone, I’m sure, Kat, you were watching very diligently the insanity that he was putting out there at some of his rallies. Even his victory speech seemed so lackluster. He didn’t even know what the hell to say. It was like, how is this your victories speech, aren’t you [crosstalk] —

Kat Abu:  We are going to get some really crazy reaction GIFs soon [laughs].

Abby Martin:  …He’s so horrible and he’s lost all of his mojo. He is not the same Trump that ran in 2016, but he is still a narcissist and megalomaniac, and that is to his detriment. So like you said, Max, the clashing of egos, the upset that’s certainly going to come with a lot of these appointments and a lot of things are going to come to a head. And he is belligerent. He’s a bull in a china shop, and that’s ultimately why the ruling class doesn’t want him, as opposed to someone who’s more manageable or someone who’s not as uncouth and belligerent to the rest of the world.

But yeah, I think it’s going to be a big opening to show how incoherent he is and how he doesn’t even have anything cogent to present at all. So there’s a lot of space to ram the truth through. It’s just a matter of how are we going to expose that when the entire media sphere is just locked down by right-wing billionaires?

Francesca Fiorentini:  And I’ll just pick up on that and say I think it’s a good question. I think things like subjecting ourselves to Piers Morgan panels, Abby is also [Martin laughs], for me, it’s fun sometimes, but I only do it if I can have a little bit of fun and sort of mock the entire thing. It’s ripe for mockery. I’m a comic, so I thrive on this kind of stuff.

That being said, I am so less interested in how we rake up the MAGA billionaires versus how we actually have the best defense, which is a good offense, and how we actually drive more fissure in the Democratic side and the liberal side, how we use this moment. A lot of liberals are being radicalized by this moment, and I think it is specifically the left’s job to allow liberals into our fold to let them be radicalized, help them learn, dig deeper, watch some Empire Files documentaries, watch some Newsbroke videos — Get woke, for lack of a better term.

Because there are also people, as much as we’re so hyperfocused on who voted for MAGA — Nah, man, I’m focused on the people who are disillusioned, and rightly so, with the Democratic Party as it exists, and they are trying to dig deeper, they’re trying to get involved. They realize this is not going to be won by them just getting a sticker and falling out of a coconut tree or whatever it is.

So there’s that. I agree that the Trump administration on its own will eat itself alive, but we have to remember that even ineffective fascism does still hurt people, and separate people, maim people, does give rise to vigilantism and hate crimes. We’re going to see a lot of that and we already have seen that. I think that child separation happened under Trump’s first term. I think we can expect that and worse.

So for me, here’s why I can’t care about the right and their billionaires: is because this whole year, this whole year, ever since Biden started campaigning, what have we been doing? Look at how silly they are. Look at how crazy they are. Look at how dumb, look at how weird, look at how corrupt, look at them drinking horse dewormer and shitting their pants on the regs. Look at all of this stuff. How undemocratic, how stupid.

None of it breaks through. None of it matters if you yourself are not offering real, concrete solutions. If you’re doing a piss poor job at selling any concrete solutions or a piss poor job at selling the solutions that you actually did do, some of the good things that Biden might’ve done, then I can’t help you. And so me pointing out Orange Man bad, I just brought this segment onto my show, it’s now going to just be an Orange Man Bad segment. We talk about all the Trump shit and then we talk about some real stuff. What are we doing? How can we fight back? What are people doing organizing with their unions and their workplaces? That, to me, is where our energy needs to be.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Preach, sis. Kat, you want to hop back in here?

Kat Abu:  Both of y’all are absolutely right. Abby hit on the head with talking about their oversized egos and Francesca talking about offering another solution. Besides, I think, George H.W. Bush, every president who has won since Carter has been a populist, whether on the right or left. And the good thing about progressive policies is if you don’t market them like a moron, pretty much every normal person likes them. People hate Obamacare, but they love the ACA. It’s the same thing.

And so I think when you’re bringing these people into the fold, that’s an important thing to remember. Instead of immediately attacking progressives or say, that’s a pipe dream, why don’t we try to strive to do better?

But I think the biggest thing that gives me comfort and I think to look out for in the next four years is what happened today: The Onion buying Infowars. They are losing their collective minds over this. And it’s because they desperately want to be a part of normal person culture [Fiorentini laughs], deeply entrenched culture.

I’ve watched it for the last three years, the Patriot Awards at Fox. It’s their equivalent of the Academy Awards. There are like four awards. One year it was Most Valuable Patriot, Patriot of the Year, Most Patriotic Badass — And that was Pete Hegseth, by the way — And the Back the Blue Award. That’s not a real awards show. No one watched that except me.

They want to have comics that are lauded and everyone thinks they’re hilarious, and instead you’ve got Gutfeld. And sure, there are a lot of radicalizing podcasts and stuff that are capturing the attention of especially young men, young white men. But as far as our identity of what’s cool, what’s fun, who you want to be around in real life and not online, they simply can’t capture that. They can only do it through a screen or through angry taglines they say on TV that your uncle might believe, but he’ll make sure not to say his true thoughts at Thanksgiving until a couple glasses of wine.

And that’s devastating. Then they’ll never get that. And I think exploiting that, on top of all of this other action we can take, on top of bringing people into the fold, on top of running candidates, on top of just resisting complete doom and despair, kind of rocks. They’re terrified of that and it makes them so mad that they can’t capture the lightning in a bottle of being a person.

Francesca Fiorentini:  Oh boy, that’s so true.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think all three of you, beautifully and powerfully put, and important things to remember. And I could genuinely talk to you guys for hours and hours, but I know we have a limited time with you, and I want to make sure that in this next round we zero in on the work that you’re doing as media makers, as journalists, as analysts, as powerful voices in this ecosystem.

So let’s talk about the media side of things. And then to everyone watching, I want to remind you that we are going to have a Q&A section at the end of this hour where we want to hear your questions for our guests. So please, if you haven’t already, put your questions in the live chat.

So as we’ve already addressed here, corporate media, big tech, and this growing network of new media influencers have all played major roles in the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement, and they’re going to continue to shape our political reality as we head into a second Trump administration; From Elon Musk buying Twitter and turning it into a cesspit of Trumpaganda to influencers like Joe Rogan endorsing Trump the day before the election. The arena of digital media and online politics has shifted over the past eight years. As Francesca said, a lot has stayed the same, but changes have happened.

And Abby, you actually went on Rogan’s show again back in the summer, and I want to play that clip for our audience. Let’s roll that appearance from Abby’s on Joe Rogan.

Abby Martin:  A couple years ago. Yeah, back in 2021.

Maximillian Alvarez:  This is the 2021 one?

Abby Martin:  Yeah.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let’s roll that.

[CLIP BEGINS]

Joe Rogan [recording]:  When you see the Iron ,and you’re seeing these rockets being fired out of Palestine and they’re all getting detonated in the air, and then you realize like, oh, this is kind of a crazy situation. One side has this insane technology and the other side is kind of in an open air prison camp, in a way. You can’t go anywhere. You’re kind of stuck.

Abby Martin [recording]:  25% of American Jews now, after the latest onslaught in Gaza, believe Israel’s an apartheid state. And that shows you how dramatically the narrative has completely flipped on its head. Because for the last 20 years, Israel’s been losing control of dictating the narrative. I mean, that was really what they relied on for so long: that we’re acting in self-defense, that we’re surrounded by people who hate us and hypothetically will commit genocide against us, to basically defend the fact that they are committing defacto genocide in Gaza. That is the erasure of Gaza residents. It’s the erasure of a culture. It’s not just the extermination. That’s according to the UN.

[CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  The very fact that Abby fricking Martin was speaking the truth about the occupation and Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians on the most popular podcast in the world is a testament to what you were saying in that very clip, Abby.

So what does that say about the media environment that we’re in today? And what have you learned navigating that environment that you think folks out there may not be seeing or understanding? And how do we square clips like that? The influence that shows like Rogan’s have their openness to voices like yours and also the Trump endorsement?

Abby Martin:  My God, there’s so many levels there. First we need to look at Joe Rogan’s audience, and I think it’s a huge mistake for liberals to write it off just like they have written off Trump supporters as racist, misogynists, and just a MAGA cult entirely.

Look, Joe Rogan’s audience is eclectic, diverse. I’ve had thousands of people come up to me over the course of the last eight or nine years, ever since I was going on his show, telling me that they learned about Palestine for the first time, that they became radicalized, that they became a communist based on what I said on his show. So I think it’s a huge mistake for, again, it’s just writing off any semblance of alternative spaces and turning them into conservative pockets.

And we saw exactly what happened with Bernie when he went on the Joe Rogan podcast and Joe Rogan endorsed him, and the entire liberal media sphere was up in arms. Everyone was like, recant the endorsement, denounce it. How dare you go on his show and how dare you take this endorsement from him? It was a huge mistake.

And I think that, when we’re looking at someone like Kamala Harris, it was a huge mistake for her not to go on Joe Rogan’s platform. Would Joe Rogan have ultimately endorsed Trump either way? I don’t know, probably. But I think, look, when we’re looking at these huge spaces with tens of millions of people who are captive audiences and we just silo ourselves off and we don’t engage with them, it’s to our own detriment.

You look at the liberal media, the corporate media of liberal spaces and liberal dominant narratives, they were painting that the economy was actually fine, the stock market was good. They don’t ever talk about poor, working-class people. They talk about the middle class, the middle class. So they’re erasing tens of millions of people. 40% of Americans are insecure economically.

So yeah, when you’re looking at what was a big driving factor of this election, people’s material conditions and being gaslit and lied to from so-called legacy media, or the term that conservatives have really hijacked to paint what they claim is corporate media hegemony on the liberal side. We know that that’s not the case, but it’s easy to paint it that way when the corporate media, by and large, is defending the status quo and promoting what we’ve been seeing: a genocide.

So it’s crazy and it feels schizophrenic, and I think people are completely detaching themselves from that space. We’re no longer in the position where we’re begging these outlets to cover our struggles fairly or to stop being so biased and one-sided when it comes to US foreign policy. We have to create our own avenues and engage with each other and uplift our voices to build this consensus that we know exists with a large swath of Americans.

Unfortunately, to the point of all of you and all of our work, it is so dominated by conservatives, and it’s so unfortunate because people are so detached from what they’re being told by the media pundits, and they’re basically being funneled into the alt-right pipeline because it’s so overly dominant. And now you see Elon Musk, who’s a total joke. I mean, he basically bought Twitter to just be relevant. Because the Babylon Bee, they want to be funny, they want to be culturally significant and relevant, and we’ve seen what he’s done with it. He bought it under the pretense that it would be somehow because the government was too involved, and he’s just become an arm, an appendage of the Trump administration.

So it’s getting quite scary. It’s getting quite scary. But look at two networks that allowed someone like me to have voices that were anticapitalist and antiempire: Telesur and Russia Today. And when you have a voice on networks like that, among the only spaces that we’re allowing people like me to talk, the national security state becomes involved and ends up suppressing voices like that. And it erases leftists like Chris Hedges and Lee Camp, and then silos us off into oblivion.

So we’re all scrambling and competing with our own brands and Patreons and podcasts to try to make a modicum of space that the right wing has engineered and really dialed in. And I think it’s an incredibly effective strategy, and you cannot understate or discount the effect that Joe Rogan had, the effect that folding in R.F.K. Jr. and Tulsi and all of these kind of alternative media figures into this umbrella. It’s a big tent, and they pulled everyone into it, and it’s the opposite of what the liberals have done to the left.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Man. Mic drop shit. So Francesca, I want to build on that and come to you, because you are quite the influencer yourself, and you’ve got a lot of experience, as Abby does, as Kat does, moving between the independent media sphere and the upper echelons of corporate or legacy media from MSNBC and Nat Geo to Fox. You’re like a bull shark. You can swim in saltwater and freshwater.

And perhaps most famously, I don’t know, maybe because he masochistically loves getting dunked on, Piers Morgan has frequently had you on as a guest on his show, Piers Morgan Uncensored. So let’s play the next clip of Francesca blasting Morgan on his show for being a hypocrite and a division profiteer.

[CLIP BEGINS]

Francesca Fiorentini [recording]:  During a Wednesday episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, Piers Morgan found himself agreeing with a fellow guest named Kat Timpf, who had recently wrote a book about why we are so divided in this country, and why we need to come together, left and right, and really talk about the issues and not make everything so polarized.

And I, Francesca Fiorentini, happened to also be on that panel. And I took issue — Not with Kat Timpf or her book, which I actually thought was incredibly interesting and, yes, much needed because so many of the issues that face this country really do cut across party lines — But I took issue with Piers Morgan who was gushing over Kat and gushing over the book and saying that he agrees that we are way too divided as a nation, and we really need to just listen to each other, when this is a man whose bread and butter is made by people screaming at one another, arguing with each other, and he gets rich in the meantime. And here’s what I had to say about that. Take a look:

Piers Morgan [recording]:  I completely agree. I’m a bit like that. I don’t park myself into either the right or left camp. Go on.

Francesca Fiorentini [recording]:  You’re so dishonest, dude. You’re so dishonest, though. Because all you do on this show is play off social media algorithms to get people to fight. You lead with it in the cold open and you get the click, click, clicks. And if you don’t hit a mill, you never ask that person back. You literally play the game that Kat is decrying. But Piers, stop pretending like you think there’s something wrong and can’t we [crosstalk] reach across the aisle and hold hands —

Piers Morgan [recording]:  Francesca. There’s one central — There’s a flaw —

Francesca Fiorentini:  Your whole algorithm is based on it. Your whole model is based on it —

Piers Morgan [recording]:  Francesca, it’s a lovely statement that will get you lots of clicks from your followers, and that’s why you’ve just delivered your little monologue. However, it’s based on [crosstalk] —

Francesca Fiorentini:  I’m here on this panel for free —

Piers Morgan [recording]:  Wait a minute — You don’t normally get a million views for me, but I still invite you back. So that can’t be true. I do it as an act to charity, ’cause I like you.

Francesca Fiorentini:  I check the [stats]. You know I crush, you know I crush, Piers.

Piers Morgan [recording]:  I like having you on because you’re so annoying.

Francesca Fiorentini [recording]:  [Laughs] Same.

[CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  Queen shit [laughs]. So Francesca —

Kat Abu:  We stan.

Maximillian Alvarez:  We stan [laughs]. So what has your experience in these different sides of the media ecosystem taught you about where the power is in that ecosystem? Who and what are we fighting against in this media arena, and how do we win? Or at least, how do we not lose in that arena?

Francesca Fiorentini:  We’re fighting liberals. We’re always fighting liberals. I’m sorry. The reason I do Piers is because it’s fun. But look at the commenters. They hate me. They think I’m crazy. They think I’m an insane person who supports trans rights, all that. I just go on there, again, as he called out, for fun, to show those clips to dunk on him and move on my merry way.

Sometimes I get real. Sometimes I talk about the billionaire class versus the rest of us, the number of venture capitalists that the Trump administration has supporting it: the David Sachs, the David Horowitz, all these people, the Peter Thiels and whatnot.

But for me, it’s about liberal mainstream media. And I think I want to pick up on some things that Abby said as well. I actually think that war and empire have a lot to do with why so many, especially young people, don’t have faith in mainstream news. And it’s because of the Iraq War, people like us who came up during the war on terror and completely that mainstream news was nowhere to be found. They were in lockstep with the generals and beating the drums of war. And we got a couple mea culpas here and there, but really nothing. And then since then, the media sphere has proliferated with alternative news, much of it amazing, a lot of it also disinformation. And then Donald Trump comes in and calls everything fake news and everyone’s discombobulated.

But the fact that the media, mainstream news, has still not been able to adequately discuss the war machine, the war profiteering, the military-industrial complex is just like, I mean, obviously in part because they accept money from these weapons contractors and, in some cases, are owned by them, but that will forever be the stain that they cannot wipe out and they’re clawing their way back from.

So for me, it’s twofold in terms of how to get the Rogans of the world, and how to get big. And I agree with Abby, you’ve got to find these openings. Look, I disagree with him platforming a lot of white nationalists and spewing a lot of misinformation about trans people. I have people who are talking to me like, I don’t know, but these kids are getting these sex changes, and you’re just like, I know you’re listening to Rogan all the time, man. That’s what’s happening.

However, who are the people who he will let on the show? And they happen to be, and usually always are, people who are antiestablishment. And that, I think, is the bigger — Rather than left/right, it’s antiestablishment, it’s distrust with big pharma, which can lead to awful things like the R.F.K. anti-vax movement, in my opinion.

But it can also lead to great things like the Medicare for All movement, or people who want pharmaceuticals, the drug prices to come down. It can lead to mealymouth things like Medicare gets to negotiate on insulin in two years, as per Joe Biden. So it’s like not capturing that antiestablishment… Not vibe, movement, is how the mainstream news loses every single time — To say nothing of the fact that for me, in my career… I had a special in 2019, right? MSNBC, they run it in the dead — You guys will love this — The last week of December. So it’s the week between Christmas and New Year. Nobody home, nobody watching. All the B hosts were in then. It was very funny.

And what happened in 2020? The pandemic, and Donald, and the election. Cable news did not need deep dive journalism, an hour-long report looking into the successes and failures of Obamacare. And that’s on them. And every four years they come around going, why is the electorate so misinformed? It’s ’cause you cannot break your own 24-hour news media cycle and actually give a journalist, a real journalist, an hour, give them an hour a week to explain something to the many, many millions of people that watch your program. But they can’t do that because they don’t need to. And again, it could be unsafe for their bottom line, to say nothing of it would have to be a little bit of an investment.

But anyway, one day I’ll be Stanley Tucci traveling Italy and eating my ass off. But until then, Bitchuation Room is where I’ll be.

Maximillian Alvarez:  We have the same dream, I just want to be the Mexican version of it [both laugh].

So Kat, I want to bring you back in here because you are doing something that so many of us want to figure out how to do but can’t. And you’re playing a really critical role in the short-form video space on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, X, and more. And you’re also doing something that none of us would ever want to subject ourselves or our worst enemies to: you are watching, studying, and analyzing ungodly amounts of Fox News.

So let’s play the next clip from one of Kat’s recent explainer videos:

[CLIP BEGINS]

Kat Abu [recording]:  And finally, Fox News is definitely excited about running the country again through Trump’s TV habits — In fact, they’re already proposing administration officials.

Speaker 1 [recording]:  I expect him to appoint someone really strong at the FCC, like Hannity.

Speaker 2 [recording]:  RFK is going to make us healthy again.

Tom Homan [recording]:  President Trump knows if he needs help securing that border, I’m standing by. If he needs help running a deportation operation, I’m standing by. But no formal offer has been made.

Kat Abu [recording]:  Oh, by the way, that last guy, who is a Fox News contributor and Project 2025 author has already been named as Trump’s border czar. Cool stuff.

Tom Homan [recording]:  I’m standing by.

Kat Abu [recording]:  These people feel like they’re invincible. And with Trump at the helm, they kind of are. But there is one advantage to Fox News: it’s public, which means we know it’s being pumped into Trump’s brain every morning, afternoon, and night. And a tipped hand like that is exactly how we can document and call out these authoritarian goals for you — Which Mother Jones has been doing well before this and will continue to do so well after.

[CLIP ENDS]

Kat Abu:  Damn, you cut off my cat. You didn’t show everyone the clip of my cat high off her ass.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I wanted to save something so that folks — I was going to say, go watch the rest of that video for a special treat at the end. But spoiler alert: it is Kat’s cat. And it is adorable.

Kat Abu:  She’s so cute. She’s wearing a little watermelon hat.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Oh my God, I love it. So I want to ask, Kat, if you could expand on, first, the points that you were making in that video. As an expert in this area, how do you see right-wing media, Fox News, especially shaping the politics of Trump, his base, and the GOP today, and what does that mean for our fight? And then I also, if I can, I want to ask if you could talk a little bit about your process for how you’re navigating this media environment and what your process is for making and using media to combat the corrupting influence of right-wing media.

Kat Abu:  I’ve talked about this before, but I think the interesting thing about Fox News, and my old boss at Media Matters, Andrew Lawrence, also, we just say this on repeat, is Roger Ailes created Fox News to support the GOP, but now the GOP exists to support Fox News. And this was really obvious during the Trump administration and when Tucker was on. That’s honestly, personally, the point that I am most annoyed with, just from a petty perspective, is now Fox hosts are like, oh, we have more power again I want them to have a bad day every day.

But now, GOP senators and congressmen, when Tucker was on, they used to compete with each other for a five-minute slot where they would only get to speak about a minute of the time. And now it’s that again. Trump has a place to call in every morning and rant for 10, 20, 30 minutes at a time. Hannity, his favorite fanboy, is out there with a direct line to the president. When Trump lost in 2020, Hannity literally was tearing up on air at the thought that he wouldn’t be able to call the White House day or night.

And as far as right-wing media as a whole, I think the big thing is there are all these forms of alternative media. Fox, they love to talk about mainstream media; You’re the most popular cable news channel in the country. You are the mainstream media. But that’s not how they see it. But it’s the biggest establishment version of conservative media.

So even though a lot of its viewers, it gets a ton of viewers, but that’s because most of them are super old and they’re just sitting in a chair getting scared all day every day, watching from Fox & Friends till Gutfeld. And they’ll die off soon enough.

But the influence isn’t really who is watching at that point. It’s twofold: One, it shows what far right narratives are finally OK to say in the mainstream. Tucker used to do this. He was the one that would normalize them. Like the great replacement theory. The first time he said that on Fox, it was in 2021. And me and my colleagues at Media Matters are watching it, and it was like red alert, all hands on deck. He said replacement, this is insane. But now you can hear it all the time, not just in Fox, but in the GOP.

And then additionally, it’s a place for the GOP to rally around. Once again, they are supporting Fox, not vice versa. Fox is dictating their policy. And if you want to know what’s happening or what’s going to happen in the next day, week, month, year of the Trump administration, watch Fox. Watch what Jesse Watters is saying, watch what Sean Hannity is saying, watch what Laura Ingraham is saying, and then the next morning, see what’s being repeated on Fox & Friends.

Or you don’t have to do that. You can just watch my stuff because I do it for you [Alvarez chuckles].

Maximillian Alvarez:  Thank you for your service [chuckles].

Kat Abu:  Of course, of course. I mean, I do miss getting paid a full-ass salary with benefits for it, but [crosstalk]. I don’t know anymore. I’m just hoping I don’t get hit by a car. That’s a good plan.

Francesca Fiorentini:  God.

Kat Abu:  Too real.

Francesca Fiorentini:  But Kat, I want to pick up something that you said, which is they’re the most mainstream-ass outlet, but then they say that they’re…

Kat Abu:  They’re hitting on the antiestablishment thing.

Francesca Fiorentini:  They’re hitting on the antiestablishment thing. Exactly. It’s like the brand is good for antiestablishment, but you never hear MSNBC, to their own discredit, they could easily be like, you’re not going to hear this anywhere else, but we’re telling you. You don’t even hear a whiff of that when, actually, sometimes — Not all the time — Sometimes they do [crosstalk] good reporting. I like [inaudible] show.

Kat Abu:  …It was like pulling teeth getting people to tell Biden to step down. The shit I have gotten since Oct. 7, 2023, I have gotten so much more anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab racism than I did growing up as a kid in Texas. But the shit that Democrats were saying to me, or supposed liberals were saying to me when I just said,hey, Joe Biden didn’t allow a primary, and this debate performance is clear that he should step down, some of the most vile shit I have ever had in my DMs and replies — And I monitor Nazis for a living.

Abby Martin:  Well, it’s so emblematic when you look at something like Bill Clinton. The fact that they had to hoist up Bill Clinton, who was flying the Lolita Express more than Trump, and instead of putting front and center, Trump was friends with the most notorious pedophile in the country. Holy shit. Isn’t that crazy? They didn’t say one thing because they thought Bill Clinton was too important of an asset to go talk down to Palestinians in Michigan. Yu can’t even unpack, say the brain damage going on [crosstalk] —

Kat Abu:  …A lot of people under 22 don’t know who Bill — They would not recognize him on the street [crosstalk]. Honestly, with the way that he looks now, I probably wouldn’t either. He literally looks like the “Suds” episode of SpongeBob. But as far as [Alvarez laughs] —

Francesca Fiorentini:  He looks like an Eli Valley cartoon. You guys know who he is? Oh my God. He literally looks like he’s turning into an Eli Valley cartoon.

Kat Abu:  It’s so bad.

Francesca Fiorentini:  [Crosstalk]

Kat Abu:  [Crosstalk]

Maximillian Alvarez:  It’s like a literal visual metaphor of the decaying [crosstalk] Democratic Party. It’s like, hey, let’s bust out a decrepit slick Willie and send him to Michigan, that’ll win voters over. He, Biden, Pelosi, all these people are falling apart, as is their ideology. They just won’t let their fingers off the wheel of power until someone like Trump and the Republicans take it from them.

Kat Abu:  No, and that was so clear at the DNC. I was one of the 200 creators that was at the DNC, and they were super accommodating at first. They were like, let us know who you want to talk to. And I had a very detailed proposal of all the surrogates I’d want to talk to, and I was like, I think I’m the only Palestinian creator here with the way that I look. It’s shitty that wearing a hijab and having dark hair and dark eyes, even though this is obviously fake, makes people listen to you less. But I was like, if you want a Palestinian to talk to that’ll make some dude in Iowa not shoot up a Walmart, I’m here. I am here. After a day of delusion on my part, I was like, oh, it’s clear I am here as a token.

But also, so was everyone else. They brought in all of these creators, and there were some that were like, oh, yay, democracy, going to the Hotties for Harris party and sitting on the J.D. Vance couch or whatever. But a lot of people there are great people who do great work and were just trying to do their jobs. And then when the Democrats were like, you need to do this, this, and this, they were like, no. And the Democrats were like, wait, what? Even though they marketed this whole thing as the creator convention, as the creator election, and it’s because they fundamentally misunderstand what that is and what actually appeals, especially to young people. It’s icky.

Francesca Fiorentini:  Did you get kicked out?

Abby Martin:  …[Crosstalk] crisis?

Kat Abu:  No, I didn’t get kicked out, but I spent the night outside with the Uncommitted movement, and you had to go to get your credentials. And I was like, well, I can’t do the credentials. You don’t get them after 11:00 AM. And I was like, well, I can’t really leave. And the only good decision they made was not siccing the cops on us or escorting people out for not having their credentials the second day because you had to get them every single day.

But no, I did not get kicked out. I know Hassan was escorted out. I think that that would’ve been too dicey. They’re like, oh, well, we don’t want to… You guys can stay out here, but we don’t want to put you in cuffs or escort [crosstalk] —

Francesca Fiorentini:  Plus, the headline of “Palestinian Content Creator Gets Kicked Out” is not one they want necessarily. Sorry, I interrupted. But…

Kat Abu:  No, no, no, that’s exactly, that’s what I was trying to say.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And there was some eyebrow raising shenanigans, to say the least, at the DNC. That was actually where I first met Kat in person, was at the Uncommitted sit-in. I’m there with my camera, I turned, I’m like, oh, that’s Kat Abu. So I’m there. And then when I tried to go back in, suddenly the entrance to the United Center is blocked off for the next hour. So —

Kat Abu:  Oh, yeah, they blocked off the front entrance, right? So no one could go out that way.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So when the Uncommitted sit-ins started, a lot of folks went out. And then, curiously, we found that same entrance — Which had been open the whole day — Was suddenly, you can’t go through here anymore. So it felt like a trap. Anyone who’s going to go out and look at the Uncommitted thing, go stay out there. You’re not getting back in, but

Francesca Fiorentini:  I see. Right. Right, right, right. Yeah.

Kat Abu:  And also, sorry, this is sort of unrelated. I’d just like to say I went to go see Charlie XCX at the United Center a month, two months ago. There is weird United Center trauma, and Max, if you go back, you’re going to heal it too.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Oh, Jesus [laughs]. Yeah. Whenever I go back, it’ll be too soon, that’s for sure.

Francesca Fiorentini:  Because I thought this was also the biggest latest breaking story before the election was the Epstein stuff and the Michael Wolff tapes revealing that Epstein was his source, and actually Epstein had regular contact with Donald Trump during his first term before he was obviously raided by the FBI and arrested and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera — Trump’s FBI.

But Abby’s so right on that this would’ve been the story that, across the board, many people are interested in terms of, yes, the biggest sex trafficker, not only that, but also like a billionaire and everything, and all the connections that he had. And so you can imagine this alternate universe, which might not have affected anything, but where Kamala Harris goes to the Joe Rogan podcast, sits down [Martin laughs], and gets to talk about these Epstein tapes and all this information, and they get to smoke a bowl and think about, did Donald Trump have Epstein killed? You know what I’m saying?

Abby Martin:  Imagine. Instead, you have Don Jr. talking about who’s on the P. Diddy tapes. It’s like, dude, what about your fucking dad, bro?

Francesca Fiorentini:  Right, exactly. Exactly.

Abby Martin:  It is so fun to envision an alternate reality that would be so cool. Imagine what would’ve happened.

Kat Abu:  The Democrats are so good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Abby Martin:  Exactly.

Kat Abu:  Just, oh my God.

Abby Martin:  It’s so obvious. Capitalism’s in crisis and we’re seeing this [crosstalk] —

Kat Abu:  If you have to throw Bill Clinton under the bus, do it.

Abby Martin:  …Across the planet, not just in the US, and people are voting out incumbents as a rejection of whatever their material conditions are. And I absolutely, even though a lot of people are downplaying the Gaza genocide and the Ukraine War as factors in this election, I do not think that you can uncouple the economic conditions and hardships of Americans with the periphery and backdrop of funneling tens of billions of dollars to our foreign policy to subsidize a genocide. I don’t think that that can be uncoupled for the average person to say, hey, that doesn’t make sense. Why can’t I pay for bread or eggs at the grocery store but we have unlimited money to kill babies?

So I think that it’s a huge problem. And when you have the Democratic Party saying nothing will fundamentally change while the writing is on the wall. Any of us could have predicted what was coming if we just laid it bare. And they did not care enough to stop it.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that’s a really powerful point. To cap off the hour here, I want to A, not take liberties with anyone’s time and say that we did ask if you guys could be on until 5:00. If you do need to go, totally understand. It’s been an absolute honor having this conversation with the three of you, I hope we can have you back.

For those of you who can stay, I wanted to just see if we could do a little overtime here to get to some of the audience questions. Y’all have touched on some of them already, but I wanted to throw up one here about the merit to the argument that the Democrats can be pushed left. It really comes down to what path forward is there in the existing Democratic Party? We know that that is not the end all be all of the political struggle, but insofar as the Democratic Party is part of that struggle, what would you say to folks about how we should be approaching that strategically, and how far we can actually push this party that seems hell bent on going to the right, to the left?

Abby Martin:  I want to touch upon that just because I do have to go. I think Kamala’s whole performance and Biden’s whole performance… We can’t forget that Biden won on a progressive platform. Everyone was coat tailing the Bernie Sanders movement because of how enormously popular his brand of progressive populous politics were. And so Biden, over the course of his presidency, unfortunately, abandoned a lot of that. And then Kamala Harris, nothing will fundamentally change, ran one of the most conservative platforms, abandoned Medicare for all, ban on fracking, federal jobs guarantee. All of those things just made no sense. Why would anyone who’s remotely leaning conservative vote for Diet Coke when you can vote for the real thing?

I think at this point, look, I was really energized about Bernie just because of the tens of millions of people that were in the streets mobilizing because I felt it was a revolutionary moment to catalyze the masses. I never believed in electoral politics on a federal level, especially, I’m not saying to discount city council races and local districts, obviously referendums and city council and all those things, absolutely we need to be investing our energy into seizing power locally. However, investing in two to four years and putting all of your political energy and enthusiasm into federal electoral politics, I think, is a dead end. And I think if that’s not apparent now, it sure as hell should be.

Let this election galvanize and radicalize us outside of electoralism because the Democrats have perfectly elucidated that they will not lean left. They would rather have fascism than Bernie Sanders populism. That’s just social democracy. They would rather have Trump than an FDR platform. So they are going so far right because they have no other choice. They have to maintain their capital and power no matter what’s at stake and what’s in the future.

So it’s up to us, the tens of millions of people who have been radicalized by the Gaza genocide, who radicalized by Bernie Sanders, who see the climate change catastrophe on the horizon. It is up to us to build the movement we know is the only thing that has ever pushed politics left, the social movements in the street, the masses that shut down business as usual.

That is the only possibility that we have moving forward because time is urgent. We don’t have the time to wait for a supermajority pie in the sky — Oh, maybe, and if one of these freaks on the Supreme Court croaks — No, we don’t have time to wait and waste. The time is now. We need to act accordingly and get involved locally with the struggle and with activism because that’s how we’re going to move mountains.

Kat Abu:  Hell yeah.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Hell yeah, sister. Well, I know Abby said she has to go. I just wanted to, first, have a Jesus moment, ’cause that was incredible and fire. And also really, really stress to everyone watching you need to subscribe to the Empire Files YouTube channel, you need to support Abby’s work, her current documentary, her past documentaries, share them with everybody you know, watch everything that she does. You can see for yourself why her voice is so vital.

Abby, thank you so, so much for joining us today. It’s been a real honor.

Abby Martin:  You guys rock. It was such an honor. I hope to do this way more frequently. We should do this like a monthly thing or something.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let’s do it!

Kat Abu:  So good to meet you.

Abby Martin:  All girls panel, baby.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Hell yeah. Solidarity, sis.

Abby Martin:  Bye guys.

Kat Abu:  Bye.

Francesca Fiorentini:  Bye Abby.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Francesca and Kat, if you guys got more, I would hate to follow that act too [crosstalk] —

Kat Abu:  I don’t know what I can add to that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  — But I guess if you have anything else to say…

Francesca Fiorentini:  I forgot what the question was, but…

Kat Abu:  Yeah, I was entranced.

Francesca Fiorentini:  I really appreciate Abby’s perspective and her analysis is spot on and always has been. I am not ready to say that electoralism is not going to work. I think that we cannot just take our ball and go home because it didn’t go the way we wanted. I think we have to be players in this, and I don’t think that being players means you’re not in the streets. And I don’t think being players means it is the only way.

And I think I’m very much let a hundred flowers bloom, I guess, in a Maoist sense? I don’t know. In a nonviolent Maoist sense. But I do think that we need inside-outside strategies. I am not someone who you’re going to hear bashing the squad for not doing enough. I think that there are many, many hurdles and layers to actually getting things over the finish line in Congress. I think a lot of us have sometimes maybe too simplistic of a view simply because we feel like we elected somebody, they didn’t do the change we wanted, so we’re fed up.

But I do think that even though Biden’s — I mean good God, I’m sure he would like a mulligan on the last year and a half of his presidency. But I do think what Abby said about Joe Biden’s election in and of itself was thanks to the progressive movement, so was Barack Obama’s thanks to a progressive anti-war movement, that he absolutely capitalized on. Eight years of the war on terror made people sick and tired of it. We elected Barack Hussein Obama, the first Black president.

Are you kidding me? I was under no illusion that he would be really for the working class or actually very progressive, but it was such a radical sea change that I do think we have to be poised for what is the electorate willing to do when it comes to reacting to what we know will be a failed fascistic government coming from Donald Trump. So the pendulum swings, but let’s swing it farther, and let’s make sure it stays there, and let’s break this goddamn grandfather clock of a duopoly.

So I am inside outside. I’m of both minds. I just feel like you find the place and the space that you feel most effective, and we stop putting so much credence into the electoral process, meaning especially on a national level. I just feel like by the time you get to the presidential election, it really is which flavor of warmonger. And yes, I really would like the diet warmonger, honestly, because I feel like Kamala Harris and the Democrats were much more pushable. And I know people disagree with me on that, but I think we see that… Look at the Zionists. Trump’s disappointing a bunch of bidens. It’s like they’re nothing but Bidens. And Biden was arguably one of the more Zionist people in his cabinet.

So anyway, that’s where I stand on that. I feel like we on the left tend to say, here’s my line, this is what I believe, and if you don’t believe this, then you can go sit over there. So let’s have the same grace and understanding that sometimes we’re like, gee, how did Trump get all these voters? Let’s be kind to one another as well as we forge a path forward and figure out what to do.

Kat Abu:  Can I just jump in here real quick?

Maximillian Alvarez:  Please.

Kat Abu:  One of the things that I want to stress to everyone in the world all the time, and not just even in the political sense, is, in general, there are very few consequences for your actions that will genuinely affect you. Whether it’s standing up for a server who someone is yelling at, whether it’s doing that thing that you always wanted to do, or whether it’s running for office, speaking up at your town hall meeting at your local city council meeting, whether it’s trying to mount change in any way. If you feel any inkling to do it, you should do it.

I think that we’ve, coming back to the antiestablishment stuff, we’ve come to this idea that you have to have all of these ins to get anywhere, and that these people in power have some type of extra read, some secret read on the electorate that we don’t have, or some secret it factor that the rest of us don’t have, but they are just people. They are just as fallible and dumb and weak as all of us, maybe more so.

Francesca Fiorentini:  More so!

Kat Abu:  More so. And anyone that gets into power will probably take on a little bit of that too. And that includes you, me, all of us. That’s just the human condition.

But if enough of us actually acted on what we want to do, especially in an age where you can reach so many more people through alternative media, through the TikTok algorithm, through person-to-person connection that a lot of people are really missing. I’m hosting a women’s club at my apartment this weekend because I read it in a book and I was like, you know what? Why don’t I just do that? Maybe in a different time I would’ve been like, well, probably no one would be interested or whatever. But instead I reached out to some friends and they were like, yes, that sounds like so much fun. So everyone’s bringing a friend. We’re learning how to embroider together.

And it’s just action. Action is what spurs us forward. And it doesn’t have to be running for office. It doesn’t have to be taking to the streets. This is going to be a really weird four years, at the very least, and probably pretty dark. And if you don’t act on what you know is right and what you want yourself or others to do, nothing is going to get done.

Francesca Fiorentini:  Max, this is the least I’ve ever heard you speak, maybe ever [Alvarez laughs].

Kat Abu:  I’d also like to apologize for any, I’m actually going to DM Abby after this. My wifi is laggy. I’m on my building wifi, so if I interrupt, I’m so sorry.

Maximillian Alvarez:  You’re great.

Kat Abu:  No, you’re fine.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Y’all have been incredible. I’m sitting here in awe. I’m learning, man. I could spout a lot myself, but y’all have so much insight that we need to hear, and I don’t have all the damn answers. I need to learn from y’all, just like I hope our audience is learning.

And in a way, y’all were already picking up on another audience question that I want to just keep this ball rolling. One of the questions was about how we fight the hate, the vitriol, the trolling, the misinformation on social media that is emboldening people in the MAGA movement. And so I wanted to pose that to y’all as well.

But I wanted to pick up on where Kat was talking just now that the answer to that question does not solely exist on your online tactics for engaging people through a screen. I can’t stress enough how important the old meme of go touch grass, go talk to your neighbors. It really matters.

One of the things that I’ve noticed watching my own grandfather die from Alzheimer’s over eight years since Trump was first elected to now, his social world, his physical mobility, everything in his world has shrunk. And that got hyperaccelerated with COVID, where his social world went to going out to the golf course, meeting friends, to those friends dying, to his mobility being limited, to now being locked to one living room, and the entire connection to the outside world is mediated through the TV in his living room that plays two channels: Fox and OAN.

And so I bring that up because I know this man, I love this man. He is one of the many Trump supporters in my family who I know is not the diehard racist and fascist that we like to paint Trump supporters as being. But what I really want to emphasize for people that they can learn from folks like my grandfather and folks in your family is that people don’t just go gung-ho into fascist politics saying like, yeah, let’s deport all the Brown people. That comes way later because people’s politics flow downstream from their perception of the reality they believe they’re living in.

When you are being bombarded with these images of what the world looks like outside your window as your connection, your real connection to that world gets smaller and smaller and is all mediated through screens. That’s how you end up with so many Fox News viewers saying, you live in Baltimore. Do you even walk down the street? I won’t ever go to New York City or to Chicago, these places are bedlam. It’s like, that’s nuts. But that’s the reality they believe they’re living in, and Trump’s fascist politics feels like a natural response to this dark world that’s being presented to them.

And so, going out and countering that misinformation with reality, with real human connection seems to me to be one of the most, if not the most potent antidote to that fearmongering.

Francesca Fiorentini:  And the same thing with the media in terms of why do we only sit in diners when it’s an election? You should sit in diners all the time. You should really talk to people all the time. The mainstream news has allowed for the demonization of immigrants, as much as they want to clutch their pearls over Donald Trump’s wall or mass deportations. We all watched in 2016 how Donald Trump single-handedly moved the Overton window and Jake Tapper helped him refix over to the right a little bit.

Jake Tapper, the whole GOP primary was just, what do you think of Donald Trump’s wall? What do you think of Donald Trump’s wall? What about the wall? How about the wall? It’s like, no, no, no. How about a serious answer to the question of immigration in this country? How about a serious plan? What do you think about the wall? They helped every single step of the way, and they’re going to continue to help when it comes to mass deportations.

How many Haitian migrants have they actually platformed on mainstream news? How many times have they talked to, have they gone to, let’s say, Portland and seen the way that decriminalization programs are working in the community? We always make fun of when Jesse Watters or some Fox News hosts will go and be like, isn’t it crazy here?

And it’s funny, but who do you actually see doing it from the other side, or doing it from a side that doesn’t have an agenda? Just being real with it. It’s like you got to listen. It’s like long-form investigative stuff, Reveal, Real News Network. Even some Bourdain did that. People are like, wow, Bourdain is really amazing, how he talks to people. So that’s the other thing is how are we humanizing all of these groups, including ourselves, every single day? And there’s just a consensus to not do that because fear really does sell.

And so I think I’m more terrified to see what nonprofits, what different organizing, not left, but liberal entities, which news outlets, who’s going to decide I don’t want to resist anymore, I’m just going to join. It’s too much for me to resist this fascism. Let’s just join them because that’s easier, I need access, and I need money. That terrifies me.

Kat Abu:  It is really scary. I have to hop off after this, but I think two things on that is one of the big problems at these big companies, like at MSNBC and CNN and The New York Times, and all these big media companies is they have a lot of really good reporters who the leadership straight up will silence their work. It will be written, it will be edited, it will be ready to publish, and then it will just be on the chopping block and no reason will be given. And then, oftentimes, they’re assigned to a different beat. That is such a problem in our media right now.

I grew up conservative in Texas, and I think a lot of people underestimate the power of conservative propaganda. You were talking about how people see cities. I have lived full-time in New York, DC, and Chicago over the last two years because I had two major life changes. So I had to move from DC to New York, New York to DC, DC to Chicago. Haven’t been stabbed once in any of them.

But the way that conservatism was portrayed to me — And granted, my parents were more like Reagan conservatives, but still, there was so much misinformation that I had to break. Like, we’re the responsible party. We are being responsible. If you think our cities, even though you haven’t stepped foot in one in 15 years, are being taken over by maniacs, you’re like, well, I’m being the responsible one because, for some reason, my brain is now rewired to make me think that certain people love crime, like that’s a position that anyone has.

But it’s a lot harder, especially older people, to get someone to admit that they’re wrong. No one likes doing that. And I know when I had to realize when I was 16 and we moved to Tucson, for whatever reason, I moved to Tucson halfway through high school. Dallas is where I grew up, was super segregated by income and by race. I had never really been around a poor person before. So many of my friends, Tucson is a very low income city, and so many of my friends at my school couldn’t afford basic things. I had never really experienced that before, someone on a daily basis, someone who I had a real relationship with, and it totally radicalized me. But I had to go through and see all of these things that I thought were truth were wrong.

And that feels like shit. You feel like a moron. You’re like, what is my moral compass? It’s not fun. And I look at people like my mom, my grandmother, her mother was a major GOP operative in Texas, so she was right in the middle of it. She grew up with this as a major part of it. And she has re-evaluated so many of her views, and I think it takes a lot of bravery and grit. It’s hard to do that. And if you’re looking back when you’re like 40, 50, 60, and you’re like, did I spend this much of my life being wrong, lacking empathy where I could have given it, villainizing people who didn’t deserve it? And so that’s, it’s —

Francesca Fiorentini:  Never too late, though.

Kat Abu:  It’s never too late.

Francesca Fiorentini:  It’s amazing to hear when older people might make this transition. It’s like, yay.

Kat Abu:  It is. But I think that there’s a lot of people on the left who either grew up in a family that wasn’t really political, or was liberal, like Obama voters or whatever, and they really underestimate, A, the power of propaganda that gets you there in the first place, and then also how hard it is to change that because you’re trying to break an entire structure of thinking and also have someone admit, I was wrong, everyone I love was wrong, and I might’ve had some really shitty opinions about ideas, people, places, things, other nouns, and it’s…

Francesca Fiorentini:  And calling people racist is, and calling folks racist or sexist, it isn’t a winning strategy. Even if some of them are.

Kat Abu:  If you say something or sexist to me, I will say that. But if it’s just like a guy [crosstalk] —

Francesca Fiorentini:  It’s being able, it’s the looking past the racism and sexism. I said this four years ago before the election then: you cannot shame Trump voters. You cannot shame Trump. You cannot shame the Trump administration. Shame doesn’t work. It’s for us. Us making fun of them is for us. Now, we need it to stay sane because we have to tap in and be like, is this real? Are you real? And I think we’re all doing that, and this is The Real News Network. So there you go. But that’s for us. It’s not necessarily going to move the broad electorate. That’s just for us to be like, that was fucking crazy, right? Yeah, that was fucking crazy. OK, we can laugh at that. Yeah. Yeah, we can fucking laugh at that. Yeah. That’s for us.

Kat Abu:  I tell people all the time, say, question me. If you watch my stuff and you’re like, that doesn’t sound right, question me. I am fallible. Everyone is. I could be wrong. Or just make sure you have an extra source or two on that. This is not the time to think anyone is perfect, that anyone can say anything and it’s the absolute truth. And when it comes to conservatives and on the right… Where was my train of thought going on this, I had a point that I was really fired up about [crosstalk].

Maximillian Alvarez:  If it comes back to you, I will just say that one of the reasons that I’ve always gravitated towards your work, Kat, is that I myself, as folks on The Real News know, I grew up deeply conservative as well in Southern California. And for me, the reality breaking thing that got me to start that long process of unlearning all the dumb shit that I believed and acted on was the recession, was this massive market crash. Our family lost everything. 12 years ago, I was working in warehouses and factories wondering why the hell I believed in this system that just bailed out all the banks while families like mine lost everything. And I was working with ex-cons, undocumented folks, trying to make my own paycheck so I could buy dinner that week. So that forces you to confront a lot of those realities.

But as you both said, so well, and as you both and Abby embody so well, we need grit and grace to navigate that and to help others navigate it. And it can be done. We’re living proof of it. But we can testify as people who have made that transition that, like Francesca said, shaming and berating, even though it may feel morally righteous and good, is not going to fucking work, if your goal is to bring folks out of that darkness into the light, finding their way back to love and common humanity and working class struggle. You need grit and grace.

Kat Abu:  My point came back to me, and it’s exactly what you’re saying. I clown on conservatives all the time because it’s fun, but I try to only punch up; people on Fox who are getting millions of dollars to misinform you. And even when I talk, I did a video about Rob Schneider’s comedy special, which was abysmal from a comedic perspective.

Francesca Fiorentini:  I gotta see this.

Kat Abu:  It was a lot of fun.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Wait, Francesca, can you please have Kat on your show to talk about that [laughs]?

Francesca Fiorentini:  Please.

Kat Abu:  That? Oh, yeah, yeah. We need to break it down [inaudible] please. Rob Schneider’s comedy special on Fox Nation. But I did admit he had a really funny 10-minute bit where he did a Trump impression, but it wasn’t political. He was just talking about his experience with Trump as a person. It could have been about any celebrity. And it was funny. So I admitted it.

Painting anything in a broad stroke… I did a whole thing on Trump’s Charlottesville comments explaining why he said that Nazis are very fine people. And by doing that, I went through literally minute by minute every single thing he said, I didn’t cut anything out, so anytime a conservative was like, you’re misquoting, I say, watch the whole thing. And you will not believe how many people on the right have come back to me being like either, damn, I still don’t agree with you, but you were right. You didn’t cut anything out, or like, oh, wow, I really didn’t understand the full context, and I watched this whole 35 minute video, and now I do.

And so doing that instead of straight villainization, because these people villainize themselves. If you just give a little bit of grace. No one is right all the time. No one is wrong all the time. We need a baseline for humanity. There is a baseline that if you straight up see me as a womb on legs, probably, you have to address that on your own. This is not us to handhold you through. But there are a lot of other people who just don’t know anything else. And you can’t blame someone for ignorance if you don’t tell them where to find the knowledge.

Francesca Fiorentini:  That’s so true. That’s very real.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that is a beautiful, powerful point to end on. I apologize to everyone in the live chat if we didn’t get to your questions, but I think you’ll agree —

Kat Abu:  Shout out to the two people’s questions we answered. We hope you’re satisfied.

Maximillian Alvarez:  [Laughs] Shout out to the big two. I mean, you guys did address a lot of the questions that were asked, even if we didn’t directly pose them, but I think everyone watching will agree this was a feast for the mind and heart, and I think I’m feeling better prepared to head into this darkness, and I’m feeling at least a little more emboldened, knowing that we’ve got great folks like you, folks like the people watching, folks like the folks at The Real News in the backroom right now, making this all happen. Thank you, sisters.

Francesca Fiorentini:  Thanks for having us.

Maximillian Alvarez:  We’ve got each other and we can make it.

And to everyone watching, I wanted to ask you to please go support, subscribe to every channel that Kat, Francesca, and Abby are on. We need their voices now more than ever. And if you don’t want independent media to go away, you got to support it. So please go support it, share it, send it to folks that you know who you think will want to watch it, anything you can do to help them out. We need that work. We need your support here at The Real News. The overall message is, is that we need you guys to keep going. So please go subscribe to their channels, follow them on any platform that you’re on, and if you can, please donate to the incredible work that they’re doing.

Kat, Francesca, and Abby, who had to depart 20 minutes ago, it has been a true honor being on this stream with you. Thank you so much, and solidarity from Baltimore.

Francesca Fiorentini:  Likewise. Thank you.

Kat Abu:  Everyone. Go outside.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Go outside and touch grass for The Real News Network. This is Maximilian Alvarez signing off. Please donate using the buttons on the side of this video. Share this livestream with your friends, family members, coworkers. Please go to therealnews.com/donate and support our work today. It really makes a difference. But more importantly, and most of all, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.

Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most, and we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity forever.

Investigative reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis report on the ground from Milwaukee, explaining what they heard from voters in this key swing state on Election Day and the lessons for Democrats as they try to rebuild and rebrand.

Studio Production: Stephen Janis
Additional Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello. This is Taya Graham and Stephen Janis on the ground covering the 2024 Wisconsin election. And most of us woke up to a decidedly different country.

Donald Trump’s resounding victory exemplifies a nation that has shifted red and that seems unconcerned about Trump’s violent rhetoric and often racist statements. But our job is not to comment on President Donald Trump’s behavior, but rather to understand why people have embraced it. That’s why we’re out here today: to discuss some of the voters we spoke to and what they had to say about his support.

Stephen, I realized that this election was about to shift in a decidedly unexpected way when we were outside of Centennial Hall interviewing voters. Tell me about some of the things that you noticed.

Stephen Janis:  Well, yeah, we had a couple of people, random people that we just spoke to who had voted for Trump right in the heart of Milwaukee in a precinct that serves students from nearby Marquette University and University of Milwaukee. So I was a little stunned. I don’t know if you were, but I was, and I was also stunned by their reasoning.

Taya Graham:  And now let’s listen to a young woman explain why she voted for Donald Trump and her interesting reasoning on reproductive rights.

Speaker 1:  I voted for Donald Trump today, yes.

Taya Graham:  Now there are a lot of different policies former President Trump has. Are there any of his policies that he had from the previous administration that you’d like to see him carry out if he has another term?

Speaker 1:  I actually have no idea.

Taya Graham:  Well, let me ask you like this. I’m just curious your thoughts on reproductive rights.

Speaker 1:  I think that one too, that one’s probably the most controversial topic that I can think of. I think everyone has a right in their own bodies. I did hear that Donald Trump was leaving it up to the states to be able to decide what is going to happen with abortion and those rights for women. I believe that women should have a choice. But I also feel like Donald Trump does a great job in leading our country, and I think overall his policies are a bit better structured than Kamala’s. I’m 50/50 on that one, but I do believe that, overall, he would be the better candidate for our country.

Taya Graham:  My very last question, you mentioned that there are other policies of his that you think are good compared to Harris. Maybe you could just give me an example of one, because I can understand reproductive choice being a controversial one. Is there one that you like more than what Vice President Harris is offering?

Speaker 1:  I’m not sure on policies exactly. I think regarding the border, I do get concerned that there are so many people entering our country with access to a lot of things that I think US citizens don’t have access to. So I do believe in cracking down on the border and making it a little bit more strict on who can be in our country and what they have access to.

Taya Graham:  And then we had an encounter with a young man who had an unusual reason for voting for President Donald Trump. Take a listen.

So Brian, can you tell me what issue was important to you that brought you out to the polls today?

Brian:  So I’m originally from California, and I think immigration is one of the bigger issues. But apart from that, I’ve just noticed a lot of changes that I don’t like with regard to the media I typically consume, not news and stuff, but just artistic stuff or creative things. And I’ve just noticed a shift from creativity to toeing the party line or the social line, whatever is acceptable in the social context, and I don’t like it. Sorry.

Taya Graham:  Wow, that’s interesting. So when you’re talking about creativity media, are you talking about content creators, people who talk online, or are you literally describing visual media…?

Brian:  Visual media would be a really good example. For example, Lord of the Rings, that’s the one that really comes to mind right now because I just watched a video last night about it.

Taya Graham:  Do you mean the Lord of the Rings that Amazon produced?

Brian:  Yes.

Taya Graham:  So what did you take issue with?

Brian:  I don’t like how the original content produced by Tolkien has been changed to fit the social narrative that is accepted today. I don’t know —

Taya Graham:  Okay, that’s fine. So let me see if I can guess: Does that mean you didn’t like seeing a Black lady dwarf?

Brian:  No. That’s not why.

Taya Graham:  Oh, oh. Then I’m confused.

Brian:  That is part of it though.

Taya Graham:  Oh, okay.

Brian:  Because it’s not necessarily that she’s a Black lady dwarf, it’s just… It’s actually not even that, it’s just the creators of the current Lord of the Rings show have supplanted the original content in favor of pushing real life issues such as minority representation, LGBTQ.

Those things, yes, they’re important, but they don’t really have a place in… This is about elves, orcs, and dwarves fighting and stuff. What does this have to do with the current zeitgeist? I watch that stuff because I want to get away from what is currently happening. I don’t want to always be bombarded with this stuff.

Taya Graham:  I see what you’re saying. You’re looking for an escape, not another interpretation that brings in present day issues.

Brian:  Yeah, we watch movies because we want to be taken away from where we are.

Taya Graham:  You mentioned immigration. I’m curious, whose immigration policy do you prefer?

Brian:  I prefer Trump’s.

Taya Graham:  You prefer Trump’s. And may I ask what you’re hoping will be done at the border?

Brian:  More control. Yeah.

Taya Graham:  Now, there was a mention of a deportation of nearly 20 million people. What kind of impact do you think that might have on our economy? I mean, just as an example, California, in the agricultural sector, undocumented as well as documented folks working to put food on our tables is anywhere between 40% to 60% depending on what type of crop it is. So don’t you see there might be a possible economic impact, or do you think that that will be offset in some kind of way?

Brian:  There’s definitely going to be an economic impact, and it’ll probably probably be pretty severe initially, but I think we’ll adjust.

Taya Graham:  So Stephen, these young people, they’re part of what’s known as generation Z, correct? So these folks, what did you think of their reasoning? I was somewhat surprised by some of the cultural reasons that were suggested as well.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, it seemed very detached from policy and specifically understanding mechanics of policy, and more based on what people have been talking about, vibes. But I think there’s a reason for that. I think partially it has to do with the media ecosystem that younger people are immersed in like TikTok, where it’s very hard to parse very complex policy decisions.

Like the young woman talking about the fact that Donald Trump had returned it to the states even though that had meant that 20 states now literally banned abortion, and she seemed not to be cognizant of that. And conversely, the young man who seemed to be, I guess, focused on the Lord of the Rings as —

Taya Graham:  Right. It was interesting because the word he wouldn’t use, but I knew was there, was woke. And his concern was that his art, his visual culture had been affected by politics, had been affected by what he considered an agenda. He mentioned specifically LGBTQ issues and racial issues that he felt were present day issues that he didn’t want in his art. He wanted to escape, he said.

But I think he was genuinely uncomfortable with modern day issues being represented in art. But however, isn’t that what always happens with art? Isn’t the modern day always reflected in an interpretation of any sort of creative project, whether it’s a book that’s being adapted or a movie? Right?

Stephen Janis:  Yeah. I mean, well art is technically supposed to be memetic, that is, reflective of the society from which it is created. But I think there’s also another aspect of that. I think we’re dealing with what would be the first generational inequality election where the Democratic Party turned away from Bernie Sanders and kind of became a corporatist entity, even though really, technically, the Biden administration moved significantly from the idea of neoliberalism.

I think that what happened was we have departed from serious policy discussion to more ephemera. And obviously, these students to me who should be able to grasp it, were not able to grasp the technical or the specifics of policy. And I think that’s why they voted, basically, on more like a TikTok meme or something.

Taya Graham:  And it’s not just TikTok’s fault. There are plenty of other areas of our social media ecosystem that have essentially flattened the conversation. It’s very difficult to have a nuanced conversation when you’ve got a one-minute or a three-minute deadline.

Stephen Janis:  Let me ask you a question. As a woman, you saw the young woman saying, well, he turned over abortion rights to the states. How did you feel about that?

Taya Graham:  Well, I was somewhat shocked that she so deeply misunderstood the policy, whether one is for or against women having the right to choose, to state that turning it over to each individual state to decide means that it will interfere with a woman’s right to choose if that’s what you want. And in this woman’s case, she thinks women should have the right to choose. So her not realizing turning it over to the states actually resulted in abortion bans across the board, it was somewhat disappointing.

Stephen Janis:  And that’s something we’ve talked about, and we talked about after several debates, we have discussed at The Real News the disconnect between policy and people’s perception of how things work is really vast. We’ve had the Infrastructure Act, we’ve had the Inflation Reduction Act, very specific policies that have benefited people. We have one of the strongest economies in the world right now. We do have the strongest economy —

Taya Graham:  We recovered from COVID in a way other nations could only dream from.

Stephen Janis:  Yep, and low unemployment, and all these things. And it hasn’t resonated with people. I understand inflation, I personally understand inflation, but even inflation is down now and still people think this country is somehow wrongly positioned. And so I think we’re dealing with a different political reality that the old formulas won’t work.

Taya Graham:  Well, it’s interesting because so many people that are Republican, I would say, want smaller government, and yet at the same time expect the government to fix our grocery bills. So it’s kind of a conundrum. If you want smaller government, then you can’t expect government to fix all of your problems.

Stephen Janis:  Well, you make a really good point. No one in the mainstream media ever pushed back on the Republicans when they said, we’re going to lower inflation. But how? It’s the Fed that controls the money supply and the Fed that controls interest rates, which ultimately control how the economy responds to monetary incentives. So it really, no one ever pushed back on Republicans and said, how are you going to solve inflation?

But we do not want to end this totally on a bad note, right?

Taya Graham:  We don’t want to end this on a negative note either, throwing accusations at any party. What we would like to do is celebrate some of the first-time voters, because one thing that we can all feel good about is people becoming civically engaged as first-time voters. Whether they’re 18 or 80, we’re happy to see it.

[Crowd cheering] May I have your first name, please?

Jasmine:  Jasmine.

Taya Graham:  And I heard that you’re a first-time voter, is that correct?

Jasmine:  Yes, it is.

Taya Graham:  And so what brought you out today? What brought you out? What was important to you? Why does this election matter to you?

Jasmine:  It matters to me because I was able to make a choice. I was able to take my own thoughts and what I felt and take it in and be able to really show it in the world in a way [inaudible] us younger folks really can’t. So definitely that, being able to use my voice.

Taya Graham:  Now as a first-time voter, I heard the whole room burst into applause for you. How did that feel? How did it feel actually seeing everybody celebrate you?

Jasmine:  It’s exciting. You don’t get it much, so it was definitely warming. It was, okay, I’m being heard. This is the first step, this is the first thing. So it was exciting, it was warming.

I want people to know that it’s okay to have your own opinion, to not follow anybody else’s thoughts or comments, anything. We have our own opinion, we have our own choice. So I feel that’s the biggest thing right now.

Stephen Janis:  Taya, it was really… When you’re actually in the polling place, when someone votes for the first time, they applaud. And it was really…

Taya Graham:  [Inaudible] applause. It was beautiful.

Stephen Janis:  And it was nice because these were very enthusiastic young people who really were glad to be engaged. And it was heartwarming. No matter what happens in an election, whatever outcome you feel, it’s always good to see that we can still participate in this process, right?

Taya Graham:  Absolutely. And we saw some really adorable young children with their parents, and it was just so lovely to see them be interested in the process. And of course, those 18-year-olds voting for the first time, they seemed a little shy, but I could tell they loved the attention.

So it turns out you voters have something kind of special about you. What’s a little bit different about you folks?

Speaker 2:  First-time voters.

Taya Graham:  And are you excited to be a first time voter?

Speaker 3:  Yes, I am.

Taya Graham:  So was there anything in particular that brought you out that you’re excited about this election?

Speaker 4:  No. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say!

Taya Graham:  Well, as a first-time voter, is there any particular… As a first-time voter, is there any particular issue that’s very important to you?

Speaker 2:  Just want to make the environment better.

Taya Graham:  Okay. And for you, is there a position that matters to you? Any particular policy?

Speaker 3:  No policy, but besides the president, don’t forget about the legislative branches, and all the other branches.

Taya Graham:  That’s an excellent point. The down ballot really does matter.

Now, can I ask you a question? Would you be willing to share with me who you voted for?

Speaker 3:  Kamala Harris.

Speaker 2:  Kamala Harris.

Speaker 4:  Kamala Harris.

Taya Graham:  So Stephen, before we go, there’s one thing I had to ask. For those who were supporting progressive policies, those who were Democrats or even further on the left, is there anything for them to be optimistic about?

Stephen Janis:  Well, I’m going to put a pessimistic optimistic view on this — No, but seriously. So I think Trump is going to execute some really damaging policies that are really going to hurt all of us and we’re all going to suffer. But maybe, out of that, we’ll realize the value of progressive policymaking. And maybe, through that, we’ll understand how important it is to embrace the complexity of progressive policies, and we’ll see that it really isn’t great to vote on a vibe and to vote for someone who really has, I think, bad policy chops. And we will learn what happens when that person is allowed to execute those policies.

So I think the silver lining is that we can hopefully, out of what happens once Trump is president, we can actually see how valuable it is to talk about good policy and be progressives. And I think that’s really, really important. Get past some of the things that hold back the left and the Democrats and actually say, you know what? We can create great policies that can make for a better country. So I hope that’s kind of optimistic, not terribly optimistic, but somewhat.

Taya Graham:  Well, Stephen, I hope your optimism is able to reach people because I know there are a lot of people out there right now that are absolutely heartbroken, and of course, there are people out there who are celebrating. All we can hope is that, as a country, we can find some way to move forward in a united fashion.

This is Taya Graham and Stephen Janis reporting for The Real News Network in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Speaker 5:  Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network where we lift up the voices, stories, and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity forever.

One of the clearest signs of Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza has been its unrelenting, targeted attacks on children and families. Israel has slaughtered more than 11,000 Palestinian children over the past year, and there are also over 17,000 children who have lost their parents and caretakers. These orphans have been largely embraced by their communities, but must still find a way to survive the war without their closest loved ones. The Real News reports from Khan Younis, speaking to Alma, age 12, and Mahmoud, age 13, who have both survived Israeli massacres that killed the majority of their relatives.

Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt

Transcript

NARRATOR: For those children who escape death, surviving has its own challenges. According to UNICEF, At least 17,000 children were estimated to be unaccompanied or separated from their parents in the Gaza Strip in February 2024, four months into the war. Today, that number is likely significantly higher. 

ALMA MOHAMED GHANEM JAROUR: Come and sit. Look how nice the camp looks. There’s the first medical point, and there is the second. There’s the administration point. 

NARRATOR: Alma Jarour was the sole survivor of an Israeli air strike that flattened the entire building where she was taking refuge, killing a reported 140 people in total, and almost every single member of her extended family. 

She is only one of the orphans staying at the “Dar Al Baraka” orphanage, a single tent in a sea of refugee tents, designated exclusively for orphans West of the city of Khan Yunis. 

ALMA: Where do you like to go? 

GIRL 1: I like the amusement park! 

ALMA: And you, Samaa? 

GIRL 2: I like to go to restaurants! 

ALMA: —And I like to go to the sea! 

ALMA: The place I used to love to go to the most before the war was the sea. When the war began, the Yarmuk mosque was targeted and it was next to our house. I felt strangled, my chest was constricted. I was so scared, I would hide in my mum’s arms. We would sleep in my mum and dad’s arms. We would not move from our places. We were in my uncle’s building. The entire building was bombed. It was full of children and women only. 

INTERVIEWER: Where were you?

ALMA: I was with them! I was not expecting that. I got out from under the rubble and thought my family had also gotten out. I didn’t expect that. I got out, and then strangers took me to their home. I ran away and went back to the building. The people took me away a second time but I went back to the building again. I got the biggest shock, I found all the people from the building in pieces. In pieces. I don’t know what to tell you. 

I came out from the rubble, out of 140 people. I mean, there were 140 people in the building. We’re innocent children, we’re not involved in anything. We’re children. 

INTERVIEWER: All your family died? 

ALMA: Yes, all of them. What can we say? 

NARRATOR: Sami Jihad Haddad is Alma’s aunt’s husband, and one of her only surviving relatives.

SAMI JIHAD HADDAD: The house was hit, and the only survivor was Alma. She came out of the rubble after three hours. No one else survived with her, they all died. No one remained for Alma except her aunt, because her aunt was displaced to Al Wasta. 

God sent the war and wiped out their entire line. He wiped the near and the far. From the grandfather to the grandson: they’re all gone. This girl survived. No uncle, no father, no grandfather—all of them: may god have mercy on their souls. In the center of this building. They stayed under the rubble for four months, until the neighbors and loved ones pulled them out when the area was cleared after the bombings. 

ALMA: I was in the building on the same day, at the time of that same air strike. On that same day I went to the south. What did I find? I found tanks and weapons… 

INTERVIEWER: Who did you go with? 

ALMA: With my mother’s relatives, but they are not my relatives. We found the Israelis, and tanks and weapons. I mean, we found a sniper who was shooting at us, and tanks were pointing at us! I mean, an unbearable scene. 

We found blood. I found blood. But my aunt, she found a corpse. Thrown in the street. I saw a lot of blood. I was walking in the street and I saw a lot of blood. The Israelis were moving in the area, they were in front of us, they were in front of us, it was normal. They had a store of weapons there. They raided a house and took it over and made it their place. They went in and took out a lot of weapons. I mean, these were unbearable scenes at this time. The whole way I was screaming, screaming, screaming. I was screaming for four, five days, I didn’t speak to anyone. I didn’t want to eat.

NARRATOR: Like Alma, 12-year-old Mahmoud has also been recently orphaned. 

MAHMOUD TAYSIR ABU SHAHMEH: We were sleeping at 3 o’clock at night. We heard a strike and I ran out of the house outside. I was injured from the strike, and that’s it. After I was in the hospital for 14 [days], then we went to sheikh Nasser, then we left to Mashrou’, then to Rafah. Then after Rafah we came here, to Khan Yunis. 

INTERVIEWER: How did your parents die? 

MAHMOUD: The house was struck, and we lost my mum, my sister, my brother, his wife, his son, my aunt. Then they struck my house at a different time, and we lost my dad, my uncle, my other uncle, my other uncle, my little cousin, my other cousin, my aunt, her son, and my dad’s wife. 

INTERVIEWER: And you were left alone? 

MAHMOUD: Yeah, I’m left alone, I have three married sisters, they’re all with their husbands. 

NARRATOR: Daoud Abu Shahmeh is Mahmoud’s uncle and one of his only surviving relatives. He tells us about Mahdmoud’s anxiety attacks and dark memories that mostly surface at night. 

DAOUD ABU SHAHMEH: His mental state is difficult; honestly, it’s bad. What do you expect? A child loses his mother, his father? The air strikes. Every minute, something bombed. What’s his mental state? It’s destroyed! I’m telling you, not the mental state of children, us adults, our mental state is destroyed. 

We try to ease his pain. He’s not a baby, he’s 12 years old and he’s aware that his parents have died and gone to heaven. Sometimes he dreams at night and shouts out, ‘Mummy! Daddy! Where are you?’ 

Everything I can do for him, I do it. He asks and I tell him, may Allah have mercy on your mum. May Allah have mercy on your dad. They were good people. They live in Heaven, God Willing. And may God allow us to join them. Because I swear this is no life. I swear it’s no life. We’re not living. We’re martyrs-in-waiting. Everyone is waiting for their day. 

NARRATOR: But during the daylight hours, both Mahmoud and Alma show remarkable resilience. 

MAHMOUD: We play football in the evening with the boys here outside. We play for an hour and then we come and sit here. 

DAOUD ABU SHAHMEH: I sit with him and we play together. We play football. We throw the ball to each other. I tell them stories about ghouls, old fairy tales. We laugh together. When they get tired, we all go to sleep together. 

ALMA: I have coloring pencils and we play together and have fun. Instead of remembering. When I’m alone I start to remember what happened and remember how life before used to be so nice. 

I dream that I will go to my grandmother. My grandmother in Germany, my dad’s mother. I want to go to her a lot. I miss her. I want to embrace her and she wants to embrace me. 

INTERVIEWER: What do you miss about your mum and dad? 

ALMA: Their embrace, honestly. I used to love being in their embrace. I feel their embrace was warm. In winter the best thing is to go and cuddle your mum and dad. Those were sweet days.

When this war is over, I will have nothing left. My childhood home is gone. The house we lived the best days of our lives in, is gone. Nothing is left for me when this war is over. That’s all.

Not many people today know about the radical history of the Jewish Labor Bund, the Jewish socialist party founded within the Russian Empire in 1897—but they should. Understanding the Bund is essential for understanding the long and critically relevant tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism. “From the Bund’s very earliest days,” artist and author Molly Crabapple says, members “saw that if there was an attempt to create a Jewish ethno-state in Palestine, it would mean a state of eternal war with both the neighboring countries [and] the Palestinians… inside that country.”

In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Crabapple about what the history of the Bund can teach us today in the midst of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine, and about how anti-Zionist Jews, including Crabapple herself, continue to fight for a socialist alternative to Zionism.

Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

What you just heard is Di Shvue, the anthem of the Jewish Labor Bund. It’s appropriate for our guest. This is Marc Steiner. Welcome to the Marc Steiner show here at The Real News, and I’m about to talk to Molly Crabapple. She joins us once again. Artist, activist, writer, co-author of Brothers of the Gun, which is an illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, which was a New York Times notable book and listed for 2018 National Book Award, and her memoir, Drawing Blood, which received global praise and attention. Her animated films have been nominated for three Emmys and won an Edward R. Murrow Award, Disappearing Rooms. Crapapple’s reportage has been published in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Paris Review, vanity Fair, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and right here on The Real News.

So Molly, welcome. Good to have you back with us.

Molly Crabapple:

Thank you so much for having me, Marc. And thank you so much for starting with Di Shvue, the Bund’s anthem.

Marc Steiner:

Tell me, before we get into what’s happened to you recently, getting arrested and what you were protesting, let’s talk a bit about the Bund. I really want to understand how you get into them, and for our listeners, let’s stop here. For our listeners right now, let’s talk about what is the Jewish Bund and then how did Molly jump into it?

Molly Crabapple:

What was the Jewish Bund? The Jewish Bund was a Jewish socialist, secular, and defiantly anti-Zionist revolutionary party that started in 1897 in the Tzarist Empire and became one of the most popular Jewish movements in Poland and the former Pale of Settlement until it was destroyed by the Holocaust and then by Stalin. And the Bund was a movement that was based on this idea that they called hereness, doykayt in Yiddish, that said that Jews had the right to live in the countries where they were born, where their fathers and mothers were born in the Eastern Europe that had rejected and brutalized them, but was still their home. It was a philosophy that said, “Here where we live now is our country. We don’t have to go to the there of Palestine and colonize it in order to have lives of freedom and of safety. We can do it here and we fight for it here.”

Marc Steiner:

That whole argument, that discussion has been lost since the founding of Israel, and especially during these wars with, A, the passions about Zionism even if you’re not a Zionist, and B, because Jews always feel preyed upon and the other. But the struggle inside that world, inside the Jewish world, over Zionism and things like the Bund have been around for the last 150 years.

Molly Crabapple:

As soon as Zionism, political Zionism was created, there was anti-Zionism.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly. So talk a bit about what you think the Bund’s legacy is now for us, because you’re working on that at this moment. There’s a book coming out, so talk a bit about what their relevancy is for what we’re facing now and what they say to us in this age.

Molly Crabapple:

Sure. So I spent the last five years working on a book about the Jewish Labor Bund. It’s called Here Where We Live is Our Country, and I think it’s the first full history of the group that’s written for a popular audience. It’s not an academic book. It’s a book that is written in a way that’s as exciting and vivid and funny, where characters talk. That’s something that you could give to a 25-year-old and say, “This is your history.”

Now, why did I choose to write a book about the Bund and why does it say something that’s so relevant and so vital for us now? To me, what their legacy is, it’s threefold. The first is that they were humane democratic socialists. They were people whose philosophy was in line with the DSA here. They were people who did not go over to Stalinism, but who nonetheless were a party that fought with their fists and in electoral politics and in the streets for the rights of workers. So that’s the first thing. They were socialists in the best way.

They were also people who said that the answer for Jews was not to go and colonize and ethnically cleanse another country in order to make a sort of ersatz homeland, but instead that Jews had the right to live where they were and that this was something worth fighting for, that your home now where you were, was worth defending and could be defended in solidarity with other people. Bernard Goldstein, who was a fighter for the Bund who ran their militia, he compared their philosophy in interwar Poland to that of Black people in America. And Bernard said that from knowledge he spent the last years of his life in the Bronx.

The third reason that I have been obsessed with them is that they were so, so prescient about what Zionism would become. From the Bund’s very earliest days, they saw that if there was an attempt to create a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine, it would mean a state of eternal war with both the neighboring countries, but also with the Palestinians that were inside that country, and that it would mean also an eternal state of war with the Jews that were taken into this project to get rid of their previous cultures, whether it was the Arabic culture of a Jew from Baghdad or the Yiddish culture of a Jew from Vilnius to create them as these new Israelis. And they saw that eventually this violence that Israel would need to inflict from its very first moments would turn inward and create a state that was based on racism and religious fundamentalism. They literally have letters and articles where they’re writing this in the 1920s and the 1930s.

Marc Steiner:

And here we find ourselves in this moment. This is probably, I think in my lifetime, one of the most dangerous moments we face, not just in Israel, in this country, across the globe, for the rise of neo-fascism. And Israel is at the heart of that. It’s painful and difficult to fathom that Jews could end up running a neo-fascist state. There have always been fascists among the Jews as well as communists and liberals and everybody else, but the idea that a neo-fascist state has taken hold, and that we are, the larger we, are pressing on other people at this moment and also could cause that we bring the Masada to ourselves again. That’s where I think we find ourselves.

Molly Crabapple:

We find ourselves where a self-declared Jewish state with a big old Star of David on the flag is doing a genocide in Gaza and is involved in an evil, unspeakable invasion of Lebanon, and that’s creating hell every day on the West Bank for Palestinians. That’s where we find ourselves. It’s one of the most shameful and heartbreaking moments that I can think of. On one hand, I’ve always rejected this idea that because a people has been oppressed, that it makes them good people. I don’t actually think oppression, let alone going through a genocide like Jews did, makes anyone better.

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Molly Crabapple:

In fact, I think it makes you worse. I think that in fact, the role that the Holocaust has played in cultural and ethical life has in some ways blinded people to the fact that suffering makes no one into saints. I often think about the people of the Soviet Union who had 20 million people were murdered, 20 million who had their cities destroyed, who suffered ungodly amounts under the Nazis, and who pretty soon afterwards killed millions of people in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and no one would look and say, “How could the people of the Soviet Union after suffering so much inflict suffering on others?”

Marc Steiner:

Right. Right.

Molly Crabapple:

It wouldn’t even cross people’s mind. But I think because the Holocaust is this event that’s almost put apart from history, this basic truth about humans has been forgotten, that enduring a genocide just means that you’re a people that endured a genocide. It does not mean that you are destined by history never to inflict one on others.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly. To me, it’s the contradiction that exists when you look at the fact that in the sixties, 70% of all the white freedom fighters were Jews. At the same time, I had cousins who I loved dearly I would sit with, but they were slumlords, and they owned corner stores that ripped off the people in poor neighborhoods where they lived and worked. And the contradictions just abound. And that’s just human existence, I think. I think in the Jewish world, we could use some kind of internal discussion about who we are and let’s deal with reality.

Molly Crabapple:

Exactly, that we have the same flaws and contradictions and idiocies and heroisms as any other group.

Marc Steiner:

Let’s talk a bit about your recent arrest.

Molly Crabapple:

My recent arrest.

Marc Steiner:

With Nan Goldin and others at Wall Street.

Molly Crabapple:

Yes. So I was arrested trying to block the stock market from opening with… How many people were we? I think several hundred people organized by Jewish Voices for Peace, which is, speaking of things that give me hope in our people, I love JVP. What a profoundly ethical and brave and amazing group. We were trying to blockade the stock market to protest the full-throated material support that American corporations were giving to the genocide and Gaza, to protest the bombs and bullets that companies like Lockheed Martin, for instance, are sending to tear apart Gazan children. That’s why we were there. And there was a small, pathetic little band of Zionist counter-protesters that threw eggs at us, tried to yell at the meathead cops to be allowed in to scream in our faces, but in general, we were all arrested. And I was very proud to do that. And I think that, honestly, it feels like the least I could do.

Marc Steiner:

And that’s been happening across the country too and across the globe. And I think it’s really important that, as you were describing, that Jews come out as activists saying, “Not in our name. This is not going to happen. We don’t stand with this.”

Molly Crabapple:

Oh my God, it’s the most important thing in the world. You have this state that claims us, it claims that it’s acting on behalf of Jews. It perverts our history. It blasphemes our symbols by carving them into the literal earth of Gaza and into Palestinian faces, and it says, “This is Jews. This is Jews doing it. We are Jews and we are inflicting this horror.” And every bit, every particle of my being is like, “Fuck you. No. How dare you?” And for me, I think it is so essential that Jewish people are screaming with their full chests that, “No, this genocidal Israeli state does not represent us. It has no right to excuse its atrocities with our history, with our identity, with our religion, with our pain. It has no right at all, and no, not in our name.”

Marc Steiner:

So you’re a woman who’s been an artist and a writer and an activist, and you have taken yourself into war zones.

Molly Crabapple:

I have, yeah.

Marc Steiner:

To Ukraine and other places.

Molly Crabapple:

Yeah. I was in Ukraine in 2022. Yes. Oh, man, you’re making me do math. Yeah, 2022.

Marc Steiner:

It all melds, I know, I understand.

Molly Crabapple:

Yeah, I know.

Marc Steiner:

And your writing out of that was very powerful and very painful. That war is going on and has not ended. And it’s also where that borderline between Ukraine and Poland is where my family came from originally. And so we got a lot of back and forth about that. But I’m curious, looking at what’s happening in Ukraine and looking at what’s now happening in Palestine-Israel, where do you think after all this work you’ve done, the kind of visionary kind of thinking you’ve been involved in, where do you think this is taking us? None of us are prescient, but your analysis about where this is taking us and how this happened to us.

Molly Crabapple:

In terms of particularly the war against the people of Gaza, it’s part of this cheapening of human life. It is part of this, how do I put this? Willingness by governments around the world to countenance people literally being thrown into a meat grinder and mass murdered. This is the worst, what’s happening in Gaza is the worst thing that I have ever witnessed, even though I obviously was not reporting from Gaza, just communicating with my friends inside, but it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I’m not saying that there aren’t worst things going on. It’s not like a hierarchy of suffering, but it’s certainly the worst thing that I’ve ever been aware of in the sense of people who are literally trapped and totally cut off who are being bombed and murdered from the sky, from the ground, from the sea, and who are basically without defense.

To me, that element of people being without defense and also totally cut off and unable to escape is what makes this so, it makes it different than Ukraine. Despite the horrific and obscene atrocities that Russia has visited on Ukraine, at least Ukrainians have an open border to Poland, and at least they are being armed by America. They have some ability to defend themselves, inadequate though it is. It’s also what makes it different from Syria, because in Syria, people could still, they could flee to Turkey or to Lebanon, and also they were getting arms, inadequate and often used in bad ways, but still they weren’t defenseless like people are in Gaza. I just think that this phenomenon where we are all watching literal babies having their limbs blown off, and girls with half their skull sheared off on our smartphones every day, while those in power continue to arm and fund it, is something that is like a wound in all of our moral fabric.

Marc Steiner:

I was thinking about the work you’re doing now in the Bund and JVP now. There’s an arc here to me, a historical political arc, but I’ve never seen before the numbers. Since the Bund was very powerful in Poland and Russia, but looking now at JVP and the anti-war groups, the anti-Zionist and non-Zionist groups of young Jews especially, the movements have similarities. And the power, though, this time seems to be not winding down, and it seems it’s going to have an effect on this country, maybe Israel-Palestine, including inside the Jewish community, and you are in the middle of it.

Molly Crabapple:

Yeah. Every day, I am in awe of these Jewish kids in JVP, if not now, in just countless, countless groups, some of which aren’t specifically Jewish. A lot of the people who organized the Columbia encampment were Jewish kids. I am in awe of their courage, of their willingness to face a lot of rejection, often from their families, to get arrested, to affect their job prospects, to risk their university educations because of just their profound moral need to protest this genocide. And it is something that’s growing, right?

I think that a lot of older people, like people of my mother’s generation, who are American Jews, they had this very delusional view of Israel that was not actually based on even having visited Israel. Or even there were people who didn’t know Hebrew who couldn’t name an Israeli political party, but they had seen the movie Exodus, and they maybe once had visited a kibbutz when they were young for three weeks or so. And they had this very strong emotional attachment, and this emotional attachment utterly blinded them to the horrific crimes that Israel, since its foundation, was inflicting on Palestinian people. I think that the difference with younger Jews is they don’t have that, right? They’re not people who remember a Israel that claimed to be socialist, right?

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Molly Crabapple:

They’re people who probably weren’t, they probably never in their lives saw an Israel that wasn’t being governed by Netanyahu. I mean, Netanyahu has basically been in power on and off since he incited Rabin’s murder, I think.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly, yes. When I look at that, we all have our journeys. In ’67, I tried to join the Israeli Army to fight because of the war.

Molly Crabapple:

You did?

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Molly Crabapple:

Zion rejected you, man. [inaudible 00:18:36] Jesus.

Marc Steiner:

That was in the midst of being an anti-Vietnam war activist and organizer in the underground media as well.

Molly Crabapple:

So why? Why did you-

Marc Steiner:

Because it was that war that changed a lot of us. It was that war, meeting left-wing Israelis, meeting Palestinians, that changed everything, that went from being a member of Hashomer Hatzair to saying, “No, this is wrong. This is not us. We can’t do this.” That’s where the switch came.

Molly Crabapple:

Right. Right.

Marc Steiner:

I’m glad the war was over in seven days. I didn’t join the IDF. But I think that there was a profound switch then, and it’s happening now. When I think about your work on the Bund, and people really need to know this, I can’t wait for it to come out so we really can dive into it deeply together to understand what that history means for us now, and that war in ’67, and where we find ourselves today with this war in Gaza, where we are slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians, to destroying the entire strip of Gaza. One of my closest friends is Palestinian Ali Zageb, his nephews, two of them were shot and killed by settlers outside of Ramallah.

Molly Crabapple:

[inaudible 00:19:58].

Marc Steiner:

In this madness now.

Molly Crabapple:

Yes, yes.

Marc Steiner:

And I’m in touch with a guy I’m going to get on the air with again, Mohammed Rah, who is in Gaza trying to take care of his people. People don’t fathom how horrendous this war is for the people in Gaza, what it’s doing to them.

Molly Crabapple:

Every single bit of life is being destroyed. Every university, every library, every hospital, every restaurant, everything that people built against such odds, right? Because these people were building these things under blockade, under extreme limits on construction materials, under poverty. They’re building them while being bombed every two years. People in Gaza still built so much beauty in spite of everything. And all of that has been systematically block-by-block destroyed and turned into blood-soaked dust by this genocidal invasion.

I also, I reported from Gaza in 2015, and I had this amazing translator I work with, Mohammed Rajab, and right now he’s a driver for UNICEF, and he is living in a tent with four little boys and his wife and his elderly parents. His father-in-law died because Israel sadistically keeps medicine out of the Gaza Strip. And so he died in pain because of this sadistic Israeli blockade that they’ve done at the same time as they’re doing this genocidal invasion. And I just think about that.

One moment you have a home, you have things that you’ve built, you have beauty that you’ve made, you have a family, and then the next moment you’re living in a fucking tent surrounded by just the absolute destruction of everything you’ve ever known. And right now at this moment, where Israel is essentially liquidating Northern Gaza, where they’re rounding up men and forcing them to strip and writing numbers on their foreheads and taking them to God knows what torture camp, my heart wants to leap out of my chest from rage at this.

Marc Steiner:

Yes, I understand completely. Before we’ll let you go, I want to go back to this arc and also where you think this takes us now. I mean, the Bund that you wrote about was a very powerful movement, a non-Zionist Jewish movement.

Molly Crabapple:

Anti-Zionist Jewish movement.

Marc Steiner:

Anti-Zionist, excuse me, crystal clear, anti is the right word, not non, anti-Zionist.

Molly Crabapple:

They literally had mass meetings where the banner was “Liquidate Zionism,” and they passed resolutions that, this is in Warsaw in the twenties. They passed resolutions that were like, “It is the duty of every worker to struggle with all his might against Zionism and national chauvinism.”

Marc Steiner:

So do you think there is actually a hope that we can build a really strong, not Bund, because that’s another century, but a movement that really takes hold inside the Jewish world that speaks to the rest world saying no, and we can actually do something to stop this, that we have a voice, and it’s not just up to the folks that have all the money in all the kind of major Jewish organizations?

Molly Crabapple:

I absolutely think that a movement is being built and not just in America. There’s networks of Jews in Europe that are standing against this, in Argentina, in Australia. In places around the world that have Jewish communities, Jews are absolutely rejecting this. And they’re organizing both just as people in general political things like how I’m in the Democratic socialists, but also they’re organizing as Jews. And I think it’s something that is scaring the shit out of the people that are the donors to these major Jewish orgs.

There was an interesting article. Who wrote it? It was basically labor reporting about how Jewish organizations around the country, from Jewish day schools to synagogues to just like lefty Jewish cultural groups, have been purging anti-Zionist employees, especially young people, who are people who don’t necessarily have a big platform and a lot of means to fight back. They’ve been firing people over being in a keffiyeh in a Facebook photo or liking an Instagram post. And I think the reason that there’s this huge, huge institutional backlash against young anti-Zionist Jews is because these donors are scared shitless because they know that they’re losing an entire generation.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly. I agree. As we close out today, I want to come back to that day where you all went to Wall Street, you and Nan Goldin and the others, and the effect that had, and those demonstrations are not stopping.

Molly Crabapple:

Absolutely not, no. JVP has been doing these demonstrations that involve civil disobedience and mass arrests. They have a long history of doing that. But specifically, they’ve been doing that since very, very soon after the genocide began in Gaza. They took over Grand Central Station, hundreds of people were arrested. I was also part of a demonstration where we took over the Statue of Liberty. Over and over and over again, whether in the Capitol or at sites in New York, they have been doing these mass demonstrations, where hundreds of people are getting arrested in order to show that they utterly reject this war. Obviously, I don’t think that we alone can stop the bombs. We’re a very small group, despite how big our mouths are. I mean, Jews in general. But I think that the moral power of Jews utterly rejecting this genocide and utterly rejecting this apartheid being carried out in our name is crucial. And I think it’s terrifying to the Zionist establishment. And it’s not going away. It’s only growing.

Marc Steiner:

Molly Crabapple, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you’re an extremely busy human being. I appreciate your work, your creativity, your strength to stand up to all this that’s happening and what you paint, draw, and write. And I look forward to talking when the Bund comes out, your book on the Bund. And thank you so much for everything and taking time out of your valuable work to join us today.

Molly Crabapple:

Thank you so much. My pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

I want to thank Molly Crabapple once again for joining us and bringing her creative genius to bear on so many issues we’re confronting, especially Israel-Palestine. We’ll link to all of her written and artistic work. It’s well worth the exploration. And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for all of her magic in audio producing, Rosette Sewali for producing the Marc Steiner Show and the tireless Killer Ravala for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thanks to Molly Crabapple for joining us today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.