In Baltimore, Maryland, thousands took to the streets on May 1—from students to seniors, teachers to transit workers—united by a shared demand for hope, justice, and a future not shaped by billionaire greed. Marchers opposed the Trump administration’s policies targeting public programs, labor rights, and immigrant communities—and expressed solidarity with Gaza.

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The transcript for this video is in progress and will be made available as soon as possible.

As Israel resumes its genocide in Gaza with the full support of the Trump administration, the movement in solidarity with Palestine has returned to Washington, DC, in a mass mobilization on April 5. The Real News reports from the ground in the nation’s capital.

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

Jaisal Noor:

On April 5th, thousands joined anti-Trump protests across the US, including multiple rallies in Washington, DC.

Roua:

I am here to demand an end to the genocide. I am here to demand an arms embargo, and I am here to demand an end to the deportations and repression against the Palestine movement.

Jaisal Noor:

The Hands-Off 2025 protests criticized the Trump administration’s assault on basic democratic rights, while a large pro-Palestine rally demanded an end to US-backed violence and Gaza and growing repression.

Miriam:

I think it’s really important for everyone to come out and protest what’s happening with the Trump administration. These cuts to public benefits, to public housing, it’s really, really destructive to working-class people everywhere. It’s also important, as we’re showing here today, that Gaza be at the front of this.

Jaisal Noor:

Critics claim, these protests are anti-Semitic and support Hamas. We got a response from participants.

Miriam:

No. This is a narrative that is being parroted by all of these politicians, pulled forward by what is ultimately a right-wing white supremacist administration. And what it’s trying to do is demonize any kind of political dissent right now. It’s trying to paint the movement for Palestine as something that it’s not. What we’re really out here for is an end to genocide. An end to the war machine that has been murdering tens of thousands of people for the last year and a half.

Jaisal Noor:

Recent Gallup polls show a historic low in US public support for Israel, yet only 15 US senators supported Bernie Sanders’ recent bill to block 8.8 billion in arms sales to the close US ally.

Eugene Puryear:

I think what we’re hoping to achieve with protests like this is like the abolitionists years ago with the longterm campaigns of petitioning and other forms of pressuring the government, and their own forms of demonstrations and others is to help build a stronger moral conscious movement in this country in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to end this genocide. And we know this country is so undemocratic, it’s so gerrymandered, it’s so difficult to get the voices of the people, even when they’re in the majority, represented inside of Congress. And so we’re here to crystallize our position, to show people they’re not alone, to encourage them to stand up in their own localities, to keep building a movement that cannot be denied.

Jaisal Noor:

Protesters also highlighted the Trump administration’s crackdown on student activists, including revoking 300 student visas and detaining Mahmoud Khalil under a controversial Cold War-era law that permits deporting non-citizens deemed a threat to US foreign policy.

Roua:

The repression against the Palestine movement speaks to the power of the Palestine movement. You have the president of the country with one of the strongest militaries in the entire world, and at the forefront of his agenda is revoking the visas of anti-genocide student protesters. That is how effective our movement, the Palestine movement, has been in exposing Israel’s crimes. And that is how strong we are. And I think that gives me hope. That gives me the power and the inspiration to know that what we are doing is working and what we are doing must continue to be done.

Jaisal Noor:

For The Real News, this is Jaisal Noor in Washington, DC.

Israel shattered the ceasefire in Gaza in the early hours of March 18 with a massive series of airstrikes targeting Palestinian civilians living in tents inside the designated “safe zones” of the strip. In a single night, more than 400 people were killed, and cities across the world have responded with a new wave of protests. Amid this calamity, Chuck Schumer has quietly cancelled the tour for his newest book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning. In spite of this, Baltimore-based organizers with Jewish Voice for Peace went ahead with a planned protest of Schumer’s cancelled event in their city, raising up a message of Jewish solidarity with Palestinians and a rejection of Zionism. Jaisal Noor reports from Baltimore.

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

Jaisal Noor:

Jewish peace activists and their allies rallied in Baltimore on March 17th, just hours after New York Senator Chuck Schumer abruptly canceled his book talk amid planned protests. The demonstration led by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace was meant to challenge the top Senate Democrat stance on Israel and assert that criticizing Israel’s genocide in Gaza is not anti-Semitic.

Nikki Morse:

As it turns out, Chuck Schumer canceled the event, but we didn’t feel like we should cancel ours because the information we wanted to share with each other, with our community, it’s still relevant. It was relevant decades ago, and it is relevant right now because we have to understand what anti-Semitism is and what it isn’t, if we’re going to stop it, and if we’re going to fight other forms of oppression.

Zackary Berger:

The right wing is trying to drive a wedge into the Jewish community and trying to use charges of anti-Semitism to cover up its anti-democratic and frankly, fascistic tendencies. And the fact that Senator Schumer is aligning with those groups, even implicitly, is very disappointing.

Jaisal Noor:

Schumer’s also facing amounting backlash for voting for the Republican budget bill instead of doing more to fight the GOP’s cuts on vital government services.

Nikki Morse:

We’re a group of people that include LGBTQ folks, trans folks, queer folks, people of color, people of low income, unhoused folks. We have people who are undocumented, who are threatened by deportation. These are all the things that we need our leaders to be fighting

Jaisal Noor:

Many voiced support for Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and spokesperson for the pro-Palestine protest on campus who is facing deportation by the Trump administration despite being a green card holder and not being charged with a crime. Activists call it a blatant attempt to silence dissent.

Nikki Morse:

In Jewish Voice for Peace, we see that as a sign of the threat to all of us. The chant that we’ve been saying tonight is “Come for one, face us all. Free Mahmoud, free us all,” because we see our fates as intimately intertwined with the fate of someone like Mahmoud Khalil.

Jaisal Noor:

For The Real News, I’m Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.

Son of Nun [singing]:

From the IDF for divest.

Divest.

Divest.

Divest.

Divest and let’s lay apartheid to rest.

On Oct. 7, thousands of American Jews with the organization If Not Now held vigils around the US to grieve the tens of thousands of Palestinian, Lebanese, and Israeli lives collectively lost over the past year. For many anti-Zionist Jews, the past year has been a time when their political commitments and principles have been put to the test. While the Biden and Netanyahu governments continue to weaponize antisemitism to justify the genocide in Gaza, many Jewish people are instead taking up the banner of justice and equality for Palestinians. The Real News reports from DC, speaking directly with organizers working with the Jewish American community to demand an arms embargo of Israel.

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Eliana Golding:  Our tears are abundant enough and our hearts are big enough to grieve for every life taken, every universe destroyed, whether Palestinian, Lebanese, or Israeli. It is not either or. We need one another. Jews cannot be safe if Palestinians are not safe and free.

Jaisal Noor:  On Oct. 7, hundreds of American Jews held a vigil in Washington DC to solemnly commemorate the one-year mark since the Hamas attack that killed 1,100 Israelis, and to condemn Israel’s continued genocide in Gaza that’s killed tens of thousands of Palestinians — Though one study estimated in June that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributed to the current conflict.

Lauren Maunus:  We grieve the continuing genocide in Gaza, which we as Jews, many of whom had ancestors killed in the Holocaust, recognize as an attempt to wipe a people out.

Jaisal Noor:  Speakers also condemn the ongoing attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Eliana Golding:  We grieve for the hundreds of Palestinians killed in the West Bank by the Israeli military and settlers, many of them in violent pogroms, reminiscent of those unleashed against our ancestors. We grieve for Palestinians continually displaced through occupation and apartheid.

Jaisal Noor:  And Israel’s escalating attacks in Lebanon.

Lauren Maunus:  It is unimaginable that a full year later we are seeing similar scenes in Lebanon to those we saw in Gaza. Residential buildings bombed to rubble, Israeli and American officials using dehumanizing rhetoric to justify massacres of civilians, and no end to the violence in sight.

Jaisal Noor:  The action was organized by If Not Now, a Jewish organization dedicated to fighting for Palestinian equality. Organizers said 4,000 turned out for vigils across Boston, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.

While they mourned each Jewish life lost over the past year, their message contrasted sharply with mainstream Jewish organizations. Speakers demanded an immediate ceasefire and an end to US weapon shipments to Israel.

Ethan Miller:  While we grieve today, we also are taking action to ensure that there’s not another bomb sent to Israel to be used to kill any number more innocent people, and that, as American Jews, our voices need to be heard.

Jaisal Noor:  Among the speakers was Lily Greenberg-Call, the first Jewish Biden administration appointee to resign over the US’s ongoing support of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Lily Greenberg-Call:  I felt that, one, I needed to leave to be in integrity with myself, that I could not represent the president as he is making Jewish people the face of the American War machine, and using our trauma and our pain to justify slaughter of another people, and that I would actually potentially have more power to change this and to end what’s happening if I stepped out and if I resigned.

Jaisal Noor:  Organizers emphasized that criticizing Israeli policy is not inherently antisemitic, and highlighted the challenge of speaking out for Palestinian rights in Jewish spaces.

Lily Greenberg-Call:  And I think the greatest threat for Jews remains white supremacy and white nationalism. And it’s very convenient for those people, especially to conflate antisemitism with critique of the state of Israel because it distracts from the real threat. The only thing that will keep Jews safe is a multiracial democracy. And there’s a lot of people in this country, especially, who are invested in fighting against that.

Jaisal Noor:  Speakers emphasized Jewish safety will not be achieved through what they repeatedly named as Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Lily Greenberg-Call:  We are here to really emphasize that the only way out of this is a new politics that values every single human life as equal, as dignified. And the only way to get to a thriving future for Palestinians and Israelis is a ceasefire and an end to the occupation and apartheid.

Jaisal Noor:  For The Real News, this is Jaisal Noor reporting from Washington.

Maximillian Alvarez:  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.

The mass movement in solidarity with Palestine returned to DC in protest of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. Presenting a citizen’s warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest, the protesters surrounded Congress, joined by a sizable labor contingent that included the UAW. Jaisal Noor reports from DC. 

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Transcript

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

Speaker 1:

Free, free, free Palestine.

Speaker X:

Free, free, free Palestine.

Eugene Puryear:

And we are here today to raise our voice against the war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is criminally speaking before a joint session of Congress today. And we did not want to let that moment pass without showing that people here in the United States are overwhelmingly in favor of an immediate ceasefire.

Jaisal Noor:

On Wednesday, July 24th in Washington DC, tens of thousands took to the streets to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint address of Congress. Demonstrators called for the U.S. to end military aid to Israel and for Netanyahu’s arrest.

Eugene Puryear:

That’s why we have the phrase behind this demonstration that we’re going to do a citizen’s arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu because ultimately, if the U.S. government isn’t going to step up to the plate, if foreign governments aren’t going to step up to the plate in terms of actually holding this war criminal to account; we the people are at least going to attempt to hold these war criminals to account.

Jaisal Noor:

The International Criminal Court is seeking an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over Israel’s conduct of the war. Over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since Hamas’ October 7th attack. Israel has been charged with genocide by the International Court of Justice, and this week the court affirmed Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal.

Daniel Vicente:

The international criminal courts find that genocide is possibly happening, proven to be happening. When we are supporting a government that does not get full rights to certain citizens, we have to speak out. For too long this issue has been going on and I think you can see the tide is staring to-

Jaisal Noor:

Organized labor mobilized a large contingent for the protest.

Parul Koul:

I think it’s a hugely significant moment for organized labor. Earlier on in the genocide, separate unions had signed letters calling for a cease fire. I think it’s really crucial and amazing to point out that the letter that was released yesterday specifically also talks about U.S. ending its funding of Israel and funding arming Israel, which is a crucial step forward. And I feel like it just points to labor starting to take the more broad, bold, independent action from the Democratic Party because I think we’re starting to see the Democratic Party itself doesn’t offer a platform for the Labor Movement or for all people to solve the really crucial problems that we’re all facing right now.

Jaisal Noor:

Dozens of U.S. lawmakers boycotted the speech, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now the Democrat’s presumptive presidential nominee after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race.

Daniel Vicente:

Him stepping down was exactly what needed to happen. The numbers we were looking at, at our own [inaudible 00:02:33] and external polling; he didn’t stand a chance in Pennsylvania, especially after the assassination attempt. And he’s still probably going to get crushed at Michigan. Our hope is that Kamala will take a softer approach to the situation and finally put strings on the weapon systems we’re giving because we have the levers to put… I’m not saying we could stop the conflict tomorrow. We could certainly put pressure on the Israeli government to take a different path.

Speaker 1:

Free, free Palestine!

Speaker X:

Free, free Palestine!

Jaisal Noor:

The uncommitted movement welcomed Biden’s departure and urged Harris to change course on Gaza.

Eugene Puryear:

We do know that Vice President Harris will have a private meeting with Netanyahu. The Israeli press is already briefing from U.S. sources that she will reaffirm the U.S. support for the state of Israel. Historically, throughout her career, she’s been a very strong supporter of Israel, of APAC, of the overall Zionist project. But given the electoral circumstances, given the power of this movement, I think we can at least hope that perhaps some space will open and we will see some shift. But we’re not waiting for it nor are we going to let our foot off the gas.

Jaisal Noor:

For The Real News, this is Jaisal Noor reporting from Washington D.C.

Chabane:

If we don’t extradite this war criminal or alleged war criminal, to the crimes tribunal, then what was the point of international law? Why did we sign this document? So I’m reminding our elected officials that we’re part of the United Nations, aren’t we? And the ICC is cooking and we are accomplices. So if we are abetting this alleged war criminal, then that makes us accountable too, right?

The mass movement for Palestine returned to Washington, DC on Sat., June 8—forming a two-mile-long “red line” around the White House with a crowd that numbered in the tens of thousands. As discussed in a prior interview with The Real News, organizers of “The People’s Red Line” are seeking an immediate, permanent end to US aid to Israel. Jaisal Noor reports for TRNN from the streets of DC.

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Speaker:  [Chanting] Biden, Biden, you can’t hide!

Crowd:  [Chanting] Biden, Biden, you can’t hide!

Speaker:  [Chanting] The people are the red line!

Crowd:  [Chanting] The people are the red line!

Jaisal Noor:  On Saturday, June 8, thousands of anti-war activists unfurled a 2-mile-long people’s red line around the White House to demand the Biden administration halt its support for Israel.

Brian Becker:  This is the beginning of a red line campaign. We’re going to go all the way until Netanyahu is scheduled to speak before the US Congress, which is a disgrace. That’s at the end of July.

We’re building public pressure on Biden. We’re building public pressure through a grassroots, anti-war movement that’s in solidarity with the rights of the Palestinian people.

Sherry Wolf:  It’s outrageous that for eight months, even for eight minutes, that there’s been a genocide going on. Our government is supporting it, our government is arming Israel, our government is funding Israel, and our government is providing political support for this genocide.

Just this morning, hundreds, hundreds dead in central Gaza. And they used the pier that the Biden administration claimed would be used to bring in humanitarian aid in order to murder children in their sleep.

Jaisal Noor:  The White House says Israel has not crossed Biden’s red line because it has not launched a large-scale offensive in Rafah, a city on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, where the majority of Gaza’s residents have fled.

Dan:  I think the red line was crossed many times from the first day. And Joe Biden, he’s another war criminal involved and he should be prosecuted, should be in jail. And I don’t know, what’s the red line for him? How many kids need to be killed? How much blood does he need? I think he needs to stop.

Sennéa Raslan:  My name is Sennéa Raslan, and I’m here today to support the fight against injustice and the fight for collective liberation.

Jaisal Noor:  And so it says here you’ve been on hunger strike. This is day 20.

Sennéa Raslan:  Yeah.

Jaisal Noor:  Talk about why you’re on hunger strike.

Sennéa Raslan:  My goal is to help break the silence. Even though we see a lot of people here today, there’s still a lot of people in my circle that don’t talk about it enough, if at all. And I knew that me doing this would be something that would draw attention, more attention to the issue just in my small circle.

And I think it’s worked, actually. I see people speaking up now that haven’t said a word up until I started doing this. So that was my goal.

Kyra:  I’m here to be part of something impactful, to show our government that this is the red line that we were promised, that we were told an invasion in Rafah is where this will end. And it did not happen. Local protesting has not been doing what we wanted.

So coming to DC — I’m from Ohio, I took a bus to come here to join in on this, to be in a historic moment, to tell Biden that this is unacceptable, and if they won’t do something about it, the people will come together and make sure that something changes.

Emily Siegel:  The weapons that US sends to Israel is what is fueling the genocide that’s happening there. And what we need to do is call for an end of those weapons transfers and of funding of Israel in order to stop what is happening. I think really the US government could stop this tomorrow. They could stop this yesterday, and they’re choosing not to by continuing to send weapons.

Jeremy:  Israeli occupational forces have begun their full-scale invasion of Rafah. They have stepped up their bombing campaigns on “safe zones” that they told civilians to evacuate to. They’ve bombed refugee camps, UN schools. Just deplorable, deplorable things. But Biden has done nothing. It’s all been rhetoric and no action behind it. And Biden could stop this immediately if he ended weapons shipments to Israel.

Jaisal Noor:  Israel has killed at least 35,000 Palestinian civilians, and the Gaza Strip has been largely reduced to rubble. Israel says it’s responding to Hamas’s attack on Oct. [7] that killed nearly 1,200 civilians last year.

Reporting for The Real News, I’m Jaisal Noor in Washington, DC.

Maximillian Alvarez:  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.

A dozen activists were arrested in an act of civil disobedience at the US Capitol in Washington DC on Wednesday, May 22, to urge President Joe Biden to “fund education not genocide.”

Ahead of the November rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump for the White House, activists are calling for Biden to invest in social spending and halt aid to Israel amid its eight-month all-out assault on Gaza.

“Our country seems to find funds and money when it comes to endless wars,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib said at a rally at headquarters of the Department of Education before the arrests. “Yet, year after year, my colleagues tell me that there’s no money for life-saving investments in our communities.” 

That morning, the Biden administration announced an additional $7.7 billion in student debt relief for 160,000 borrowers, adding to the previous $160 billion in targeted student debt forgiveness. Last year, the Supreme Court blocked a separate proposal from Biden to grant eligible borrowers up to $20,000 in student debt relief. 

The Debt Collective—a national union of debtors, which organized the protest—is calling on Biden to use executive power to wipe away all $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. 

“Our public universities and colleges have faced decades of divestment and disinvestment, which has created a two-tiered system that punishes low-income students with a lifetime of debt,” said Rep. Cori Bush, who called for massive investments in education, infrastructure, and healthcare instead of military spending.

“The people want a ceasefire. The people want to stop funding, genocide, and endless war. The people want to stop their taxpayer dollars from being used to bomb children,” she said. 

Organizers said the action was inspired by the thousands of college students who have been ridiculed and arrested at Gaza solidarity encampments, pressuring their universities to cut ties with Israel. 

“When it comes to student loan debt cancellation, people said the student loan debt would never be canceled when I started fighting for this in 2007,” said Tiffany Dena Loftin, Debt Collective’s higher education campaign lead, in an interview with The Real News. 

Over 500,000 people have voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries in protest of Biden’s ongoing military and diplomatic support of Israel. 

“Right now in the primaries, there were students who were saying, ‘If you do not stand on the right side of justice, if you’ve not said, the right side of freedom, we’re not voting for you,’” Loftin said.

Last week, Real Time host Bill Maher attacked Biden’s loan forgiveness initiatives for student borrowers. 

“Colleges constantly raise tuition, then the kids take out more loans, then the government comes by and pays those loans. Okay, so my tax dollars are supporting this Jew hating? I don’t think so.”

Loftin rejected the characterization of the anti-war protestors as antisemitic.

“We are anti-Zionist, and we want to free Palestine. And in addition to that, we do not want to fund the bombs that are killing babies as we speak right now, we want that money to go to fund a free education in America. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Also speaking at the rally was Lily Greenberg Call, who last week became the first Jewish-American Biden administration official to resign in protest of US policy towards Gaza.

“I could no longer serve this president, represent this administration, who is funding the genocide of Palestinians and ignoring the voice of the American people who have made their wish loud and clear: ceasefire now,” said Greenberg Call, who from 2017 to 2019 served as president of Bears for Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s affiliate group at UC Berkeley.

Many at the rally also criticized the Biden administration for authorizing a $1 billion arms sale to Israel a week after halting a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs over concerns over their use in densely populated civilian areas. 

Over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel,  which killed 1,200 people, including many civilians. 

This week, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for senior leaders of Hamas and Israel over crimes against humanity and war crimes. The International Court of Justice has urged Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza.

“We will get a ceasefire. We will get a hostage deal. We will stop sending weapons to Israel. We will end the system of apartheid and occupation that is stretched across the Holy Land,” Greenberg Call said.

US military spending far outpaces other nations, accounting for 37% of global military spending—more than the next nine countries combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Of its $1.8 trillion budget, “$1.1 trillion—or 62%—was for militarized programs, including war and the military, deportations and detentions, and prisons and policing,” The National Priorities Project reported. 

“We’re going to build solidarity, through solidarity here and around the world, multiracial democracy, the only thing that will keep us safe, that will keep my community safe, that will keep all of us safe anywhere,” Greenberg Call said at the rally. “We will cancel student debt. We will stop funding the war machine. We will take meaningful steps to protect our communities and our beautiful planet from climate change.”

This story originally appeared in Baltimore Beat on May 09, 2024. It is shared here with permission.

Despite threats of disciplinary action, pro-Palestine demonstrators encamped at Johns Hopkins University remained there the following day. 

Representatives for the university handed out forms on Wednesday, May 8, asking demonstrators who had been camped out on the area known as “the beach” since the week before to agree to leave and not return. If they did so, the school officials said, they would “defer taking conduct action” against them.

“We refuse the University’s scare tactics,” the Hopkins Justice Collaborative said via a press release sent out Wednesday afternoon. “After yesterday’s meeting with the administration, which produced a miserable offer to the encampment, this move from the University reads as despicable and fear-mongering. The encampment has yet to receive any word from the administration about resuming negotiations.”

In a statement to Baltimore Beat, a JHU representative said, “We are pursuing other avenues for those who remain and would remind everyone that participation in the encampment is a trespass.” 

Dozens of college campuses have launched protests amidst growing calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. The student movement is seeking to pressure institutions to cut ties with Israel over its war that’s killed over 40,000 Palestinians in the last seven months and is continuing to kill civilians.

The anti-war protests persist as Israel threatens a full-scale invasion of Rafah, a city on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt where 1.4 million Palestinians — more than half of the territory’s entire population — have sought refuge. The United Nations has warned that hundreds of thousands of civilians could die if Israel invades Rafah.

Under increasing pressure from young activists in the streets and within his own administration to protect Palestinians from Israeli human rights violations, President Joe Biden on Wednesday threatened to halt additional military aid to Israel.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah … I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden told CNN. Last month, Biden approved a $15 billion weapon shipment to Israel over the objections of over 250 human rights organizations.

Israel blames Hamas, the political and military organization that controls the Gaza Strip, for civilian deaths. Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and captured 240 hostages during its deadly surprise attack on Oct. 7. 

Earlier this week, Hamas agreed to a ceasefire deal, which Israel rejected, reportedly because it called for a permanent ceasefire. Amid negotiations, Israel seized the Rafah border crossing, cutting off the main artery for food and humanitarian supplies into the region. 

“If the crossing is not urgently reopened, the entire civilian population in Rafah and in the Gaza Strip will be at greater risk of famine, disease and death,” a UN official told the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, northern Gaza is already experiencing “full-blown famine,” said World Food Programme executive director Cindy McCain. McCain is the widow of late Republican Senator John McCain.  

A May 8 poll from Data for Progress, a left-wing polling firm, found 70% of Americans and 83% of Democrats support a ceasefire in Gaza, 54% of Americans and 68% of Democrats supported suspending arms sales to Israel for blocking aid to Gaza. A majority also said they believed Israel is committed genocide in Gaza, including 56% of Democrats. 

At the Hopkins encampments, activists say they remain committed to their protest in solidarity with Gaza as the conditions there grow more dire. Organizers say they are concerned the school will use force to evict them. The Baltimore Police Department has thus far found no reason to intervene against the encampment. 

On May 7, representatives from seven Baltimore-area colleges held a joint press conference to collectively urge their schools to end ties with Israel. 

“We organize in protest of the systemic violence against Palestinians, and all people, in recognition that peace cannot be achieved without freedom from oppression,” read the statement from students at Johns Hopkins University, Towson University, the University of Baltimore, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and Goucher College.

“There are no universities left in Gaza. It is our duty to recognize our position of privilege and refuse to be complicit in genocide,” the letter continued. “The students of Baltimore condemn the notion of “neutrality” in fighting for social justice and implore our universities to use their institutional power for the liberation of Palestine.”

In a statement, JHU said the university is “continuing to work to bring the encampment to a close given the serious risk of conflict and harm to the university community, as seen here already and at peer institutions around the country.”

On May 3, the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS) Faculty Senate wrote a letter urging JHU President Ron Daniels to engage with protestors and not use force to disband the camp.

“[G]iven the non-violent nature of the protest, and the willingness of students to use this opportunity for education and training, we urge President Daniels to continue to follow principles of dialogue, engagement and de-escalation,” they wrote. “Wesleyan and Oberlin both are permitting encampments. We see no reason why it should be necessary to address the encampment at Hopkins through police action.”

According to a recent report from The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, “the overwhelming majority of student protests since October — 99% — have remained peaceful.”

Daniel Levy, an Israeli peace negotiator under two former Israeli prime ministers and president of the U.S./Middle East Project who has turned into a fierce critic of the Israeli government,, said the protests are making an impact. 

“People should not feel disheartened. What they are doing is having an impact: the fear of how this could play out politically. And so, I would say, in these crucial moments, those efforts should be redoubled because they are meaningful,” he told the independent news program Democracy Now! 

This story originally appeared in Baltimore Beat on Apr. 30, 2024. It is shared here with permission.

Activists and organizers who set up an encampment at Johns Hopkins University said that school officials threatened to call the police on them if they didn’t leave last night. They said that school officials also threatened them with academic sanctions.

“We have been clear that the consequences of violating our policies and creating unsafe conditions include academic discipline, which is determined by University officials, and trespass, which is handled by local law enforcement,” a representative for the school said in an email to Baltimore Beat.

Organizers launched the encampment on Monday, April 29.

A negotiation team working on behalf of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment said that they offered officials concessions when officials said that people had to leave, citing health and safety concerns.

“The negotiation team offered the following concessions and guarantees in order to allow the encampment to remain overnight: respect for campus quiet hours, offers to take down semi-permanent structures, offers to keep supplies and materials off-site, freedom of movement for students and non-participants, a written guarantee of nonviolence, and continuous presence of de-escalators on-site,” organizers said via a statement from the Hopkins Justice Collaborative.

“The University Administration released a public statement claiming an agreement was reached with our negotiation team to limit the hours of our encampment. This is a false statement. No agreement was reached. In addition, they stated in the email that they met with students for several hours—this is also untrue; negotiations lasted for one hour. What is most egregious is that the message stated that they had concerns over the ‘health, safety, and welfare’ of students. This is in clear contradiction of their threat last night when they admitted that they were willing to risk the safety and wellbeing of students by calling in the BPD and sending students to jail,” the statement read.

One student who stayed overnight and identified himself as TB spoke to Baltimore Beat by phone from the campus on Tuesday morning. He said school administrators threatened to call the Baltimore City Police if the people gathered did not leave. He said that they asked officials if they were willing to risk the safety of students to do so, and the officials didn’t seem to care. 

TB said he felt an obligation to remain on campus, and as long as others were with him, he would stay there as long as he needed to. 

“We are saving the Palestinian people, speaking up for them since they cannot speak up for themselves at the moment,” he said. 

TB asked people to continue to gather at the university to continue to highlight the plight of Palestinians.

“Please join our struggle to fight for the human rights of the Palestinian people to exist,” he said. “We invite you to struggle and fight for the human rights of the Palestinian people.” 

“All out to JHU: We need your consistent urgent support!!!” read an Instagram post by the organization Students for Justice in Palestine at Johns Hopkins University Tuesday morning. “We are not letting Johns Hopkins shut down our encampment. We are still here. There have been no arrests.”

“We’re here to urge the university to sever its financial and academic links [in Israel] and its involvement in the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” Sarah, a Hopkins undergraduate, told Baltimore Beat. They chose not to provide their full name due to concerns about being targeted for their pro-Palestine stance.

The encampment had places to get food, supplies of face masks and tables offering free books and newspapers. People spread out blankets, and some sat under tents.

Throughout the evening, activists chanted, “Disclose, divest; we will not leave until our demands are met,” and “Free, free, free, Palestine!”

At around 8 p.m., a Baltimore City Police Department helicopter made tight circles around the encampment. A smattering of police officers stood around the perimeter of the area where people had gathered.

By 10 p.m., six hours after the encampment’s launch, demonstrators had ignored multiple orders to disperse. Instead, they distributed water and food as they prepared to spend the night to ensure their demands were met. 

Representatives for organizers met with Hopkins officials, and by 3 a.m., some decided to abide by the university’s request that they leave and return the next day. Others said they felt a strong commitment to remain on campus no matter what. 

Over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed during the more than six-month-long Israeli assault, which has been supported by the U.S. government with weapons shipments and diplomatic support. Politico reports 20 State Department lawyers are urging a halt of the flow of arms to Israel because it may be using U.S.-made weapons in violation of international law. Meanwhile, humanitarian experts warn that a famine is developing in Gaza because Israel is blocking food deliveries.

“I was moved to see the courage, moral clarity, and conviction that the student protestors displayed today; this encampment has been established with a clear understanding of how to keep participants safe, and how to keep the space inclusive, thoughtful, and disciplined,” Hopkins English professor Drew Daniel, who visited the encampment, told Baltimore Beat in an email. 

The protest is part of a national movement of campus occupations urging universities with substantial endowments to cut financial ties with companies that support the Israeli occupation. At several other universities, hundreds of students and faculty have been arrested nationwide, often violently, after officials have ordered police to clear the protests.

“I want to encourage my fellow faculty members to show up and show solidarity with our students as they speak out against what is happening in Gaza, and to lend their voices to the growing calls from our students to hold Hopkins accountable for its investments in corporations that profit from this conflict,” said Daniel, who was vocal in his support of the student protests against the Hopkins private police force in 2019. 

“Consider Emory University, for example, where police used tear gas and were aggressively handling students, throwing them to the ground and arresting them. Rubber bullets have been fired at student occupations. We’re here to ensure that doesn’t happen,” they said.

Dozens spread out blankets and set up pop-up tents at Hopkins Beach, a large grassy area on the Hopkins Homewood campus, and created protest signs.

Over 100 Hopkins faculty and staff wrote an open letter to the university, urging it to allow the protests to continue.

“We call on you to continue fulfilling your responsibilities to protect peaceful protesters, uphold academic freedom, and resist any pressure to criminalize demonstrations. In recent weeks, several universities have allowed extensive protests and have managed to keep everyone safe,” the letter states.

The organizers’ additional demands include a Hopkins boycott of Israeli academic institutions, condemnation of the deaths of Palestinians and a call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. They also demand that the university denounce the widespread repression of pro-Palestine speech in the United States, particularly on college campuses, and reaffirm its commitment to free speech without fear of reprisal.

Supporters of Israel, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have attempted to brand the campus protests as antisemitic.

Sarah, who is Jewish, rejects this notion. “There are many Jewish organizers, including myself, who have consistently supported Palestine, been arrested for the cause and are here to declare that Zionism is not part of our Jewish identity.”

At the Hopkins protest camp, racism, bigotry and antisemitism are strictly prohibited, as outlined in a code of conduct given to participants.

“Antisemitism has no place in this encampment,” Sarah noted, highlighting that Muslim students have faced harassment on campus for expressing pro-Palestinian views.

Organizers say they were inspired to start their own campus occupation by both the historic national wave of student protests and Hopkins’ legacy of successful campus protests.

In 1986, a years-long student campaign pressured Hopkins into divesting from corporations that did business with the white supremacist government of South Africa.

“Students once camped for nine days to protest apartheid in South Africa, and they successfully pushed the school to divest. We are part of that legacy,” Sarah explained. 

“The demand to divest is not going to go away, and I hope the administration listens and responds in a manner that lives up to its stated mission to generate ‘knowledge for the world.’ The people of Gaza are a part of that world, and Hopkins needs to act like it,” Daniel said. 

Additional reporting by Lisa Snowden.

Updated 4/30/2024 6:14PM

Maryland public university graduate students and faculty are demanding collective bargaining rights from the state government for the 20,000 public academic workers currently denied the right to join a union. Maryland currently has a Democratic majority in its legislature as well as a Democratic governor. Jaisal Noor reports from Annapolis.

Videography / Post-Production: Jaisal Noor

Transcript

Sen. Ben Kramer:  What is it they are afraid of? They know the facts are that they are not treating the workers with the respect and the dignity that they should be doing.

[Crowd chanting]

Lenora Knowles:  I’m living paycheck to paycheck. It’s definitely not a living wage. One life crisis away from not being able to pay rent.

Jaisal Noor:  Fed up with low pay and poor working conditions, over 50 professors, graduate students, and their supporters rallied for the right to join a union.

Linda Foley:   Even at the University of Iowa, for goodness sake, they have collective bargaining rights for grad assistants. We should be able to do that here in Maryland.

Reporter:  Maryland denies the over 20,000 professors and grad assistants it employs collective bargaining rights — But supporters hope this is the year that’s going to change.

Maryland has a Democratic trifecta and supermajority in the state legislature; almost all other state workers can join a union. 

Sen. Jill Carter:  For better outcomes for our students, for better input into the academic process, for equity, for ending disparities, for fair treatment, access to resources, all those reasons, we need collective bargaining.

Jaisal Noor:  University officials argue that grad assistants can’t unionize because they are students, not workers.

Ivy Lyons:  You are a worker. You clock hours, you take time out of your day, and you are compensated for that work. If we understand what work is and we understand the value of work for faculty and staff, then we should also understand the security, the things that they need to survive.

Jaisal Noor:  Grad students at Johns Hopkins, a private University based in Maryland, overwhelmingly voted to unionize in 2023.

Justin Otter:  Strong academic unions mean better conditions for academic workers. Strong academic unions mean students get the best education possible. And I’m here today because your fight at public Maryland universities is our fight at Johns Hopkins.

[Crowd chanting]

Jaisal Noor:  Union benefits extend beyond better pay, benefits, and working conditions.

Luka Arsenjuk:  It’s important to know that it would improve the conditions of grad students and faculty, but it’s also really important to stress that it would improve the higher education

Marcus Johnson:  This is a simple democratic right. The state of Maryland is a super majority of Democrats.

Jaisal Noor:  In this critical election year, organizers say it’s incumbent Democrats deliver to working people.

Marcus Johnson:  It’s on the fundamental platform of the Democratic Party for this election year. Our state is out of step with them. And so it really is incumbent on these legislators to step up, do their jobs, and support collective bargaining.

Jaisal Noor:  For The Real News, this is Jaisal Noor. 

Maximillian Alvarez:  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.

The largest pro-Palestine rally in US history took place this past Saturday, Nov. 4, in the heart of Washington DC. As nations and human rights organizations around the world warn that Israel is committing acts of genocide with its scorched-earth bombing and ground invasion of Gaza, and as Israeli military and settler violence increases in the occupied West Bank, people from all over the US descended upon the nation’s capital to demand an immediate ceasefire, an end to US aid to Israel, and an end to Israel’s 75-year occupation of Palestine. And organizers of Saturday’s march, along with other international organizations, are also calling for a national day of action on Thursday, Nov. 9. Many corporate media outlets have either ignored, attempted to downplay, or misconstrued the tone and scale of the Free Palestine! National March on Washington, but TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and veteran reporter Jaisal Noor were on the ground speaking directly to organizers and attendees about why they were marching, why it’s important, and what feels different about this moment.

Studio Production: Jaisal Noor
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

Yara Shoufani:  Free, free Palestine!

Protesters:  Free, free Palestine!

Yara Shoufani:  Long live Palestine!

Protesters:  Long live Palestine!

Yara Shoufani:  Long live Palestine!

Protesters:  Long live Palestine!

Yara Shoufani:  Justice is our demand!

Protesters:  Justice is our demand!

Yara Shoufani:  No peace on stolen land!

Protesters:  No peace on stolen land!

Maximillian Alvarez:  This Maximillian Alvarez for The Real News Network. I’m standing in downtown Washington DC on Saturday, Nov. 4. Behind me, you see the thousands upon thousands of people who have come to Washington DC for the March on Washington for Palestine. People around the country are here to demand an end to Israel’s genocidal bombing of Gaza, here to demand an end to the 75-year Israeli occupation of Palestine.

For the past few hours, we’ve been hearing speakers on the stage just over to my left. And right now the march is about to begin heading towards the White House. We are here on the ground for The Real News Network talking to folks about why they’re here, why this is important, and what feels different about this moment.

Yara Shoufani:  So my name is Yara Shoufani. I’m here with the Palestinian Youth Movement, and we are one of the organizers of today’s March on DC, which is the largest Palestine march in DC in US history. We are here to demand an end to the genocide against the Palestinian people with three central demands: We’re calling for an immediate ceasefire; we are calling for an end to US military aid to Israel; and we are calling to lift the siege on Gaza which, for 17 years, has suffocated the people of Gaza and turned Gaza into an open-air prison.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So can you say a little more about PYM, about the work that y’all have been doing for years up until now, and what feels so different about this moment?

Yara Shoufani:  So the Palestinian Youth Movement is an organization of Palestinian Arab youth. We have chapters across the US, Canada, and Europe, and we are fighting for a free Palestine. And the PYM has been working tirelessly for years on this issue. And this moment feels like a turning point in history for us, and for the Palestinian movement in general. But at the same time, this moment is the culmination of 75 years long of our people’s struggle against the colonization of Palestine, fighting to return to our homeland, fighting to end the genocide against our people, to break down the apartheid walls, to shut down the military checkpoints, and to end US funding to Israel – Which, in the last two days, the US government has voted to send an additional $14.5 billion to the Israeli regime. We are talking about the United States government rewarding Israeli’s genocide, and we are here as the Palestinian Youth Movement, along with the masses of the United States, the masses of the world, to say that we will not be silent, and we will fight until this genocide ends and until we see a free Palestine.

Noura Erakat:  Even though the majority of the world, the majority of Americans support an immediate, an immediate end to the carnage and destruction of Gaza, only six out of 535 members of this cowardly, decrepit Congress have endorsed a ceasefire [crowd cheers]. Every single human rights instrument ever drafted was meant to prevent these atrocities.

Merveen Adwan:  75 years ago, we’ve been under attack to leave our land. The only fault Palestinian did, these Palestinians were born in their land. My grandpa, 75 years ago, he was farming and working in his house, on his farm, when the bomb fell on his house and they had to flee to Gaza. And then my dad has to flee to Lebanon. And they also bombed Lebanon, and we had to flee to Egypt. The Oslo Agreement and all this political work didn’t help Palestinian people to live in peace. 75 years of suffering, losing people close to you, finding them hurt all the time. And even after we get our citizenship, I’m not able to visit my family there. My dad died in Gaza and I was not able to visit and see him because the border is always closed.

Violence creates violence. Violence creates anger. Anger… It’s not like before 75 years, it stays only in Gaza. Palestinians now are all over the world because they kicked us [out]. We had to flee our land. So you find Palestinians in America, you find Palestinians in Britain. All over the world.

We are seeing people every day dying there. In Jerusalem, they are dying. They take their houses and take our youth. In Jenin, in Nablus, West Bank, all over. Gaza is so bad because they are literally, it’s genocide. They are doing genocide in Gaza. They’re killing everyone. Yesterday you just bombed five hospitals. People in ambulances, they bombed them. They killed them. And all over the world, they are, the governors in all over the world, you want to get rid of Palestinians. Is it doable? It’s not. It’s not doable. We are not going down. Gaza will keep fighting and Palestinians will keep fighting, we’ll keep fighting, peaceful way, and our resistance will keep fighting the right way.

Jihad Alniser:  Because there’s a lot of kids dying in Gaza. We’ve got to make sure that we know that they’re dying, that we’re aware of their deaths, and we’re protesting to prevent more deaths.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And you’re in ninth grade. You should be focused on school, on living your life, and yet, you have to care about this stuff. Can I ask just what it feels like for someone like you in ninth grade to watch what’s going on in Palestine right now?

Jihad Alniser:  I’ve seen all the graphic pictures. I’ve seen everything in Palestine. At this point, there’s no limit for what I can’t see. I’ve seen everything.

Mohammed el-Kurd:  I called my father earlier, I told him I was coming to this march. He said, stay away from the cameras. We’re all afraid, but this fear does not compare. They want us to think that we are paying personal prices, but we have our community. If they come for you, if they come for you, if they take your job, if they fire you from school, if they expel you, do not think of yourself as a casualty. You are not a casualty. You are fuel for the movement [crowd cheers]. You are part of the struggle.

Hannah Priscilla Craig:  So I’m an artist and cultural worker. I work with The People’s Forum, and in the last three weeks we have come together, more than 8,000 artists and cultural workers have signed on to a letter, “Artists Against Apartheid,” calling for solidarity with Palestine, recognizing the apartheid nature of Israel, and recognizing that as artists and cultural workers, it’s our responsibility, it’s our duty to use our skills, use our craft in the way that we know it forms culture. And so, needing to really be present, be active, and use the tools that we have to struggle and to fight and be part of this movement for Palestine.

Well, we’re in Washington, DC of course, in the United States, in the heart of empire, in the belly of the beast. We’re about to march to the White House. This is an incredible show of solidarity with Palestine. I don’t think we’ve seen something like this ever before in terms of solidarity with Palestine in the United States itself. And this moment is really specific. I think we’re seeing people come out in numbers that we’ve never seen, people understanding the situation more clearly than ever before. So I think it’s important that we participate, that we’re active, and that we don’t let this fight die down. We have to stay strong.

This Thursday, Nov. 9, there will be a huge day of action where we’re going to shut it down. Shut It Down 4 Palestine. You can register in action and become part of the movement at ShutItDown4Palestine.org.

Firas Saleh:  My name is Firas Saleh. I am currently living in Durham, North Carolina. My heritage is Palestinian. We are from Silat ad-Dhahr, our original town, and it is a town by Nablus. And I have only been one time in my whole life. And that one time, we were held on the border for six hours trying to come inside, and we were just tourists. And in that one instance, they checked our documents, they called our businesses back home, make sure that we’re legitimate. And it’s just a humiliating experience. I had one humiliating experience. I cannot imagine the daily humiliation that our brothers and sisters go through over there.

So I’m here to show my pride in the Palestinian people, my people, and we just want a homeland to come to. It’s just that simple. We want peace. We want a homeland, and we hope for it.

Nihad Awad:  No votes. No votes in Michigan. No votes in Arizona [crowd cheers]. No votes in Georgia [crowd cheers]. No votes in Nevada [crowd cheers]. No votes in Wisconsin [crowd cheers]. No votes in Pennsylvania [crowd cheers]. No votes in Ohio [crowd cheers]. No votes for you anywhere [crowd cheers] if you will not call for a ceasefire now.

Nasser Beydoun:  Well, we’re here at Freedom Plaza in Washington DC with all these people, hundreds of thousands of people that want a ceasefire, that want to end the genocide in Gaza. And these are people who have come together for the cause. And I think this is going to be an inflection point because come November, Joe Biden’s going to see that his blind support for Israel is going to cost him the election.

Nick Tilsen:  My mother is a matriarch and a revolutionary from the Oglála Lakota people. My grandfather was a Jewish anti-Zionist organizer who stood with Palestine since the Six Day War [crowd cheers], and he embedded that into my heart. So I’m here with you, with my brothers, with my sisters, with my relatives. No matter what they have done to try to wipe us out from history, to try to erase us, to put us through boarding schools, to take our land, to try to take our language, they were not successful. So we are here with you, and in this battle, we will not stop, no matter what [crowd cheers].

In this historical moment, we must remember our ancestors. We must remember our elders who prayed for this moment one day. They prayed, they sacrificed. No matter what they’ve ever done, it wasn’t for nothing, because we will, together, achieve revolution and the liberation of all of our people everywhere [crowd cheers]. One Cuban revolutionary once said, once said that “Revolution is not a bed of roses. It is a struggle between the [future and the past].” My relatives, we are in struggle, therefore we are in revolution. [inaudible][crowd cheers].

Hala Alahmad:  My name is Hala Alahmad. I’m from Palestine, and also nationality as a Jordanian because we moved from Palestine to Jordan, and we stayed in the refugee camps. Basically, I was born in refugee camps. And because we have so many refugee camps in Jordan, because it’s close to Palestine. My father, when he came from Palestine to Jordan, past the Jordan River, he was walking because they told him to leave as soon as possible, and the only thing he grabbed with him, the document, the deed of his land, his father’s lands. And we have around 500 acres, and this is like a small sample. This is from the Osman Empire, and it was registered in Turkey and Jerusalem. And we have a copy here. And this page, this paper, it’s 100 years old, 140 years old, and one day when we come back, we’re allowed to go back to Palestine, and we hope we retrieve our land.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Can I ask you, if you could talk directly to Americans who think that this conflict just started on Oct. 7, 2023, what it means to have documents showing how far back your own family’s displacement goes?

Hala Alahmad:  Exactly. And the problem is, when we say conflict, it’s not a conflict. People came to our land, took our home, they told us, leave. Under which right, we don’t know. And the problem is the media, nobody knows here in America what’s going on, and they think it’s both of them, they think, they should stop fighting. But the problem is, they are the stealers. They stole our land, and they’re claiming they’re innocent. And we are the victims. They’re playing the victims, but we are the victims.

Because I have to, if I stayed with my grandfather, we have houses, we have money. I don’t have to come to this country and tolerate all this stuff from other people as a stranger and a Muslim and Arabic, and they ruin our life basically. Nobody pushed me to come. They push us to leave. And that’s why it’s sad. Now we live here, we have to accept it, and we have to say, okay, whatever you call me, you know we’re here.

Even the Palestinians outside of Gaza and the West Bank, they are suffering too. We have racism, and they always call us names, and I denied I was born in a refugee camp. I’m so proud, proud of myself. I was born in refugee camps, and I made it here, and I’ll prove to the world, we have our rights. And I’m so happy. My grandfather now, he’s so proud of me. To bring the document, it was between his hand, and here in Washington DC.

Lamis Deek:  And the truth is, the Western world is a lie [crowd cheers]. The truth is that when they said they were bringing freedom, they were bringing fascism [crowd cheers]. That when they said they were bringing the only democracy in the Middle East, they were bringing domination and barbaric colonization [crowd cheers]. That when they said they were the most moral army, they were the most monstrous and murderous that we have seen in modern history [crowd cheers]. That America’s trusted ally is nothing but a cult of torturers. A cult of torturers.

I’m an attorney. We filed a notice and demand to the members of Congress letting them know that they will be prosecuted in criminal courts [crowd cheers] all over the world. That they will be sanctioned like they like to sanction us all over the world [crowd cheers]. The days of just speaking have ended. So when we tell you, do not be afraid, this is about your future, our words are not empty. Three weeks ago we convened an army of lawyers for all of you here and all over the world [crowd cheers].

Michaela Yamine:  Hi, I’m Michaela Yamine. I’m an organizer with UAW at the National Institutes of Health – Not representing the National Institutes of Health right now.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Hell yeah, baby!

Griffin Mahon:  My name’s Griffin Mahon. I’m a temporary staff organizer with the United Auto Workers, supporting the fellows at the National Institutes of Health to form a union.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And can you guys say a little bit about why you’re out here today and why it’s important that the labor movement get involved in this fight?

Michaela Yamine:  We’re out here today because there’s a genocide happening in Palestine, and that’s fucked up.

Griffin Mahon:  An injury to one is an injury to all, and American-made bombs are being used to kill the families of Americans in Palestine, in addition to thousands and thousands of other people. And our government should not support that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  If you could talk to our fellow workers, our fellow unionist folks in the labor movement about why it is important to not only fight for our rights and dignity in the workplace, but all around the world right now. What is your message to other working folks around the US about why they should get involved in this fight?

Michaela Yamine:  Our politicians aren’t representing us. In labor, we’re organized and we have the ability to put pressure on politicians, and when we come together and use collective bargaining that we use in our workplaces to improve our working conditions, we can extend that to the rest of the world.

Griffin Mahon:  The United States is the most powerful, wealthiest country in the world, but the people here have some of the poorest living conditions compared to comparable countries around the world. And the reason for that is that people who work, and the unions that represent us, and all the people who don’t have unions have not combined in order to politically fight the politicians in the Democratic and Republican Party who represent the interests of political elites and the capitalists.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Anything else you guys wanted to say before we wrap?

Griffin Mahon:  Free Palestine.

Michaela Yamine:  Free Palestine.

Vijay Prashad:  You are a war criminal [crowd cheers]. President Joe Biden, you are a war criminal [crowd cheers]. Prosecutor Kareem Khan of the International Criminal Court, we put you on notice. This is not the culmination of anything. This is the beginning [crowd cheers]. This is the beginning. This is where it starts. It starts here. We march from here. We tell them from here [crowd cheers]. History begins now. From the river to the sea!

Protesters:  From the river to the sea!

Vijay Prashad:  From the river to the sea!

Protesters:  From the river to the sea!

Protester:  Palestine will be free!

Protesters:  Palestine will be free!

Ameer Khattab:  We’re out here today in Washington to make sure our voices are heard. Fighting for my people back home, man. There’s people dying. There’s my family dying. There’s a lot of people dying back there. And it’s sad watching our own people dying when we can’t do nothing about it. So us out here talking, maybe our voices will be heard by this motherfucker Biden. Maybe he’ll do some ceasefire and end this shit and do something about it. So all these people out here today, their voice is going to be heard one day, inshallah.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And as we know, this fight did not start on Oct. 7. We’re talking about a 75-year-long occupation. And when I was growing up, no one talked about this. No one talked about the Palestinian side. I just wanted to ask, do you feel like that is changing among the new generation? What are you hearing? What are you sensing?

Ameer Khattab:  Oh yeah, this right here is going to make a big change, because 75 years we’ve been occupied, but the moment we do something, they call us terrorists. But all what we’re really doing is protecting our home and trying to get our home back. So us doing this, we’re not terrorists. They’re the terrorists killing innocent kids. A lot of people know what’s going on in the world, but they stay quiet. Social media tries to hide it for them. But look at how many people are here. They know what’s going on.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And what would you say to folks out there who are, maybe they want to get involved, but they are afraid of the pushback they’ll get? Maybe they are being pressured into silence. If you could talk to people, young people, working people around the country and around the world about why they should get involved in this fight, what would you tell them?

Ameer Khattab:  I’d tell them, stop bitching and go out there and say the truth. Go out there and say what’s really going on. Don’t hide. Don’t be scared that something’s going to happen to you. I’m over here speaking into the camera, showing my face because I don’t give a fuck. I’m out here to tell other people and tell the world that your voice needs to be heard and you got to stop being scared, and go out there and tell the truth.

Eugene Puryear:  They killed tens of thousands of Palestinian people. Even before what we’ve seen now, they killed thousands of children. From 2000 to just this year before this conflict, they were killing 100 children every year. That’s what I condemn. The brutality of the Israeli apartheid forces. The whole reason why the world is standing up right now is because our hearts are in Palestine, because we know it’s one of the purest struggles for liberation in the world today [crowd cheers]. So of course they want to demonize it.

But let me tell you this. When the Indigenous people in this country stood for their land, they demonized them. When the enslaved people of this country and Haiti rose to defend their human rights, they demonized them. When the people of Algeria rose for their human rights, they demonized them [crowd cheers]. So we’re not going to allow the Palestinians to be demonized. They have the right to stand up, the right to defend themselves, and the right to resist. Free, free Palestine!

Protesters:  Free, free Palestine!

Eugene Puryear:  Free, free Palestine!

Protesters:  Free, free Palestine!

Merveen Adwan:  My American people, I have lived here in the USA for 20 years now. I was here on 9/11. And 9/11, it was hard time for all foreigners, not American people here. But I remember my neighbor, she baked a cake and she came to visit me to calm me down, and she said, if you need shopping, if you need any help, I will help you. I’m here for you. So I trust my people. I trust American people. If they know the truth, they will stand with us. If you count, how many Americans do you find? We are all American. Different color, different background, but we are all American. We support the rights. We want justice. All Americans want justice. Our money, you send it to different countries to bomb people. We need it here. We need it for school. We need it for our hospitals. We need it for healthcare. You’re wasting money on killing people.

Yara Shoufani:  The violence did not begin in this recent wave. In 2009, Israel committed a mass genocide on the people of Gaza, murdering thousands of Palestinians. In 2014, again, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza murdered. In 2018, when Palestinians protested peacefully in what was dubbed the Great March of Return, because 80% of the Palestinians in Gaza are actually refugees from neighboring villages and towns who were kicked out of their villages and made refugees inside the open-air prison of Gaza. And when these people marched to the wall to demand to return to their homeland, they were shot en masse by Israeli snipers.

And so, really, we are talking about 75-years-long of a brutal colonial regime, of brutal violence, and the only way to end this violence is through the liberation of the Palestinian people. And so we are calling on the American people who we know do not support this genocide. 66% of the American public want a cease fire now. We see behind us tens of thousands, potentially 100,000 people behind us who are here to march to the White House to make their voices heard. We are calling on the American people. We are calling on people across the world to join us, to join this movement. Get out onto the streets to make your voices heard, to put pressure to end this genocide.

And we are participating and leading a national, or international shutdown on Nov. 9 to say that we will not continue with business as usual, while the bombs ran down on Gaza, while over 10,000 Palestinians have been murdered, almost half of whom are children, thousands trapped under the rubble. We refuse to be silent. Gaza is not alone.

What you see here is a refusal to be silent. The masses have made their voices heard. We refuse to be silent. And this is a historical struggle. This is a struggle for freedom, a struggle for liberation. Gaza is just a small, small piece of land, but it is at the heart of the struggle, the global struggle against reactionary forces, against colonization, against Western-led imperialism.

And we are calling on the masses of the world to not be afraid. You have a movement of people behind you. Join us, and let’s fight for freedom, just as we saw the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Just as we have seen, time after time, people who are fighting for justice. We know that we are standing on the right side of history, and we know that we are stronger in numbers. So join us. Do not be afraid. And we will win, and we will fight this fight together.

Hala Alahmad:  Just treat us equal with the Israeli and Israel. We’re not asking to kick them out, leave the country. Stay. But we have to have rights like them, and we don’t have rights there. Leave Gaza alone. Give them the rights. Let them live [inaudible] people, and we’ll be okay with this.

And America, they should stop. The American people, please do not pay your taxes or everything to outside the country, like all the support. Why do we have to be police? I’m American. Why do you have to be police outside the country, paying money in Iraq, spending money in Iraq and in Syria, in Ukraine, and now in Gaza? Why? And here, the economy is so bad and the people here are suffering. $1 trillion he sent there for weapons, killing children. Anyway, I hope he opens his eyes and sees the truth.

Maximillian Alvarez:  For The Real News Network, this is Maximillian Alvarez, signing off from Washington DC. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Fight like hell. Solidarity forever.

On Saturday, Nov. 4, tens of thousands of demonstrators from around the country descended on the nation’s capital for the Free Palestine! National March on Washington. “We are here to demand an end to the genocide against the Palestinian people,” Yara Shoufani, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, told TRNN. “We are calling for an immediate ceasefire, we are calling for an end to US military aid to Israel, and we are calling to lift the siege on Gaza.” TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and veteran journalist Jaisal Noor were on the ground in DC to speak with organizers and attendees.

Studio Production: Jaisal Noor
Post-Production: Jaisal Noor, Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  This is Maximillian Alvarez for The Real News Network. Behind me, you see the thousands upon thousands of people who have come to Washington DC for the March on Washington for Palestine. People around the country are here to demand an end to Israel’s genocidal bombing of Gaza, here to demand an end to the 75-year Israeli occupation of Palestine.

For the past few hours, we’ve been hearing speakers on the stage just over to my left. And right now, the march is about to begin heading towards the White House. We are here on the ground for The Real News Network talking to folks about why they’re here, why this is important, and what feels different about this moment.

Yara Shoufani:  We are here to demand an end to the genocide against the Palestinian people with three central demands: We’re calling for an immediate ceasefire; we are calling for an end to US military aid to Israel; and we are calling to lift the siege on Gaza which, for 17 years, has suffocated the people of Gaza and turned Gaza into an open-air prison.

Jihad Alniser:  I’ve seen all the graphic pictures, I’ve seen everything in Palestine. At this point, there’s no limit for what I can’t see. I’ve seen everything now. And for a ninth grader, at first it was scary and then it became less scary as you saw more and more of it. If this is how I feel outside of Gaza, imagine how the people in Gaza feel.

Michaela Yamine:  We’re out here today because there’s a genocide happening in Palestine, and that’s fucked up.

Griffin Mahon:  An injury to one is an injury to all, and American-made bombs are being used to kill the families of Americans in Palestine in addition to thousands and thousands of other people, and our government should not support that.

Merveen Adwan:  Oslo agreement and all this political work didn’t help Palestinian people to live in peace. 75 years of suffering, losing people close to you, finding them hurt all the time. Even after we get our citizenship, I’m not able to visit my family there. My dad died in Gaza and I was not able to visit and see him because the border is always closed.

In the wake of Israel’s scorched-earth bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza, Baltimore activists took to the streets on Wednesday, Nov. 1 to demand a ceasefire. At least 8,796 people have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of Israel’s retaliatory offensive, Gaza’s Health Ministry said yesterday, including 3,648 children. Current polls show a majority of Americans support a ceasefire, even as the US government has continued to ramp up support for Israel and the Biden administration has compared demonstrators calling for a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine to white supremacists who marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. Journalist Jaisal Noor reports from Baltimore.

Production: Jaisal Noor

Transcript

A transcript will be made available soon.

On Oct. 18, organizers say 500 people, mostly Jewish activists, were arrested in Washington, DC, as they carried out a sit-in inside a Capitol office building to demand an immediate ceasefire in the besieged and blockaded Gaza Strip. 

“We are here, very simply, to say no to genocide, to say an end to mass murder, to say an end to keeping water, food, power, and medical care away from people,” Rabbi Linda Holtzman told The Real News prior to her arrest inside the Capitol’s Cannon House Office Building. 

Holtzman and a dozen other Jewish rabbis led the civil disobedience action as thousands rallied outside to demand an end to the US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza. Many held signs that read “Jews say: Ceasefire Now,” and “No to war, no to apartheid.” Gaza’s 2.2 million residents face a mounting death toll from a relentless  bombing campaign by Israeli forces, which have cut off access to food, water, and electricity in retaliation for the Oct. 7 Hamas cross-border attack that killed over 1,400 Israelis. 

As of Oct. 18, 3,478 Palestinians have been killed and 12,000 wounded by Israel’s assault, including reports of 471 killed on Oct. 17 in the bombing of a Gaza hospital. The United Nations has urged Israel to lift its humanitarian blockade cutting access to power, water, food, and medical supplies. Israel ordered one million Gaza residents to relocate to the south ahead of a possible ground invasion. 

“It is a genocide, and I say that with the full knowledge of all that means to our people, and we are here to end it now,” said Stephanie Fox, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, which organized the action.

The protest took place as US President Joe Biden traveled to Israel to show support for its ongoing attack on Gaza, and one day after the bombing of al-Ahli Hospital, which, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, killing hundreds of women, children, and medical personnel. Palestinians accused Israel of the attack but Biden echoed Israel’s claim that the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad was responsible for the attack. Responsibility remains disputed. 

During his visit, Biden vowed to send Israel additional military aid and sought to broker a deal to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, but activists said the US must stop supporting and try to end Israel’s attacks.

“It’s crystal clear. We’re saying to Biden as he’s there in Israel: demand an immediate ceasefire,”  said Holtzman. “We are here to say the United States of America: You can’t keep funding a genocide.”

Starting at noon, gathered  at the National Mall, speakers led chants of “No more weapons, no more war, a ceasefire is what we are calling for,” and urged Congress to support a resolution introduced on Monday by Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for an immediate ceasefire.  Both representatives addressed the crowd.

Tlaib, the sole Palestinian-American member of Congress, criticized her colleagues for rejecting her call for an immediate end to hostilities. “They’re saying, ‘Not yet. Maybe next week. Maybe in a couple of days.’ How many have to die?” Talib asked. 

Tlaib also criticized the White House, which has so far rejected calls for a ceasefire, and last week said those demands were “repugnant” and “disgraceful.”

“I want [President Biden] to know, as a Palestinian American [and of the] Muslim faith, I’m not going to forget this. And I think a lot of people are not going to forget this,” Tlaib said.

Bush said a ceasefire is the only way to stop the cycle of bloodshed in Israel and Palestine. “Violence, we know, will never bring peace. Violence only leads to more violence,” she said. “We must stand on the side of humanity. We must stand on the side of justice. We must stand on the side of equality. We must stand on the side of self-determination.”

Activists urged the Biden administration to hold Israel accountable for its actions. 

“President Biden has one job when he’s talking to Netanyahu, which is to say ceasefire now. We already funded Israeli apartheid at $4 billion a year—there they’re discussing $10 billion more in this horrifying march of war, violence and death.” said Fox.

Congress has pledged additional military support to Israel, which has already set to receive over $3.8 billion this year. Israel remains a top recipient of US military aid, which has totaled $158 billion since World War II, while it has continued to expand settlements on Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law. The current humanitarian crisis is rooted in the displacement of Palestinian communities both in 1948 and an ongoing Israeli military occupation since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

“For 75 years, the State of Israel has built and enacted a system of apartheid that privileges Jewish Israelis over Palestinians indigenous to the land,” said Fox. “Palestinians live with less rights and and less freedom simply because they are not Jewish. And human rights experts …agree that it meets the definitions under international law of apartheid.”

Criticism over the US’s role in the conflict was echoed on Wednesday by a high-ranking State Department official who resigned over the US’s weapons sales to Israel.

“I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation,” Josh Paul, a former director at the State Department, wrote in a Linkedin post, “will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people.”

At the rally, speakers also accused politicians of stoking Islamophobia by dehumanizing Palestinians, noting the death of six-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al Fayoume, who was stabbed to death the previous Saturday because he was Muslim, police say. 

“Our poor six-year-old baby—my child is the same age. There is just no excuse for the kind of utter cruelty and dehumanization that is being drummed up by our very politicians. And that’s what we’re here to say no to,” said Fox.

The conflict’s growing death toll and a growing anti-war movement is turning US public opinion against the conflict, Jewish activists said. Two days earlier, at another protest, over 30 were arrested after hundreds of Jews led by the group If Not Now surrounded and blockaded the White House to demand a ceasefire.

Congressional support for a ceasefire remains small, but growing. On Wednesday, Congressional Progressive Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal was among the Democratic lawmakers who signed on to calls for an immediate ceasefire, noted JVP’s political director, Beth Miller. 

“What we’re seeing is that as progressives see more clearly what is happening in Gaza, the demand for ceasefire is rapidly becoming more normalized, and it’s coming from the progressive left of the party,” said Miller. “We anticipate that that will only grow, and the more and more we make it clear, by showing up en masse on the Capitol like this, that this is what their voters want and demand.”

Holtzman said she and other Jewish protesters were compelled to attend the rally and risk arrest to call for a ceasefire because of the atrocities experienced by their own families. 

“I grew up in a family where, in my past, my grandmother lost several siblings in the Holocaust because of people who were ready to commit a genocide. I cannot possibly allow in my name that to ever happen again,” said Holtzman.

Despite the cold weather, dozens of workers and their supporters picketed outside the Marriott Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore in February, as they had been doing—and have continued to do—for months. The workers are demanding better wages and working conditions, which they say they are owed on principle—but also because of the heavy public subsidies their employer receives.

Andre Eldridge Jr., who has worked at the Marriott Waterfront since 2017, said that many of his colleagues live paycheck to paycheck and have to take on second jobs to make ends meet. “That’s just crazy,” he told The Real News.

Vilma Sanchez, a banquet server at the Marriott Waterfront for the past 18 years, said that the job is physically demanding and exhausting, requiring long shifts with few breaks. She believes that workers in such positions deserve higher wages.

The hospitality industry in general, including hotels like the Marriott Waterfront, suffered tremendous job and revenue losses during the pandemic, but it has bounced back in a big way. In fact, Marriott recently announced “record financial results in 2022,” including $2.9 billion paid out to shareholders. Meanwhile, hospitality has rapidly outpaced other industries in the country in terms of new hiring efforts, according to The Wall Street Journal.

However, workers argue that their paychecks are being squeezed in order to further enrich shareholders. At the Marriott Waterfront, workers claim the hotel has been offering smaller annual raises than other similar employers in the area, all while the regional cost of food and housing has increased by over 8% over the past year, as measured by the Consumer Price Index.

According to their union, UNITE HERE Local 7, which represents around 1,700 hotel, gaming, and food service workers across Maryland (down from 3,000 members before the pandemic), employees at the Marriott Waterfront are paid significantly less than other unionized hotels in the region. Banquet servers represented by Local 7 in other area hotels typically make $80,000 to $90,000 a year, while those at the Marriott Waterfront make between $40,000 and $50,000.

Marriott did not respond to an interview request for this story.

Workers at the Marriott Waterfront signed their first contract during the pandemic in November 2021 after voting to unionize in 2018, securing union job protections and a small raise. However, they have not received a raise since then, despite nearly double-digit inflation largely driven by corporate price gouging and higher prices passed onto consumers.

Amy Altvater, a banquet server at the Marriott Waterfront since 2011, told TRNN that low pay and decreased hours due to major renovations at the hotel prevent her from planning for the future. She says pay and working conditions have improved since the workers unionized, but the fight is not over.

The hotel charges a 25% service fee to guests, and workers receive tips that can range from $5 to $20 or $25 per hour. The first union contract gave workers the right to keep 51% of those tips, but workers are demanding a greater share.

Workers also claim that low wages force them to rely on public transportation or park far away from the hotel; combined with the fact that their schedules often require them to work late, some workers report being mugged as they walk to bus stops or distant parking lots.

Since opening in 2001, the Marriott Waterfront Hotel has benefited handsomely from public subsidies amounting to tens of millions of dollars’ worth in tax breaks. A Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement with the city has exempted the hotel from $56 million dollars in taxes, according to a Real News analysis.

Tracy Lingo, UNITE HERE Local 7’s staff director, said that the whole justification for the subsidy was to bring good jobs to Baltimore, but the investment needs to filter out to the whole city, not just the harbor communities.

Lingo hopes that a recent contract approved by a 97% margin by workers at the nearby Horseshoe Casino—who are represented by Local 7 and other unions like the United Auto Workers, Teamsters, and IATSE—will pressure the Marriott to increase pay for workers at the Waterfront property. In the new contract, wages for non-tipped casino workers will rise from $14 to $17 within a few years. 

“We’re saying to Marriott that we want to get up to the same level as the other hotel workers in Baltimore and workers around the country who have been winning unprecedented contracts right now,” said Lingo. The union resumed negotiations with management on March 20.

At an April 11 demonstration outside the hotel, Lingo told TRNN that, after months of bargaining, management has finally agreed to some of the concessions sought by workers, including a greater portion of gratuities, much of which is currently pocketed by management.

Lingo says the gains made during the negotiations were both testament to the will of the workers and the power of the public support they have received since they began picketing outside of the Waterfront Hotel in November. 

“We’re standing firm in what we believe in and we’re not going to give up until we get what we need,” Altvater said. 

This story originally appeared in YES! on December 27, 2022. It is shared here with permission.

Sonia Eaddy never lost faith that she would be able to save her home at 319 North Carrollton Ave. in the Poppleton neighborhood of West Baltimore. 

Like they have done to many predominantly-Black neighborhoods, developers have targeted Poppleton for years. Over the past decade, the city used eminent domain to evict residents and raze their houses, resulting in the displacement of longtime residents.

But last year, Eaddy, who is a third-generation resident of Poppleton, was able to mobilize a citywide coalition that staged rallies, packed public hearings, and collected over 5,000 signatures to save homes like hers from destruction. Even after most of Eaddy’s neighbors were forced out of their homes, after surrounding blocks were demolished, and after she exhausted legal appeals, she never stopped fighting. 

In July 2022, her activism paid off when the city agreed to allow Eaddy to stay in her home. But she says it’s hard to call that a victory until her neighbors who were displaced have an opportunity to return. “We are continually working to help bring back those who were displaced,” she says.

As part of the deal the city reached with stakeholders, some residents may have the opportunity to return to their homes. Eleven historic alley houses—which are small homes typically occupied by African Americans or immigrant laborers—on the 1100 block of Sarah Ann Street, located next to Eaddy’s, will be renovated for homeownership in preparation for displaced former residents.

The group tasked with the renovation project is Black Women Build, a homeownership and wealth-building initiative that trains Black women in carpentry home restoration by rehabbing some of the 15,000 vacant and deteriorated houses in the city.

Black Women Build is one part of a larger ecosystem of grassroots groups addressing the racial and economic disparities created and perpetuated by unjust housing policy in Baltimore. Other efforts, working in tandem to strive for justice in housing, include housing associations, the city’s affordable housing trust fund, a blight-fighting social justice group, and an equitable development company that restores abandoned homes to increase affordable housing stock. 

Why Real Estate Tax Breaks Aren’t Working

On a rainy mid-October afternoon in Baltimore, Maryland, four dozen residents, housing advocates, and lawmakers rallied in the heart of the city’s business district. Their demand to officials was to stop subsidizing wealthy developers at the expense of the city’s long-neglected Black, working-class communities.

Towering high-rise office buildings, swanky hotels, high-priced condos, and the Inner Harbor, a major tourist attraction, served as a backdrop for the press conference that laid bare the city’s economic and racial disparities. 

“The city is becoming unaffordable and unattainable to low- and moderate-income families,” said Char McCready at the rally. McCready is executive director of Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA), which trains tenant organizers to advocate for progressive housing policies. Like Black Women Build, CPHA forms a critical part of the housing justice ecosystem. 

Officials have long sought to incentivize the creation of affordable housing by offering tax breaks to the real estate sector. But developers are raking in millions of dollars in credits and subsidies, while loopholes allow them to largely avoid building housing that is affordable for the city’s majority-Black working people. 

“We feel these tax credits may be used to support segregation and encourage gentrification and displacement of BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, people of color] communities,” said McCready.

Developers in wealthy areas have received a disproportionate number of tax breaks compared with low-income ones, building 6,600 luxury apartments over the past 15 years, only 37 of which were affordably priced. 

Investing in Residents, Not Developers

At the rally in Baltimore, McCready stood in front of 414 Light Street, a 44-story high-rise luxury apartment building dubbed the tallest residential building in the state. She called it “an example of one of the luxury apartment buildings we speak of,” explaining it was “why we chose this location.”

Questar, the company that developed 414 Light Street, received a $3 million tax credit from the city to build affordable housing, but officials say the company has yet to market a single unit of housing at an affordable price. 

Speakers at the rally argued that if the city can provide subsidies to the wealthy, it can do more to empower communities struggling to overcome poverty amid rising rents for substandard housing, which remains in short supply. A 2016 report found that “more than half of Baltimore renters live in housing they cannot afford.” City rents have increased 19% since the start of the pandemic. 

At the time this article was written, apartments at 414 Light Street were priced starting at $2,100 for a one-bedroom—a price Baltimore City resident and housing activist Tisha Guthrie says is unaffordable for her neighbors, and she surmised the company’s employees would also not be able to afford living there.

Guthrie also says that less than a mile away, in her neighborhood of Poppleton, the community faces crumbling infrastructure, a lack of basic services, and deep poverty. She’s been a longtime supporter of residents like Eaddy’s fight to save their homes from demolition. And she’s advocated for the city to undertake community-guided investment in those communities instead.

As a commissioner of Baltimore’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, Guthrie helps oversee an annual city fund of $20 million to promote affordable housing through such projects as community land trusts. As YES! previously reported, the commission was created and funded as a result of a decade of sustained activism and grassroots pressure.

Guthrie has also been working to support her neighbors in Poppleton—like Eaddy—in their long-standing fight against displacement.

Beyond Gentrification

Poppleton is situated between downtown Baltimore and the infamous “Highway to Nowhere,” an urban renewal program that tore a wide swath through the area and displaced 1,500 predominantly Black residents, before being abandoned in the 1970s. 

The city has a long history of implementing such policies. In 1910, Baltimore mandated racial segregation. Over the following decades, officials supported “urban renewal” and exploitative housing practices that destabilized neighborhoods, decreased Black homeownership rates, fueled a massive racial wealth gap, and concentrated working-class Black communities in slum-like housing.

The harm caused by such policies is incalculable, says Guthrie. “It’s not gentrification, it’s just a complete dismantling.”

Last year, activists painted a mural viewable from the Highway to Nowhere that quotes Sonia Eaddy. “Losing my home is like death to me,” it reads. “Eminent Domain law is violent.”

As part of her longtime opposition to the development project, Eaddy helped create The Poppleton Plan, an alternative vision for her neighborhood developed in collaboration with other longtime community members and a city planner. It aimed to preserve the character of the neighborhood and prioritize the needs of the community, but policymakers ignored it.

Instead, the city used eminent domain to relocate longtime residents and bulldoze several city blocks. Today, the project remains unfinished, and the neighborhood is littered with the remnants of the demolished buildings.

Fighting Blight and Rebuilding Neighborhoods 

The Federal Reserve estimates close to 4 in 10 Baltimore residents are rent burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent. This is taken as an indicator that they may have trouble affording food, clothing, transportation, and medical care. A 2021 study found the median net worth for Black households in Baltimore was $0, compared with $59,430 for whites. 

Studies show the housing crisis across the U.S. has destabilized communities and furthered cycles of violence. “We found that at least 50% of the homicides that have occurred up until August occurred within 100 feet of a property with a vacant building notice,” says Nneka N’namdi of Fight Blight Bmore. Yet the city’s spending on its police department far outstrips its spending on housing and other social services.

Just across the Highway to Nowhere, Parity Homes, an equitable development company, is rehabbing three properties that will be available to purchase or rent for legacy residents at an affordable price in spring 2023. 

The organization works to address the concerns of the community by listening to their needs. “We really just try to think about all the ways in which people could inadvertently be pushed out of the neighborhood as it gets revitalized, and we try to mitigate that as much as possible,” says Parity Homes founder Bree Jones. Jones has been a vocal supporter of Poppleton’s residents. 

One key part of its work is supporting wealth creation through homeownership. “We integrate wealth through homeownership for Black folks in particular, who have been excluded from that for decades,” Jones says.

Jones and N’namdi are part of a coalition working to end the practice of tax sales. If property owners fall behind on their taxes, the city auctions off the right to collect that debt for pennies on the dollar to debt collectors. In 2020, over 1,000 residents lost their homes for what can amount to a few hundred dollars in unpaid property taxes. 

The group raised money to purchase the debt of some of the homeowners. Jones explains, “We’ve paid off the debts of close to 100 homeowners across the city who are at risk of losing their homes.”

In the absence of a response from authorities on a scale that will address the problem, Jones remains optimistic that it will be possible, with time, to create and develop an adequate supply of housing that does not cause displacement. 

“We think that you can both revitalize the neighborhood and keep legacy residents in that neighborhood.”

This story is part of Building the Block, an original YES! series supported by a grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation’s AmbitioUS initiative, which encourages the development of burgeoning alternative economies and fresh social contracts in ways that can help artists and cultural communities achieve financial freedom. Reporting and production of this story was funded by this grant, but YES! maintains full editorial control of the content published herein. Read the editorial independence policy here.

Senator Raphael Warnock is facing off against Republican challenger Herschel Walker after neither secured 50% of the vote during the Nov. 8 general election. UNITE HERE is aiming to hit more than 500,000 doors for Warnock, a pastor at Martin Luther King’s former church. Walker is a former NFL star backed by ex-president Trump, and was the only statewide Republican candidate in Georgia to not win his race in the general. He is facing fresh accusations of domestic violence and is trailing in the latest polls.

But it is widely expected for the race to be decided by election day turnout, which is what is driving these union members. Their recent track record gives them reason to be optimistic. In November, UNITE HERE played a key role in helping Democrats maintain their Senate majority. 1,200 members knocked on 2.7 million doors in key swing states, including, as The Real News reported, one million doors to help Democrats hold onto Nevada. A Warnock win will give Democrats an outright majority in the Senate.

Transcript

Linda Harris:  Hi, how are you?

Speaker 1:  Wonderful. How are you?

Linda Harris:  My name is Linda and I’m with UNITE HERE.

Jaisal Noor:  Two days before the Dec. 6 Georgia Senate runoff, 500 members of the hospitality union UNITE HERE are hitting doors across Metro Atlanta to get out the vote. Senator Raphael Warnock is facing off against Republican Challenger Herschel Walker, after neither secured 50% during the Nov. 8 general election.

UNITE HERE is aiming to hit on more than 500,000 doors for Warnock, a pastor at Martin Luther King’s former Church. Walker is a former NFL star backed by ex-president Trump and was the only statewide Republican candidate in Georgia to fail to win his race in the general election. He’s facing fresh accusations of domestic violence and is trailing in the latest polls. But it’s widely expected for the race to be decided by election day turnout, which is what is driving these union members.

Linda Harris:  My name is Linda Harris. I live in Jonesboro, Georgia, and I am here canvassing, getting the Democrat voters to come out and vote. And then I ask them, what is their concern in their community? And once they talk about their community, what their concern is, and then I tell them that Warnock is on our side, that Warnock can help us get what we need as a community, because we start with our community first and then we go out. And like I said, listening to people talk about their community because they know the union is about working people.

Jaisal Noor:  And their recent track record offers them reasons to be optimistic.

Speaker 2:  Well, Rodney broke the record.

Jaisal Noor:  In November, UNITE HERE played a key role in helping Democrats maintain their Senate majority. 1200 members knocked on 2.7 million doors in key swing states, including, as The Real News reported, 1 million doors to help Democrats hold on to Nevada. A Warnock win will give Democrats an outright majority in the Senate, giving them control over committees, more power to confirm Biden’s nominees, and to reduce the influence of corporatist senators like Democrats Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

 In 2020, UNITE HERE also played a key role in Biden’s historic win. And then six weeks later, knocked on 1.5 million doors to help Democrats sweep the January 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs, which gave Democrats control of the chamber. But now they face new challenges in getting out the vote.

Georgia has become ground zero for what critics call Jim Crow 2.0 and has made it harder to vote by mail, by dropbox, or during early voting. The runoff period was shortened by a month, and even giving food or water to those waiting in voting lines has been banned.

Tiffani Davis:  [speaking to homeowner] …Tell people like, our ancestors work for us, right?…

[speaking to camera] The lines are long, whereas in Philadelphia, I could walk around the corner to my center and I could be out in 10 minutes. And it’s like, they have to sit here and wait in line, and it is illegal to get people bottles of water. So it’s so lucky that it’s not hot out here because if it was hot, what would we do? People would get discouraged.

Jaisal Noor:  In response, community union and faith-based leaders say they’re trying to out-organize voter suppression by talking directly to millions of voters to help motivate them to overcome the obstacles to voting.

Tiffani Davis:  [speaking to homeowner] My name is Tiffani Davis, I’m from Local 23 UNITE HERE.

Speaker 3:  We need someone to stand up for us. We need labor. We are the force. We are the force. If it wasn’t for us, the world wouldn’t run, really.

Jaisal Noor:  A record 1.8 million Georgia voters cast ballots during early voting, which tends to favor Democrats. But this period was shortened from two weeks to one. And there’s fear that long lines at some polling sites in heavily Black areas could deter voters on election day.

In the days leading up to the election, President Joe Biden, who has called himself the most pro-union president, moved to prevent railroad workers from striking for paid sick leave against bosses who have raked in record profits. It remains to be seen if this move will alienate the labor movement, a key democratic base that’s played an outsized role in their recent electoral success.

For The Real News, this is Jaisal Noor in Atlanta, Georgia.

Things are heating up in Nevada ahead of the midterm elections on Tuesday, Nov. 8. A Republican victory in the state could end up flipping the Senate, and undermine the Democrats’ federal agenda for years to come. That’s why union workers are mobilizing to turn the tide in their state. Culinary Workers Union Local 226 has been leading the charge. 400 Local 226 canvassers have knocked on 800,000 doors across the state, and reached over half of Nevada’s Black and Latinx workers, along with over a third of its AAPI voters. Local 226 is an affiliate of UNITE HERE, which represents 300,000 hospitality workers in the US and Canada. The Real News Network correspondent Jaisal Noor covers UNITE HERE’s efforts from the ground in Nevada.

Pre-Production/Studio/Post-Production: Jaisal Noor

Transcript

The transcript of this video will be made available as soon as possible.

TRNN speaks with journalist Chris Hedges from the ground during the international protests to free Assange, which were held in Washington, DC, and in London.

Studio/Post-Production: Jaisal Noor

Transcript

Crowd:  [chanting] Free Julian Assange!

Jaisal Noor:  Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange held an international day of action Saturday, October 8 to demand the United States halt its efforts to have him extradited to face criminal charges for his role in leaking a trove of highly classified US intelligence documents by Army Whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

In London, Hundreds of protesters gathered in a line which stretched from the British parliament to the other side of the River Thames. Stella Moris, who is married to the Australian-born activist and publisher, said the British government should speak to authorities in the United States to end the extradition bid which was launched in 2019. 

Stella Moris:  The British government should be speaking to its counterparts in the United States to bring this matter to an end immediately. It’s already gone on for three-and-a-half years. It is a stain on the United Kingdom and is a stain on the Biden administration.

Jaisal Noor:  In Washington, DC, dozens marched on the US Department of Justice, calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to drop charges against Assange, which include one charge of hacking and 17 counts of violating the World War I era Espionage Act

Chris Hedges:  Julian is not a US citizen. WikiLeaks is not a US-based publication. It is not legally, I think, justifiable to charge him under the US Espionage Act. He’s an innocent man, he’s never committed a crime. The only crime he committed is telling the truth.

Jaisal Noor:  Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and former New York Times Middle East bureau chief. He’s currently the host of The Chris Hedges Report on The Real News. He says fears the Assange prosecution could criminalize the publishing of classified documents, a vital tool for holding governments accountable.

Chris Hedges:  Part of the reason that I’m so involved in this is because, having worked for The New York Times, having published classified material, if Julian is sentenced, it sets a legal precedent which allows anyone who possesses classified material or publishes them to be criminalized. It’s really the end of any investigation into the inner workings of power.

Jaisal Noor:  Assange has been jailed in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison Since 2019, enduring conditions that experts have condemned as torture.

Chris Hedges:  The conditions of his incarceration are so brutal. I mean, he’s isolated, he has suffered a minor stroke. He’s lost a lot of weight. We know from the trials in London that psychologically he’s had hallucinations, and was found banging his head against the wall. 

Jaisal Noor:  Assange’s supporters say the US is targeting him for exposing US wrongdoing in Afghanistan and Iraq, including releasing Collateral Murder Video which shows a US Appache Helicopter gunning down civilians and Reuters journalists in Iraq.

Among the dozen journalists, veterans, and activists speaking out in support of Assange was Berthony Dupont, the publisher of Haiti Liberte, which has published troves of US diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks that reveal ongoing US meddling in Haiti 

Berthony Dupont:  We published an article about the US trying to sabotage [inaudible] known as [inaudible]. How it fought to raise the minimum wage from $1.75 per day to $5.00 per day. How it voluntarily deployed US troops into Haiti after the January 2000 earthquake. How it integrates [inaudible] soldiers into Haiti’s police force. How it approved of deadly assault on [inaudible]. And how it fought tooth and nail for seven years to stop [inaudible] return to Haiti after he was exiled in 2004.

Jaisal Noor:  Assange’s legal team has lodged an appeal at Britain’s High Court against London’s decision to extradite him. Hedges says it will be essential for Assange’s supporters to keep up public pressure to secure his release.

Chris Hedges:  I think that getting out in the street is key, and surrounding the Parliament. I think there are about a dozen actions in Australia and all over the world. We have to take the time and the energy to get out and make our voices heard to defend Julian, that is really key. And then the other thing is informing ourselves about the long persecution of Julian, because it’s not going to get out in the commercial press, and the establishment press is never going to tell you.

Jaisal Noor:  For The Real News, this is Jaisal Noor reporting from Washington.

With chants of “refugees are welcome here,” hundreds of activists rallied in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on Friday, Aug. 26, to protest the country’s “inhumane” treatment of asylum seekers.

The demonstration was organized two days after an infant died at the country’s primary refugee intake center in the small, remote town of Ter Apel, prompting the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to announce they would provide services to the approximately two thousand people stranded at the site.

“People don’t have a place to shower, access to bathrooms, or medical care,” Sam, a Jordanian-Palestinian asylum seeker who declined to give his last name to protect his identity, told The Real News at the rally. He said the conditions he experienced in Ter Apel over the previous two weeks were worse than what he endured crisscrossing Europe on his way to the Netherlands. “It’s horrible. People are starving and don’t have enough clothes,” he said.

As the protests mounted, the Dutch government announced it would relocate asylum seekers, the majority of whom arrived to the country from the Middle East and Africa, into temporary shelters. But migrants rights advocates were not satisfied, and cited the far more favorable treatment received by Ukrainian refugees.

“After the crisis in Ukraine… the government and municipalities were offering money or housing, free travel,” said Martina Heijjd, a member of the feminist WONDA Collective. “We want to see that for these refugees as well.”

David, who declined to give his last name, fled his home in Ukraine earlier this year, but is originally from Nigeria. “The first question you get asked is, ‘What citizenship do you hold?’ So it doesn’t matter that I just came through hell, that I survived a bombing. That’s always gonna be the question,” he said. “If you are born in Ukraine you get special treatment.”

While hundreds of asylum seekers have been forced to live outdoors or in overcrowded makeshift shelters, the Netherlands has already resettled at least 74,000 Ukrainians who were driven from their homes by Russia’s invasion earlier in the year; a third of those Ukrainian refugees had found work by July. 

“It’s racism. What more should I say about it?” said Heijjd. “There’s a very stark difference between how the two groups have been treated.”

Despite repeated warnings about the conditions there, the Ter Apel site continues to face overcrowding and acute shortages of food, medicine, and shelter, forcing 700 people to live and sleep outdoors despite temperatures reaching 90 degrees throughout the week. 

The country’s capacity for taking in refugees was diminished at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and authorities have failed to restore its institutional ability to accommodate more refugees in response to growing demand, prompting some to argue that this is a deliberate failure and that the currently unfolding refugee crisis was designed to deter migration from the Global South. 

“It’s very obvious that our government wants to give the people that want to come here the feeling that it’s also very bad in the Netherlands, [that] it’s the same as if you [were to] stay in Syria,” said Iman Abrontan, a member of the leftist GroenLinks party. “That’s the feeling that they want to create… ‘It’s better not to come over here, because if you come here, your treatment would also be very bad’. That’s the policy of our government,” he said.

Many attendees said they felt compelled to join the protest after news broke that a three-month-old died at the camp after authorities had failed to provide basic humanitarian services.

“[The news] made me so angry,” said Vicker Annellies Jans at the rally. “It’s such a shame that… we treat people like this in a country like [the Netherlands] when we are supposed to be so tolerant,” she said.

That sentiment was echoed by Narayan, another protest attendee who declined to provide her last name. “I’m here today because I’m ashamed that in a country like Holland, Doctors without Borders… felt it necessary to help at the camp,” she said.  

As the deteriorating conditions at Ter Apel prompted international condemnation, MSF, which primarily works in international conflict zones, announced it would provide medical care at the camp, marking the first time the aid agency has deployed within the Netherlands.

“We cannot stand back and do nothing with this increasingly inhumane and unacceptable situation on our doorstep,” Judith Sargentini, director of MSF in the Netherlands, said in a statement. “The Dutch government and local municipalities must urgently improve living conditions and take on the responsibility of providing vulnerable people with medical care.”

Echoing calls from many who attended the rally, Sargentini called for immediate action to end the crisis. “[T]here must be a structural solution, such as creating multiple — and more — humane reception locations. This is something that the Dutch government has been called upon to do for years.”

Protesters also rejected a growing far-right campaign against the asylum seekers; the day before the protest, 500 far-right demonstrators descended on Ter Apel. Sam witnessed these marchers yelling slurs at residents and telling them to “go back to your country.” 

David, the Nigerian refugee who had fled Ukraine, has also been told to ‘go back’ to his country. “[But] if [people like me] had a country to go to in the first place, why the fuck would [we] come to Ukraine?” he asked.

Counter-demonstrators called on officials to defy the anti-immigrant protests and treat asylum seekers with “humanity.”

“We have a government that’s kind of right-wing now, and they see them not as human beings but as people that are invading our country,” said Jans. “But they are people and they need shelter, they need love, they need our open arms.”

Voter suppression has been on the rise throughout the country for years, but there are other ways to keep the nation’s working poor from the ballot box. The daily grind of surviving poverty itself can shut potential voters from participating in elections. In Georgia, activists were forced to confront this reality while canvassing for the 2020 elections—and still managed to flip the state and achieve record voter turnout. As part of our ongoing series about grassroots efforts to fight voter suppression ahead of the 2022 midterms, The Real News Network journalist Jaisal Noor speaks to community organizer Auburn Wideman of the group Song Power about how they helped flip Georgia blue through mutual aid and ensuring their members had their basic needs met.

This story is part of a series that was made possible with the support of the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

Transcript

NBC Host:  With the midterm election season heating up, tensions are mounting inside the Democratic Party and White House.

Jaisal Noor:  Many observers are warning the Democrats are courting disaster in the approaching 2022 midterms. President Joe Biden’s approval rating is tanking as the administration struggles to deliver on many of its campaign promises.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:  This is really about the collapse in support among young people, among the Democratic base, feeling like they worked over time to get this president elected, and they aren’t necessarily being seen.

Jaisal Noor:  To make matters worse, since the 2020 elections Republican-controlled states have passed dozens of bills aimed at restricting voter turnout and making it more possible for partisan officials to subvert election outcomes.

Auburn Wideman:  What we are seeing is just literal suppression, literally figuring out new ways to tie people’s hands to keep them from getting to the polls so that our voices cannot be heard.

Jaisal Noor:  In response to this onslaught of voter suppression Democrats have done next to nothing. After Democratic senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin blocked efforts to pass federal voting rights legislation that could have protected access to the ballot, the Joe Biden White House reportedly told civil rights activists they need to quote, “Out-organize voter suppression.”

Auburn Wideman:  I think it’s unfair to expect the labor of us constantly having to figure out how to get around things when we could have the federal protections that we need.

Jaisal Noor:  Voting rights organizers and communities of color did out-organize voter suppression in 2020, helping Democrats notch historic wins like flipping Georgia blue for the first time in nearly two decades. One key focus of those organizing efforts was helping people meet their material needs.

Auburn Wideman:  You can’t think about voting if you know that your lights are going to get turned off. You can’t think about voting if you’re thinking about feeding your kids.

Jaisal Noor:  As we wind down our months-long series, supported by Solutions Journalism, examining the fight against voter suppression across the country, we speak to Auburn Wideman of the grassroots group SONG Power. We started by asking what key lessons they learned in the 2020 elections that organizers everywhere need to understand.

Auburn Wideman:  I think what’s so important about SONG Power is that our theory and approach to electoral organizing is to be transformative and not transactional. And so I’ve worked on campaigns in the past, traditional Democratic campaigns where you come into town, you come into the state, and then everybody works here, and then you go. And it’s like you promise folks, you ask folks for their votes, and then you just disappear. You don’t really ask people what they need, what they’re going through, what obstacles are keeping them from voting. You’re just like, hey, show up, I think I’d be a really good person for you, vote for me. And it’s just like the election happens and people bounce. And that’s just not our MO in SONG Power, we believe in one, building infrastructure, building relationships, but being transformative in a way where we’re not coming through, like elections, we don’t just want you to vote for a candidate. We are voting for changing real material conditions, and we want to know what those conditions are for our people.

So even before we jumped into the runoff race and partnered with People’s Action in Georgia, in our South Carolina race we did a lot of deep canvassing. But deep canvassing for us was just calling people and just being like, hey, what do you need right now? COVID is going on, how are you? What access do you have? What access don’t you have? Do you need some mutual – What resources can we point you to? And we had these lists for mutual aid. After the runoff we ran a separate mutual aid campaign called More Money, More Power, where we were paying people’s electric bills. Because Georgia has some of the most astronomical energy bills in the country. And so really for us, it’s like outside of getting people to vote, what do you need? We are telling people, outside of giving us your vote, or not even us but your candidate this vote, what are you asking for in exchange? What real material changes can your vote materialize for you? And so that is where we’re coming from as far as our deep canvassing.

We really deeply care about our beloved community and building beloved communities when we’re engaging in electoral organizing and politics in this way. And so our deep canvassing is very much we call people in Georgia like, what do you need? What resources can we get you? How are you on groceries? We have these mutual aid projects going on, we can pass your name along. Some of our canvassing was just mutual aid canvassing. So while we did have a team of people out there knocking [inaudible], a majority of our canvassing was, hey, how are you? We know in this neighborhood, how resources are, this is the mutual way we have available, can we get your information? Do you need it? And just really talking to people and learning what people need.

It’s so crucial because we believe in ideas and policy over people and candidates. And so no matter who is running we always want to make sure that our people get taken care of and we know what our people need on the back end. So once these people get into office we know what we’re demanding. Because our work doesn’t stop at the election, it goes beyond that. And so it starts before we ask people to vote too, so what do you need to be able to vote? You can’t think about voting if you know that your lights are going to get turned off, and you can’t think about voting if you’re thinking about feeding your kids. And so getting to that first and then being able to push people into voting and giving people the information they need to vote after we’ve made sure that they’re okay.

Jaisal Noor:  Were there any particular conversations or moments from that that you think about or that stay with you? Any particular conversations?

Auburn Wideman:  I think one of my favorite moments from the runoff is just how we expect people to kind of just oh, it’s time to vote, I gotta vote. But people really are thinking about their survival and what they have going on. And I remember there was a canvasser, our canvassing team was out and they met this guy, and they were talking to him, and they were really just our mutual aid team so they were just talking mutual aid. For SONG you should throw down with us, this is kind of work we do. He was like, I’m good but I’ll pass your mutual aid information along. And then in the next couple of weeks he had joined one of our new member calls. And so even just that contact of okay, we went, we made sure this person was okay. They were good, they passed our information along, we were able to help more people because of this person. And then this person has also decided to join our organizing world and become an organizer and figure out how they can also be a part of this movement that we’re trying to do.

And so it was a lot of that, people being like, thank you so much for these resources, I don’t need them, or yes, I’ll take them. Also I can pass them along, but also what can I do to help you all steward these resources? What can I be doing to also help and move this movement and this conversation along? And so we had a lot of conversations like that. A lot of people being like, thank you so much for hearing the things that we want and the things that we need over just telling us to vote, vote, vote. And that came up a lot. And even just the kind of content we put out.

Even the emails we sent. We sent an email that was just like, we just need two seats. We also believe in SONG Power that elections aren’t the end all be all, these candidates aren’t perfect. And really trying to reframe the conversation in Georgia that a lot of people were having like oh, these people are going to save our democracy, and the Senate’s going to be so amazing, they’re going to save us. And we were just like, we just need these two seats so we can get some COVID relief. In Georgia, there’s whole swaths of the state with no medical access. At one point Georgia had more people dying per capita from COVID than they had in the entire world.

And so while people are flooding to the state and giving all this money to get on the airways and tell people to vote and we’re not. We’re taking that same money and putting it into our community’s hands by giving them mutual aid, by paying off these bills, by making sure when we go into the community we’re investing in our people, we’re investing in our businesses, we’re investing in the infrastructure of building up an actual community of people who can move politically together in the future because they’re taken care of.

Jaisal Noor:  What are the biggest challenges to your work?

Auburn Wideman:  I think see answer one. But the suppression. I think the idea that we’re constantly fighting an uphill battle. Like we’ll get one win to be knocked back and then have to rebuild to get another win again, like the runoff. The runoff was such an amazing feeling to win something like that, to get those two seats, to deliver something to your people, and then the next day you see that the Capitol is being besieged. And so I think it’s this idea that we are constantly having to do this uphill battle. But I think the work of trying to jump over these obstacles is so rewarding because we are bringing material change to our people. And even if we didn’t get every single thing that Biden promised, there are kids in Georgia who ate, who got to eat consistent meals because of the child tax credit being reconfigured, and the extra money that went into food stamps, and the extra money that got to Georgia because of Biden or because [inaudible] were there.

And so I think some of our biggest limitations are one, we are trying to reach our people and we are constantly being fragmented by suppression, by misinformation, by disinformation. So there’s always obstacles to jump over. It’s never as easy as just knocking doors and being like, we need you to vote in this election. We have to constantly fight. Almost like pulling every single win that we can, and we’re just constantly fighting a battle where it feels like we’re being pushed back with every win, and we have to overcome. Now we’re overcoming, this year we’re thinking of how do we overcome everything we had to overcome in 2020 and 2021 plus new obstacles? And so it’s just this constant configuring of how do we get to our people to get them to where they want to go?

And so I think that’s our biggest limitation. I think especially for SONG Power we think so big about what we can do, and we try so hard to grow our hope muscle that we don’t feel limitations of what we can do, we just feel the limitations of what people are trying to put on us. And so that is the biggest fight for us, I think, is just trying to get past those shackles and things that they’re putting on us so that we can’t do the good work that we’re trying to do.

Jaisal Noor:  And of course there’s the fact that, in terms of limitations, there’s the fact that the voting rights legislation, the federal voting rights legislation isn’t going anywhere. There are no federal protections when it comes to access to the ballot anymore, really. And so talk a little bit about that, the fact that yeah, you got the majority, thanks to Georgia, but that didn’t equal voting rights.

Auburn Wideman:  Yeah, I think, for me, I think it’s this idea that… It’s kind of like when a baby throws something. You don’t want to keep giving it to them because then the baby’s like oh, well that person will always do it. And when you have people in Georgia mobilizing and doing so much to overcome voter suppression, I think the idea is these same people will keep doing it. They’ll just keep figuring out how to jump over all these obstacles and figure out how to protect the voting rights on a state level without any federal protections. And I think it’s unfair to expect the labor of us constantly having to figure out how to get around things when we could have the federal protections that we need. And I think it also comes from when we talk about what we can do and what government can do, I think we have to be more honest about the entire system as a whole. And that’s what we try to do via SONG Power when we talked about the election.

Forget what you’re hearing about the election overall. Yes, we’re going to get these two senators and we’re going to have this tie, but that is not going to be the end all be all, that is not necessarily going to save us. And so we have to figure out other ways that we can begin to work it out. And I think it’s definitely unfair to ask organizations, to ask individuals to overcome what the government could do. But that’s just the nature of government and the nature of us being Black and Brown and oppressed people, we’re constantly overcoming things that the government could just do for us. That should have been one of the biggest things, getting that done, knowing what we’re fighting, knowing that democracy is hanging by a thread, knowing that these legislators were going to have it out, that should have been the focus. But I think they felt because they did it in Georgia before, they can do it again and these same people will figure it out and continue to save us so we don’t have to do the hard work of giving people what we promised them.

Jaisal Noor:  So as an organization, what metrics do you use to measure success or effectiveness or your impact?

Auburn Wideman:  For SONG specifically I think it’s the amount of people who we feel we’re bringing something tangible to. And a lot of our theory and approach is real material, tangible change, which is why even in the election we focus so much on mutual aid and giving people resources and making sure they’re getting something out of the electoral process that is more than just talking points. I think even with the example of the guy that we met, Devon, who we met at the doors and then he ended up becoming a new member, is how many people are coming into our ecosystem of SONG at SONG Power? How many people after we touch them are saying, you know what, I really want to figure out how to be a part of a political home, I really want to do these things? Because a lot of our campaigns are aimed at not just candidates getting into office, but building an ecosystem where we’re training up people to run campaigns to do this work in their own communities on their own. That is the whole foundation of what our C3 arm does, which is finding our people, training them up so they can become organizers, activists, leaders in their own communities.

And so that is our same thing with SONG Power. Going into the communities, doing our electoral work, but how many people are we not just getting to vote but who are coming back into our ecosystem to throw down with us, be a part of our chapters, show up at our events, and go farther beyond the work of just voting? Because that’s what we believe in. Everything goes beyond voting, that’s not where we end our work. And so how many people are still rocking with us after the election period, and what that looks like is a really big key indicator for us. Of course, doors knocked, and text sent, and conversations had, like in a traditional organizing campaign, but a lot of it is how many people are we moving from just general I’m going to vote to being a part of the SONG infrastructure too? I want to be trained up, I want to throw down, I want to come through and fuck shit up the SONG way. How many people are coming into our ecosystem like that is a really big measure for us.

Jaisal Noor:  And I also wanted to ask you what you’ve learned with the lessons you’ve… And you’ve spoken a lot about this, but the lessons that you’ve learned that would be relevant for other communities? Because there’s a lot of communities that are facing the same sort of obstacles that you’re facing in Georgia. What are the big lessons you’ve learned, and what do you hope to share with other organizations?

Auburn Wideman:  That’s really good. So SONG, we’re based in Georgia, we’re a regional org, so we cover the entire South. I actually live in South Carolina, and I am from Charleston, South Carolina. And South Carolina is like Georgia 10 years ago. People are trying. It’s still very red but there are a lot of pockets for opportunity. And I think what we have done in Georgia and tried in South Carolina, we are actually trying more in South Carolina and North Carolina. Because what we’re learning is that one, we have five prongs in our transformational versus transactional organizing theory, and one of them is electoral organizing is all year long and not just during campaigns. So the work that we do is not just for people to vote, but for people to work all year long creating these civil minded, voter-like behaviors, getting people more politically involved.

Two is the local. Instead of doing a trickle down effect in politics, things need to trickle up. You have to get people locally involved for them to then be able to be like okay, I can think now about my state rep, or their individual local problems, local issues are much more important than what’s going on in the national news. And knowing what people’s pain points and issues are in their local vicinity is really important.

Three, we believe in mutual aid and building beloved community. Deep canvassing is so important because you need to know what people want and what people really need before you can tell them to move for these things. Sometimes I think candidates’ campaigns have it in their minds like oh, this is what the people want and I’m going to run for that, without actually hearing what the people want and need, and that’s so important to figure that out.

And really just being transformational versus transactional, building infrastructure, building people power, building organizational power like political education, giving people things to do, giving people a space to come together and build and congregate together, and build community so they can move as a political force. All the things that are foundational to the work we’ve done in Georgia that can be done anywhere. Really just understanding your neighborhood, your people and what they want, and then you can move however you want. But in Georgia I have learned so much about locality and really just understanding how to reach people and talk to people.

And the same here in South Carolina, people forget… Like in Georgia during the runoff race for instance, a lot of people spent money on digital ads not realizing that a great percentage of Georgia doesn’t have broadband access. It’s a rural state.

So knowing the local feel of your place, how people are connecting, how people are talking. We do a lot of organizing on WhatsApp because we have a very strong Latinx community, very strong language justice approach, and so a lot of our people are on WhatsApp. So just really learning who your people are, how to meet them and where to meet them, and what they want. And I think that is very central to building a campaign or to building transformation and finding your people in the margins. We always say our people are in the margins, our people are Black, Brown, queer, live in the South, live in rural areas, those people are not your mainstream voters that are going to be in your voter file. We are looking for our people in the margins and bringing them into the mainstream via SONG, SONG Power, and the work that we do.

Jaisal Noor:  And yeah, it’s interesting you mentioned South Carolina is Georgia 10 years ago, because in the last 10 years Georgia has really transformed in terms of political power, the balance of power has changed. And I think that speaks to the voter suppression, because the system evolves. It’s constantly evolving to maintain the current power structure. But I know you said that SONG Power is a newer organization. Do you have thoughts on what that, I mean I guess decades long fight, but especially in the last 10 years, what changed in Georgia to make this possible?

Auburn Wideman:  I think what changed in Georgia was honestly the work done around the ACA [Affordable Care Act]. So 2014, 2016, before people were even thinking about Georgia in that way, there was a lot of organizing around getting people just to buy into ACA. Getting folks to be like ACA is out there, your state reps are not trying to bring it to Georgia, they’re not trying to let you have it, this is what it could do for you, and this idea of organizing around issues and getting people involved around issues. Like medical care, healthcare access really matters a lot in Georgia to all people, but especially Black and Brown people. They were able to be like okay, you need ACA, you need medical access. Are you registered to vote? Because this is your way you should be able to get your voice heard on this particular topic.

And then out of that, Fair Fight Action and Stacy Abrams, and so this idea people who have been organizing on the ground in Georgia for decades, SONG, Fair Fight Action, other orgs like that, New Georgia Project, which are newer but still have ties to organizations that have been organizing in a very grassroots way is what has allowed Georgia to be able to tip the balance of power. What we’ve learned and know in our Southern states is that the belief is these states are red and will never be blue. So I live in South Carolina and I try to tell people like oh my God, South Carolina could be blue. They’re like, how could it possibly? That doesn’t make any sense. And it takes a lot of convincing people one to one very locally, no, your voice matters, you need to register to vote.

And tying things to issues instead of people, instead of politicians, and issues that people actually care about was the groundwork of getting people into the system and getting people to vote, and that was able to build into a groundswell for Georgia. And that’s what I think it’ll take in other places. Finding people in the margins, finding creative ways to reach people. SONG, before we had SONG Power, the way SONG got into electoral organizing was that we had a very strong abolitionist view on our politics. And we were trying to figure out how do we get into the jails? And what is going on here? Why can’t voting happen in jails? They found out voting can’t happen in jails because you can’t record people in Georgia voting, jails have cameras everywhere.

And so we started ordaining people as pastors so they could go into the jails and talk to people, because who can go into the jails freely? Pastors. Ordaining people as pastors to go into the jail and get people registered to vote. Because as long as you haven’t been convicted and you’re just sitting in county jail, you can vote. These people can get ballots, their voices can be heard. So finding where your people are, how can you access them, being creative, being able to not be confined by traditional or what you feel might be political work, we are very outside of the tradition, we do whatever we want, we say whatever we want, and we’re very authentic to our people.

So I think that in Georgia it was the work of people doing the work for years and years and years, really it’s the work of registering people, convincing people to vote, mobilizing people, persuading people. And it is not an overnight thing. You cannot register 300,000 people in four weeks. But you can, over the course of elections, you can get people slowly to be more into elections when they’re locally based. When you know that if I vote for this state rep, these things are going to happen for me. And so really being able to tie issues to people and getting people to galvanize around issues that mean something to them I think is the first step to being a Georgia. Because that is what happened in Georgia. It was an issue that they could get people to organize around that wasn’t people as… It wasn’t about Obama or anything, it’s just like, I want healthcare access, how do I get healthcare access? I need to be able to vote these certain people in who have these ideas and build on that.

Jaisal Noor:  I just want to be clear about the organizing work you do. Do you target… Like I know some of the other organizations that do deep canvassing, they’ll go into Trump country, they want to target everybody. And they want to deep canvass Trump supporters, they want to canvass people with Biden signs, it doesn’t matter what their political perspective is, but they still want to deep canvass. Is that your approach? Or are you just targeting communities that are already of color and that are already sort of in the same areas?

Auburn Wideman:  Mostly our people. So at our South Carolina campaign when we did deep canvassing, we did target [inaudible]. Some of them were more of our persuasive universes of the suburban educated young women. But in Georgia what we did was actually, we didn’t even pull a voter file in Georgia. We had a database of Georgia folks from SONG that have been a part of SONG in some way of like 30,000 people, and those were our people that we called to deep canvass. Those are people we knew probably wouldn’t be in the voter file, more than likely a lot of our folks don’t necessarily believe in voting or buy into voting in the same way. And we knew that with those numbers on our list that just calling and checking on our people who we already had in Georgia for deep canvassing was going to be our margin for us.

And so with Georgia, in the runoff race we did only target, as far as deep canvassing, our people. And then when we partnered with People’s Action we talked to a more diverse group. But when we did our own separate deep canvassing it was us calling our people, because we knew that those were the people that weren’t going to be touched by the Democratic Party, that weren’t getting the direct mailers, that weren’t being targeted via ads because they were outside of the Democratic system. And so we knew that calling our people, deep canvassing our people in that way would help us be over the margins in our numbers that we were projecting.

Jaisal Noor:  That was Auburn Wideman of the grassroots group SONG Power, which played a key role in helping Democrats win Georgia in 2020, talking about the key strategies they used to turn out voters and the important lessons they learned for organizers in the upcoming elections. Go to therealnews.com for our entire series on how grassroots organizers in key swing states are preparing for the upcoming midterm elections. For The Real News, I’m Jaisal Noor.

America’s electoral system is broken. From partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression to an Electoral College that sidelines the popular vote, it should surprise no one that a majority of Americans don’t believe they live in a democracy. As the January 6 hearings play out in Congress, some argue that the attempted coup on that fateful day was only made possible by the fact that the American political system subverts meaningful democratic participation. How can progressives organize in the face of such widespread voter apathy and systemic barriers preventing so many from exercising their most fundamental democratic right? TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez chats with former TRNN senior reporter Jaisal Noor, who’s spent the past few months reporting on grassroots get-out-the-vote campaigns from rural Georgia to Nevada.

This story is part of a series that was made possible with the support of the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

Pre-Production/Studio: Jaisal Noor, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

TRANSCRIPT

Maximillian Alvarez:  Welcome, everyone, to The Real News Network. 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. The House committee investigating the Capitol Insurrection held its first public hearings on Thursday, June 9, 18 months after hundreds of armed Trump supporters stormed Congress. The hearing focused on the events leading up to the deadly January 6 attacks. But some argue that the attempted coup that occurred that day was only possible because America’s political system systematically subverts meaningful democratic participation. The insurrectionists were only able to attempt to shut the certification of Joe Biden’s victory down because the Electoral College, not the popular vote, decides who becomes president in this country. And that’s just one component of a larger system designed to keep the will of the population at bay. Other noted examples of this include the US Senate. Republicans, representing tens of millions fewer people than Democrats, control 50 seats.

And as such, they’re able to block legislation addressing issues, like gun reform, that a wide majority of the public supports. And of course there’s the Supreme Court, whose reactionary far right majority frequently and almost gleefully defies the will of the people, as the recent leaked draft opinion outlining the majority’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade revealed. So what does all this mean for the tens of millions of working Americans whose rights and livelihoods hang in the balance? Our senior reporter Jaisal Noor has been digging into this as part of a project supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, looking at how organizers and activists in key swing states, which have an outsized influence in the electoral system, are building power on a grassroots level to ensure their communities do have meaningful participation in our democracy. Jaisal, thanks so much for joining me, man.

Jaisal Noor:  Thanks for having me.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So this is such an important series, and I’m so honored that I got a chance to work with you on it. But I wanted to ask if you could give viewers a sense of what you got out of this series. What you think is really important about it, and why you wanted to embark on it in the first place.

Jaisal Noor:  Yeah. I feel like a lot of the media is missing the big story here, like the big picture. Because a lot of people are focusing on the January 6 insurrection, or they’re focusing just on the issue of voter suppression. Or on the other side, denying the existence of voter suppression, denying that the Capitol Insurrection happened. But how do all these things connect together? And what does it mean for ordinary people whose rights are being taken away from them? And how do they see it, and how are they responding? So that’s why I was so interested in this, because you don’t often hear from ordinary people that are living in this country that, as you’ve laid out, is extremely Democratic. But says it’s a democracy and that’s… Those are the ideals it’s aiming to live up to.

Which we know is not the case, has not always been the case, but the rights we do have are the result of decades of struggle. So in a lot of ways, the story starts and ends in Georgia. And we spoke to some organizers there. Because we wanted to ask them, because Georgia is ground zero for voter suppression. Joe Biden went to Georgia to tell organizers they need to out-organize voter suppression. But Democrats have refused to actually lift a finger to actually do anything about it. So what does that look like for communities of color in Georgia that are flexing their political power for the first time, but facing increasingly harsh repression?

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker 1:  It is very difficult for us to out-organize voter suppression in the state. Some voters will not be able to cast their votes because of voter suppression.

Jaisal Noor:  Earlier in the year, despite the onslaught of attacks on the right to vote in states around the country, which critics say curtail the growing power of African American, Latinx and immigrant communities, Senate Democrats failed to pass measures that would have provided critical federal protections for voting rights.

Speaker 2:  On this vote, the yaes are 49. The nays are 51. Three fifths of the senators, duly chosen and sworn, not having voted in the affirmative. The motion is not agreed to.

Jaisal Noor:  In response to the flurry of new Republican voting laws, inspired in large part by former President Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, President Joe Biden’s team has reportedly told voting rights activists to “out-organize voter suppression.”

Speaker 1:  These new changes to state law that have been put in place are hurting our communities.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  Man. I mean, I think, again, it’s just such an important report. Because I think we were all rubbing our chins when Joe Biden said, okay, we’re not going to actually pass any meaningful legislation over in DC to protect the right to vote. So we’re just going to out-organize voter suppression. And of course the actual organizers on the ground around the country who hear that are like, well, do you understand what that takes? Do you understand the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into that? And I think that you’ve done a really incredible thing by lifting up the voices of those folks like the ones in Georgia, who are actually hitting the pavement and doing the out-organizing, as it were.

Jaisal Noor:  As you touched upon in the intro, it is the Jim Crow era filibuster which is being used to block civil rights legislation. It is this far right majority civil court that gutted the Civil Rights Act, which is why states like Georgia can pass these voter suppression laws. And the reality is, as we just heard, there are going to be votes that aren’t counted. There are going to be people that aren’t going to be able to vote. And the mission, the reality on the ground is that means that the organizers have to work twice as hard and get even more people out there, while fighting disinformation, and while dealing with the reality that the Democrats have not delivered on a lot of their campaign promises. So it’s going to be a huge uphill battle for them. And another state I wanted to talk about is Nevada. Because we’re going to… When we were talking a lot about how states are passing voter restrictions, but that isn’t the case everywhere.

There are states that have expanded voting rights, and Nevada is one of them. I know formerly incarcerated people have the right to vote. People with disabilities have greater access to voting. And it’s one of the states where Native Americans can actually request ballots be delivered to their reservations and they are actually able to vote on their reservations. Which was the most mind blowing thing I learned about in this story. That after centuries of genocide, after a century of being able to legally vote, Native Americans are just in the last decade getting polling sites on their own reservations, which is just incredible. But the two tribes we spoke to in Nevada led the fight on that, and the Nevada legislature codified that into law. So we went to Nevada and we asked them how they made this happen.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker 3:  They try to put up any barrier that they can to make sure that our people don’t get to the voting polls.

Jaisal Noor:  Despite a century of voter suppression, Native Americans turned out in record numbers for the 2020 elections.

Speaker 4:  We’ve had young students from our high school, from their government class, our local BIE school. They came and registered to vote, and they voted as a class.

Jaisal Noor:  The historic turnout played a pivotal role in a number of Senate races and in securing Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Donald Trump. In Arizona, for example, which has voted Republican every presidential election since 1996, voters living on the Navajo and Hopi reservations in the Northeast cast around 60,000 ballots, increasing turnout by nearly 20,000 compared to the 2016 election. Exit polls showed these precincts voting heavily for Biden, who flipped the state by a thin margin of 10,000 votes.

Speaker 4:  One of our eldest, and she was a hundred years old, and it was her first time voting.

Jaisal Noor:  A culmination of tireless efforts of Native voting rights activists and landmark court cases, Native Americans won their right to US citizenship a century ago in 1924, but had to fight for the next 40 years to secure the right to vote in every single state.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  There are so many parts of that story in particular that struck me. One, like you said when you were introducing it, it was just how nuts it is that this is still the fight that Native voters have to wage to get polling places on their reservations. In a very expansive state. It’s not like, as you detail in the report, it’s not like it’s a hop, skip, and a jump away to get to your nearest polling station. Sometimes you’re going tens, dozens, even over a hundred miles. And so it was just so eye opening to watch that report and to… It was inspiring, frankly, to see the efforts of folks working on the ground to make sure that their community is engaged and has access to our most basic fundamental democratic right. And like you said, it’s a varied picture depending on where in the country you look.

And we go from Nevada to a state like Wisconsin that has gone through many changes of late. And some of those I reported on myself over the past year, when our brilliant camera man and studio technician Cameron Granadino and I joined Hannah Ferris at In These Times to investigate what the state looked like 10 years after Republican governor Scott Walker declared war on the labor movement in Wisconsin and ran through Act 10, which has been devastating for working people in the state.

But Scott Walker, really, as you report on in your Solutions Journalism-supported report on Wisconsin and the battle for voting rights there, Scott Walker really came out of this tea party wave, which was itself a backlash against Obama becoming president. And with that wave, he declared war on the labor movement, on working people, he instituted or accelerated extreme partisan gerrymandering. He did a lot of damage. And it’s not like voting rights in Wisconsin were perfect before that. And so you actually went and spoke to folks on the ground in Milwaukee, the most segregated city in the United States, who are doing that on the ground work to basically counteract with people power, this sort of restriction on voting rights. So tee this clip up from your report.

Jaisal Noor:  Yeah. And another big shout out to Cameron Granadino, because he was on the ground with me. And we wanted to go to Wisconsin because it’s a battleground state. It is a purple state. It’s a state that has a Democratic Senator, a Republican Senator who’s up for reelection, one of the most vociferous election deniers. And it’s also where you have the most segregated and incarcerated city in the country, Milwaukee. And because of gerrymandering, has virtually no political power in the state despite being one of the biggest cities in the state. And the result of that is that people are living in extreme conditions, extreme poverty. And trying to tell them they live in a democracy is a joke, because they know that their vote really doesn’t matter on a state level.

So what does it look like to organize in those communities and to build political power in neighborhoods where promises have been broken? Where voter ID laws have meant that they had the lowest turnout in the last couple elections in generations. We know that MLK became famous for his fight against segregation and for voting rights in the South. But it was in the North where he faced some of the strongest racism. We forget that. So the legacy of racism lives on in places like Wisconsin. So we went to Wisconsin and we talked to an organization called BLOC, Black Leaders Organizing for Change, that are on the front lines, going door to door in some of the poorest, most segregated communities in Milwaukee, and trying to figure out what people need to survive.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker 5:  When you come door-to-door and talk to people like they’re humans, I think that’s a better fit for this neighborhood. Because people are already afraid, and you don’t want to believe everything you see on TV. And when a person comes and confronts you face-to-face, it’s more personal. That’s what I think. I think that’s more caring.

Jaisal Noor:  And they’re helping residents overcome the numerous obstacles of voting. A crucial task, says Angela Lang, the group’s founder and executive director.

Angela Lang:  And the challenges around voting are being able to constantly limit early voting hours, taking away polling places, taking away weekend voting, which so many people utilize. But then also we have photo ID in our state, and not everybody has an ID. Not everyone has the most up-to-date ID.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  Man. It really hits in a different way, watching this as we are simultaneously watching the House investigation on the January 6 Capitol Insurrection. I think, understandably, a lot of us have tried to forget or suppress that memory, and now it’s all coming flooding back. But when I see that footage of the Capitol Insurrection and I put it alongside the reporting that you’re doing, I’m just reminded of how divided this country actually is. I know that gets said a lot. But what that actually looks like is having silos of people who learn to see each other as less than people, as almost different species living in our different respective echo chambers and cocooning ourselves within these certain versions of reality that we come to believe so strongly that people will be willing to storm the Capitol over it.

And I think that a lot of people are asking themselves right now, how can we possibly bridge these divides? How can we possibly reestablish any semblance of dialogue between the increasingly divided segments of our country? And I think that’s where the reporting that you did in Pennsylvania and North Carolina is really important and really instructive. Because there’s no one solution to this. I think that’s a really important message that comes through in your reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network on this project. But I think what you showed by, again, going to the grassroots in Pennsylvania and North Carolina and talking to organizers about how even in deep red, rural segments of these states that Democrats have largely written off, they are trying some interesting tactics to reconnect with their neighbors and their fellow citizens, and are actually having some pretty promising results. So could you say a little bit about what you found in those two states?

Jaisal Noor:  Yeah. And I was also struck by the images of these armed men, men and women storming the Capitol. And it just makes you think about the fact that Fox News didn’t even carry the hearing. The only major network that did not carry it, on one hand. But on the other hand, people are living in extreme poverty. People are faced with hopelessness. People are faced with stagnant wages and inequality. So what is the reality going to be for people that see no hope and are being radicalized? They’re being radicalized because the Republicans have a message and they’re going out there and saying, look, this system is rigged against you. And you need to join our side, the election’s being stolen. We’re fighting for you. So come join us. And the Democrats haven’t really countered that as a party. They haven’t gone to these rural areas that have been economically devastated, socially devastated. Hurt by the opioid epidemic and all these other challenges. And like you said, largely written them off.

Not being able to go and tell them what they’ve done for them, because in a large part, they haven’t. They haven’t done it. And so where economic policies have failed, the culture war is going to win time and time again, because that’s all people have. This idea of this America,this great America that used to exist, when in fact it was labor, it was labor and industry and these other things that are being taken away from us. So the reality is very different on the ground there. So the question that these organizers are dealing with is, they live in those communities. They have to find a way to reach out and to win people over. And traditional political campaigns, when you’re going around knocking on a door, are not going to reach those people.

Dropping flyers, not going to reach those people. You need to talk to them like they’re human beings, and you need to listen to what they want. And this doesn’t even just apply for people with a different point of view. Because if you are a minority, if you are a person with a different political persuasion in those same areas, those deep red areas, you’re also not going to want to participate in the political system because you know that that area’s gerrymandered and your voice isn’t going to matter. So what they’re doing is literally going around and asking people what they need, what services do they need. Do they need housing assistance, or rental assistance?

And that is how they’re connecting to people. And it’s proven to be a hundred times more effective than traditional canvassing. It’s something the Democratic Party does not embrace. But People’s Action, a progressive grassroots advocacy group, has embraced it. Dozens of smaller groups, their infinity groups in swing states have embraced it. And a study found, a hundred times more effective than traditional canvassing. And it’s making a deep impact. The organizers acknowledge it’s a generational fight, but these areas have generations of the legacy of slavery and all these other oppressions to overcome. So it’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be quick. But they are going out there, and they’re changing hearts and minds, and they are doing historic things. People are running for office, formerly incarcerated people like Dreama Caldwell. Running for office. The first Black woman to run for Alamance County commissioner in North Carolina won something like 34,000 votes.

Had historic Black turnout, higher than the turnout statewide in areas. First Latino elected official in the state office in North Carolina. Changing the conversation around who gets resources in Pennsylvania. Fundamental things, and they’re starting on the local level. But that, I mean, that is inspiring. They’re going to the scariest places. They’re putting their lives on the line. They’re going up to houses with people that are flying Trump flags as mostly women of color and they’re trying to engage with people. Doesn’t always work. It’s dangerous, but they’re on the front lines. And they’re putting in that hard work, and they’re winning.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Alicia Walker-Patterson:  They want to make it about polarizing viewpoints or battling cultures when really it’s about corporate interests. And I don’t know, manipulating us to fight against each other.

Jaisal Noor:  In rural North Carolina, dog whistle politics, scapegoating minorities for social and economic problems, have long fueled racial resentment, But have done little to alleviate high poverty rates and skyrocketing inequality, says Alicia Walker-Patterson.

Alicia Walker-Patterson:  Certain communities are barred from the political process via their economic [status]. If you have to work all day and your boss isn’t giving you time off to vote, then you can’t go in and vote.

Jaisal Noor:  Walker-Patterson is deputy field director of the grassroots group Down Home North Carolina. They engage residents with the political process by showing them their voice matters.

Alicia Walker-Patterson:  A lot of the doors that we knock, they’re like, wow, like no one’s ever knocked on my door before. No one’s ever tried to hold a political conversation with me.

Jaisal Noor:  Since 2016, these progressive activists have organized areas like Alamance County. Parts of deep red, rural North Carolina, long ignored by the Democratic Party. Down Home has found just going door-to-door and asking voters to support a cause isn’t going to make a big difference here, a sentiment backed by a growing body of research.

Alicia Walker-Patterson:  Other canvasses I’ve been a part of and other campaigns I’ve been a part of are definitely focused on trying to get people to agree with us. Or trying to sell a certain person that someone might or might not know. Or might not ever meet.

Jaisal Noor:  Instead, Down Home relies on deep canvassing.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  Man. Well again, just shout out to those organizers. Shout out to everyone all around the country who is doing something. People who are realizing that it is within our power to do something about this. And people are not waiting anymore for some party official to save them. Or someone, some deus ex machina to save us. Whatever your political persuasion is, I think that if we believe in democracy as such, seeing people take that power, use that power, and try to build that power together is something that we can all get behind. And it’s something that we need to have a functioning democracy in this country or any –

Jaisal Noor:  Get offline and do something.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Get offline. And please go do some –

Jaisal Noor:  Talk to your neighbors.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Talk to your neighbors, touch some grass. The benefits are immeasurable. I promise you. And I’m so proud of this series, I’m so proud of you and everyone that you collaborated with on this. Because I think it’s a really, really invaluable contribution to our political discourse, especially as we head towards the 2022 midterms. Which, I already got a massive headache thinking about it. But we have to always remember who and what is at stake here, and who the people on the ground doing that organizing actually look like and what they’re actually doing. And I yeah, wanted to thank you for doing that. Wanted to thank Solutions Journal –

Jaisal Noor:  Could not have done it without your support and the support of everyone else here at The Real News.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Teamwork makes the dream work. And I want to thank Solutions Journalism Network for all of their incredible support in making this happen as well. And yeah, it’s something that we’re going to continue covering here at The Real News. We’re going to build on the great reporting that you did through the midterms and beyond. We want to see these struggles through, we want to keep viewers, listeners, and readers informed on the battle for democracy. But it’s with a heavy heart that I say that you will not be joining us like in a professional capacity on that journey, because this is your final production here at The Real News after almost 10 years here. And, I think I’m not going to embarrass you too much.

I’m not going to tear up myself, but I think I speak for the whole Real News crew and our incredible audience when I say that The Real News would not be what it is without you. And I went through looking at all the reporting that you’ve done, all the folks, the team members that you’ve worked with. All the stories in Baltimore and beyond that you’ve reported on. It’s really incredible, man. And so I just wanted to thank you for all of your work on this series and in general, and to say that we’re going to miss you and we love you. And we couldn’t be more grateful for the work that you do.

Jaisal Noor:  Yeah. And it’s really been a dream working here, working with you, working with Cam. We’ve traveled all over the world together. And yeah, to get to talk to people that are making change, that are fighting for justice in their communities who don’t get on the local news, who don’t get interviewed in their local papers, and giving them a voice. And it’s been some of the best years of my life. And I’m not going away. Hopefully we’ll still continue to collaborate and work on stuff together, and the struggle will keep going on. So thank you for this opportunity, and we’ll be seeing you guys soon.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Hell yeah. Well, I feel like I have to let you do the final sign off. But as you said, the struggle continues. And yeah, don’t worry. Everyone watching and listening, you guys, you are going to see more of Jaisal, but he is going on to new horizons, and we are nothing but supportive of that. And we couldn’t be more excited for him. So Jaisal, with your last Real News sign off, take us out.

Jaisal Noor:  With Max Alvarez and Cameron Granadino, this is Jaisal Noor for The Real News. Thanks for watching.

Native Americans overcame multiple challenges to turn out in record numbers during the 2020 elections, playing a crucial role in Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump. One of those challenges: many Native reservations lack their own polling sites, forcing residents to sometimes travel hours to cast a ballot. As part of our series “Defending Democracy in the 2022 Midterm Elections,” TRNN’s Jaisal Noor and Carly Sauvageau speak with leaders of the Walker River Paiute and Pyramid Lake Paiute, two tribes that successfully sued Nevada for the right to get polling sites on their reservations, which played a key role in Native organizers’ efforts to mobilize and empower their community.

Pre-Production/Studio: Jaisal Noor
Post-Production: Jaisal Noor, Cameron Granadino

This story is part of a series that was made possible with the support of the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

Transcript

Amber Torres:      They try to put up any barrier that they can to make sure that our people don’t get to the voting polls.

Jaisal Noor:          Despite a century of voter suppression, Native Americans turned out in record numbers for the 2020 elections.

Janet Davis:         We’ve had young students from our high school, from their government class, our local BIE school. They came and registered to vote, and they voted as a class.

Jaisal Noor:          The historic turnout played a pivotal role in a number of Senate races and in securing Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Donald Trump. In Arizona, for example, which has voted Republican every presidential election since 1996, voters living on the Navajo and Hopi reservations in the Northeast cast around 60,000 ballots, increasing turnout by nearly 20,000 compared to the 2016 election. Exit polls showed these precincts voting heavily for Biden, who flipped the state by a thin margin of 10,000 votes.

Janet Davis:         One of our eldest, and she was a hundred years old, and it was her first time voting.

Jaisal Noor:          A culmination of tireless efforts of Native voting rights activists and landmark court cases. Native Americans won their right to US citizenship a century ago in 1924, but had to fight for the next 40 years to secure the right to vote in every single state. Even then, voting rights on paper didn’t translate to voting rights in practice, as Native people face the same racist tools of voter disenfranchisement that the white establishment used against Black voters, including poll taxes, literacy tests, and vigilante violence and intimidation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a major intervention by the federal government to put an end to these forms of voter suppression, but systemic obstacles to voting for Native Americans have persisted to this day.

Amber Torres:      Well, I think the most unique is transportation, times of voting, the availability on our own local homeland.

Jaisal Noor:          Many Native Americans don’t live and vote on sovereign reservations, but voting laws are especially unaccommodating for those who do. Along with having to navigate voting without traditional addresses and IDs, the scarcity of polling places on tribal lands has contributed to some of the lowest voter registration and turnout rates.

Amber Torres:      Our people feel that their voice is not being heard, or it doesn’t matter that their vote doesn’t count.

Jaisal Noor:          But things may be changing, because people on the ground are fighting to change them. In a landmark 2016 case, two Nevada tribes, Walker River Paiute and Pyramid Lake Paiute, successfully argued in federal court that a lack of local voting centers violated their Constitutional rights.

Janet Davis:         Our case is actually a case that is cited in different laws for other reservations and communities throughout Indian country to follow. Distance, the inequity at the ballot box.

Jaisal Noor:          This victory was a watershed moment for Nevada’s Native tribes, says Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe chairwoman, Janet Davis.

Janet Davis:         To me that shows the tell tale of Native voter suppression, and how, since we opened our polling site, how we were able to overcome that.

Jaisal Noor:          The grassroots effort that led to this historic ruling offers a crash course in how people can take democracy into their own hands. Walker River Paiute chairman Amber Torres says the tribe used a number of strategies to get people engaged such as inviting candidates to their reservation to address Native issues directly.

Amber Torres:      We set up meet and greets for those who are running for the different positions to come in and talk to our constituents.

Jaisal Noor:          Leading Democratic presidential candidates took part in a historic Native American presidential forum ahead of the 2020 election, directly addressing tribal issues for the first time. And tribes in Nevada also engaged in extensive outreach efforts across the vast state to ensure all tribe members who want to vote are able to.

Amber Torres:      We just try to get them all the tools that they need to make sure to place that vote. Also, trying to line up rides if that’s what they need, because transportation is a huge issue.

Nicholas Cortez: The entire way I got into the poll working field was because our tribe had to sue for access to a polling site.

Jaisal Noor:          Another crucial facet to this victory for tribe members was winning the right to staff the voting sites with members of their own community, says Nicholas Cortez, who has served as a poll worker since he turned 18.

Nicholas Cortez:A major push for our tribe was to implement the idea of including our own people in this polling station, because our people would be more willing and open to coming to a place where they knew people.

Jaisal Noor:          Combined grassroots efforts have helped spark a dramatic increase in both voter registration and turnout in Nevada’s Native reservations.

Janet Davis:         We actually had over a 70% increase in registered voters and people that actually came to vote on the first time that our polls opened.

Jaisal Noor:          Tribes have won similar victories in other states, but what sets Nevada apart is what happened after the court ruling. In 2017, Nevada’s governor signed Senate Bill 492 into law. All of the state’s 27 tribes were able to request polling sites on their tribal lands. Being battered by COVID-19, many states enacted measures to make voting in 2020 safer and more accessible, such as expanding people’s ability to vote by mail or submit absentee ballots. These measures helped produce that years record voter participation. But based on the lie that voter fraud cost Donald Trump the election, many states have since rolled back these measures and passed dozens of new laws that make it harder for people to vote in future elections. Nevada bucked this trend, however, by codifying many of those emergency measures into law, such as universal vote by mail, increased drop boxes, and same day voter registration.

Nicholas Cortez:Previously it was, if you register during early voting then you’ll be allowed to vote during general, but you won’t be able to vote during early voting. Now we can get you registered today and we can get you voting today. I think that’s benefited a lot of people because it allows them to see that change immediately.

Jaisal Noor:          Nevada has some of the strongest voting rights in the country, and in recent years has expanded the right to vote for the state’s approximately 80,000 previously incarcerated people and expanded access to voters with disabilities. But this doesn’t mean the fight to ensure everyone has equal access to the ballot is over.

Kerry Durmick:    The takeaway from working with our county clerks and working with the tribal nations and working with the Native led tribal organizations is that even though Nevada has succeeded in expanding access to the ballot, we still have work to do to make voting access fair and equitable for everyone across the state.

Jaisal Noor:          Kerry Durmick is Nevada’s state director for All Voting is Local, a grassroots group that’s worked with tribes and voting rights groups to maintain pressure on local county commissioners to respect the legal rights of tribes.

Kerry Durmick:    We’re working to push the Secretary of State’s office to provide more oversight to these county clerks, to make sure that the county clerks are serving the tribal nations in the same way that they’re serving every other resident that wants to vote in the county.

Jaisal Noor:          While Native communities have had record voter turnout in recent years, they have also had low registration rates according to a report published by the Inter-tribal Council of Nevada and All Voting is Local.

Kerry Durmick:    Native Americans had the highest turnout demographically in 2020. They have the lowest voter registration rates.

Jaisal Noor:          A lack of nearby DMVs to obtain state ID required to vote is one major barrier.

Kerry Durmick:    In some cases, the DMV is extremely far away from our tribal nations, like in some cases an hour or more.

Jaisal Noor:          While Nevada has not passed state laws to restrict voting access based on the big lie, that hasn’t stopped voter suppression efforts from being introduced on the county level.

Kerry Durmick:    Some of the rural counties are attempting to change the election systems to paper ballots and hand counting ballots, which would discriminate against voters with disabilities, potentially discriminate against voters or anybody that live in that county because it would increase the length of the line in order to vote. Voters could get frustrated and leave instead of being able to cast their ballot that day.

Jaisal Noor:          Those efforts have thus far been thwarted thanks to a big pushback from voting rights advocates. Winning and protecting the right to vote requires the full community’s support, says chairwoman Janet Davis.

Janet Davis:         That is the strategy. You have to get all your community involved, your tribal government involved. It has to be a big push from everyone. You have to have volunteers involved as well. We went door to door getting our voters registered.

Jaisal Noor:          While Natives have made great strides in recent years in expanding ballot access, tribes still face tremendous challenges overcoming centuries of genocide and settler colonialism.

Nicholas Cortez:The fear that you’re going to be treated as a second class citizen. Even today, we’re still trying to fight that or combat it to improve our quality of life, because a lot of times people forget about that. They forget that tribes struggle at an unprecedented rate compared to other communities.

Jaisal Noor:          For The Real News with Carly Sauvageau, this is Jaisal Noor.

In rural North Carolina, dog-whistle politics focused on scapegoating minorities for social and economic problems have long fueled racial resentment but have done little to address high poverty rates and rising inequality, says Alicia Walker-Patterson. This is why Walker-Patterson, deputy field director of Down Home North Carolina, works with other grassroots organizers to get residents in rural areas engaged in the political process and to show them that their voices matter. Since 2016, these progressive activists have organized areas like Alamance County and other parts of deep-red, rural North Carolina that have long been ignored by the Democratic Party. However, just going door to door and asking voters to support their cause doesn’t make much of a difference, and that is why Down Home relies on deep canvassing, a strategic approach to canvassing that draws on active listening and asking non-judgmental questions to spark deep, meaningful conversations.

In this on-the-ground report for our special series “Defending Democracy in the 2022 Midterm Elections,” TRNN’s Jaisal Noor and Joshua Komer speak with members of Down Home North Carolina about how they are working to build working-class, grassroots power one voter at a time.

Pre-Production/Studio: Jaisal Noor, Joshua Komer
Post-Production: Jaisal Noor, Joshua Komer, Cameron Granadino

This story is part of a series that was made possible with the support of the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

Transcript

The transcript of this video will be made available as soon as possible.

Georgians went to the polls in record numbers during the May 24 primary ahead of the crucial 2022 midterm elections, despite renewed GOP efforts to suppress the votes of the state’s communities of color. Passed in the wake of the 2020 elections, inspired in large part by former President Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, Georgia’s SB 202 (the Election Integrity Act of 2021) is perhaps the most egregious example of Republicans’ nationwide efforts to roll back voting rights through a flurry of restrictive voting laws. Such laws disproportionately impact people in low-income communities and communities of color, and they are being passed at a moment when the power of communities of color to shape election outcomes is rapidly increasing. Case in point: Georgia’s Latinx community has grown by 30% over the past decade and now comprises 10% of the state’s population. In this on-the-ground report for our special series “Defending Democracy in the 2022 Midterm Elections,” TRNN’s Jaisal Noor and Jeffrey Moustache speak with organizers from the Georgia Alliance of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO), an advocacy group that helps Latinx voters unlock their political power, about how they are working to “out-organize voter suppression” by mobilizing and empowering the state’s Latinx community.

Pre-Production/Studio: Jaisal Noor, Jeffrey Moustache
Post-Production: Jaisal Noor, Jeffrey Moustache, Cameron Granadino

This story is part of a series that was made possible with the support of the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

TRANSCRIPT

Jaisal Noor: Georgians went to the polls in record numbers during the May 24 primary in the crucial 2022 midterm elections. This is despite renewed GOP efforts to suppress the votes of the state’s communities of color.

Jerry Gonzalez: It is very difficult for us to out organize voter suppression in this state. Some voters will not be able to cast their votes because of voter suppression.

Jaisal Noor: Earlier in the year, despite the onslaught of attacks on the right to vote in states around the country, which critics say curtail the growing power of African American, Latinx, and immigrant communities, Senate Democrats failed to pass measures that would’ve provided critical federal protections for voting rights.

Speaker 1: On this vote, the yeas are 49, the nays are 51, three-fifths of the senators, duly chosen and sworn, not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to.

Jaisal Noor: In response to the flurry of new Republican voting laws, inspired in large part by former President Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, President Joe Biden’s team has reportedly told voting rights activists to “out organize” voter suppression.

Jerry Gonzalez: These new changes to state law that have been put in place are hurting our communities.

Jaisal Noor: In perhaps the most egregious example, a 2021 Georgia law gave the Republican controlled legislature the power to subvert democratic elections, and created new hurdles to voting.

Speaker 2: The bill grants broad power to state officials to take control of election management from local and county election boards. It also adds new voter ID requirements, severely limits mail ballot drop boxes, and rejects ballots cast in the wrong precinct. One provision would even make it a crime to hand out food or water to voters waiting in line at polling places.

Jaisal Noor: Such laws are being passed at a moment when the power of communities of color to shape election outcomes is rapidly increasing. Case in point, Georgia’s Latinx community has grown by 30% over the past decade, and now comprises 10% of the state’s population

Jerry Gonzalez: From 2016 to 2020, the Latino electorate grew by well over 150,000 new voters.

Jaisal Noor: Jerry Gonzalez is CEO of the Georgia [Association] of Latino Elected Officials, or GALEO, an advocacy group that helps Latinx communities unlock their political power. And despite a litany of restrictive voting laws passed since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, the Latinx community is participating in record numbers in Georgia.

Jerry Gonzalez: The Latino electorate has outpaced the national Latino voter participation rate for several election cycles, including in 2020, there was record breaking turnout of the Latino electorate.

Jaisal Noor: GALEO serves the community by bringing resources like voter registration information directly to them.

Brenda Gutierrez: It’s very hard to find resources. There’s not a lot of resources provided to the Latino community.

Jaisal Noor: Brenda Gutierrez joined GALEO as a community organizer to help educate and mobilize voters.

Brenda Gutierrez: I hear it a lot within my community that they’re like, oh, why does our vote matter? It probably doesn’t even matter.

Jaisal Noor: And to show them they hold real power.

Brenda Gutierrez: Not only does the community need resources in order to thrive, but also them holding elected officials accountable.

Jaisal Noor: Passed last year, Senate Bill 202, the so-called Election Integrity Act of 2021, created even more obstacles to voting based on the lie that voting fraud cost Donald Trump the 2020 election. Among the implemented restrictions, at least one county has eliminated Sunday voting, and early voting must now end before 5:00 PM, creating barriers for working people who can’t get to the polls during work hours.

And there are new limits on voting by mail and the use of drop boxes, which critics say could lead to longer lines at the polls. Supporters of the law insist these were emergency measures to deal with the pandemic and are no longer needed.

Darrick Alvarez: Breaks our ability to be able to go out and vote. It completely stops people from wanting to go out and wait in long lines when there’s few voting machines. It makes for absentee voting to not be possible for voters. It makes it harder when it’s only during the day for people to be able to take off of work.

Jaisal Noor: GALEO community organizer Darrick Alvarez says these restrictive voting laws discourage voters from participating in elections and exercising their most sacred democratic right.

Darrick Alvarez: It makes it even harder for organizations like us to be able to go out there and offer election protection, offer translation services in the lines, and just be able to be out there, comes down to not even being able to pass out simply water.

Jaisal Noor: GALEO has joined lawsuits against the state of Georgia which are seeking to overturn Senate Bill 202, but with an absence of federal voting rights protections, they are forced to focus their efforts on mitigating the impacts these laws will have and are already having on voters.

Darrick Alvarez: And then we do everything that we can to do everything bilingually. Offer events, flyers, go out and have conversations with our communities, because with the knowledge they’ll have the power and to be able to make the decisions and go out there and vote.

Jaisal Noor: The pandemic created unique challenges for voters and canvassers alike, and limited social interactions.

Darrick Alvarez: Being extremely conscious of the pandemic, we did not knock on doors to have conversations. We just made sure to keep everyone safe on our team and just leave flyers at doors, and to make sure not to approach any voters if they were to come out.

Jaisal Noor: Despite these challenges, Alvarez feels like he’s making an impact.

Darrick Alvarez: Having people tell us, wow, we’ve never had anyone knock on our door and speak to us in Spanish or offer literature in Spanish. So by being out there, the community’s reaction to our efforts have shown us a piece of the impact that we’re making on them.

Jaisal Noor: And those impacts are tangible. In the past six years, the Latinx electorate has nearly doubled to close to 285,000 voters in Georgia. And GALEO has shifted the scope of their work from four to 10 counties.

Jerry Gonzalez: President Biden won Georgia by 11,000 votes in the previous gubernatorial election. We had the current governor win by 55,000 votes. Well, the Latino electorate is 285,000 strong. So the Latinos can and will determine the outcome of the next election here in Georgia.

Jaisal Noor: GALEO CEO Jerry Gonzalez says genuine community engagement and empowerment are the keys to their success.

Jerry Gonzalez: You’re meeting the community where they are, understanding their needs and the opportunities for engagement are critical. And that’s where locally based organizations like GALEO and others that we partner with are vitally important to do this type of work, because we have earned the respect and the trust of our communities.

Jaisal Noor: For The Real News with Jeffrey Moustache, this is Jaisal Noor.