An audit of past rulings by a controversial medical examiner found that 36 cases of police custody deaths deemed accidents should have instead been classified as homicides. 

The comprehensive review of 87 determinations regarding deaths resulting from police use of force stretched back 16 years from 2003 to 2019. It highlights the often questionable conclusions the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) used to determine that police were not culpable.  

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, whose agency managed the audit of former Chief Medical Examiner Dr. David Fowler, said the audit was disturbing and that the reclassified cases warranted further scrutiny. 

“These findings are of great concern and demand further review,” Brown wrote in the preface of the report. 

The report is simply an audit. It does not formally reclassify any of the cases that have been reviewed. Normally, changing an autopsy determination requires a hearing in front of a judge.

The push to examine Fowler’s past rulings came after he testified at the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was charged with murder after video surfaced of him sitting on George Floyd’s neck for roughly nine minutes. Floyd later died at a nearby hospital.  

The case sparked outrage and nationwide protests.  

Fowler testified that Floyd did not die from positional asphyxiation, the result of the downward pressure of Chauvin’s knee. Instead, he attributed carbon monoxide poisoning from a nearby tailpipe to be the primary cause. 

The testimony sent shockwaves through the medical community. An open letter penned by roughly 450 medical experts called for a review of Fowler’s rulings in light of his testimony. The pushback prompted the state to undertake a comprehensive audit, the findings of which were released in a 90-page report. 

But prior to Fowler’s testimony and the subsequent review of his rulings, family members of victims and activists had been calling attention to his determinations. TRNN also consulted an independent pathologist to review Fowler’s cases. 

Among them is the death of a 19-year-old Eastern Shore resident, Anton Black. 

Black died after police chased him to his mother’s home. The body camera showed officers lying atop the former track star, who weighed 160 pounds at the time of the arrest. Fowler ruled the death an accident due to an underlying heart abnormality and bipolar disorder, a decision his family said did not reflect the evidence. 

The Real News consulted noted pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht to review the case. Wecht said Black’s death was not the result of an accident, but police use of force. 

“This is a classical case of positional asphyxiation in which somebody is placed face down, and then someone leans on his back, presses down on his back, and he’s tasered, after several minutes, and then he goes limp,” Wecht told TRNN. 

Black’s family eventually won a $5 million settlement of a wrongful death suit against the state. Sonia Kumar, senior staff attorney at the Maryland chapter of the ACLU, who was lead counsel on the lawsuit, released a statement calling the audit result long overdue. 

“This report vindicates what family members and communities—mostly Black and Brown Marylanders—have been saying for decades: that the entire system has been complicit in making police-involved deaths seem inevitable,” Kumar wrote. 

The audit also includes other cases covered by TRNN. 

Among them is the death of Tyrone West. West was pulled over in 2013 in North Baltimore after officers stopped his car for a broken taillight. Officers dragged him out of his vehicle and beat him for roughly an hour. West died later at a nearby hospital.

Fowler ruled his death was accidental, the result of dehydration and an underlying heart condition. Prosecutors also declined to press charges.  

But Tyrone’s sister Tawanda Jones fought back. She started a series of protests known as West Wednesdays that have continued every week since her brother’s death in 2013. 

Jones noted that the first protests were staged outside Fowler’s office. 

“That’s where West Wednesday started, at his office. And now the right is finally coming out. I am just overwhelmed.”

Now she is calling for the prosecutor to reopen her brother’s case. 

“Yes absolutely, I am going to keep pushing forward.” 

While Fowler’s police custody cases were more widely scrutinized, TRNN has also explored how his less notable rulings negatively impacted Baltimore residents. 

In our Hidden Victims series, we examined how Fowler’s unusual classification of large numbers of deaths as unclassified or ‘undetermined’ impacted cases with suspicious circumstances that might have warranted further investigation. 

The series examined multiple cases, including the death of a woman who was found buried under a pile of mulch, which were ruled undetermined. It also explored how investigations into the past deaths of women who suffered from addiction might have overlooked evidence of foul play. 

Critics say Fowler’s misclassifications were purposeful, with the aim to lower the number of homicide cases in a city where political careers are made or broken by the murder rate. Other sources say the primary goal of his questionable findings was to protect police officers from accusations of wrongdoing. But families like Tawanda’s are simply seeking closure and justice. 

“I’ve been fighting for my brother and other families for so long. I just want the truth to be known.”

In the latest installment of Inequality Watch, TRNN investigative reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis explore the roots of today’s historic levels of economic inequality and the system that has perpetuated it while devastating the lives and livelihoods of wage earners. To do so, they speak with renowned economist Dr. Richard Wolff about how ideas hatched in the classroom decades ago prompted economic elites to put the US on a treacherous path that would hollow out the middle class, suppress wage growth for working people, and ensure a future where only the wealthiest benefit from America’s economic growth.

Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Studio: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

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

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Inequality Watch. It’s a show that seeks to expose the dangers of extreme wealth inequality and discuss what we can do to fix it and to do so, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis

Stephen Janis:

Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:

It’s good to have you. Now, this is a form to examine the facts and figures, consequences, and solutions for our current wealth and balance, which infiltrates every aspect of our civic life. On this show, we won’t just tell you about inequality. We will dig deeper and show you how it works, how it affects your lives, and the political system that has grown inherently hostile to the working class. And to do so, we’ll be joined by a guest who knows more about this topic than anyone I can think of. Dr. Richard Wolfe is an expert economist who’s become YouTube’s foremost public intellectual at the intersection of economics and politics. And his analysis of what is driving America’s progression towards oligarchy has been critical for the movement to fight against it. And I know his historical context has helped me understand how politics can often sit decidedly downstream from economics.

So we’re going to have Dr. Wolff respond not just to the report, but to some recent pronouncements from politicians on Capitol Hill who we interviewed and some recent moves by the Trump administration. But before we get to Dr. Wolff, we want to delve into a new report about the devastating impact of our decades long march towards wealth imbalance, and it’s from the Rand Corporation. And reveal just how profoundly the inequities and unfairness are wired into the American economy. We will dig deep into the consequences of this stunning report and unravel deeper roots of unease. It is generated among Americans and how that lack of confidence in the system has manifested itself in the very tense politics of the present. But first, some of the details of the report itself. Now, as I said, it was released by the RAND Corporation. The premise of this analysis is relatively straightforward.

The authors take a look at working class income as a share of the overall GDP or all the goods and services produced by our economy in a given year. The study looks back 50 years to determine the share of income that went to working people and then compares it to the present. It’s an indicator of how much of the wealth of the largest economy in the world goes to the people who actually make it work. And guess what? It’s done nothing but drop consistently. Believe it or not, in 1975, roughly 75% of the total American economic output went to workers’ wages. That’s three quarters of all economic activity into workers’ pockets. You heard that right? Nearly 50 years ago, workers were the biggest beneficiaries of our country’s increasing wealth. But things have certainly changed. As recently as 2023, the RAND study found that the percentage had dropped dramatically to 46%. Over time, the share of the nation’s income that goes to workers has dropped by roughly 30 percentage points. And where has that income gone? Well, not just to the rich or the very rich or the extremely rich, but to the insanely rich to the top 1%, although, and all they’ve done well, don’t worry. In fact, the biggest bulk of the gain has actually gone to the 0.01%, not even the 1%, the actual

Stephen Janis:

Tip of

Taya Graham:

The iceberg 0.01%,

Stephen Janis:

The

Taya Graham:

Most absurdly wealthy group in America. And that income transfer has led to an astounding amount of loss of wealth for people who actually do the work to keep this country running. The RAM report estimates that since 1975, a jaw dropping $73 trillion of wealth has migrated from the working class to the elites. That’s trillion with a T. That’s twice the total annual output of our economy in any given year. And that trend is accelerating. That’s because in just 2023, a mind boggling, 3 trillion additional dollars would’ve gone to working people if wages had garnered the same share of economic growth as they did in the 1970s. And all of this, of course, brings us back to the most stunning takeaway from these incredible numbers, namely that wealth follows power. And with power accumulating and concentrating in fewer and fewer hands, our democracy becomes unable to solve complex problems. And Steven, this sort of becomes a vicious cycle.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I think that this report points out and sort of parallels that you need to bring up to understand just how catastrophic it’s been, is the fact that we have been living in a progressively extractive economy. In other words, as the worker share has diminished the parts of the economy that actually produce things for people that are useful and improved, their lives has diminished. And that economy has come more and more extractive. And just to illustrate that point, to make it very simple, as you think about what share financial services have played in the economy since the 1970s where it was about two to 3% of the economy, meaning hedge funds, investment bankers, hedge funds actually didn’t exist, but investment bankers, people who feed off the froth of the economy, well, it’s tripled since then, tripled to almost eight or 9%.

And at one point, just before 2008, before the great recession, about 40% of corporate profits came from companies that just did nothing but shuffle the deck and make money off of money. And so that illustrates what happens. And that’s when you’re talking about sort the political paralysis that precedes it because the more people are extractive, the more antagonistic relationship they have with the working class, working class doesn’t become a group that you want to lift up and improve their lives. It becomes people that you want to extract money from and make their lives worse. And so I think that’s what evolves in parallel, and that’s where we see these sort of mean billionaires, angry billionaires all the time. They’re always angry. Elon Musk is always angry, and Donald Trump is pretty much always angry. And it has to do with the fact that their relationship with the people who actually make this economy run has become purely antagonistic in the sense that their wealth is based upon extracting from people. So I think that’s a good point, and that’s what comes out in this report.

Taya Graham:

That’s actually such an interesting point, and I really hope Dr. Wolf will respond to it.

Stephen Janis:

Oh, he will.

Taya Graham:

And you’re basically saying that bad policy follows

Stephen Janis:

Wealth

Taya Graham:

In a way that we can’t see

Stephen Janis:

Because good policy requires collective thinking and it requires thinking that is most beneficial to everyone. That’s a hard thing to do in a democracy. We don’t understand that it’s not easy to build a bullet train or to improve housing or to build more affordable housing. It takes concerted effort where people are kind of on the same page where I will benefit from what you will benefit. But when the economy becomes purely extractive and wealth is based on the power of accumulating so much that the people underneath you have no power whatsoever. You can’t think big in that sense. You can think big on individual scale, but not collective scale. And I think that’s what we’re seeing,

Taya Graham:

Steven. I think this imbalance also destabilizes communities and makes them more susceptible to things like over-policing and economic exploitation. I mean, so many of the small towns that we covered

Stephen Janis:

Were

Taya Graham:

Also under economic duress, and they had issues with policing. They were overwhelmed by aggressive ticketing and fines and general overreach and overspending on things like law enforcement.

Absolutely. But these are questions we can put to our guests. Dr. Richard Wolf, I’m sure will have a lot of interesting things to say about all of it, and I’m sure most of you are familiar with him, especially if you’re watching us on YouTube. Dr. Wolf is an esteemed economist and founder of Democracy at Work whose ability to analyze the economics of the present through the history of the past is unparalleled. He’s also the author of multiple books, including his latest capitalism crisis, deepens, and he’s perhaps one of the best people we know to break down the mechanics of how rampant inequality is reflected in the politics of the present. A topic of great importance now more than ever. Dr. Wolf, thank you so much for joining us.

Richard Wolff:

My pleasure. I’m a big admirer of what you do as well, so this is thank an opportunity for me to join you, and that’s worth it for me right there.

Taya Graham:

Thank

Stephen Janis:

You, Dr. Wolf.

Taya Graham:

That’s so wonderful to hear. Thank you, Dr. So first I just wanted to address the Rand report, and to me the numbers were really quite shocking. So I guess my first question would be just taking in the raw numbers and weighing on the methodology, how does the economic share of wages drop so dramatically? I mean, how did the oligarchs pull this off basically? That’s a good question.

Richard Wolff:

Well, first of all, let me reinforce, this is a very historic process. You don’t see this very often. That is, you don’t see changes this big in so relatively short a historical period. So yes, you’re right to focus on it. It is stunning. And in order to explain it, you have to look at certain basic shifts here in the United States and in the global economy that span the last 40 years or so in terms of when this really took off. The 1975 is the right year for the Rand Corporation to have used because it is a crucial, not that particular year, but the 1970s are a crucial time. You should think about it as sort of the end of the very special situation that came out of the end of World War ii, 1945 to 75. Those 30 years were a period that the United States must have known, certainly the leaders knew could not possibly be sustained because all of the potential competitors in the world, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, were all destroyed.

Russia, if you want to ask them, they were literally destroyed. Immense bombing had wrecked their train systems, their factories, their cities killed enormous numbers and hurt enormous numbers of their people. So they were finished. Whereas in the United States, it was radically other, other than Pearl Harbor, no bombs fell in the United States. Pearl Harbor happened as you know at the very beginning. So for the bulk of the war, the United States was immune as a percentage of our population. We lost many fewer young people in the fighting compared to every other one of those countries. Japan had an atomic bomb dropped twice, we dropped it, but nobody dropped anything comparable on us. So in those years, the world readjusted itself. The war forced it, and suddenly we saw very dramatically the end, the final end, it had been dying, but the final end of the British empire that had dominated the world for the previous two to three centuries, it was completely gone.

The jewel of the empire, India became independent in 1947. It was over and there was no one to fill that void, no one with one exception, the United States. So in a very short time, the global currency went from the British pound sterling to the US dollar from the British Navy being the power force of the world to the American military operation on a global scale with atomic weapons. You cannot overstress this. The only way Japan and the Europe were able to rebuild from the war was because the United States lent them the money to buy the equipment from the US with which to do that. So after the 1970s, all of that was over the 1970s were in fact a watershed. The great fear in the United States, the great fear was to slide back into the economic problems that the United States had had before World War ii.

Let me remind you, 29 to the war or the great depression, the worst collapse of capitalism in the history of that system, even to this day, we have not had anything worse than the 1930s. So there was always a fear then that oh, what would happen if we slid back with that in the back of your mind? Then you get the results that the Rand Corporation, like many other investigations have shown that the response, and this is really important, folks, that the response of the capitalist class and who do I mean by that? I mean the people who are employers, the people who are in the position of hiring other human beings. The United States census tells us that 3% of the American people are employers, the other 97% are not. And what that means, whatever else you think, it puts that 3% in a position to make powerful decisions that the other 97% of us have to adjust to have to live with and basically have to accept unless we make a revolution, which as you both noticed, we have not had.

So here is what that 3% did, and then I’ll stop. The 3% started, particularly in the 1970s, realized that the Europeans in the Japanese had recovered from the war as everyone should have expected them to do. They were still the Germans in the Japanese, hardworking, highly skilled engineer, modern country, all of that. And they understood that their place in the sun could only be achieved if they could outdo the absolutely dominant economy in the world, namely the United States. So they set their goals on producing goods and services that were either better than or cheaper than, or hopefully both what was done in the United States that made the United States great, which is why Americans discovered in the 1970s and eighties, the Volkswagen and the Toyota and the Nissan, and they fill in the blank. They did it. They did what they set out to do. They produced better cars so that even Americans bought them ahead of the Ford, the Chevy, the Chrysler and so on.

And in that moment, the discovery of the American capitalist class was that if they didn’t do something dramatic, they would be sliding downward as their former adversaries. The Europeans in the Japanese made their move, and that move was more and more successful with each passing year. So here’s what they did. Number one, they made the decision to move the manufacturing base of the United States. Out of the United States. The working class in the United States had been so successful in pushing up wages over the previous century, a century in which profits froze faster than wages, but they rose fast enough right up until the seventies that the employer could share with the workers a modest increase every year that the union would negotiate. And when an employer didn’t do it, the unions had the muscle to strike and to get it, and so wages were much higher.

But in the 1970s, the invention of the jet engine and the invention of the internet made it possible to supervise, organize, monitor a manufacturing factory in China pretty much as easily as you used to do it across the street in New Jersey or St. Louis or Chicago or where you were. So they left. The second thing they did was to take advantage of their history and to automate, to really go about systematically focusing on replacing these high cost workers, which they kept seeing as their great problem. Wages were lower in Japan, wages were lower in Europe, significantly so, and so they realized how do we do well? We replace workers with machines and the third action bring cheap workers here when it wasn’t convenient to move production there where the cheap workers live, those three things, export of jobs, automation and immigration of working class people.

That is mostly people in their working ages, 20 to 50 who would come here with or without family. No one really cared but would work for Penny on the dollar compared to what Americans were used to. And I have to tell you that worked, that strategic move of the business class, those 3% who run the businesses work, they all did it. By the way, at the beginning. Many of them were hesitant. They didn’t want to go to China. China don’t speak English and China’s far away and China’s run by a communist party. Very scary, don’t want to do it. But they had to because the first ones who did it made such profits that those who were not willing to go had to overcome their cautionary anxieties and go, but I want to stress here because Americans are being fed real nonsense about all of this.

No one held a gun to their head. The Chinese never had the authority or the power to make that happen. They might’ve wished it, they might’ve wanted it, but they never had it. This is a decision made by Americans and by the way, their counterparts against whom they were competing in Japan and Europe followed suit, also went to China. And exactly for the same reasons, which is one of the reasons Europe is in the trouble. It is in now Japan having difficulties that it is in now. The world has changed. The people’s republic of China is an entity in the world economy, the likes of which we have not seen for a century. I need to explain to people so often, Russia, the Soviet Union, may and I underscore may, may have been an adversary, militarily may have been an adversary ideologically, but economically never.

It was much too poor. It could never hold a candle to the American economy. That was its Achilles heel. And then when it tried to match the arms race with the US, when it tried to control another country, Afghanistan, it discovered that it was simply too poor to pull that off. And having waited too late, it dissolved. It couldn’t survive. No one has missed that lesson, least of all the people’s republic of China. So they’ve been super careful. If you watch them now, they’re still, when they don’t actually need to anymore, be super careful. They don’t impose tariffs on us until and after we do that to them. That’s been their kind of behavior all the way through. But we Americans have to understand, we do not. We are not in position to win. We’re not even in a position to fight another Cold war. China isn’t the Cold War the way the Soviet Union was. The conditions are completely different. And if the United States pursues it, I as a betting person would bet we will lose. Not out of it, not that we aren’t strong, we are not that we aren’t rich, we are, but the world isn’t a place where statements like we’re rich and we’re strong carry the day that

Is over. And I think that is a necessary way to frame or to contextualize all of the other important issues.

Stephen Janis:

Well, Dr. Wolf, thank you so much for laying that out. That is really fascinating. And I guess when we’re talking about the Rand report, so they were at this sort of pivot point, they make this decision, was there an option to be more inclusive with the working class here? I mean, does it have to end up the way it did where wealth is so extremely unequal? I really appreciate the way you rooted that and we now kind of understand the mechanisms, but could they have done this a different way, in a way that would’ve led to less economic dislocation for the working class in this country, or was it just the table was set the way it was? That’s a good

Taya Graham:

Question.

Richard Wolff:

Well, the way I would answer it, which will upset some perhaps, but it’s the only way that makes sense to me. If you allow the system to function in the normal way that a capitalist economic system functions, then I have to give you the answer your own words. That’s the way the world was. That’s the way decisions got made and it isn’t neither surprising nor shocking that they were made in that way. Could you have had a different outcome? Absolutely. But in order to get it, and I’ll describe it to you in a moment, in order to get it, you would have to change the system. And what I mean by that is you would have to stop making the decision based on what is profitable. Look, I’m a professor of economics. I have learned about capitalism as the profit maximizing system. That’s what I learned, and I went to all the fanciest schools. This country has to learn it, and they tried their level best. Half of my professors were Nobel Prize winners and sitting next to me in my class at Yale where I got my PhD, was one of the very few women that took economics courses in those days, and her name is Janet Yellen.

Stephen Janis:

Wow. Oh my god. Wow. So you were there in the room where it happened,

Richard Wolff:

And I know these people personally because we all went through college and university together, et cetera, et cetera. If you make profit the guiding, if profit is the bottom line, which not only I was taught, but I have taught that to generations of students as a professor, then you get these results. If you don’t want these results, you’ve got to deal with the way people are taught to make decisions. I’ll give you the simplest example. If you move your manufacturing out of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and St. Louis and all the other places, Detroit. I mean I love to use Detroit. In 1975, it had 2 million people. Today it has 700,000 people. I mean, that’s it. End of conversation. That’s called an economic disaster. That’s as bad as having dropped bombs on that place and having killed all those people, obviously that’s not what happened,

But they were driven out by loss of jobs, et cetera, et cetera. So if you move your manufacturing, what is going to happen? Well, we know what happened to the companies that did it. They profited, which is why they did it and keep doing it. But let’s take a look, just you, me and the people participating here. If you produce it in China, it means you’re going to have to bring it back 10,000 miles from Shanghai or any of the in order to sell it to the American public. And you all know you can go buy an electronic device or furniture or kitchenware or a whole lot of other things and it says made in China. Well, what’s the problem here? The problem is you are be fouling the air with all the exhaust from all the freighters that are crisscrossing the ocean. What are you doing to the water? What are you doing to the fish?

Stephen Janis:

What

Richard Wolff:

Doing to the air? Well, here’s the important thing. No one has to worry about it because the companies that profit, even though they cause all of that turmoil, which will cost a fortune if you even can clean it up, they don’t have to pay a nickel. If they had to pay a nickel if they had to, they probably wouldn’t have done it because the profit wouldn’t have shown it as a reasonable thing to

Stephen Janis:

Do. So just so I understand, you’re saying that if the environmental costs were factored into this business decision to move everything to China, if the environmental costs were really factored in, then it wouldn’t be technically profitable to have this kind of transcontinental business or not transcontinental transatlantic. That’s

Richard Wolff:

Amazing.

Stephen Janis:

Wow.

Richard Wolff:

Only amendment I would give you is it’s not just the environmental costs. Let me give you a couple of other examples.

Stephen Janis:

Of course,

Richard Wolff:

When Detroit and I love the city, I’ve been there, I’ve been taken through it, the people treated me one, I have no complaint about the people, but an enormous part of Detroit is empty, burned out neighborhoods, mile after mile. They took me through, I’m talking, I’m not secondhand this, I saw with my own eyes, this is a disaster for these people. They had to pull up stakes, leave their homes, leave their families, leave their churches if they had kids in school, those kids at a very important time in life when they’re making friends and boyfriends and girlfriends, we yanked out of all of those relationships. One of the reasons all due respect that we have Mr. Trump in office is the dislocation of the white, particularly the white manufacturing working class.

It’s been a disaster for our labor movement because our unions were concentrated in manufacturing and you lost them and their member. And then remember all the communities in which those auto workers who lost their jobs lived, the stores in those communities went belly up. The housing market in those communities collapsed. They were unable to maintain their schools. How many children’s educations were interrupted, slowed down, deteriorated. This teach, if you add up all the costs, here’s the irony. Every one of the last eight or nine presidents of the United States have promised in their campaigns to bring manufacturing back. Our current president makes a thing of saying over and over again, he’s doing this to bring back manufacturing. None of them have done it. None of them have delivered on the promise. And we see why because private profit makes it. Well, let me give you an example. In his first presidency, Mr. Trump visited a factory in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, true temper or temper something, I forget the exact name. The factory made three quarters of all the wheelbarrows in the United States.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Richard Wolff:

In 2023, I just followed it through 2023, a venture capitalist bought the company out and did what they all do, which is carved it up into pieces, sold each of the pieces and made more money that way than they had to pay to get the factory in the first place. Today, that brand is still the brand of most wheelbarrows in America. But if you look at the label on the wheelbarrow underneath the same brand temper, whatever it was in small letters made in China,

Taya Graham:

Incredible.

Richard Wolff:

That’s how this works. If you leave the profit system in, if your loyalty to capitalism means that, then you’ve got a hard road ahoe because you’ve got to understand that commitment by you and by this society is producing the problems. Its presidents cannot and will not

Stephen Janis:

Solve. So Professor Wolf, this is kind of profound. It’s kind of effective because in Baltimore we have 11,000 vacant houses. I never conceptualized your thought of it that those ideas that were taught in that classroom, when you sat next to Janet Yell, and because we conceptualized profit in a certain way led to this destruction, which you kind of made an analogy to a war on the working class and cities like ours that were Baltimore is another example of postindustrial malaise. Absolutely. So you’re saying how these ideas were conceptualized, how we thought about profit, what profit meant has as much to do with the destruction we see as even any other force. Is that what you’re saying? I just want to understand because it’s pretty

Richard Wolff:

Profound. Yeah, you’ve understood me absolutely perfectly. We live in a society. Look, it’s really bad, you know that. I know that

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely.

Richard Wolff:

That part of that understanding. I know a little bit about the history, that understanding is part of the history of where the Real News network comes from and what it was designed to do by the people who have worked at it all these years. It’s an understanding, but we are now evolved enough in the United States that the taboo I’m about to mention doesn’t have its hold anymore. And you were very kind at the beginning to talk about me being all over the internet. Believe me, I’m as amazed by that as possible because having been a critic of capitalism most of my adult life, I know that people approached me always as a kind of an odd duck. If I didn’t have the credentials of the fancy universities, I wouldn’t be in these auditoriums. I wouldn’t be invited. It’s not me, it’s all the other you all know. You know how America works.

I’m here to tell you. Yeah, we now have to do what we have been afraid to do for 75 years, as I like to say, Americans are good. We question our education system, our transportation system, our hospital healthcare system. My God, we are in the forefront of questioning institutions like marriage, heterosexuality and so on, and good for us that we open up those questions. But when it comes to questioning capitalism, oh, all the old taboo sets in and you’re not supposed to go there. You’re not supposed to. Here’s the problem if you don’t go there, if we don’t go there, we are foregoing the solution to the problems. We say we. We should never have undone our manufacturing system that because there’s anything special about it. But a balanced economy is a diverse one. Yes, we need service industry. Yes, we need, but we also need manufacturing.

Right now, the most troubled part of our population are relatively less educated in the formal sense. Males without jobs and without any prospect forgetting them, those were the people who worked in manufacturing and a manufacturing job doesn’t have to be dirty and dusty and it can be clean and in noling if you want it to be. All of that is within reach. Unless we hold on to the taboo and the only people left for whom that taboo works is the very elite that the Rand Corporation makes so clear to us sits at the top. If it weren’t for them, I would be able to talk to 10 times more people and all the others like me. And I can assure you, I’m not the only one out there ready and willing to go would have the audiences that need to hear that message.

Stephen Janis:

Amazing. You’re asking the question, but I was just going to say Toay and to Dr. Wolf. I remember sitting in my macroeconomic was class and the professor said, all people make rational decisions. That was like the basis of it. Now it’s all falling apart as Dr. Wolf. But go ahead. You had the next question.

Taya Graham:

I was just thinking that criticizing our for-profit system, the way we accrue profits and how

Stephen Janis:

And

Taya Graham:

Conceptualizing even a person who is wonderful at accumulating those profits, how they’re lionized, how they’re

Stephen Janis:

Heroes, right? The ideology. The ideology,

Taya Graham:

It’s such this incredible ideology built around it and tackling that as a last taboo is just so important

And very powerful because I think people do sense the imbalance and that’s why when tariffs were proposed by our president that people have the feeling, well, yes, we do want these jobs back, but instead the way tariffs have been implemented has caused a lot of confusion. And so what I want to know is if you’ve discerned any strategy behind it, but before I have you answer, I actually asked Senator Sanders about Trump’s tariffs and what he was doing and I just want you to hear what Senator Sanders response was. And I just want to ask you a question. President Trump has been describing America as a sick patient and tariffs as secure. Do you think America is sick and what would you say should be the remedy

Senator Bernie Sanders:

In America today? My definition of what is wrong with America is very different than Trump’s. My definition of what’s wrong is that we have three people in America who sat beside Trump in his inauguration who own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. My definition of what’s wrong with America is we’re the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right, that our childcare system is broken, that 60% of the people in this country, as you’ve heard today, are living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to put food on the table. So that’s my analysis, which is very different than Trump’s. I happen not to believe in unfettered free trade. I helped lead the effort against nafta, PMTR, with China. I think we need trade policies that work for workers, not just the CEOs of large corporations. I think selective tariffs in the right time in the right place are exactly right. I think a blanket tariff in terms of what Trump is doing, which number one happens to be illegal, don’t have the power to do that, and second of one will be counterproductive. Okay, thank

Taya Graham:

You so much. So I guess my question for you is what do you think the approach should be with tariffs and what do you think of President Trump’s approach so far?

Richard Wolff:

Okay, I won’t comment on Bernie’s response, although that would be a conversation I think we could profitably all of us have about the tariffs. Here’s the problem. A tariff is a nasty action. It hurts other people. Americans love to imagine that somehow that’s not the case. If you put a tax, let’s take an example of our major trading partner Canada. If you put a tariff on the things that Canada ships into the United States, and remember, we have thousands of miles of unguarded border between our two countries and we are each other’s major trading partner. We more important for Canada than vice versa because it’s a much smaller country than we are in terms of population and activity, but nonetheless, we depend on each other. Okay? If you suddenly say that for every foot of timber Canada grows wood and we need wood for our housing industry and we bring it in from Canada, if every tree stump that we bring in has to now be paid for, so we have to give the Canadian company that cuts and ships the wood, whatever it costs to get it.

But now on top of that, the buyer in America has to give Uncle Sam tax. That’s what the tariff is. The tariff is exactly the same as a sales tax, right? When you go to the local store and you buy a shirt, if you are in a jurisdiction that has a sales tax, you pay for the shirt and then on top of it, the cash register rings for you. The tax, the sales tax that is for you, an extra cost of that shirt or that pot or whatever you bought. A tariff is exactly the same. It’s a sales tax on imported items, okay? This means that Americans will buy fewer of them because they have become more expensive. So a tariff imposes on the seller in this case, notice a American official not elected by any Canadian makes a decision, a tariff that hurts a Canadian lumber company. Same thing. If you put a tax on electricity, which US spies from Canada and from many other things, oil, gas, those are important exports. You are hurting them. You are telling them we here in America have some economic problems and we are going to kick you in the face to relieve ourselves.

You don’t do that unless either you have a sense of entitlement that the whole world will hate you for or you feel you can browbeat and force them to accept it. And then you have the nerve, which by the way, president Trump did today with the visiting new leader of Canada. He told him today, we don’t want to buy Canadian automobiles. We don’t want to buy your steel, your aluminum. He mentioned half a dozen items. Well then only Mr. Trump could say that and seem, because I watched it actually live, seemed not to grasp that he was condemning major industries in Canada to unspeakable decline in a short amount of time. I mean, he’s making Detroit’s out of these places, but he’s not elected by them. Why they are sitting there. These Canadians, you can be sure, and I can tell you this again from personal experience, they are sitting there transforming a really positive attitude towards Americans, which they had into a really deep hatred for Americans.

Yes, they understand Trump is not all American and they’re not not children, but you are putting them and then now multiply this by virtually every other country on earth. Here’s the irony. After World War ii, if you remember, the policy of the United States was containment. George Kennan was a great thinker in American political science. That was a strategy. So the Americans put bases around Russia and we isolated and we constrained Russia, the Soviet Union. Here’s the irony. Today it is the United States pursuing that kind of policy, but with the absurd opposite result. We are isolating us. We are turning the whole world into looking at the United States, and understandably, I wish I could say they were wrong about it, but they’re not.

Mr. Trump is doing unspeakable damage. Now on the economics, if you are going to put a tariff the way we are doing, and you’re going to say as Mr. Trump does, I want automobiles to be built here. I don’t want them to be built in Canada. I don’t want them to be built in Mexico where a lot of them are. Well, okay, then put a tariff and hope cross your fingers that the profit calculations of the car companies will lead them to do what you hope they will do if you impose such a tariff. But here’s the one thing you cannot do. You cannot say, here’s the tariff, and then two days later take it away and then a week and a half later raise it up a bit more. You know why? Because that introduces uncertainty and here’s why that matters. Go to any large company that’s busy in Canada or Mexico or anywhere else. They hear about these tariffs and do they consider moving into the United States? Of course they do. They want to escape the damage that a tariff does to them, but to move back into the United States takes two or three years, costs a ton of money, and is an immense risk. If you have any reason to doubt that this tariff will stay the way it is, you would never do it.

That’s why no one is going to do it. That’s why that such a point policy. Policy is a roaring failure from the get go. Wow. He has economic advisors. I know them. Either they’re intimidated and don’t tell him these things or they tell him and he doesn’t care or doesn’t listen. I don’t know. I’m not privy to that sort of thing, but I can tell you that the whole world watches this look, it was a long shot for him, which he didn’t understand because he’s not going to be president in three and a half years and most of these moves of companies, they take much longer than he will be president. So they have to worry that whoever comes in, Kamala Harris or anybody else will undo all of this, in which case they will have spent a fortune of money and moved and be regretful that they ever did it. They’re not going to move there, they just aren’t.

Stephen Janis:

Well, Dr. Wolf, I’ve been really thinking about some of the things you’ve said, and a lot of us we’re kind of naive. We always look at economics as a science, right, as a science. But from what you’re telling me, economics as a philosophy and it’s a philosophy, kind of turned somewhat as a religion where we’re worshiping at the feet of Milton Freeman or something, and that where prophet has become invaluable, prophet is like the catechism or something. You can’t question it, and I’m kind of profoundly affected by this because I did take micro macro and I feel like, wow, I was misled. I mean, you’re talking profit has become sort of invaluable. You can’t say anything against it, is that

Richard Wolff:

Where we are? But let me correct you about something you said a few minutes ago, and you were very wise. If I heard you correctly. You said you sat in a course and the course began with the teacher saying to you, in this course, we assume that everybody is a rational person, who

Stephen Janis:

That’s what was said.

Richard Wolff:

Yeah, that’s what was said. But you were clever when you said it a few moments ago in this program, I’ve got you here. You said you let us know that you thought that was nuts, what we were being told.

Stephen Janis:

Yes I did. Even at 19 years old I did.

Richard Wolff:

Yes. Here you were 19 years old. You already knew that this was crazy. Well, let me just tell you, I am married. I’ve been married a very long time. I know I’m a dinosaur. I got married at 23. I’m still married to the same lady. Congrats.

Taya Graham:

That’s lovely.

Richard Wolff:

She is a psychotherapist, and when I was a graduate student, we were just sort of getting together. Then when I was a graduate student, I came home one day and I told her that I had heard in my class what you heard, that economics is based on the notion that decisions are rational.

She fell off her chair laughing. She thought I was making it up to pull her leg to say something humorous. I said, no, there was no humor at all. And she said, oh my God. My whole field of psychology is an attempt to understand the very difficult combination of drives and urges and fears, half of which we’re not even conscious of that determine RB, the notion we are all rational calculators of costs and benefits. She could finish the sentence. She started laughing again at the thought of mature men and women sitting around talking like that. It struck her as incredible,

Stephen Janis:

But why do we worship the notion of prophet if it’s irrationally derived? Do you know what I mean? That’s what I’m just thinking about. What you said was so profound because these were conscious decisions, but they really were also exclusive decisions. That’s right. We are going to exclude the working class because of this idea of profit. How come we’ve come to worship at this idea of the science of it when it really is more like a philosophy, I guess is what I’m asking, because you’re there

Richard Wolff:

When I teach it. Now, in order to get at this, when I teach it now, I say to the students, profits are part of the revenue when you sell, if you make shoes or you make software programs, when you sell your product, you get a revenue and part of that revenue stream comes into the pocket of the worker, and we have a name for that. That’s wages and salaries, and another part of the revenue stream goes into the hands of the employer, and we call that profits. Now, if you want to make a economic system, have an objective, a goal, if you make it to profits, then you say the whole system is supposed to work to maximize what goes to a tiny minority of the people involved. Why wouldn’t you say more democratic for sure that it is the wages that we are most interested in securing because that’s where most of the people’s needs lie with the wages and the salaries, not with the, and when I explain it that way, everybody nods. It makes sense if you don’t explain it that way. If you explain it the way most universities and colleges do, and I still teach. I’m sitting here in New York City, I teach at something called the New School University,

But that’s a recognized American university. But most of my colleagues, they continue to teach profit maximization as the royal road to efficiency it.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I mean, inequality is not efficient, right? That’s right. Can you explain that a little bit? How inequality is not efficient economic

Richard Wolff:

Principle, you should have stayed with economics. You’re getting perfectly well,

Stephen Janis:

I blew it. I was an economics minor, English major as you can imagine, but never too late, right? But yeah, so inequality is inefficient, right? Professor?

Richard Wolff:

Yeah, it’s a terrible inefficiency. And again, you can see because nobody has to calculate it in a profit system. If inequality means that inner city schools across America can barely hold it together as disciplinary institutions, let alone chances to motivate, educate, and inspire young people who need it, then you are going to pay a cost in those kids’ lives not being anywhere near the contributions that they’re actually capable of not being able to earn the income that they need for their fear. The social cost of this is enormous to tell me that private profit doesn’t see its way clear to deal with this is to tell me that we got a system that doesn’t work well. It’s making profit driven decisions that are outweighed by the social costs that these private profit calculators never have to take into account. And that’s cuckoo. That’s the distill way of organizing yourself, right? Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Professor Wolf, you were mentioning how tariffs work, and I remember Peter Navarro, who’s the White House senior counselor for trade. He said that the administration intends to raise 6 trillion over the next decade via these reciprocal tariffs and that this would actually shrink the annual trade deficit, which is about $1.2 trillion. So I would have a two-part question for you. So would the US government actually directly raise trillions of dollars via tariffs? And my second question, is a trade deficit really a bad thing?

Richard Wolff:

Yes. It’s a very, very old question. Okay,

Let me make a parenthetical remark just to set the context. Tariffs are not, new. Tariffs have been used by many countries over centuries. I tell you this only because there is a vast literature that has developed in all modern languages about tariffs because they have been used so often and we have lots of empirical studies. Under what conditions did they achieve the goals they set? Under what conditions did they fail to achieve? I’ve taught courses in international trade, and there’s a segment of the semester when you talk about tariffs. That’s how established they are. So having said that and wanting to remain very polite, I would tell you that Mr. Navarro is considered even in the economics profession, to be, I’m searching for the polite word, difficult to take seriously. I’ll leave it at that.

Taya Graham:

That’s very diplomatic.

Richard Wolff:

Yes. So the notion of the trillions, there is no way to know how much money a tariff will raise. That’s what the literature shows. Mr. Navarro should know that because it depends always on how people react. So for example, if the tariff, let me give you an example that’s real. The best and cheapest electric vehicles in the world are currently made in China by Chinese companies, the most famous of which the BYD three letters, which stands by the way for the English words, build your dream. That’s the name. The Chinese company took BYD. Let’s say you wanted to get one of those cars, which by the way, you’ll see on the roads of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. The only place you don’t see him is here. Why? Because of the tariff. The tariff now stands right now at a hundred percent. It was raised from 27.5%.

That’s what Mr. Trump put on it in his first presidency, and Mr. Biden raised it to a hundred percent. So if you want a $30,000 BYD car or truck, you have to come up with 30 grand that goes to China to pay for the vehicle, and another 30%, another 30 grand, a hundred percent tariff go to Uncle Sam. So you would have to pay, or I would have to pay $60,000 for that $30,000 car. Now hear me out. Every competitor of the United States, every company in the world that uses electric trucks to get its inputs to ship its outputs, they are all able to buy the best and the cheapest truck for $30,000. But the American company that has to compete against them would have to pay 60,000 for the same truck. You know what that means? That America is shooting itself in the foot by what it’s doing.

It’s not going to make more jobs. And what are Americans going to do as a result? They’re not going to pay the tariff. They’re going to settle for a cheaper electric vehicle made by Ford or General Motors or Tesla or Toyota because it’s not as good as the Chinese, but it isn’t 60 grand. And so guess what? No tariff will be paid because Americans will get out of paying the tariff by buying the cheap car, buying the cheap truck with the end result. That step-by-step Americans will isolate themselves in a walled off tariff universe, which makes them progressively incapable of competing. Let me put it to you this way. I look at all of this as a professional economist, and my image is I’m watching one of those proverbial movie scenes where you see a train crowded with people having a good time, but from where you sit, you can see the train is heading for a stone wall. Oh, wow, Jesus. And you want to yell loudly, get off the train, but they’re having such a good time telling each other’s stories and drinking their cocktails that they simply can’t

Stephen Janis:

Hear me. Wow, it’s

Taya Graham:

A nightmare.

Stephen Janis:

I’m just thinking about what you’re saying. And so we have, as we discussed before, we have a irrational system that sort of presents itself with science, comes up to an irrational conclusion to create tremendous wealth inequality, which creates the conditions for a political class now that is making totally irrational decisions. And so are we looking at a point where capitalism is turning in on itself in America, because the elite said profit above all else, profit above people, and now people are pushing back. But what they’re getting is actually not a good solution, but really irrational decisions that are kind of based on that irrational idea in the first place. Not to be too circular, but

Richard Wolff:

Because of my time constraint, I have to get off, but let me end by breaking another taboo.

Stephen Janis:

Okay, great.

Richard Wolff:

Here it is. The way this system is going, the way it is acting, it is doing exactly what you said, holding on to the taboo and building the conditions, which I know we haven’t got there yet, but building the conditions where the next concept we will be discussing is revolution. You cannot do this to the mass of people. Our people are already showing many signs of extreme stress. Mr. Trump is an exemplar of where that stress can lead. It can go to the right, of course it can, but if it goes to the right, which it’s doing now, and if the right proves itself unable to solve these problems, which it’s clear to me it will, then the next step for the American people is to try to go to the left, which after all they did in the 1930s, there is no reason they can’t or won’t do it again. That’s a wonderful

Taya Graham:

Thing. Professor Wolf, I know you have a time constraint, but I was hoping I could just ask you one quick question.

Richard Wolff:

Okay. Quick.

Taya Graham:

Okay. The question is, I think this is really our most important question for you is what do you see on the horizon? What advice do you have for your average worker out there who’s paying off their car or their home or their credit card, who doesn’t have a whole bunch in their savings account, who doesn’t make over $70,000 a year? What should we be looking out for on the horizon? I mean, we’ve talked about the macro economics. What can we do on the micro to protect our wallets? What do we need to look out for?

Richard Wolff:

Well, the first part of the answer is to be honest. If people say to me, which they do, is it possible by some mixture of good luck that this all works out for Mr. Trump? The answer is yes, that could happen. It’s not a zero probability it could, but if you want me to tell you what I think is going to happen, I think it’s going to be a disaster. And therefore, I would say to every working man or woman, any person, you must now be extremely careful about your financial situation. Don’t make major expenditures if you don’t have to. Hold on. Find ways of accommodating and economizing because there are risks now of a recession, which by the way, most of Wall Street expects later this year or early next year, there are serious risks of an inflation. There are serious probabilities of a combination of both of those things, which we call stagflation. And all of those are terrible news for the working class. And I’ll add one more. Having told the working class for the last 70 years that there is this thing called the American Dream, and that if they work hard and study hard, they will have an entitled chance to get it, an nice home, a car, a vacation, a dog, a station wagon, all the rest of it.

You’re not providing that now to millions of people. And if we have an economic crisis, and remember the last two were immense. The 2008 and oh nine crisis was very, very bad. And the 2020 so-called pandemic crisis. Also, if we have another one on those scales on top of the receding American dream, you are putting your working class under X extraordinary stress, and it would be naive not to expect extraordinary political ideological outgrowths from that situation.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Richard Wolff:

Well,

Stephen Janis:

Dr. Wolf, thank you.

Taya Graham:

We appreciate you so much. So can

Richard Wolff:

We take your class?

Taya Graham:

I would like to sign up, please.

Richard Wolff:

Okay. Send me an email. I’m sure we can work it out.

Taya Graham:

That would be wonderful. I’m going to take you up on that. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much,

Stephen Janis:

Dr. Wolf.

Taya Graham:

We really appreciate you Professor Wolf.

Stephen Janis:

We take care. Bye.

Taya Graham:

Wow. We learned something new from

Stephen Janis:

Him.

Taya Graham:

Every time we ask a question,

Stephen Janis:

I mean the discussion of economics, it always sort of presents itself with a science. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I didn’t pursue it because it felt scientific to me. But the way he unpacks it, you understand. You see, you, Vince, the philosophy that defines it, which is so profound. We don’t even think about it. We accept it. Well, profit motive is the only thing. And look, I sound a little pollyannaish, but still to think about it in that context where he kind of turns it into a philosophy that you can kind of wrestle with and see the underlying assumptions is pretty powerful. And I really appreciate the way he does that, because we need to think of it that way. If we’re going to survive the next decade, we need to think of it as something that comes with conscious decisions, not made from scientific analysis, but someone’s preference. Preference of having inequality. And that’s the preference you’re expressing, right?

Taya Graham:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

That’s what Milton Freedom Express is, absolute inequality, because there can only be so many capitalists. So when he equated, and I thought about Baltimore does look like a war zone. I mean, our own city looks like a war zone, right?

Taya Graham:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, we have 11,000 vacant buildings. A lot of them are burned out. We were just in Santown Winchester where Freddie Gray was killed in police custody. It doesn’t look any different. Someone’s living in a house that’s connected to a burned out building with part of the roof

Stephen Janis:

Missing.

Taya Graham:

I mean, how can you have hope to have any value in your home? How can you hope to have any wealth to pass on to your children when you have a home attached to a burned out building?

Stephen Janis:

And I used to think of it like Baltimore. I would look a war zone like post drug war, but the way Dr. Wolf said it, it was really post economic malaise. It really was affecting me profoundly. But anyway,

Taya Graham:

What’s interesting is the idea of interrogating the very base assumptions. I mean, for years he’s been speaking about interrogating those base assumptions. Exactly the way we run. That’s a better way our economy.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah,

Taya Graham:

It is for profit. Is that the direction it should be? It should be for profit, or should it be for people? And he’s asking us to really take a look at that, and I think people are finally now ready to at least ask these questions. It’s no longer so taboo to even ask the question, which

Stephen Janis:

It was. It’s interesting you called it taboo, because it really is.

Taya Graham:

Oh, absolutely. It really is. Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

But thank you.

Taya Graham:

Well, as we discussed, the Rand report is shocking and sort of makes a point about the uncertain times we’re living in now. I mean, regardless of your partisan preference, it is undeniable that the curtain era is both turbulent and unpredictable, which is why the Rand Report meets such a deep impression for me, because along with the truisms, it revealed about how wealth inequality breeds more wealth inequality. I couldn’t help but think of something else, a special type of influence that accompanies this kind of economic dislocation. And that’s chaos. I mean, utter chaos. Just think about it, that shrinking piece of the pie for workers harms, people’s lives, real lives, people with family, with loved ones, with children, with elders, people who watched as their incomes technically shrank, who could nothing as fewer and fewer of the benefits of the wealthiest country in the world, were not shared with them. I don’t even think shared iss the right word here. Maybe denied or withheld. You know what? How about stolen? You know what? Pick your adjective. Pick your verb. But the effect is the same. But let’s use the word stolen in this case.

I mean, when you look at the numbers, I want you to imagine the lives that impacted and then imagine the chaos it created. All of us, no matter where we are in our lives, have experienced the trauma of losing a job or having trouble paying off a student loan or getting squeezed by your landlord or trying to figure out how you can pay for a car or fund your kid’s education or take care of your grandma. All of us have confronted these choices and often ask a question, how can anyone afford this? And what the heck are we going to do? And don’t even get me started about surprise medical bills. A fact that Bernie Sanders shared during his press conference pushing for Medicare for all. He said, think about this. 60% of cancer patients go through their entire life savings two years after their diagnosis, cancer patients and their families left destitute.

And add to that, the even more disturbing reality that roughly 500,000 people a year are pushed into bankruptcy by medical debt. That’s right, due to being in an accident or getting sick. How’s that for the wealthiest country on earth? But it’s also why this Rand report hit so hard, because it’s not just about 50 years of a declining share of income. It’s also about 50 years of chaos for working people. It’s about five decades of shrinking paychecks, fewer opportunities, insane student loans and unaffordable housing. It’s about the time we spend worrying about a utility bill or keeping a cell phone on or paying for an ailing parent that needs around the clock care. And even worse, it’s often about keeping a job we don’t even like just for the health benefits or working two jobs or even three, or working for a way to offers just enough to get by, but not enough to build a future.

Meanwhile, the horizon and opportunities for the 1% keeps expanding. The future for them gets brighter and brighter and brighter while ours, the working people of this country gets dimmer and dimmer. In fact, today’s conversation isn’t just about numbers or charts or percentages on a page. It’s about the lives of everyday Americans who have been systemically deprived of dignity, stability, and justice. By extreme wealth inequality, $73 trillion didn’t just disappear. It was taken. It was taken from working families, from communities and from our collective future and handed over to a tiny elite whose power and influence grow more unchecked each day. This isn’t an accident. It’s a choice, a political and economic decision made by those who benefit the most from the imbalance. But here’s our choice. We can stay informed, we can stay vigilant, and we can demand accountability, and we can refuse to accept a rig system is normal. This type of inequality thrives in silence, and I guess you can tell we won’t be silent. Isn’t that right, Steven?

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely. Clearly.

Taya Graham:

Well, I just want to again, thank our guest economist, Dr. Richard Wolfe, for helping us make sense of the dismal science and our current fiscal ups and downs. And of course, I have to thank you my cohost, reporters, Steven and Janice. Great. Thank you. I appreciate your insights in helping make this show

Stephen Janis:

Possible. Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

And of course, I have to thank our friends in the studio, Kayla Cameron, and Dave, thank you all for your support and I want to thank you out there watching. Thank you for watching us. Thank you for caring, and thank you for fighting the good fight. My name is Taya Graham. I’m your inequality watchdog. See you next time.

Anyone who witnessed or was affected by Baltimore’s failed experiment with zero-tolerance policing during the aughts remembers the unrelenting chaos it created. As reporters working for a newspaper, we witnessed the onslaught of so-called quality of life arrests as a fast-moving crisis that seemed to accelerate with each illegal charge.

The policy was driven by the idea that even the most minor infraction, like drinking a beer on a stoop, was worthy of detainment in the pursuit of stopping more violent crimes. However, it soon spiraled out of control to roughly 100,000 arrests per year between 2000 and 2006. It led to bizarre examples of over-policing, like Gerard Mungo, the seven-year-old boy arrested for sitting on an electric dirt bike, or the incarceration of attendees of an entire cookout over a noise complaint. 

But aside from the individual horror stories of people who ended up in jail without committing a crime, there was something else just as shocking: all of the suffering occurred in a blue city, with little if any political opposition or pushback from the Democratic establishment.  

If you’re skeptical, don’t be. Post 9-11 Democrats wanted to look tough. And they were looking for a political superstar to replace former President Bill Clinton. 

Then-Mayor Martin O’Malley fit the bill. He was a rising political star who the local Democratic establishment believed would eventually ascend to the presidency. Throughout his tenure, he oversaw this policy of mass arrests, hoping the ensuing drop in crime would bolster his future candidacy. Predictably, his presidential aspirations fizzled under the weight of the 2015 uprisings after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, and crime didn’t go down. 

But the results were undeniably horrific: tens of thousands of people placed in cuffs without committing a crime. An authoritarian policy embraced by a Democratic establishment that seemed to have few qualms with allowing police to create untenable conditions within predominantly African-American neighborhoods.

During the zero tolerance heyday, prosecutors were so overwhelmed by the onslaught of detentions that they invented a previously unheard-of legal terminology to address it: ‘abated by arrest.’ It was a legal classification intended to reckon with the fact that there was no legal basis for charging thousands of people police were putting into handcuffs. In other words, the arrest was illegal; prosecutors just invented a way to make it seem less so.  

The city’s Central Booking facility, constructed in the ’90s with the expectation it would process around 40,000 arrests annually, was so overwhelmed that many detainees would be given what was known as a ‘walk through,’ which entailed simply walking in and out of the facility in a long serpentine line guided by corrections personnel. This overcrowding was exacerbated by the jump-out boys, who would arrive in predominantly Black neighborhoods to lead people, whose only crime was living in an area police deemed suitable for mass illegal incarceration, into the back of vans.

The point was, and is, that zero tolerance was, in some sections of Baltimore, worse than authoritarianism—it led to a reconfiguration of the Constitution. People would be illegally detained and then disappear into the Central Booking facility for months without due process. Many victims we interviewed were often released without charging documents, unable to describe or otherwise recount the crime that had landed them in jail. Baltimore was essentially non-constitutional—a bastion of notably unlawful law enforcement.  

All of this backstory is a prelude to the astonishing and terrifying argument made recently by prominent Johns Hopkins professor of Political Science and Africana Studies Lester Spence. 

Spence is one of a handful of innovative political scientists who examine national politics through the prism of urban governance. He is the author of Knocking the Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics. In it he argues that cities, once bastions of progressive policymaking, have become laboratories for neoliberalism.  

But Spence has taken this idea one step further by making an argument that makes the Trump administration’s current unconstitutional actions even more terrifying. 

During an interview for the TRNN documentary ‘Freddie Gray: A Decade of Struggle,’  Spence linked the wildly unconstitutional policing that precipitated the uprising to the anti-democratic impulses from the Trump administration that are infiltrating the country’s institutions. 

“To the extent that if you looked at a map of the country and you looked and you layered density and then voted on that map, what you’d see is the most Democratic places are the densest places, and all the rest is red,” Spence explained. 

“Now, if you layer onto those values about democracy, should everybody be able to get a right to vote? Should people accept the results of elections? But then, should people have a right to healthcare? Should people have a right to solid education? Should people have a right to a living wage? All those attitudes are concentrated in metropolitan areas. If you constrain the ability of those spaces to articulate those values and policy, then you constrain the ability to state on one hand… and then the nation-state on the other to actually fight for those values,” he said. 

“So the sort of authoritarianism comes out of the policing and the lack of opportunity and the dysfunction of democracy.”

There are obvious connections that Spence is making here. Illegal arrests have been proven to diminish political participation. Specious criminal charges literally erode the type of citizenship that a democracy depends on.

It estranges, isolates, and otherwise marginalizes entire swathes of a community. Affected residents subsequently cannot access public housing, student loans, or even admission to higher education. All of these factors conclusively diminish the strength and vibrancy of our citizenry, and, as Spence suggests, mute the constituency most likely to advocate for progressive policies. 

But Spence’s idea has even more profound implications if you delve deeper into the history of policing in blue cities like Baltimore. To understand its true significance, just consider a less direct force undermining democracy which is precipitated by Democrats’ commitment to aggressive law enforcement. 

It starts with the conservative narrative of the failed city. 

The so-called failed “Dem-run city” is shorthand for broader attacks on Democratic competence. It boils broader ideas of liberal excesses into simple narratives: The chaotic blue communities are beset by criminals and immigrants. The lawlessness and moral bankruptcy of cities that have run amok. All of it espoused by Republican candidates and right-leaning news media outlets as probable cause to run Democrats out of Washington.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post published daily stories on crime and dysfunction in San Francisco. Similarly, in our own hometown, right-wing Sinclair Broadcasting has touted a ‘City in Crisis’ series that again equates crime to failed Democratic policies and the mayhem they supposedly engender. All of this, manufactured or true, creates a perception that Democrats are wildly incompetent.

That perception gains traction, according to Spence’s idea, because—in some cases—it’s accurate.

That’s because cities under Democratic administrations have invested billions in the ostensibly flawed idea that policing was a key to reducing crime. Just like with zero tolerance in Baltimore, many Democratic mayors and elected officials not just allowed but touted aggressive and illegal policing as a proficient means to an end.

That commitment to a flawed policy has not only led to failure, but has given Republicans plenty of fodder to justify the Trump administration’s authoritarian rule. The easy-to-construct narrative that Democrats can’t and will not impose order and don’t know how to do so has simply made right-wing talking points more salient and appealing.

The irony is, as Spence points out, that blue cities like Baltimore invested massive sums in policing for decades with meager results. Defunding the police has hardly been the problem. Here in Baltimore, for example, public safety spending has outpaced education spending for decades. 

Nevertheless, Baltimore’s recent drop in homicides suggests that all this spending overlooked what appears to be the most effective solution: investment in community-based programs. 

Dayvon Love, public policy director for the Baltimore-based think tank Leaders of Beautiful Struggle, made this point in the same documentary. The Baltimore Police Department, he noted, has been grappling with a historic number of vacancies, fluctuating somewhere between 500 and 1,000 officers. However, even with fewer officers to patrol the streets, violent crime and homicides have dropped significantly. In 2024 homicides dropped to 201, a 20% decrease from the year prior. This year, nonfatal shootings and homicides have continued to fall another 20% to a record low. 

Some have attributed this to a broader national trend towards lower homicide rates. But, as Mayor Brandon Scott recently pointed out, Baltimore has always bucked fluctuations in homicides and violent crime.  

Instead, Scott attributes the drop to the city’s commitment to community-based programs like the Gun Violence Reduction Strategy, which uses a coordinated community-based approach to persuade high-risk residents to get a job rather than commit a crime. The city, with the help of the state of Maryland, has also made historic investments in Safe Streets, a violence interruption program in which former felons mediate disputes before they turn violent. 

All of this points to the fact that Democrats’ past use of aggressive policing has been a boon for Republicans because it was not just the wrong solution, but a prescription for electoral failure as well. Whether or not the Republican depiction of this policy has been fair, the fact remains that Democrats across the country have invested countless billions into authoritarian policing with little impact on crime, and as a result have paved the way for an authoritarian national movement.

If these two trends continue, as Spence suggested is possible, then we are in big trouble. 

Just consider the findings of the Justice Department report that was released after its 2016 investigation into the Baltimore Police Department in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray in police custody. It found that, among other abuses, police arrested one man 44 times. It also revealed that several extremely poor and mostly African-American neighborhoods were targeted with mass arrests to the point that a person could be detained for simply walking in an area where they did not live.

If that sounds scary, consider the fact that the editor of the paper I worked for was arrested after we published the overtime earnings of all the officers on the force during the zero-tolerance era. Police contrived a crime to effectuate the arrest, accusing him of pointing a shotgun at his neighbors. The case fell apart after his lawyers pointed out that all of this occurred in the privacy of his home and that the aggrieved neighbor had only witnessed the infraction through a shut window. However, that did not stop a cadre of heavily armed officers from dragging him into the same Central Booking facility as the other victims of the city’s mass arrest movement. 

Even more troubling were the sheer numbers of arrests effectuated by a relatively small number of officers. At its peak, BPD had roughly 3,000 sworn cops—and the number of people they managed to arrest was thousands of times greater. Imagine if the vast federal bureaucracy embarked on a similar program of nationwide detentions.

That program is, actually, already happening. The Trump administration has enlisted the FBI and IRS to help arrest immigrants, a task usually outtside their respective purviews. 

The point is, we have witnessed how over-policing changes the contours of government, and if this same mentality pervades the federal institutions and agencies, it will be more terrifying than it’s already been. 

Spence’s insight should be heeded as not just a cautionary tale, but a call to action. Baltimore has made positive changes to commit resources towards a community based approach to crime intervention. The question is, will it be enough?

On April 12, 2015, lifelong Baltimore resident Freddie Gray was arrested, hogtied and thrown into the back of a police van by six officers. When Gray was pulled from the van less than an hour later, he was in a coma. A week later, he passed away from severe injuries to his cervical spinal cord. The incident, and the revelations thereafter, set Baltimore and the entire country ablaze. Details of the case alleged officers had taken Gray for a “rough ride,” a police brutality practice where individuals are intentionally left unrestrained in police vehicles during dangerous driving maneuvers. After a coroner ruled Gray’s death a homicide, the six officers involved in his arrest were charged with crimes ranging from false imprisonment to manslaughter. But the damage was done, not only to Gray, but to his community, which had endured decades of deprivations and abuse by Baltimore police. The resulting Baltimore Uprising shook the city and the nation to its core, fueling a fresh wave of Black Lives Matter protests building on the murders of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and Eric Garner.

In a special 10-year anniversary documentary, TRNN reporters Stephen Janis and Taya Graham asked Baltimore organizers, activists, teachers, and residents for their reflections on Freddie Gray’s death, the subsequent uprising, and where the city is now. What did they feel when they first received news of Freddie Gray’s death? Did they have any hope the police would be held accountable, and has Baltimore City and its police department changed for the better as a result of the uprising? The following conversation is a thoughtful meditation on the long term impact of police brutality, the limitations of legislating cultural change, the power of community organizing, and the determination to still love and heal this city.

Headquartered in Baltimore City, TRNN was on the ground when the uprising began 10 years ago. You can find an archive of our original reporting here.

Transcript

[CROWD CHANTING]:  While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying.

Taya Graham:  In 2015, 25-year-old Baltimore resident Freddie Gray locked eyes with a police officer. He was chased, arrested, hogtied, and thrown into the back of a van. He died a week later from severe spinal cord injuries. Baltimore City rose up to protest his death, the result of decades of aggressive overpolicing.

10 years later, The Real News spoke to activists and community leaders about what they remembered, how it affected them, and the impact on the community, and finally, their thoughts on the future of our city. This is what they said.

[CHAPTER 1: THE UPRISING]

[VIDEO CLIP] Taya Graham:  Thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate that. Welcome to a special live edition…

Taya Graham:  Just before the uprising began, I was actually hosting a town hall with Michelle Alexander, who’s the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

[VIDEO CLIP] Michelle Alexander:  We maintain this attitude that we ought to be punishing those kids and teaching them a lesson by putting them in literal cages.

Taya Graham:  And activists and organizers from all throughout the city had joined us. Members of the ACLU, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, all types of community members were there. And we were actually there initially to discuss the school-to-prison pipeline, but one of the people spoke up and spoke about the video of Freddie Gray that had just been released to the public.

[VIDEO CLIP] Adam Jackson:  I know here in Baltimore, in particular, we’ve been dealing with the issue of police brutality for quite some time. And Freddie Gray, recently, his spine was severed and he died, I think, two days ago.

Dayvon Love:  I actually got a text from a cousin of the Tyrone West family, and I still have it, a text message that has the picture, the famous picture that we’ve all seen of Freddie Gray in the hospital while he was still alive but on life support, and says, this is Freddie Gray. This just happened, and we think this is going to cause a big uproar.

Tawanda Jones:  When I seen Freddie Gray getting dragged into that van, it was like opening up my brother’s casket all over again.

[VIDEO CLIP] Eddie Conway:  Tyrone West’s family held their 200th-week protest and demonstration trying to demand justice for Tyrone West, who was beaten to death by a dozen police in the city and still has not received any justice.

Tawanda Jones:  Hearing him screaming and moan, it just took me to… With my brother moaning and groaning and screaming and hollering, he was getting beat down in the same streets in Baltimore — Not in the same streets, but in the same city, and nobody being held accountable. It broke my heart.

And that’s when I met Freddie Gray’s mom, Ms. Gloria, and I was just telling her pretty much to hold on, just keep fighting, and I was being prayerful that he was going to survive his attack.

D. Watkins:  I never forget, I was over Bocek’s, Bocek Park in East Baltimore, and I got a homeboy, he is one of those guys that he wanted to be affiliated — Rest in peace. He’s dead — This particular day, he was outside. He was riding around the city with my homeboy Daz because they was filming a video. And they was on a basketball court, and he just started blacking out. He was going crazy. He was going back and forth, and I’m like, what’s wrong? And he was like, the police did such and such, to my man, and he was going through it. So, that’s how I first heard about the story.

Mike Willis:  That morning, that morning… I actually had a hearing for a parole violation down in classification on Biddle Street, I think it is, in Baltimore. And when they call you in for parole hearing for a violation, if they’re calling you into the actual jail itself, it means you’re not coming out.

Doug Colbert:  I was supervising law students who were representing people in criminal court, and we had many cases just like Freddie Gray, where the police would react to a Black person who was not showing the proper respect and decorum, and they would then chase them down and eventually apprehend them and search them. And of course, those searches would not have been constitutional, legal. So, my students won most of those cases.

Mike Willis:  So, I’m at home, and I’m like, I don’t want to go to jail today. Who wants to go to jail? So, I’m like, I don’t want to go to jail, and I’m praying. And then the riots break out, shuts the whole city down.

[VIDEO CLIP] Jaisal Noor:  In Baltimore on Saturday, April 15, about 1,500 people took part in the largest demonstrations to date against the killing of 25-year-old West Baltimore resident Freddie Gray in police custody.

D. Watkins:  When people see things on video, it brings a different type of anger than just us talking about it. That’s the first thing. The second thing is poor leadership in the police department. We never really tracked down the source of who made the decision to shut the bus lines down, but some people said it came from the state, and then some people said it came from the police department. I don’t know. But whoever made that decision, was a very, very bad decision.

Doug Colbert:  Oh, I think what happened in terms of the video was so unusual. It’s when you see something and then you have live witnesses who can tell the story, that made a huge difference. And the reaction was immediate and predictable.

Mike Willis:  It made me feel, as it relates to the city, that once you push any population enough, once you keep them under your thumb enough, once you continually kick them and prod them and laugh at them and mock them, it gets unbearable after a while.

Taya Graham:  For years, our community had yelled out and screamed out, people are experiencing misconduct, people are experiencing brutality. We had endured 10 years of zero-tolerance policing, where corners were cleared, people were taken off blocks for loitering or expectorating, spitting in public, or simply not even having your ID on you to prove that you lived in the neighborhood. I actually endured that on multiple occasions in my own neighborhood, I would have to produce ID and be questioned on who I was, where I was going, and did I belong there.

[CROWD CHANTING]:  No justice, no peace, no racist police.

Doug Colbert:  Freddie Gray was well-known in his community, and there were a lot of Freddie Grays who had suffered the same consequences. So, when people were actually there, they were able to tell the story firsthand.

Mike Willis:  Freddie Gray, unarmed. Freddie Gray dying in the custody of police. And then the first thing the police do is try to soften the situation, and then they try to devalue Mr. Gray by victimizing him, putting the blame on the victim, saying that it was his fault that he died. All that together with everything else going on, it was a powder keg, and it blew up.

[CROWD CHANTING]:  Justice for Freddie. Justice for Freddie. Justice for Freddie. Justice for Freddie.

[CHAPTER 2: THE ROOT CAUSES]

Mike Willis:  You have to understand the atmosphere surrounding Freddie Gray’s murder, the uprising, which grew from, you have to understand the climate.

Jill P. Carter:  I think zero tolerance had a lot to do with it. It’s not me just thinking it. The entire Department of Justice thought so because it’s all throughout the report that led to the consent decree.

[VIDEO CLIP] Vanita Gupta:  BPD engages in a pattern or practice of making unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests.

Jill P. Carter:  So, it absolutely did. How does it not? How do you have 100,000 people in a city of 600,000 people? Many of them are not even eligible for arrest because they’re either super old or super young. So, you take out, out of the 600, you got what, 300 or 400 that are actually maybe arrest eligible or likely, and then you got 100,000 people arrested each year. Each year.

Mike Willis:  Nothing is in a bottle, you know what I mean? Nothing is isolated, you know what I mean? It’s like a silo with wheat flurries going through it. All it takes is a spark for that silo to ignite. It’s like being at a gas pump and the fumes in the air and you light a cigarette. The pump might blow. So, the fumes, in this case, the wheat flurries in this case of the silo of Baltimore was the policing, was the attitude of the police.

Jill P. Carter:  I think that the ongoing confusion that people have, as well, when those arrests were coming, wasn’t that what was needed? Well, no, because those were also years that we had astronomical homicide numbers and astronomical violent crime numbers and astronomical shootings that didn’t lead to homicides.

Lester Spence:  Whenever I talk about the Baltimore case, I point viewers or people I’m talking to two figures. One figure is spending on parks and rec, and the other is spending on policing, starting in 1980. I think in 1980, parks and rec spending was like $35, $45 million. Parks and rec spending in 2015 was $35, $45 million. Policing was maybe, I think, $140 million. Policing by 2015 was three times that, was approximately $430, $440 million. Now, it’s above, I think, it’s maybe $500, $550 [million], if not more. And then you look at where that spending goes, that spending goes into a martial approach to policing.

Dayvon Love:  Some of the factors that I think led to the uprising is that law enforcement is a very insular industry, and the way that the system of white supremacy operates in this society is that there’s a fundamental disregard for the humanity of people of African descent. And that manifests itself in the notion that the community having oversight of law enforcement and respectable “political establishment society” is seen as ridiculous.

Taya Graham:  The fuel, the gasoline was all the crimes that had gone unpunished. And when I’m speaking of these crimes, I’m talking about police crimes, Baltimore City police crimes against our community.

Dayvon Love:  Because I remember talking to a reporter at the time for whom I mentioned this concept of community oversight of law enforcement, and young white women whose response was almost like she found it a little bit of a stretch.

D. Watkins:  If I walk out here right now and you put a gun on me and rob me, the last thing on my mind is going to be, call the police. I’m never going to think that unless I had something that was insured and I was like, oh, I can get that bread back. Then I might be like, all right, bet, call the police. But other than that, if I can’t get my stuff back or figure it out, then that person was meant to have whatever they took and that’s just theirs. That’s just what it is.

Dayvon Love:  But I’m mentioning that because when you think about all the structural forces that, in terms of socioeconomic denigration, lack of access to resources, disempowerment of community, when you have all those factors, the community doesn’t have the levers that it needs to be able to push back against police abuse.

Lester Spence:  Yeah, so at that point, what happens is [snaps fingers] you got this event. When an event happens that people didn’t predict — And remember, I didn’t predict, I do this, but I didn’t really predict it — So when something happens that people can’t predict something explosive like this, it disrupts everything. It disrupts alliances, it disrupts institutions, it disrupts the solutions that people routinely believe should be applied to political problems.

Jill P. Carter:  I was infuriated. So the arrest and ultimate death of Freddie Gray literally happened days after the conclusion of the 2015 legislative session. And that was a session where, for the second time in a row, 2014 and 2015, I had proposed a multitude of different pieces of legislation that would do things to create police reform.

Dayvon Love:  So police, in many respects, could run roughshod as a result of that, the community not having those mechanisms of accountability because they’re fundamentally politically disempowered given the society that we live in.

Jill P. Carter:  One of the ones that I thought was really important was — We’ve ultimately passed something similar now — But whistleblower protection so that officers would be free to report on other misconduct within their institutions and other officers and even their leadership without fear of repercussion. This happened a number of times, and there were a lot of different mothers testifying. And why was that painful? Because my colleagues within the legislature just didn’t seem to care.

Mike Willis:  I don’t think that people really realize that nobody on the corner wants to be on the corner. Whoever’s doing bad, selling drugs, shooting people, robbing people, nobody wants to do that. That’s the reality of it. And if anybody comes and says, look, we’re going to help you find a job, that’s all that they want. You think some man wants to go home to his girlfriend and two kids after spending all day on a corner hustling drugs?

Doug Colbert:  And what then happened is that three nights a week, they did drug sweeps or gun sweeps or whatever arrest. Whoever was on the street on a Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday, if those were the three nights, would be arrested.

Jill P. Carter:  Those were the years, the O’Malley years, where everybody wasn’t safe outside of their home. You are sitting on your steps, on your porch, you’re in your backyard, you’re on your street, you’re on your corner, just being present and being Black could often result in an arrest without charges. So out of those 100,000 or so arrests every year, at least a third were without charges, meaning we had no reason to legitimately arrest you.

Mike Willis:  It’s directly proportionate to these men having jobs now. And we’re talking about a very impoverished area, people in trouble with the law already. And from personal knowledge, I can tell you how difficult it is to have a criminal record, a felony record, and not being able to find a job. There’s a lot of despair involved in that. There’s a lot of give up in that. You talk about taking a knee, try going to an interview, getting hired, and then a week later getting fired because your background record comes back. People get tired of that.

So the easiest path, the easier path, is just to go on the corner. I can make $75, $100 a day hanging on the corner for 8 hours, and that’s enough that they’ll get me by until tomorrow.

Doug Colbert:  And I remember having a conversation with the mayor because we happened to both belong to the downtown athletic club. Baltimore is a very small town, and I’m going, Martin, you know these arrests are not legit. He says, we got five guns off the street, that’s five less people that are going to be in danger. I said, but the other 95 people should never have been arrested in the first place. He said, well, they shouldn’t have been out in the street. I said, Martin, they have fines that they didn’t pay.

Lester Spence:  I think when Martin O’Malley was mayor, I think over a three-year period, he made more arrests than Baltimore had Black citizens. So each of those arrests ends up leaving a mark. Leaves a mark on the individual, leaves a mark on that individual’s family. And as much as those arrests are concentrated in certain types of neighborhood, it leaves marks on those neighborhoods.

[CHAPTER 3: THE PROSECUTION]

Taya Graham:  So the uprising, the protests had been going on for days, and Marilyn Mosby calls a press conference. So at the time, everyone was a little bit nervous. No one was sure what was going to be said, but we knew it was going to be important.

Mike Willis:  And you have a brand new city state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, who nobody thought would win, who was an extreme outsider fighting against the system just being a Black woman and running for city state’s attorney. And she wanted to show that she was different.

Taya Graham:  So she calls a press conference in front of the War Memorial, and it seemed like the entire world was there. There were reporters from across the country, and even international reporters were there to listen to what SAO Marilyn Mosby had to say.

Marilyn Mosby:  First and foremost, I need to express publicly my deepest sympathies for the family of the loved ones of Mr. Freddie Gray. I had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Gray’s family to discuss some of the details of the case and the procedural steps going forward. I assured his family that no one is above the law and that I would pursue justice on their behalf.

To the thousands of city residents, community organizers, faith leaders, and political leaders that chose to march peacefully throughout Baltimore, I commend your courage to stand for justice. The findings of our comprehensive, thorough, and independent investigation coupled with the medical examiner’s determination that Mr. Gray’s death was a homicide, which we received today, has led us to believe that we have probable cause to file criminal charges. The statement of probable cause is as follows.

Lester Spence:  So Marilyn Moseley was one of the electoral, the beneficial… It’s complicated, but her election was one of the beneficial consequences of organizing. She had far less money, if any, than her person she was running against, and she ran on the platform of holding police accountable.

Taya Graham:  City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby walks out to the memorial and she drops a bomb that she is charging all six officers. As much as it was what people in the community wanted, I think we were all shocked that was actually really happening.

[VIDEO CLIP] Elijah Cummings:  This morning at 7:00, I said on one of the national networks that I would trust whatever Marilyn Mosby did. I didn’t know that a decision would be coming down today. And the other thing that I said was this, that I believe with all my heart that she would take the facts, once she did all the research she needed to do, size it up with the law, and make the right decision. And I said this morning, before I knew any of this, that whatever her decision would be, because of her integrity and the fact that I believe in her, that I would accept that decision.

Tawanda Jones:  I was so shocked that Marilyn Mosby stood up because I never saw a state prosecutor stand up and say, you know what? You all hold y’all peace while I get accountability, gave the greatest speech that I have ever heard.

[VIDEO CLIP] Marilyn Mosby:  To the youth of this city, I will seek justice on your behalf. This is a moment. This is your moment. Let’s ensure that we have peaceful and productive rallies that will develop structural and systemic changes for generations to come.

Tawanda Jones:  And I’m like, oh my God. I’m at work. I’m in tears. I didn’t know, because I’m thinking in my mind, nobody’s going to be charged. They didn’t charge nobody in my brother’s case. But when she came out with those words, I’m like, oh my God, and that speech was profound. I’m like, yes.

D. Watkins:  I know it didn’t make her a lot of friends, but at the same time, it made her a hero to a lot of people. So a lot of people, they still talk about that — But on one side, and then a lot of people on the other side can’t stand her for that.

Mike Willis:  She wanted to show that her constituency matters to her. That she was going to stand up for them and with them because she is part of them. And she charged them. She charged those officers like they should be charged.

Doug Colbert:  What prosecutor State’s Attorney Mosby did, which she really has never gotten the full credit for, is that she handled that case so differently from the way that most criminal prosecutions against police officers would take place.

So in the first instance, she did not allow the police to investigate police officers because the outcome of that situation, not just here in Baltimore but throughout the country, was that there would never be charges filed.

Taya Graham:  But as soon as she announced those charges, the pushback from law enforcement began. Even before the trial there were, let’s say, advocates on behalf of the law enforcement-industrial complex in Baltimore City that were going on CNN, lawyers who were calling her “juvie league” and saying that she was rushing to judgment. There was an entire media blitz to discredit Mosby from the very beginning of her actually announcing those charges, let alone the trial itself.

Doug Colbert:  I think what people forget is how close the prosecution came to convicting Officer Porter, who was the first to go on trial. As I recall, the jury went out late Monday afternoon, probably around 4:00, if I recall, and they deliberated very little on Monday. They had a full day on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they sent a note to the judge in the afternoon saying that they had not yet reached a verdict. And the judge had Thursday, there was a holiday weekend coming up, as I remember. The judge easily could have allowed them to deliberate some part of Thursday, at least, to see if they could have resolved their difference. Surprisingly, the judge did not do so, and that’s when the mistrial took place. But I think that outcome really scared the bejesus out of the police union because they saw how close a jury of 12 people came to convicting the first officer.

Taya Graham:  I sat in that courtroom, and I can tell you, even though there had been a lot of chatter about how Judge Williams was going to be a fair judge, he was an honest judge and a forthright judge, when I was sitting in that courtroom, I couldn’t help but feel like the fix was in.

Dayvon Love:  So I think the officers that participated in arresting Freddie Gray that ultimately led to his death, them being clear, is, I think, a little complicated. There is a natural relationship between the prosecutor and law enforcement. So, in some ways, there’s an inherent structural mismatch between the notion of a prosecutor holding police accountable, and having the tools that when a prosecutor decides to do that, having the tools to do that because you need law enforcement in order to do the investigations in order to hold them accountable.

D. Watkins:  I tell people, I don’t claim to be an expert on anything, but it is hard to be a revolutionary, identify as a revolutionary, and work as a prosecutor. If you want to be loved by the masses, you gotta go be a public defender.

[VIDEO CLIP] Marilyn Mosby:  There were individual police officers that were witnesses to the case, yet were part of the investigative team; interrogations that were conducted without asking the most poignant questions; lead detectives that were completely uncooperative and started a counterinvestigation to disprove the state’s case by not executing search warrants pertaining to text messages among the police officers involved in the case.

Dayvon Love:  So in terms of them being cleared, for me, it is a result of the structural mismatch between the fact that law enforcement, in many respects, as a matter of policy, had developed a structure where they’re the only ones that could investigate. And so with just the culture of the blue wall of silence, it makes it nearly impossible

Mike Willis:  When those cops, when those six policemen were exonerated, I don’t want to sound cliche, but it was just deflation. It was an air balloon with the oxygen being turned off. But at the same time, I’m old enough and I’m wise enough to realize that police is a very powerful beast with a very powerful union and a very long reach. And they stay together, they stick together. There’s not too many juries and judges around that’s going to facilitate, willfully, their incarceration.

Dayvon Love:  And there are ways that both her deciding to indict those officers and prosecute marked her in ways that was detrimental to her and her family. But it was a net positive to have a person in that seat who took the positions that she ended up having to take. It was a net positive. I think it helped us on police accountability, juvenile justice. Her being there really helped in some of the policy work that we’ve done on a lot of relevant issues. And I think the targeting of her, in many ways, was not just about her, the individual. It was about her policy platform and pushing back against it.

[CHAPTER 4: THE ECONOMICS]

Taya Graham:  So after the uprising, the Baltimore City government makes a really extraordinary choice, and that choice was to give a billionaire a $600 million tax break to build out Port Covington.

[VIDEO CLIP] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake:  So my office began working with Sagamore Development months ago to make sure that all of the people of Baltimore benefited from Port Covington.

Lester Spence:  And as much as that’s all occurring within a dynamic in which Baltimore is being hollowed out in social service provision, and they’re giving tax breaks to a combination of high income earners and then to either corporate actors like Under Armour or even like my employer, like Hopkins, who doesn’t pay taxes, it ends up creating this hollowed-out city in which I think the word that comparative politics or IR scholars would use to describe Baltimore if it were a nation, I think the term is Garrison State. It’s a state in which most of its governing resources are put into policing.

Taya Graham:  This tax break of $600 million going to a billionaire is going to allow him to build out Port Covington, also now known as the Baltimore Peninsula. Now, this area is isolated from the rest of Baltimore City, so the amenities, the luxury apartments, the Under Armour headquarters, none of this is actually going to benefit city residents.

Lester Spence:  The degree to which there were some actors who were able to benefit far more than others, and that, in some ways, even though the priorities shifted, they didn’t shift, they shifted, right? So they shift a little bit, but not enough where giving a $600 million basically tax write off to a major development actor wasn’t deemed to be abnormal. It was still business as usual.

Tawanda Jones:  Again, it’s just a capitalist system that perpetuates off of poor people and used our pain for its game, just like they built a Freddie Gray community center. What is the Freddie Gray community center? How is it helping Black and Brown folks, or needy folks? What is it doing? Do anybody know what is it doing?

Jill P. Carter:  Where you spend your money is indicative of your priorities and your moral code, your moral compass. So if you’re spending your resources or expending resources to help billionaires while you have neighborhoods of people starving, that shows you the priorities. And that’s indicative of the leadership of the city that’s always been in place. I’m born and raised in Baltimore, and I wasn’t always astute about decisions of leadership and how they affected everyone, but when you look at the entire history of the city, we’ve always had leadership and an establishment that feeds the rich and starves the poor.

D. Watkins:  Freddie Gray got robbed by one of those settlement companies. You’re supposed to get a lead check for like a half a million dollars, and they come through with like 15, 20 [dollars] cash, it was something criminal like that. So it’s like you’re being preyed upon by the people at the corner store, you’re getting preyed upon by the payday loan people, you’re getting preyed upon by some of the ripoff preachers. So many different people are just picking at you, and you gotta exist in that reality. And then you got a world of people speaking on your behalf, and they don’t fuck with you either, in a real way.

Tawanda Jones:  It’s the haves and the have-nots. They take care of what they want to take care and neglect what they want to neglect. And the saddest part, they get more money in the city than they do anywhere else. And then they take our money and run with it, and take care of what they want to take care of, and leave people in food deserts, leave them. It is the same exact way. And in fact, it’s getting worse.

[CHAPTER 5: POLICING AND CONSENT]

Taya Graham:  It was a hastily called press conference at City Hall. Mayor Catherine Pugh, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis announced they had reached an agreement over how to reform the Baltimore City Police Department.

[VIDEO CLIP] Catherine Pugh:  I want to say that the agreement recognizes that the city’s Baltimore Police Department has begun some critical reform. However, there is much more to be done.

Taya Graham:  A process that started last year with the release of a damning report that revealed the Baltimore City Police engaged in unconstitutional and racist policing.

But the devil was in the details. Among them, a civilian oversight task force charged with assessing and recommending changes to the city’s civilian review process, requirements that suspects are seatbelted when transported and that cameras are installed in all vans. It also included additional training and emphasis on de-escalation tactics.

Doug Colbert:  The federal consent decree is the best thing that has happened in legal circles since Freddie Gray’s killing. And I say that because once you have a federal judge monitoring police behavior and police conduct, and Judge Bredar, another unsung hero has been doing so for the last, what, eight years, and he doesn’t just bring people in to pat them on the back. He’s always demanding, what are you doing to control that practice?

Dayvon Love:  So what I’m about to say is not super popular. So initially when the consent decree was conceived, I wasn’t super excited about it. And I think sometimes people say “consent decree”, but aren’t even entirely clear, structurally, what it is. It is, in essence, an agreement between the federal government and local jurisdiction that we would sue you but we won’t unless you meet these certain standards and obligations in order to withdraw any potential legal action. So that is, in essence, structurally what a consent decree is. And so the consent decree doesn’t impact policy as much as it impacts the internal practices of the institution of the police department.

Jill P. Carter:  Right on the heels of the consent decree, there’s an entire unconstitutional lockdown because an officer is possibly shot and killed in one of the neighborhoods.

[VIDEO CLIP] Jill P. Carter:  The idea of making people understand that we understand that we’re valuable, I think that the message of what they did because of the detective’s homicide or potential homicide versus the lack of that kind of action with the other 60 or so people that were killed in West Baltimore this year.

[VIDEO CLIP] Speaker:  The second day when this was locked down, this board should have went to the media and said, you’re in violation.

Jill P. Carter:  Now, every day, there are people that are not officers that are shot and killed, and we don’t have lockdowns of entire neighborhoods. That shows you that the priorities were no different even after the consent decree.

D. Watkins:  These questions are really complex, and it’s hard to give a straight answer, and I’m going to tell you why. If I’m living as an outlaw, I don’t give a fuck about a consent decree. I’m an outlaw, I’m not thinking about that shit. I’m not even watching… I love Debra Wynn, I’m not watching them talk about the dissent decree. You know what I’m saying? So it’s not even a part of my reality. So there’s nobody who’s like, yo, I’m going to be a bigger criminal because the police officers are nice now.

Doug Colbert:  At that time, the police were still being extremely aggressive. The Gun Trace Task Force had been in effect and operating for probably six years. And so on the street, people knew about the hitters. I mean, they would just jump out of their car and they would go after whoever they wanted. And there was no regulation, there was no supervision.

Mike Willis:  For years, very passive, and it was part of that, them not working for the city and working for Marilyn Mosby, they would just not do it. And I believe that it was a complete call of duty for them not to perform their duties and tasks. I really strongly believe that.

[CHAPTER 6: THE PRESENT]

Taya Graham:  I recently went to Gilmor Homes in order to speak to residents, and I have to be quite straight with you that it doesn’t look that much different than it did in 2015 when I was reporting from Gilmor Homes. Even as I was standing on the playground, there was a woman there picking up broken glass so the children wouldn’t be injured. As I looked across the street from the playground, I saw that the row houses that were connected, one of them was burned out in the middle. I mean, imagine having your home connected to a completely burned out and abandoned home.

Dayvon Love:  So I think what has happened in the 10 years since the death of Freddie Gray and the Baltimore uprising, it’s mixed. I think that one of the biggest outcomes of the uprising was that I think there was recognition of the demand for more Black community control of institutions and more investment in Black folks’ capacity collectively to have control of major institutions.

Doug Colbert:  We have to be investing in our schools, we have to be investing in our kids. It’s not that complex. And it doesn’t mean we’re going to succeed for everyone. And if we succeeded for half of the people, that would be enormous, because that would set an example for the other half. Right now, once you get a criminal record, once you get a criminal conviction, your chances of getting a good job have decreased considerably. In wealthy neighborhoods, we often will give enormous tax benefits, and that makes it, I guess, the profit margin higher. But we’re talking about a city which has a very high poverty rate and a very high low income rate. And we’re just neglecting so many people.

Mike Willis:  No, it hasn’t changed and it won’t change. It won’t ever change. That’s the hood, that’s the ghetto. That’s where lower income Black folks are relegated to. That’s their designation. That’s their station. That’s where they’re from. That’s the way it will always be. Gilmor Homes, that whole West Baltimore area is huge. So to change the whole area, you have to change that huge amount of real estate and space. And what are you going to do? What developer is going to walk in there and step on those? And then what do you do with the people when you try to redevelop it? So no, it’s not going to change. It hasn’t changed. Nothing’s changed. Poverty is poverty. Poverty is necessary, some people believe, and Gilmor Homes faces the brunt of that belief.

Jill P. Carter:  It’s possible that, 10 years ago, if you had asked me if I thought that was possible or if I had some optimism about what might happen, I probably would’ve said yes. But 10 years later, having watched what has occurred since then, no, I’m not surprised at all. There’s no real interest in… There’s a belief that the people that have been ignored, neglected, deprived, criminalized, demonized, are always going to be that way and it’s just OK. We gotta always have some group of people that we can prey on. Do you know what I mean? Do I think anyone in leadership is that crass or that insensitive? No, but it’s a subconscious kind of thinking.

Dayvon Love:  The decline in homicides and non-fatal shootings the last few years in Baltimore City, I think, is one of the most important things to discuss, and I think it has national implications.

Doug Colbert:  In some ways, we certainly have improved. I always like to start with the positive, especially in these times when sometimes it’s difficult to find positives. But our murder rate has decreased almost in half. Whoever expected it would ever go under 200. And that reflects, maybe, a different approach to policing. I don’t get as many complaints or reports from citizens. I’m not saying they don’t happen, but I used to get regular calls, we need your help. We need you to look at this.

Dayvon Love:  So let’s start with just the facts of where we are. Baltimore City Police Department, for the past several years, has said that it has a shortage of officers. So they’re having trouble recruiting officers, retaining officers, and therefore they will claim numbers between maybe 500 to almost, sometimes, let’s say a thousand short in terms of police officers in Baltimore City.

What has happened simultaneously are precipitous declines in homicides and non-fatal shootings. So the argument that we have a police shortage, but homicides and non-fatal shootings go down, the case that makes is that law enforcement is not central to addressing public safety. The historic investments, and this is where the current mayor, Brandon Scott, should get a lot of credit. One of the first mayors to make the level of historic investments and community-based violence prevention. And what that means, pretty simply, is investing in people who are formerly involved in street activity, clergy that are really engaged and on the ground level, and a variety of other practitioners from the community, and historic investments in their work to mediate conflicts, to prevent conflicts.

Jill P. Carter:  I do give credit to some of the violence intervention efforts that have sprung up since Freddie Gray and definitely since George Floyd. I don’t just give credit to the grassroots and neighborhood-based organizations. Actually, to some of the political leaderships credit, they’ve funded and resource some of these organizations in ways they never had before. That is helpful, 100% helpful. But I also believe that I don’t understand why nobody ever looks at the decrease in population as well. You’re always going to have lower numbers if you have less, fewer people.

Tawanda Jones:  What I would like to see it change, I would like the same way that it protects white folks. I would like for it to protect Brown and Black folks too, the same way it gives white privilege, we need Black privilege. That’s what I would like.

[CHAPTER 7: THE FUTURE]

Mike Willis:  I think 10 years post Freddie Gray uprising, I think it has changed the city in the sense that the residents feel a certain compatriotism, they feel tied to each other. They feel as though they’re a collective, that they can move as one, that they can achieve goals, that if they stick together, if they hang together, if they are together, then they can move forward.

D. Watkins:  Invest in the residents, not just with money, but with ideas, and that main idea being that this city is yours. It’s yours. You should love it and you should nurture it and you should take care of it because you can own a piece of it too. This is your city. It’s not a place where you rent. It’s not a place where you’re visiting. It’s not a place where you’re here until something tragic happens to you, this is yours.

Taya Graham:  Looking back 10 years after the uprising, I have a hope I didn’t before. And that’s because I have seen community organizers and activists and just community members actually feel like if they raise their voices, they can be heard. And I have seen incredible work from our community organizers going to the Maryland Legislature asking for reform, crafting legislation.

Doug Colbert:  The criminal justice system always can be improved, always, but there are signs, at least, that lawyers are fighting for their clients. I always want them to fight harder for their clients. So we have a place to start. And if we can just keep adding to that and adding more resources to all of those different areas, I think we’re going to have a bright future.

Dayvon Love:  I think for me, to overcome the narrative so that people aren’t freaked out by Black folks that are self-determined and that taking that posture doesn’t mean I dislike white people, but it is clear that there is no form of freedom where me being self-determined should be a threat to the space if folks are serious about liberation.

Jill P. Carter:  I’m always going to have hope because I’m always going to want to see people do better. I’m always going to want to see political leadership be better for all the people. But at this moment, I could honestly say I’ve been disappointed, for the most part, in what I’ve seen. But there’s always hope. Let me tell you, every generation there’s something that happens, some events that galvanizes people around [them]. And so I’m sure that there will be things in the future who’ll do the same thing.

D. Watkins:  Obviously we know a lot of people didn’t care when it happened and they don’t care now. A lot of people started off on their little activist journey and then they realized they weren’t going to get no bread, so they went and did something else. But there’s a whole lot of people who remember that, who remember those curfews, who remember seeing those tanks, who remember what happened, and they started moving differently as a result. And I think that’s important, too. I’ve known some people that have passed and didn’t really have an opportunity to mobilize a city like that. I think his life mattered, and I think his life put a whole lot of people on the journey towards being better people.

On April 5, 100,000 gathered at the Washington Monument to tell the Trump administration in no uncertain terms that the DOGE attacks on federal workers at Veterans Affairs, Social Security, the Consumer Finance Bureau, USAID, and more were harming not only Americans but our relationships worldwide. Congressmen Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Al Green (D-TX), and John Garamandi (D-CA) shared with TRNN reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis their determination to fight, the need for a groundswell of public support and Congressman Green’s plan to end President Trump’s term early by filing articles of impeachment.

Videography / Production: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis

Transcript

A transcript will be made available as soon as possible.

We’ve been reporting from the US Capital over the past several weeks, hoping to document how Congress is responding to the authoritarian impulses of the Trump administration.  

It has been fruitful, albeit chaotic. There have been colorful press conferences and illuminating back-and-forths with Republican legislators, but not in the way we expected.  

Republicans, it seems, are happy to dispense with democracy, provided liberals go with it into the dustbin of history. In person they seem practically giddy, almost ebullient, and dangerously overconfident that abolishing liberalism is an end unto itself, regardless of the consequences.

And that might be their downfall—and ours.

During the press conferences we’ve attended, Republicans have reveled in massive federal job cuts and a possible tariff-induced recession. They’ve deflected serious concerns about data privacy and the dislocation of veterans from the federal workforce with puzzling confidence.

They have expressed few doubts about a feckless billionaire delving into Social Security data and IRS records with little apparent oversight.

Congressman Pete Sessions, co-chair of the Republican-led DOGE caucus, gave an elliptical answer on this very topic. When we asked if he could guarantee the safety of Americans’ personal information in light of reports that the DOGE team was underskilled and over-empowered, he deflected.

“The IRS failed that test, and has failed it for many, many years,” he responded obliquely. 

Even on topics like economic growth, high-profile Republicans have acted confident about usually touchy subjects, like a possible recession. Congressman Tim Burchett embraced a tariff-induced downturn, proclaiming with confidence on the Capitol steps that there would be temporary pain from the fallout over Trump’s tariff ballet, but it would be limited to the wealthy. 

“There is going to be some pain, but it’s going to be very, very short term,” he said with confidence.

Normally, all of these political third rails—a dour economy and massive federal job cuts—would be anathema to a party working to remain in power. Yet these controversial topics have been met with a collective shrug by MAGA apostles. 

You could write off this behavior as the natural hubris of a newly elected majority. But that would be an understatement. Conservatives seemed buoyed by a different sort of political calculus—the kind that shrinks politics to a binary conception of power, us versus them, that is downright dangerous.

That’s because Republicans seem certain their sole enemy—and ongoing biggest political challenge—is excising liberalism from its traditional bastions, like the federal government and academia; not improving, not reforming, or even meeting the challenges of a changing world, but vanquishing their Democratic rivals. They’re giddy that Democrats and liberals have been silenced, obliterated, or otherwise marginalized.  

That’s one of the reasons they seem unconcerned that the cuts have been indiscriminate and unlawful. Purging appears to be a priority. Chaos, the primary effect.

But all of this gloating ignores the reality of a world that is not so easily cowed. Conservatism may consider itself to be locked in an epic battle of left versus right, but the world is more complicated and nasty, and that might be a fatal miscalculation. The defeat of liberalism could be a pyrrhic conservative victory.

Consider that while the Trump administration has withdrawn aid and drastically cut funding for research at American universities, China has committed to even more funding for research.

As Trump has been deleting references to climate change and green energy, China is on the precipice of world domination in renewable energy. Sure, Republicans may wipe out the “Green New Scam,” as they call it. But how do we compete with China when cheaper and cleaner solar power drives an economy already constructed to overwhelm ours?

Trump has slowed immigration to a trickle, even as our falling birthrate indicates we need more people. The downturn occurs as the conservative Cato Institute touts that immigrants consume fewer welfare benefits than native-born Americans and have also been a key factor in America’s recent economic growth. 

If the game were simply between these two teams, liberals and MAGA, the victory could be resounding. Universities will falter, the federal workforce will dissolve, and the power base of liberalism will wither.

But the world does not abide by this calculus. This will not be the win MAGA expects. The upcoming fight will, more accurately, be one of democracy versus autocracy, scientific truth versus disinformation, and a free market versus a command economy. Battles we might not be able to fight if the chaotic deconstruction of the federal government continues.

These are the spoils Republicans seek. The rest of the world awaits a weakened nation courtesy of the Republican obsession with liberalism.

As the climate crisis escalates, a just and rapid transition to renewable energy might seem like the obvious solution. Yet somehow, fossil fuel expansion always remains on the agenda. Environmental activist and author Bill McKibben joins Inequality Watch to expose the network of carbon guzzling billionaires manipulating our media to keep our planet warming and their pockets flush with oil and gas profits.

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

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to our show, The Inequality Watch. You may know me and my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, for our police accountability reporting. Well, this show is similar except, in this case, our job is to hold billionaires and extremely wealthy individuals accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of a single billionaire. Instead, we examine the system that makes the extreme hoarding of wealth possible.

And today we’re going to unpack a topic that is extremely unpopular with most billionaires. It also might not seem like the most likely topic for a story about inequality, but I think when we explain it and talk to our guests, you might find there’s more to it than meets the eye.

I’m talking about the future of renewable energy and how it could impact your life. And now wait, before you say, Taya, you’re crazy, I mean, Elon Musk builds electric cars. How do you know billionaires don’t like green energy? Well, just give me a second. I think the way we approach this topic will not be what you expect. That’s because there’s a huge invisible media ecosystem that has been constructed around the idea that green energy is somehow too expensive or useless — Or, even worse yet, a conspiracy to fill liberal elite politico coffers.

But what if that’s not true? What if it’s not just fault, but patently, vehemently untrue? If you believe the right-wing media ecosystem, we’re apparently destined to spend tens of thousands of dollars to purchase and then tens of thousands to maintain gas-guzzling cars for the rest of our lives. We’ll inevitably be forced to pay higher and higher utility bills to pay for gas, oil, and coal that will enrich the wealthiest who continue to extract it.

But I just want you to consider an alternative. What if, in fact, the opposite is true? What if renewables could finally and for once, and I really mean for once, actually benefit the working people of this country? What if solar, for example, keeps getting cheaper and batteries more efficient so that using this energy could be as cheap and as simple as pointing a mirror at the sun? And what about the so-called carbon billionaires who are enriched by burning planet-heating gases while they jet set in private planes burning even more carbon while I’m busy using recycled grocery bags? What if they’ve constructed an elaborate plan to make you believe that electricity from the sun is somehow more costly and less healthy?

And what if that’s all wrong? What if someday your utility bill could be halved? What if you could buy an electric car for one-fifth the price of a gas powered one and leave gas stations and high gas prices behind forever? And what if your life could actually be made easier by a new technology?

Well, there is a massive media ecosystem that wants you to think you are destined to be immersed in carbon. They want you to believe that progress is impossible, and ultimately, that innovation is simply something to be feared, not embraced.

But today we are here to discuss an alternative way of looking at renewable energy, and we’ll be talking to someone who knows more about its potential than anyone. His name is Bill McKibben, and he’s one of the foremost advocates for renewable energy and a leader in the fight against global climate change. Bill McKibben is the founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate injustice. His 1989 book, The End of Nature, is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and it’s appeared in over 24 languages. He helped found 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign, which has organized protests on every continent — Including Antarctica — For climate change. And he even played a leading role in launching the opposition to big oil pipeline projects like the Keystone XL and the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has become the biggest anticorporate campaign in history. He’s even won the Gandhi Peace Prize. I cannot wait to speak to this amazing champion.

But before we turn to him, I want to turn to my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, and discuss how issues like renewables fit into the idea of inequality and why it’s important to view it through that lens.

Stephen Janis:  Well, Taya, one of the reasons we wanted to do this show was because I feel like we are living in the reality of the extractive economy that we’ve talked about. And that reality is psychological. Because we have to be extracted from. They’re not going to give us good products or good ways or improve our lives, they’re going to find ways to extract wealth from us.

And this issue, to me, is a perfect example because we’ve been living in this big carbon ecosystem of information, and the dividend has been cynicism. The main priority of the people who fill our minds with the impossibility are the people who really live off the idea of cynicism: nothing works, everything’s broken, technology can’t fix anything, and everything is dystopian.

But I thought when I was thinking about our own lives and how much money we spend to gas up a car, this actually has a possibility to transform the lives of the working class. And that’s why we have to take it seriously and look at it from a different perspective than the way the carbon billionaires want us to. Because the carbon billionaires are spending tons of money to make us think this is impossible.

And I think what we need really, truly is a revolution of competency here. A revolution of idea, a revolution that there are ways to improve our lives despite what the carbon billionaires want us to believe, that nothing works and we all hate each other. And so this, I think, is a perfect topic and a perfect example of that.

Taya Graham:  Stephen, that’s an excellent point.

Stephen Janis:  Thank you.

Taya Graham:  It really is. I feel like the entire idea of renewable energy has been sold as a cost rather than a benefit, and that seems intentional to me. It seems like there is an arc to this technology that could literally wipe carbon billionaires off the face of the earth in the sense that the carbon economy is simply less efficient, more costly, and, ultimately, less plentiful.

But before we get to our guest, let me just give one example. And to do so, I’m going to turn to politics in the UK. There, the leader of a reform party, a right-wing populous group that has been gaining power called renewable energy a massive con and pledged to enact laws that would tax solar power and ban — Yes, you heard it right — Ban industrial-scale battery power. But there was an issue: a fellow member of the party in Parliament had just installed solar panels on his farm and had touted it on a website as, you guessed it, a great business decision. The MP Robert Lowe, as The Guardian UK reported, was ecstatic about his investment, touting it as the best way to get low-cost energy. I mean, I don’t know if the word hypocrisy is strong enough to describe this.

Stephen Janis:  Seems inadequate.

Taya Graham:  Yeah, it really does.

But I do think it’s a great place to introduce and bring in our guest, Bill McKibbon. Mr. McKibbon, thank you so much for joining us.

Bill McKibben:  What a pleasure to be with you.

Taya Graham:  So first, please just help me understand how a party could, on one hand, advocate against renewable energy and, on the other, use it profitably? What is motivating what I think could be called hypocrisy?

Bill McKibben:  Well, we’re in a very paradoxical moment here. For a long time, what we would call renewable energy, energy from the sun and the wind, was more expensive. That’s why we talked about it as alternative energy. And we have talked about carbon taxes to make it a more viable alternative and things. Within the last decade, the price of energy from the sun and the wind and the batteries to store that when the sun goes down or the wind drops, the price of that’s been cut about 90%. The engineers have really done their job.

Sometime three or four years ago, we passed some invisible line where it became the cheapest power on the planet. We live on an earth where the cheapest way to make energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. So that’s great news. That’s one of the few pieces of good news that’s happening in a world where there’s a lot of bad news happening.

Great news, unless you own an oil well or a coal mine or something else that we wouldn’t need anymore, or if your political party has been tied up with that industry in the deepest ways. Those companies, those people are panicked. That’s why, for instance, in America, the fossil fuel industry spent $455 million on the last election cycle. They know that they have no choice but to try and slow down the transition to renewable energy.

Stephen Janis:  So I mean, how do they always seem to be able to set the debate, though? It always seems like carbon billionaires and carbon interests seem to be able to cast aside renewable energy ideas, and they always seem to be in control of the dialogue. Is that true? And how do they do that, do you think?

Bill McKibben:  Well, I mean, they’re in control of the dialogue the way they are in control of many dialogues in our political life by virtue of having a lot of money and owning TV networks and on and on and on. But in this case, they have to work very hard because renewable energy, especially solar energy, is so cheap and so many people have begun to use it and understand its appeal, that it’s getting harder and harder to stuff this genie back into the bottle.

Look at a place like Germany where last year, 2024, a million and a half Germans put solar panels on the balconies of their apartments. This balcony solar is suddenly a huge movement there. You can just go to IKEA and buy one and stick it up. You can’t do that in this country because our building codes and things make it hard, and the fossil fuel industry will do everything they can to make sure that continues to be the case.

Taya Graham:  Well, I have to ask, given what you’ve told us, what do you think are the biggest obstacles to taking advantage of these technological advances? What is getting in our way and what can we do about it?

Bill McKibben:  Well, look, there are two issues here. One is vested interest and the other is inertia. And these are always factors in human affairs, and they’re factors here. Vested interest now works by creating more inertia. So the fossil fuel industry won the election in 2024. They elected Donald Trump. And Donald Trump in his first day in office declared an energy emergency, saying that we needed to produce more energy, and then he defined energy to exclude wind and solar power; only fossil fuels and nuclear need apply. He’s banned new offshore wind and may, in fact, be trying to interfere with the construction of things that had already been approved and are underway.

So this is hard work to build out a new energy system, but by no means impossible. And for the last two years around the world, it’s been happening in remarkable fashion. Beginning in about the middle of 2023, human beings were putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels every day. A gigawatt’s the rough equivalent of a nuclear or a coal-fired power plant. So every day on their roofs, in solar farms, whatever, people were building another nuclear reactor, it’s just that they were doing it by pointing a sheet of black glass at the great nuclear reactor 93 million miles up in the sky.

Stephen Janis:  Speaking of around the world, I was just thinking, because I’ve been reading a lot, it seems like we’re conceding this renewable future to China a bit. Do you feel like there’s a threat that, if we don’t reverse course, that China could just completely overwhelm us with their advantages in this technology?

Bill McKibben:  I don’t think there’s a threat, I think there’s a guarantee. And in fact, I think in the course of doing this, we’re ceding global leadership overall to the Chinese. This is the most important economic transition that will happen this century. And China’s been in the lead, they’ve been much more proactive here, but the US was starting to catch up with the IRA that Biden passed, and we were beginning to build our own battery factories and so on. And that’s now all called into question by the Trump ascension. I think it will probably rank as one of the stupidest economic decisions in American history.

Taya Graham:  Well, I have to follow that up with this question: Do you think that the current administration can effectively shut down this kind of progress in solar and renewables? And how much do you think the recent freeze in spending can just derail the progress, basically?

Bill McKibben:  So they can’t shut it down, but they can slow it down, and they will. And in this case, time is everything. And that’s because one of, well, the biggest reason that we want to be making this shift is because the climate future of the planet is on the line. And, as you are aware, that climate future is playing out very quickly. Look, the world’s climate scientists have told us we need to cut emissions in half by 2030 to have some chance of staying on that Paris pathway. 2030, by my watch, is four years and 10 months away now. That doesn’t give us a huge amount of time. So the fact that Trump is slowing down this transition is really important.

Now, I think the deepest problem may be that he’s attempting to slow it down, not only in the US, but around the world. He’s been telling other countries that if they don’t buy a lot of us liquified natural gas, then he’ll hit them with tariffs and things like that. So he’s doing his best to impose his own weird views about climate and energy onto the entire planet.

Again, he can’t stop it. The economics of this are so powerful that eventually we’ll run the world on sun and wind — But eventually doesn’t help much with the climate, not when we’re watching the North and the South Poles melt in real time.

Taya Graham:  I just want to follow up with a clip from Russell Vought who was just confirmed the lead to the Office of Management and Budget. And he was giving a speech at the Center for Renewing America. And I just wanted Mr. McKibbon to hear this really quick first and then to have him respond. So let’s just play that clip for him.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Russell Vought:  We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they’re increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  So the reason why I played this for you is because I wanted to know what your concerns would be with the EPA being kneecapped, if not utterly defunded. And just so people understand what the actions are that the EPA takes and the areas that the EPA regulates that protect the public that people just might not be aware of.

Bill McKibben:  I’m old enough to have been in this country before the EPA, and before the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. They all came together in the early 1970s right on the heels of the first Earth Day and the huge outpouring of Americans into the street. And in those days, you could not breathe the air in many of the cities in this nation without doing yourself damage. And when I was a boy, you couldn’t swim in an awful lot of the rivers, streams, lakes of America. We’ve made extraordinary environmental progress on those things, and we’d begun, finally, to make some halting progress around this even deeper environmental issue of climate change.

But what Mr. Vought is talking about is that that comes at some cost to the people who are his backers: the people in the fossil fuel industry. He doesn’t want rules about clean air, clean water, or a working climate. He wants to… Well, he wants short-term profit for his friends at the long-term expense of everybody in this country and in this world.

Stephen Janis:  It’s interesting because you bring up a point that I think I hear a lot in the right-wing ecosystem, media ecosystems, that, somehow, clean energy is unfairly subsidized by the government. But isn’t it true that carbon interests are subsidized to a great extent, if not more than green energy?

Bill McKibben:  Yes. The fossil fuel subsidy is, of course, enormous and has been for a century or more. That’s why we have things like the oil depletion allowance and on and on and on. But of course, the biggest subsidy to the fossil fuel industry by far is that we just allow them to use our atmosphere as an open sewer for free. There’s no cost to them to pour carbon into the air and heat up the planet. And when we try to impose some cost — New York state just passed a law that’s going to send a bill to big oil for the climate damages — They’re immediately opposed by the industry, and in this case, with the Trump administration on their side, they’ll do everything they can to make it impossible to ever recover any of those costs. So the subsidy to fossil energy dwarfs that to renewable energy by a factor of orders of magnitude.

Stephen Janis:  That’s really interesting because sometimes people try to, like there was a change in the calculation of the cost of each ton of carbon. That’s really a really important kind of way to measure the true impact. You make a really good point, and that is quite expensive when you take a ton of carbon and figure out what the real cost is to society and to our lives. It’s very high.

Bill McKibben:  Well, that cost gets higher, too, all the time. And sometimes people, it’s paid in very concentrated ways — Your neighborhood in Los Angeles burns down and every house goes with it. And sometimes the cost is more spread out. At the moment, anybody who has an insurance policy, a homeowner’s insurance policy in this country, is watching it skyrocket in price far faster than inflation. And that’s because the insurance companies have this huge climate risk to deal with, and they really can’t. That’s why, in many places, governments are becoming insurers of last resort for millions and millions of Americans.

Taya Graham:  I was curious about, since I asked you to rate something within the current Trump administration, I thought it would be fair to ask you to rate the Inflation Reduction Act. I know the current administration is trying to dismantle it, but I wanted your thoughts on this. Do you think it’s been effective?

Bill McKibben:  Yeah, it’s by no means a perfect piece of legislation. It had to pass the Senate by a single vote, Joe Manchin’s vote, and he took more money from the fossil fuel industry than anybody else, so he made sure that it was [loaded] with presence for that industry. So there’s a lot of stupid money in it, but that was the price for getting the wise money, the money that was backing sun and wind and battery development in this country, the money that was helping us begin to close that gap that you described with China. And it’s a grave mistake to derail it now, literally an attempt to send us backwards in our energy policy at a moment when the rest of the world is trying to go in the other direction.

Stephen Janis:  Speaking of that, I wanted to ask you a question from a personal… Our car was stolen and we were trying to get an electric car, but we couldn’t afford it. Why are there electric cars in China that supposedly run about 10,000 bucks, and you want to buy an electric car in this country and it’s like 50, 60, 70, whatever. I know it’s getting cheaper, but why are they cheaper elsewhere and not here?

Bill McKibben:  Well, I mean, first of all, they should not, unless you want a big luxury vehicle, shouldn’t be anything like that expensive even here. I drive a Kia Niro EV, and I’ve done it for years, and you can get it for less than the cost of the average new car in America. [Crosstalk] Chinese are developing beautiful, beautiful EVs, and we’ll never get them because of tariffs. We’re going to try and protect our auto industry — Which would be a reasonable thing to do if in the few years that we were protecting that auto industry, it was being transformed to compete with the Chinese. But Trump has decided he’s going to get rid of the EV mandate. I mean, in his view, in his world, I guess will be the last little island of the internal combustion engines, while everybody else around the world gets to use EVs.

And the thing about EVs is not just that they’re cleaner, it’s that they’re better in every way. They’re much cheaper to operate. They have no moving parts, hardly. I’ve had mine seven years and I haven’t been to the mechanic for anything on it yet. It’s the ultimate travesty of protectionism closing ourselves off from the future.

Taya Graham:  That’s such a shame. And because I feel like people are worried that in the auto industry, that bringing in renewables would somehow harm the autoworkers, it’s just asking them to build a different car. It’s not trying to take away jobs, which I think is really important for people to understand.

Stephen Janis:  Absolutely.

Taya Graham:  But I was curious, there’s a bunch of different types of renewables, I was wondering maybe you could help us understand what advantages solar might have versus what the advantages of wind [are]. Just maybe help us understand the different types of renewables we have.

Bill McKibben:  Solar and wind are beautifully complimentary, and in many ways. The higher in latitude you go, the less sun you get, but the more wind you tend to get. Sun is there during the midday and afternoon, and then when the sun begins to go down, it’s when the wind usually comes up. If you have a period without sun for a few days, it’s usually because a storm system of some kind that’s going through, and that makes wind all the more useful. So these two things work in complement powerfully with each other. And the third element that you need to really make it all work is a good system of batteries to store that power.

And when you get these things going simultaneously, you get enormous change. California last year passed some kind of tipping point. They’d put up enough solar panels and things that, for most of the year, most days, California was able to supply a hundred percent of its electricity renewably for long stretches of the day. And at night when the sun went down, batteries were the biggest source of supply to the grid. That’s a pretty remarkable thing because those batteries didn’t even exist on that grid two or three years ago. This change is happening fast. It’s happening fastest, as we’ve said in China, which has really turned itself into an electro state, if you will, as opposed to a petro state, in very short order. But as I say, California is a pretty good example. And now Texas is putting up more clean energy faster than any other place in the country.

Stephen Janis:  That’s ironic.

Taya Graham:  Yeah. Well, I was wondering, there’s a technology that makes the news pretty often, but I don’t know if it’s feasible, I think it’s called carbon capture or carbon sequestration. I know that the Biden administration had set aside money to bolster it, but does this technology make sense?

Bill McKibben:  These were the gifts to the fossil fuel industry that I was talking about in the IRA. It comes in several forms, but the one I think you’re referring to is that you put a filter on top, essentially, of a coal-fired power plant or a gas-fired power plant and catch the carbon as it comes out of the exhaust stream and then pump it underground someplace and lock it away. You can do it, you just can’t do it economically. Look, it’s already cheaper just to build a solar farm than to have a coal-fired power plant. And once you’ve doubled the price of that coal-fired power plant by putting an elaborate chemistry set on top of it, the only way to do this is with endless ongoing gifts from the taxpayer, which is what the fossil fuel industry would like, but doesn’t make any kind of economic sense.

Stephen Janis:  You just said something very profound there. You said that it’s cheaper to build a solar field than it is to build a coal plant, but why is this not getting through? I feel like the American public doesn’t really know this. Why is this being hidden from us, in many ways?

Bill McKibben:  In one way, it is getting through. Something like 80% of all the new electric generation that went up last year in this country was sun and wind. So utilities and things sort of understand it. But yes, you’re right. And I think the reason is that we still think of this stuff as alternative energy. I think in our minds, it lives like we think of it as the Whole Foods of energy; it’s nice, but it’s pricey. In fact, it’s the Costco of energy; It’s cheap, it’s available in bulk on the shelf, and it’s what we should be turning to. And the fact that utilities and things are increasingly trying to build solar power and whatever is precisely the reason that the fossil fuel industry is fighting so hard to elect people like Trump.

When I told you what California was doing last year, what change it had seen, as a result, California, in 2024, used 25% less natural gas to produce electricity than they had in 2023. That’s a huge change in the fifth largest economy on earth in one year. It shows you what can happen when you deploy this technology. And that’s the reason that the fossil fuel industry is completely freaked out.

Stephen Janis:  By the way, as a person who has tried to shop at Whole Foods, I immediately understood your comparison.

Taya Graham:  I thought that was great. It’s not the Whole Foods of energy, It’s actually the Costco, that’s so great.

Stephen Janis:  There is that perception though, it’s a bunch of latte-drinking liberals who think that this is what we’re trying to get across —

Taya Graham:  Chai latte, matcha latte.

Stephen Janis:  That’s why it’s so important. It’s cheaper! It’s cheaper. Sorry, go ahead —

Taya Graham:  That’s such a great point. We actually try to look for good policy everywhere we go. And we attended a discussion at the Cato Institute, and this is where their energy fellow described how Trump would use a so-called energy emergency to turn over more federal lands to drilling. So I’m just going to play a little bit of sound for you, and let’s take a listen.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker 1:  What does work in your mix?

Speaker 2:  So I call it the Joe Dirt approach. Have you seen that scene in the movie where he’s talking to the guy selling fireworks, and the guy has preferences over very specific fireworks, like snakes and sparklers. The quote from Joe Dirt is, “It’s not about you, it’s about the consumer.” So I think, fundamentally, I’m resource neutral. I will support whatever consumers want and are willing to pay for. I think where that comes out in policy is you would remove artificial constraints. So right now we have a lot of artificial constraints from the Environmental Protection Agency on certain power plants, phasing out coal-fire power, for example. So I would hope, and I would encourage a resource-neutral approach, just we will take energy from anybody that wants to supply it and anybody that wants to buy it.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Stephen Janis:  Mr. McKibben, I still feel like he’s not really resource neutral. Do you trust the Cato Institute on this issue, or what do you think he’s trying to say there?

Bill McKibben:  Well, I mean, I think he’s… The problem, of course, is that we have one set of energy sources [which] causes this extraordinary crisis, the climate crisis. And so it really doesn’t make sense to be trying to increase the amount of oil or coal or whatever that we’re using. That’s why the world has been engaged for a couple of decades now in an effort, a theoretical effort, with some success in some places, to stop using these things. And the right wing in this country has always been triggered by this and has always done what they can to try and bolster the fossil fuel industry. That was always stupid economically just because the costs of climate change were so hot. But now it’s stupid economically because the cost of renewable energy is so low.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, I mean, the right always purports to be more cost effective, cost conscious or whatever. I just don’t understand it. I would think they’d be greedy or something, or they’d want to make more money. Is it just that renewables ultimately won’t be profitable for them? Or what’s the…

Bill McKibben:  If you think about it, you’re catching an important point there. For all of us who have to use them, renewable energy is cheap, but it’s very hard to make a fortune in renewable energy precisely because it’s cheap. So the CEO of Exxon last year said his company would never be investing in renewable energy because, as he put it, it can’t return above average profits for investors. What he means is you can’t hoard it. You can’t hold it in reserve. The sun delivers energy for free every morning when it rises above the horizon. And for people, that’s great news, and for big oil, that’s terrible news because they’ve made their fortune for a century by, well, by selling you a little bit at a time. You have to write ’em a check every month.

Taya Graham:  Stephen and I came up with this theory about billionaires, that there’s conflict billionaires, for example, the ones who make money from social media; there’s capture billionaires with private equity; and then there’s carbon billionaires. So I was just wondering, we have this massive misinformation ecosystem that seems very much aligned against renewables. Do you have any idea who is funding this antirenewable coalition? Is our theory about the carbon class correct, I guess?

Bill McKibben:  Yes. The biggest oil and gas barons in America are the Koch brothers, they control more refining and pipeline capacity than anybody else. And they’ve also, of course, been the biggest bankrollers of the Republican right for 30 years. They built that series of institutions that, in the end, were the thing that elected Donald Trump and brought the Supreme Court to where it is and so on and so forth. So the linkages like that could not be tighter.

Stephen Janis:  So last question, ending on a positive note. Do you foresee a future where we could run our entire economy on renewables? I’m just going to put it out there and see if you think it’s actually feasible or possible.

Taya Graham:  And if so, how much money could it save us?

Bill McKibben:  People have done this work, a big study at Oxford two years ago, looking at just this question. It concluded that yes, it’s entirely possible to run the whole world on sun, wind, and batteries, and hydropower, and that if you did it, you’d save the world tens of trillions of dollars. You save more the faster you do it simply because you don’t have to keep paying for more fuel. Yes, you have to pay the upfront cost of putting up the solar panel, but after that, there’s no fuel cost. And that changes the equation in huge ways.

We want to get this across. That’s why later this year in September on the fall equinox, we’ll be having this big day of action. We’re going to call it Sun Day, and we’re going to make the effort to really drive home to people what a remarkable place we’re in right now, what a remarkable chance we have to reorient human societies. And in a world where everything seems to be going wrong, this is the thing that’s going right.

Stephen Janis:  Well, just [so you] know, we did buy a used hybrid, which I really love, but I love electric cars. I do want to get an electric car —

Bill McKibben:  Well, make sure you get an e-bike. That’s an even cooler piece of [crosstalk] technology. Oh, really?

Stephen Janis:  Oh, really? OK. Got it. Got it. But thank you so much.

Bill McKibben:  All right, thank you, guys.

Taya Graham:  Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you, and we got you out in exactly 40 minutes, so —

Bill McKibben:  [Crosstalk].

Taya Graham:  OK. Thank you so much. It was such a wonderful opportunity to meet you. Thank you so much.

Bill McKibben:  Take care.

Stephen Janis:  Take care.

Taya Graham:  OK, bye.

Wow. I have to thank our incredible guest, Bill McKibben, for his insights and thoughtful analysis. I think this type of discussion is so important to providing you, our viewers, with the facts regarding critical issues that will affect not only your future, but also your loved ones, your children, and your grandchildren. And I know the internet is replete with conspiracy theories about climate change and the technologies that we just discussed, but let’s remember, the real conspiracy might be to convince you that all of this possible progress is somehow bad. That the possibility of cheap, clean energy is what? It’s a plot. It’s a myth.

Stephen, what are your thoughts before I try to grab the wheel?

Stephen Janis:  I want to say emphatically that you’re being fooled in the worst possible way, all of us. And we’re literally being pushed towards our own demise by this. You want to talk about a real conspiracy, not QAnon or something, let’s talk about the reason that we don’t think that we could embrace this renewable future. And it’s for the working class. It’s for people like us that can barely afford to pay our bills. We’ll suddenly be saving thousands of dollars a year. It’s just an amazing construct that they’ve done on the psychology of it to make it think that we’re antiprogress, in America of all things. We’re antiprogress. We’re anti-the future.

Taya Graham:  We’re supposed to be the innovators. We’re the ones who have had the best science. Didn’t we get to the moon first?

Stephen Janis:  [Crosstalk]

Taya Graham:  We have scientists, innovation. I mean, in some ways we’ve been the envy of the world and we’ve attracted some of the most powerful scientists and intellectuals from around the globe to our country because we’re known for our innovation. This is really —

Stephen Janis:  We embrace stuff like AI, which, God knows where that’s going to go, and other things. But this is pretty simple. This is pretty simple. Something that could actually affect people’s lives directly. We spend $2,500 a year on gas, $3,000 to $4,000 a year on utilities. And here’s one of the leading, most respected people in this field saying, you know what? You’re not going to pay almost anything by the time it’s all installed. And yet we believe it’s impossible. And it’s really strange for me. But I’m glad we had him on to actually clarify that and maybe push through the noise a little bit.

Taya Graham:  Yeah, me too. Me too. I just wanted to add just a few closing thoughts about our discussion and why it’s important. And I think this conversation literally could not be more important, if only because the implications of being wrong are literally an existential crisis, and the consequences of being right could be liberating.

So to start this rant off, I want to begin with something that seems perhaps unrelated, but is a big part of the consequences for our environment and the people like us that will have to live with it. And hopefully in doing so, I’ll be able to unpack some of the consequences of how these carbon billionaires don’t just hurt our wallets, but actually put our lives in harm’s way. I want to talk about fire trucks.

Stephen Janis:  Fire trucks?

Taya Graham:  Yes. OK. I know that sounds crazy, but these massive red engines, they scream towards a fire to save lives. Isn’t this image iconic? Who hasn’t watched in awe as a ladder truck careens down a city street to subdue the flames of a possibly deadly blaze? But now, thanks to our ever increasingly extractive economy, they’re also a symbol of how extreme economic inequality affects our lives in unseen ways. And let me try to explain how.

Now, we all remember the horrific fires in Los Angeles several weeks ago. The historic blazes took out thousands of homes, leaving people’s lives in ruin and billions of dollars in damage. But the catastrophe was not immune from politics. President Trump accused California of holding back water from other parts of the state, which was untrue. And Los Angeles officials were also blasted for not being prepared, which is a more complicated conversation.

However, one aspect of fire that got less attention was the fire trucks. That is, until The New York Times wrote this article that is not only shocking, but actually shows how deep extractive capitalism has wreaked havoc on our lives.

So this story recounts how additional firefighters who were called in to help with the blaze were sidelined because of lack of fire trucks. So the story notes that the inability to mobilize was due to the sorry state of the fleet, which was aging, in disrepair, and new replacements had not been ordered, and the ones that had been ordered had yet to be delivered.

So this, of course, all begs the question why? Why is the mighty US economy not able to deliver lifesaving equipment in a timely manner? Well, the failure is, in part, thanks to private equity, the Wall Street firms who buy out healthy companies and then raid their coffers to enrich themselves. Well, during the aughts, a private equity firm named American Industrial Partners started buying up small fire truck manufacturers. They argued that the consolidation would lead to more efficiency — And, of course, higher profits. But those efficiencies never materialized. And as a result, deliveries of fire trucks slowed down significantly, from 18 months, to now to several years.

And this slow down left fire departments across the country without vital lifesaving equipment, a deficit that Edward Kelly, who’s the general president of the International Association of Firefighters, he said it was all due to extractive capitalism run amuck. Here’s how he capitalized it.

How can anyone place profits over first responders and their lifesaving equipment? To me, this is a failure of market capitalism, and it’s indicative of what we’re seeing with our renewable energy and our country’s failure to take advantage of it. They have literally captured the market and set the terms of the debate. Set the most widely beneficial and efficient solution buried underneath an avalanche of self-serving narratives. Greedy, private equity firms, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street investment banks have not just warped how our economy works, but also how we even perceive the challenges we face. They have flooded the zone, to borrow a phrase, with nihilistic and antagonistic and divisive sentiments that the future is bleak, hope is naive, and the only worthy and just outcome is their rapid accumulation of wealth.

And so with an alternative system of clean, affordable energy that’s achievable, that promises to save us money and our environment, consider the fire truck — Or as author David Foster Wallace said, consider the lobster. Consider that we are being slowly boiled by the uber rich. They distract us with immersive social media and misinformation so they can profit from it. They distort the present to make serious problems appear unsolvable to ensure the future so their profits will grow exponentially. They persuade us not to trust each other or even ourselves. And they literally convinced us to lack empathy for our fellow workers and then profit from our communal doomerism.

And like with the example with the fire trucks, they value, above all else, profits, not people, not the world in which we all live, not the safety of firefighters or the safety of the communities and the future that we’re all responsible for. None of it matters to them and none of it ever will. It’s up to us, we the people, to determine our future. Let’s fight for it together because it really does belong to us.

Well, I have to thank my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, for joining me on this new venture of The Inequality Watch. I really appreciate it.

Stephen Janis:  I’m very happy to be here, Taya. Thank you for having me.

Taya Graham:  Well, it’s a pleasure. It. I’m hoping that in the future we’ll be able to bring on more guests and we are going to bring on people that might surprise you. So please keep watching, because we are looking for good policy and sane policy wherever we can find it. My name is Taya Graham, and thank you so much for watching The Inequality Watch.

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.

Police violence has shaken the US to its foundation multiple times in the past decade, but the problem has not been solved and only grows with each passing year. In the face of this, intrepid cop watchers across the country have stepped up to defend working people and communities. Why does the cop watching movement matter, and what can the rest of us learn from activists who have done this vital work for decades? On the sixth anniversary of the launch of Police Accountability Report, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis speak with a panel of cop watchers, including James Freeman, Tom Zebra, Otto The Watchdog, The Battousai and Laura SharkCW.

Pre-Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Written by: Stephen Janis
Studio: Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley

Transcript

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

Taya Graham:

Today we are not only going to be celebrating the sixth anniversary of our show, but we will also be seeking to answer a fairly profound question about a form of activism that has as much to do with the evolution of our show as policing itself. And that is cop watching. That’s because during the last six years as we have produced hundreds of shows, many have featured the work and personalities of this uniquely American art form. So we thought as we celebrated this special anniversary, we should do so in tandem with the people who have shared their work with us, which is why over the next hour we’re going to try to answer several important questions. First, why does Cop watching matter? In fact, why does any sort of activism matter and what makes it matter? It’s a question that I think is not asked enough, an idea that we feel must be explored in light of all the challenges we are facing.

And we’ll be trying to address it by examining the work of one of the people who literally helped invent it. He’s a man who started watching cops when VHS tapes were the dominant technology, and he’s a person who’s impacted Steven and my life in ways that are hard to measure. And of course, to help us unpack all of these ideas, we’ll be joined by cop watchers who are legends in their own rights. James Freeman, out of the Watchdog and Laura Shark, and they will be with us later to discuss their work. And at the end of the show, we’ll be making a big announcement about something Steven and I have been working on for quite some time. So please make sure to stay tuned. But of course, all of this begins with this show, the police accountability part. I mean, when we started it six years ago, we had no idea where it would lead.

I mean, sure policing was front and center as an institution that needed serious reform. Examples of police brutality were everywhere. And in our own hometown, we had just experienced the uprising after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, which engulfed our city and led to even more recognition that law enforcement was basically broken. But really, if we’re honest, there was something else, not just immediate concerns that prompted us to launch this show. Instead, I think our impetus was about something deeper. Remember at the beginning of the show, we always made clear it’s not just about the bad behavior of individual cops. No, it was and is more than that. It was a way to examine the system that makes bad policing possible. And it was that system which allows rogue law enforcement to be pervasive, which has divined our work, prompted us to dig deeper and to explore the underlying imperative that we will interrogate further as we celebrate our anniversary. So Steven, can you talk a little bit about that idea and how the show came together?

Stephen Janis:

Well, every time we looked at policing, especially the worst parts of policing, or there’s some of the worst policing we’ve seen, it occurred in communities where there was an absolute underlying unfairness to the way the community was situated. And when I say that, I mean a community which was beset by poverty or a community that had unfair economic and unfair economic inequality. And so we said, why is bad policing always part of this equation? Well, it’s because policing in a sense, enforces the idea that unfairness is okay, that unfairness is actually a natural outcome of what we call late stage capitalism. So the idea was saying if we just look at a bad cop and take what they do and just show it on the screen and not really give some context, and we’re not doing our job as journalists. So the idea was to expand the palette and say, look, this is part of a system of unfairness. Please enforce that ideology that this is actually inevitable. And so we wanted to go beyond that. That’s why we look at the system.

Taya Graham:

Really well said, Steven. Thank

Stephen Janis:

You.

Taya Graham:

And just as he was saying, back in February, 2019, we just kind of launched the show. Just sort of did it. I mean, I wish I could say it was all planned out and we were sort of working in trial and error mode, but we weren’t winging it, but we just didn’t really know where it would lead. Maybe let’s watch a brief compilation of some moments from our first shows.

Stephen Janis:

The audience is small, we’ll be out of business pretty soon. So we got this idea that we need to focus on what we did best on what we knew best.

Taya Graham:

So one thing about Baltimore City is that policing is everywhere. You’re probably familiar with the death of Freddie Graham police custody in 2015, or you might know that my city is under consent decree for racist and unconstitutional policing.

Stephen Janis:

We had to pick what we knew and make it something special.

Taya Graham:

So when Steven said he wanted to do a show called the Police Accountability Report, I thought it really made sense.

Stephen Janis:

I think that came up at the same time I’d been teaching journalism at a local university and I was trying to teach the next generation of journalists to survive. I came up with this idea of subject matter expertise, like do a show or report on what you know the best. And to us, well that was policing.

Taya Graham:

And honestly, I think it was like a last ditch attempt to really make this work to find an audience for our reporting.

Stephen Janis:

So in January of 2019, we shot our first show. We just went ahead and did it.

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report on the Real News Network. Honestly, I was just hoping we could break 10,000 views.

Stephen Janis:

I would’ve been perfectly happy with that. We’re talking about 10 years. These police officers were robbing people,

Taya Graham:

So we kept going and doing more shows. This is Taya Graham and Steven Janis for The Real News. Welcome to the Police Accountability Report.

Stephen Janis:

And it seems like T’S talent hosts a show and the topic was working, and we finally found a way to get a broader audience.

Taya Graham:

Oh my gosh, Steven, look how young you were. Look how young I was reporting on policing ages. You I think a

Stephen Janis:

Little bit. It was weird because we really did just kind of do it and we just sort of made up was going along. So it’s interesting to see that how the show has evolved themselves.

Taya Graham:

I know it really has. But as we were building the show, we started to hear about a community that we knew nothing about, a group that was in a way doing what we were doing, but let’s just say in a more different and more direct style. It was a slowly growing YouTube based movement that caught our attention. Thanks in part to our mod, Noli d Hi Noli D that we couldn’t ignore. Of course, I’m talking about Cop watchers, the people and personalities that go out and actively watch the police and then post their encounters on YouTube. Now, of course, cop watching existed long before YouTube. We all know the Black Panthers who watch police in African-American communities by taking notes and keeping track of the officers who were problematic. But along with the growth of YouTube, a new type of cop watching emerged. And that’s what Steven and I decided to report on the evolution of this form of digital activism that was different in many respects than what we were used to. And Steven, this version of Cop watching was uniquely formed by YouTube, wouldn’t you say?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I mean, the thing was you had a historic moment where for once an average working person could form an audience or have an audience. Remember before YouTube came along, and obviously the internet, most people who wanted to report the news or report what’s going on in their community needed an intense amount of capital. They needed a broadcast license or they needed a newspaper. But suddenly YouTube had created this alternative form of reaching an audience. It was kind of revolutionary. And I think that’s why Cop watching was so uniquely positioned and why it was so different, because YouTube gave a platform that didn’t exist before, a way of communicating to an audience, a way of forming an audience that didn’t exist before. So it was really revolutionary in a lot of ways.

Taya Graham:

I have to agree. And just to let people know, I will be trying to address some of the folks in the chat. I want you to know I see you, I saw you. Linda Orr. I see you. Lacey R. Hi, Lacey. R Hey, Lacey. So I just wanted to make sure to acknowledge some of the moderators and the supporters in our community are here, and Noli Dee helped introduce me to Cop watching. And I think we can honestly say that without Cop Watchers, this would be a very different show, very different. I mean, not that we couldn’t report on police, of course we could, but reporting on Cop Watchers and the personalities that drive it gave us access to a community that shaped how we thought about law enforcement by examining their work. It changed our perspective on how law enforcement had become more pervasive and powerful than even we could imagine.

And in a way, it gave us a sense of how much policing could affect not just the health of the community, but the entire psychology of it. Meaning the fact that there was a community of people who would literally go out and document police in communities across the country day in and day out for no other reason than it had to be done influenced how we thought about our show and what we needed to report again on the system, which is how and why the idea of making a show that we called Reverse Cops emerge. So let me explain. I’m sure most of you’re familiar with the show called Cops. It’s one of the longest running police reality series ever. The format is also pretty familiar, a bunch of photo follow cops as they arrest working class Americans for generally speaking petty crimes. The show, I believe, is meant to solidify the notion that only police can impose order and that the police are the moral arbiters of right versus wrong, and that working class folks are simply degenerates only worthy of arrest and jail cells. But Steven, I think our experience with Cop Watchers gave us some other ideas on how to, in a sense, reverse this narrative through journalism.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I mean because Cop Watchers and people like Tom Z were had gone out and sort of shifted the narrative, right? Gone out every night and reported from the community perspective, we sort of adopt that into our show where the person, the cops would make look bad. This guy who cops go and arrest for some dumb reason, not always the dumb reason, but a reason that is questionable, let’s put

Taya Graham:

It that way. Or at least maybe for a nuisance crime,

Stephen Janis:

Right? For a ance crime. We thought, okay, let’s reverse the perspective of the camera there. The way cop watchers are. Let’s turn the camera around. Let’s not tell it from the police going in and rushing after some guy and chasing him. Let’s do it the way Tom Zebra and Otto the Watchdog and James Freeman do, where they’re the ones holding the camera and telling the story from their perspective. So we ended up dedicating a huge amount of our show to the people who had been either brutalized, questionably, arrested, whatever. That actually became like the linchpin of our show, which is just as someone from the mainstream media, that’s not the way we report on police. We follow the police around and we follow their cues. So this whole community that created this kind of reverse cops, we just followed their cues and said, we’re going to give 15 minutes to the person who got arrested and let them tell their story, just the way police get to control the narrative. And it was really, again, sort of a revolution of narratology. We are actually looking from the different perspective that the cop watchers have adopted, and I think that’s why, how it influenced our show, what made our show kind of different in some ways.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I think that’s such an excellent point and something that I think you really teased out there is that not only did Cop Watchers show us to turn the perspective around, but they also showed us, you were talking about how you had to have money to be able to control the narrative and to sort of democratize the process.

Stephen Janis:

They absolutely democratize and absolutely took away the need to have other than a cell phone camera and the ability to edit and the ability to be creative, which is what’s really cool about it. There’s so much creativity. It kind of inspired me to say, play around with the show, have the swipes, all the things that we know are signature. Or the police accountability report came from just watching Cop Watchers and what they would do. And I’d be like, well, we can’t just be this blase report. We’ve got to have a little action in there.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, we have to add a little creativity. Absolutely.

So as we built the show, we dedicated a large part of it to the perspective that mainstream media ignores. We turned the camera around to give the people who’ve been negatively impacted by policing the opportunity to tell their stories in detail. And we made the show not about police, but about the community. And no other community played a bigger role in this evolution than of course cop watchers. And no other cop watcher embodies the spirit of that ethos better than the man we will be talking about tonight. And I am of course referring to the legendary og cop watcher, Tom Zebra. And like our show, his story and his life is intertwined with his work, and it is that work that’s transformed him and the community he lives in. But let me try to share part of his story so you can understand why that is so important.

It’s the story of a man who lived in Los Angeles in one of the city’s struggling neighborhoods who saw a problem. People have been cracking down on, excuse me, police have been cracking down on working people for years with aggressive car stops, arrests for minor infractions. Law enforcement had adopted more and more punitive tactics as a way to fight crime, but that’s not what happened, and that’s not really why they were doing it. And this man understood this implicitly. He knew that over policing was an instrument of poverty. He understood that it only made the lives of those struggling to afford housing and even put food on the table. Even worse, he comprehended the pain inflicted by a system that trapped people and stripped them of their ability to fight back. But what did he do? I mean, in a sense, he didn’t have the tools necessary in our money fueled system to fight back.

He wasn’t a powerful politician or billionaire. He wasn’t a celebrity. He was just a man, passionate man, but one seemingly without the power to protect the community he loved. So what did he do? Well, he picked up a camera, not a cell phone, but a camera back when video was recorded on VHS tapes when YouTube didn’t even exist when the internet was still in its infancy. And when his fight was essentially his own will and ingenuity against the entire Los Angeles law enforcement industrial complex. But against those odds, he decided to fight. And he did it despite a powerful institution more than willing to fight back despite the obvious imbalance of power of one man with a camera against a legion of guns and badges. And he did it for the myriad of reasons people in our flawed democratic republic decide to step forward. He did it because it had to be done. Let’s watch a little bit of his video from 2005.

Speaker 6:

Man, where you going? Why a hard T got a bike license? Have a bike license. The driver’s license. I told you to that I, yeah, it does. Your bike over here. Probation, parole. Why you being such an ass about it? What’s your problem tonight? I have no problem. Good. You have a bike license for your bike? No, I don’t see one on there. No, you need to register your bike and the city have a bike license. You riding the city. Where are you going? Okay, where are you coming from? Okay. You want to

Taya Graham:

Do a difficult No,

And of course that was the OG I was talking about at the beginning of the show, Tom Zebra. In that dramatic footage, you can see how one person with one camera lit a fire that burns bright to this day. You see someone who’s fighting against power in ways that would eventually be adopted by thousands of cop watchers and activists using the camera, not just as a mirror, but as a tool of dissent recording video that no one would perhaps ever see, but still recording. Anyway. Steven, can you talk a little bit about how Tom has helped shape contemporary cop watching?

Stephen Janis:

Well, the thing when I was watching that video and I was thinking about it, and we both hung out with him a little bit. He is tireless, right?

Taya Graham:

Yes.

Stephen Janis:

He’s like a one man mainstream media kind of org,

Taya Graham:

One man media machine,

Stephen Janis:

Right? Because the thing that was really interesting about Tom and talking to him, we interviewed him a lot. He goes out every night and he goes out every night and he just films. And sometimes when he films, something happens and he will confront police as what he sees as being wrong. And that to me is such a David and Goliath story of someone who goes out and is willing to every night, watch cops no matter what, and willing to push back. And that creates, I would say, an alternative mainstream media ecosystem. Not mainstream in the sense that it looks like mainstream media, but that counter power, that counterbalance that doesn’t always exist in a community to tell their own stories. And so he was out there like a storyteller looking at what’s happening, watching and observing and exposing police in ways that are more subtle. It’s not just about the really, really bad events, but the way they abuse their power. And when you watch these Zoe videos, you can see where are you going, where are you headed, what are you doing? Those are the things that create this psychology of power that makes policing so devastating for people living communities where that type of policing is allowed. And I think Tom did the work

And that really made a difference.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. That’s such an excellent point. And just to add to that idea, let’s run a clip about Tom Zebra. We produced for this yet to be announced project.

Stephen Janis:

Why were they focused on policing? What were they getting out of this and what was the real story?

Speaker 7:

It was like to protect myself from the police.

Stephen Janis:

Hello.

Speaker 8:

What’s going on

Stephen Janis:

Man?

Speaker 8:

Not much you doing here.

Speaker 7:

Doing know the tapes will just go in a box.

Speaker 8:

Good. How are you? Just your car?

Speaker 9:

Yes sir. Where are you coming from? Where do you

Speaker 8:

Live? I’m coming from getting dinner and I’m going home. Do you

Speaker 9:

Any guns or knives in the car?

Speaker 8:

No, sir.

Speaker 9:

You got valid driver’s license?

Speaker 8:

Yes,

Speaker 9:

Sir. Where is it at? It’s

Speaker 8:

In my center

Speaker 9:

Console. Don’t reach. You got any? You don’t have a gun or anything in

Speaker 8:

There? No, sir. There’s nothing illegal in here.

Speaker 9:

What’s going on with the camera? That’s the camera. Yeah, but what’s going on with that? Well, it’s sitting there

Taya Graham:

Recording. Mr, why don’t you pull me over? But this is only just part of the story, the beginning about the growth of a collection of YouTube activists that stood up for communities across the country, a movement that has actually achieved something tangible. People who connected on YouTube and other social media platforms to push back against power and actually made a difference. Activism that might’ve started with OGs like Tom Zebra, but has expanded to include hundreds if not thousands of channels and YouTubers working in big cities and small towns across the country. And so to talk about how this happened and what it means, and of course the work of Tom Zebra, we’re going to be joined by several guests who have been intimately involved in all of it. And to get this discussion started, we are happy to have Otto the Watchdog as our first guest. I mean, really, who else could it be? And just to let you guys know, if you see me looking down, that is because I’m looking to make sure to put some of your lovely comments on the screen. And I wanted to let you know, I think we finally have super chats and super stickers.

Now, I don’t know if you guys know this, but we don’t run any ads on our channels, and I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve never done a HelloFresh commercial, so we don’t take any corporate sponsors, but if you want to buy us a little super chat so we can say hi to James Freeman or a The Watchdog for you, we’d be happy to do that.

Stephen Janis:

And also, we should also tell people to try to subscribe to our newsletter. Go to the real news.com. You can subscribe because that way, even if you don’t have money to be able to support our journalism, you can also subscribe to the newsletter and keep in touch with what we’re doing. So we really would like people to do that as

Taya Graham:

Well. Yes, absolutely. You can hit and subscribe to the email and that would really help us as well. Now back to Otto, he’s probably one of the best, along with our other guest, James Freeman, at actually injecting comedy into the practice of Cop watching. He’s a style that is both unique and illuminating. You know what? Let’s watch a quick clip about Otto talking about how he came up with this.

Otto The Watchdog:

So I wanted to do something comical because I was becoming an angry person. I was sitting at my kitchen table, I was writing down slogans. I said, well,

Speaker 10:

He’s got stuff from there and in other counties that they’re going to try to put together and they’re going to try to get his ass organized crime.

Otto The Watchdog:

I said it out loud and I was like, hand stuff

Speaker 4:

That

Stephen Janis:

Awesome, Otto, that could have been a hit song if maybe Otto, if you’d had a few less swear words in it, I

Taya Graham:

Guess. But the thing is, I’m sure with the beeps, I am sure you all could probably figure out what was being talked about. Some of you who know the cop watching community, well might’ve recognized the other voices singing despite all the beeps. And that Otto is another important member of the cop watching community, Eric Brant, who was known for his extravagant actions to help protest treatment of the Denver homeless community. And like Tom Zebra, Eric Brat is an important part of the Secret project that we’ve been working on that we cannot wait to share with you. But perhaps it would be better to let the fellow singer speak for himself, which is why we are joined by Otto the Watchdog. Thank you so much for joining us.

Otto The Watchdog:

Hi. It is pleasure to be here. Thanks. It’s always nice to be here.

Taya Graham:

Well, we’re so glad to have you are so glad. And first, we just want to ask you a very simple question, or maybe actually it’s not a very simple question. What got you involved in COP watching? What prompted you to pick up a camera and start filming your encounters with police?

Otto The Watchdog:

Well, those are two separate things. So what got me started looking towards police and being upset in general was license plate lights. A lot of my friends were being pulled over and they were being pressured to allow a search of their vehicle over license plate lights. And when one of my friends was roughed up and one of those traffic stops, I decided that something had to be done. And the inspiration to film it came from people like Tom Zebra and James Freeman. Freeman was in my local area at the time, and I saw those guys and I thought that it was a great idea. And then I found out that there was actually a lot of people doing this, and I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to get run over and falsely accused of some pretty terrible stuff. And I wasn’t expecting that it was going to go bad, but it did quickly. So

Stephen Janis:

When you say it went bad quickly, can you just explain a little bit what you mean by that? It went bad quickly. Are you talking about the potatoes or something like

Otto The Watchdog:

That? Oh, no. So yeah, the potatoes, the first time I went out with the camera, I was only out for 15 minutes before I had my first police contact. And that was when I was like, oh, this is probably going to be a little bit more of a thing than I thought it was. Then I took a break for a while and I really went out and looked and made sure that what I was doing was going to be legal. And if it wasn’t for people posting on YouTube, their encounters, I never seen it. And like Tom Zebra, he was doing it before when VHS was out and he said that he put all those tapes in a box and nobody would ever know unless a major production company put it together and then distributed those videos.

Stephen Janis:

Right, which is what we’re trying to do. Not really, but we did use some excerpts from them. But Kate, go ahead.

Taya Graham:

Oh, I do have to ask though. I mean, we’ve discussed and highlighted some of your more humorous approaches to watching cops. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I know it might seem strange to people who see police brutality or police overreach and says, that’s not a funny topic, but you managed somehow to bring humor into it. Can you kind of explain how you did it and why you did?

Otto The Watchdog:

Well, I did it because I brought humor into it because it is so dark. It is not a funny topic. And it was something that I felt passionate about and I think that everybody should know, mainly because my family was very supportive of law enforcement. I have several members of my family who are law enforcement, and we get along fine, just for the record, everybody’s fine. Thanksgiving can get a little bit, sometimes we have to change the topic of conversation,

But I believe that they were good people and they think that they were doing good work and doing good things. And since I’ve been more active in this topic genre specifically, we’ve come to the conclusion that they might’ve not been breaking the law and violating, violating people’s rights, but they were violating people’s rights. You mentioned the long running show cops. Well, that was very popular when I was a kid. We watched it all the time, and I watched it for a long, long time, and I loved that show. It was always entertaining. There was always something going on. Now here I am many years later, I go back and watch that show and shows like it, and basically every single encounter is a violation. Every single one of those is like, oh, well, why are they doing that? Why are they immediately pulling somebody out and putting ’em in handcuffs? What’s the purpose of that? And they’re beating people up. They’re very violent. But that was because that’s the content that got them the most views and interesting. Nothing’s really changed about that. I guess there’s still the thing that gets them the most views is when they’re the most violent.

Stephen Janis:

That’s really interesting because now there shows live pd and there just seems to be this fascination with other people’s misery. But that’s really interesting. And so at some point you kind of said, I’ve seen enough actual encounters with cops that I know that kind of propaganda the cops is promulgating or whatever. I know that’s actually false. I mean, is that what someday it just clicked for you? Or is it because after you went out a couple of times you kind of felt like, wow, this is all wrong?

Otto The Watchdog:

Oh no. It was a slow progression and then a sudden snap. I was watching these things because I wanted to know what I was illegally required to do at traffic stops

Laura Shark:

And

Otto The Watchdog:

Things of that sort. I didn’t really have any run-ins with the law, but when I was not quite an adult yet, there was an incident where law enforcement, there was a fight in the park and the law enforcement showed up and somebody pointed at me and I was arrested. I was not involved in it,

But nevertheless, I went to jail and I was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. And that case was dismissed because I wasn’t the guy, but I had to call into a bondsman every Wednesday with the threat that I could be arrested if I didn’t. And that went on for a while. So that was my first, oh, maybe these guys aren’t all superheroes. And then again, one of my friends was pulled over for their license plate lights being too dim, not being bright enough, and she’s a minority. And when the police officer pulled up to the window, said, get out, and she asked one question and he opened the door and yanked her out and then roughed her up a little bit. And I just had enough. I just had enough. And that’s when I put my boots on for the first time and actively what I love about cop watching. Thank you for asking Steven. What I love most about Cop watching is that protesting in general is a reactive response to a situation that has occurred. Cop watching is a proactive protest, or No,

Stephen Janis:

You’re right.

Otto The Watchdog:

I’m using protests loosely there. Cop watching is proactive. We can go out and actively look for these.

Stephen Janis:

That is such a great way to put it.

Otto The Watchdog:

I love

Stephen Janis:

That. Cop watcher is always smarter than me because I wrote this whole script, but Otto said it in a way. Otto, sorry, I should be looking at you. But you said that, and that is so right. You guys go out there sometimes when there’s nothing going on, right? I mean, you’re just, you’re out there and you’re just watching

Taya Graham:

Or listening to a scanner, right?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, that’s such a different form of protest. You’re right. We have protests now against this administration or that, but Cop watchers just out there active. That’s pretty interesting.

Taya Graham:

I just want to mention this, since we did have Eric Brat singing earlier, we’re going to talk a little bit more about him later as we share our big project, but you connected with him and others that helped create this community that we covered. How did you connect with people like Eric Brat or Monkey 83 or Joe Kool or any of the other folks that we were fortunate to meet?

Otto The Watchdog:

That was definitely a 100% direct response from James Freeman being in my local area at the time, that I needed somebody to be local. And he just happened to respond to my email. And we’ve been good friends ever since. And I mean, he might disagree, but I can’t count James Freeman among my friends. I would invite him over for dinner. That’s wonderful. Eric. I had seen some of his videos and this man looks absolutely nuts, and I love it. I love it because he is so far out there that if he can get away with what he’s doing, then what I’m doing must be fine. And he was kicking ass and he would be arrested. And then before you know it, the cases are dismissed. And he did file a lot of lawsuits and he won quite a few, a lot of lawsuits, and he won a lot of his cases.

Taya Graham:

It was actually impressive. I think some of his lawsuits, he won the right for body cameras and

Stephen Janis:

Englewood,

Taya Graham:

Colorado.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. First a training,

Taya Graham:

First Amendment training,

Stephen Janis:

He $35,000 tattoo that

Taya Graham:

That’s right.

Stephen Janis:

He got arrested for a tattoo.

Taya Graham:

I think he was arrested on nearly 200 times and won over 80% of his cases. I mean, that’s a pretty impressive track record.

Otto The Watchdog:

It’s a staggering track record. It really is.

Taya Graham:

I am glad you mentioned Eric again, because I know he must have shaped to some extent how you do cop watching and how the community came together. I mean, how would you describe Eric’s role, just out of curiosity?

Otto The Watchdog:

Well, the cop watching and protesting are two separate things that I do both. I do both of them, but they are sometimes intertwined, but they are different. Cop watching is usually a little bit more somber. You’re just trying to document the thing. And then sometimes I would just get the calling and have to sing a song. And the song was inspired by Eric, his signs, and then I just wanted to make it into a rhyme. And then it just evolved into a song and it sounded really good. It was easy to sing, and I could do it loudly, and that was the key. And Eric and I, we could harmonize together and just pop it off. We had a unique chemistry that allowed such a thing like that. And as far as the protesting, Eric definitely shaped the protesting. He absolutely shaped what I was, everything from the sign and then his clothes. I liked that he would wear bright green clothes and everything about him screamed protestor. And then for him to be arrested, it’s clear and obvious to everybody that he was arrested for what he was saying and what the sign that he was holding. And I appreciated that.

Stephen Janis:

Wow. Well, last question we wanted to ask you, just give a little bit about what do you think about Tom Zebra? Did Tom Zebra influence your work at all? Or how do you feel about his work and how it’s influenced cop watching?

Otto The Watchdog:

Yeah. So I saw Tom Zebra after I had gotten fully immersed in what was going on because he’s in California and I’m not.

So I was trying to find somebody in Texas because I knew that Texas and California law were different, different enough that you need to know what goes on in Texas, not California. Right? So when I finally found Tom, I was well into my activism. So he didn’t necessarily shape and drive me directly, but I guarantee you that he inspired somebody that I saw at some point, or the six degrees of separation. I know that Tom Zebra shaped me and encouraged me through his actions, even though I hadn’t heard his name until well after I had begun. And again, Tom Zebra goes out every single night.

Stephen Janis:

I know,

Otto The Watchdog:

Right? It’s amazing. And if he’s not posting a video every single day, it’s because nothing happened last night. And when a cop watcher is not posting a video, in my opinion, that’s a good thing. We should not have content.

Taya Graham:

That’s a good point.

Otto The Watchdog:

None of us should be anybody worth interviewing because our channels should have zero followers. We should have zero views. But that’s not the case. And it’s not the case because, well, police officers feel like they can do whatever they want to because they’ve been able to do whatever they want to. They’re told that they can do it. And until that changes, I think that this genre is going to continue to grow. And as it has dramatically. So in the last five years since specifically the Floyd protests

Stephen Janis:

Instead Armada, the show should be, this show would not exist without the bad behavior of individual cops, I guess, right?

Taya Graham:

In some way. I mean, I’ve said before I would be happy if I didn’t, if I could report on something else.

Stephen Janis:

That’s a profound statement. We should have no followers and no videos.

Taya Graham:

That’s a really profound statement. Just before we let you go, I believe it was Tyler Smith asked what happened to Otto’s arrest at the gas station where the cops solicited a complaint on the day he had court for custody. Did you have that resolved?

Otto The Watchdog:

It did. That case is resolved. It took a while, and I took a beating. So we resolve that case out of court for, I believe that settlement was $90,000. And I took that money and split it 50 50 and put it into savings accounts for my children because they’re the victims. And I am deeply bothered by the events that happened early in my channel because they continue to affect you every single day. It’s something that never goes away, and I never wanted that, never thought that that would be a thing. And I’m glad that it’s over and looking forward, all we can do is hope that justice will prevail.

Taya Graham:

Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing that. And we just want to tell you how much we appreciate hearing from you, and we’re going to drag you back on a live stream in the future. I’m sorry. And we’re just have to do it.

Stephen Janis:

And remember, we both are going use Invisit on our car.

Taya Graham:

That’s

Stephen Janis:

Right. Your sponsor.

Otto The Watchdog:

Oh yeah, invisit. It’s the only window film approved by Nala.

Stephen Janis:

Okay, well let’s not go there, but let’s say this. It’s completely transparent, so police can’t see it. Neither can you. It’s pretty awesome. Perfect

Taya Graham:

Tint to make sure you never get arrested for Windows again.

Stephen Janis:

Alright,

Taya Graham:

Otto,

Stephen Janis:

Thank you Otto, it

Taya Graham:

Great to have you as always. Awesome. And I did just want to make sure that people saw that we had some lovely comments here. People really appreciate you, Otto. Thank you.

Otto The Watchdog:

Hey, I appreciate you guys. I wouldn’t have made it through it if it wasn’t for my friends and fantastic supporters. I could not have gotten through that if it wasn’t for you guys.

Taya Graham:

Oh, Otto,

Otto The Watchdog:

Thank Attia. And Steven, thank you for doing what you do because when I was doing this, we didn’t have a lackluster that would focus on these channels. You guys also pioneered your own little branch here because before the police accountability report, we really didn’t have anybody that cared enough to bring our videos to a larger audience in a professional way. Because a lot of people who do this are motivated, dedicated, passionate, but we’re not video editors, audio producers, and we don’t have all the skills and material and resources to do what you guys do. So thank you. Thank you as well. You’re

Stephen Janis:

Welcome. It was our pleasure,

Taya Graham:

Otto. We appreciate that more than thanks for being know that was really kind of you. Thank you. Thank you.

Stephen Janis:

That means a lot.

Taya Graham:

Especially because the Washington Post came in and said, oh, there is such a thing as Cop Watchers. I was like, thanks for noticing. Five years later,

Stephen Janis:

Right? Good

Taya Graham:

Job

Stephen Janis:

Five years after, but

Taya Graham:

At least finally, you guys are getting the recognition that you deserve.

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. Absolutely. We’re so happy about that. And I just did want to also make sure to say thank you to Michael Willis, who was kind enough to give us a donation. Very kind.

Stephen Janis:

Thank

Taya Graham:

You, Mike. And I thought that was really kind. Thank you. And I just want to make sure someone else said in response to our conversation about Eric, they could not stop Eric, so they put him away like they did. That was from DJ Plus. So I just wanted to let you all know I am taking a look at your comments, and I’m going to put them up whenever I can. You know, Stephen, that story about how Otto and Eric Brandt and Monkey 83 and Friends in Code and Chris Powers, how they got together is pretty incredible.

I mean, they all met on YouTube and they were all connected because of their support for Cop Watchers and each other, and they sort of built a community together. I mean, that’s an interesting story.

Stephen Janis:

Well, no, I think it’s interesting listening to Otto talk about how he connected with James Freeman, and you know how James Freeman connected with Eric and these guys are all working in different places.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. All

Stephen Janis:

Across the country. And organically created a network of people to bring these stories to people’s attention. And that’s not how YouTube is often advertised, is building communities and building actual physical activism. As Otto said, it was proactive. We said, here’s the problem. We’re going to go out every night and film that is so different from many things that, and I think we could all learn something from that activism.

Taya Graham:

And I have to say this, and this is a personal opinion, but I think it is very brave to go out on the streets armed with nothing but a camera.

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

And trying to make sure that your community has justice. So I think that’s a very brave thing to do,

And that is one of the reasons why we did that documentary. But we’ll save some more of those details for a little bit later. Hope you stick around and hear more about it. But for now, we’re going to be joined by a person who has been one of the most visible, prolific, and creative members of the community. He is notorious for turning routine encounters with police into revealing examples of comedic role reversal that reveals much about the power that police have and how it affects us in unseen ways. Let’s watch a clip of one of his encounters.

Speaker 11:

But these people have been told that they’ve got it in their head, that they literally have a right. They have the authority to just arbitrarily control everyone around them.

Speaker 12:

Hey, what’s up everybody? It’s James Freeman. You doing all right over here? What department are you with? You got ID on you. I sir. Dude, can I see it? Please.

Speaker 11:

I was even disturbed by the fact that this cop let me do it. Most of the people in the comments are like, man, this is the nicest cop ever. No human should tolerate that from another human. It’s wrong.

Taya Graham:

And now we have to give a big welcome for James Freeman. James, thank you so much for joining us.

James Freeman:

Hey guys, thank you for having me on the show again. It’s always good to be here.

Taya Graham:

We love having you. So happy to have you. And so first off, if you don’t mind, I would like to ask you about the legendary Tom Zebra. What did you think of his work? When did you first see it and has it influenced you at all?

James Freeman:

Honestly, I can’t remember the first time I saw it, but Tom Zebra influenced, he was one of the first. And when he was out there doing this stuff, I’ve said this before actually, I’ve compared Tom Zebra to a pioneer. Well, I have a lot of ancestors that crossed the plains over into the west, and we call ’em pioneers, right? And they blazed a trail. When they did it, it wasn’t easy. Basically when I came into the game, it was a lot easier than when Tom Zebra did it because Tom Zebra was basically Bush whacking it. He came up with the idea. He was the one who decided, alright, I’m going to go out and record these guys. When I started, I had people like Tom to help me understand what I legally could and couldn’t do. Tom, I don’t know who was his influence, but without people like Tom, I probably would’ve ended up in prison or in jail before I even really hit the ground. Got going.

Stephen Janis:

And what prompted you personally to start doing cop watching? Why did you decide that, Hey, I’m going to do this. I’m going to take this risk, the risk of getting arrested and go out and film police. What kind of motivated you to do that? How did it get started for you personally?

James Freeman:

Like Otto, it was a lot of things. I wouldn’t say it was necessarily just one thing.

I can tell you that the first video I ever shot though was when I was going through an inland border patrol checkpoint that I traveled through on a regular basis as me and my family were traveling between Arizona and Texas. And for those who don’t know what that is, you don’t cross a border or anything. But these federal police stop you and start asking interrogating questions. And it really doesn’t even have anything to do with stopping immigration or drug trade or anything like that, because all you have to do is they ask you, are you a US citizen? And if you can say the word yes, it’s like that’s the magic word. Yes. You’re no longer what they’re looking for. And I was realizing that this really wasn’t even about stopping crime or even immigration or drug traffic or anything. It was about conditioning people to obey and to understand who their master was. When master tells you to say yes, you say yes.

Speaker 7:

Wow. Wow. That’s

James Freeman:

Really

Speaker 7:

Powerful.

James Freeman:

So I shot that video and I really only shot the video to show it to four or five of my close friends and one of my friends, I couldn’t figure out a way to share it. I was trying to email it. I didn’t know anything about this technology stuff. I sucked at it. And one of my more technologically advanced friends said, Hey, best place to share a video is on YouTube, or even just with friends. So I uploaded it to YouTube. I didn’t even know how it worked. And so it was set to public, and two weeks later, a handful of other people who did this type of stuff regularly saw the video, shared it, and it had a half a million views within two weeks. And people were reaching out to me and saying,

Stephen Janis:

James,

James Freeman:

Do this again. Do it again. And I’m like, dude, what? That’s

Stephen Janis:

Incredible. That’s amazing. I mean, a half a million views, that’s not easy.

Taya Graham:

Wow. Wow. That’s amazing.

Stephen Janis:

That is amazing.

Taya Graham:

I have to ask you though, and I suppose this is somewhat of a serious question, but what is it like going out there holding a camera knowing that you might possibly be arrested, and how do you deal with that threat and how does it affect you?

James Freeman:

People talk in my comment sections. People are like, oh, James, you’re so brave. You never back down and you never get scared. That’s not true at all. Anybody who does this knows that the people we’re dealing with are armed terrorists. That’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter what laws or don’t law, or I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter what laws or don’t know. These people don’t operate under Law and order. They’re terrorists. They’re armed people who are willing to do anything that they can get away with to you. And law legislation, none of it really plays a part. The only thing to me that really plays a part is that I think that they feel some duty to hold up the illusion that they’re some type of legitimate law enforcement or some type of legitimate entity. And so I try to play on that more than anything because I know they don’t actually care about the law, but sometimes they do care about public opinion because if people really understood, if people really knew what they were, they’d be completely abolished immediately. I’m not just talking about the people that you talked about earlier, poor lower class, financially. I mean, if everybody middle class upper, maybe upper class knows what they are, but I really think that if most people really knew what they were, they would say, whoa, we want a system of law and order, and this is not it. This is armed thugs ruling our streets.

Stephen Janis:

Now, is that why you did those? Because we showed some of the videos, the video where you’re asking an officer for ID and those sort of rural reversal kind of videos. Is that where you got that idea? Because to me, they’re so revealing about policing space saying, I can come up to any person at any time and demand almost with the threat of arrest. Is that why you did those kind of videos because of that?

James Freeman:

Yeah.

Yeah. And that was inspired by a book that I read, the Most Dangerous Superstition by Larkin Rose. And I was reading it, and he was basically comparing, most of us were told that government is by the people, for the people, and that we delegate power and authority to our government. Therefore, and the point that he makes is if that’s true, then I can only give to you or delegate to you what I have. And so a lot of people even mimic this, that government can only have the power or authority that we give to them. But when we talk about it hypothetically and say, what if I were to go up to a cop and do this, still usually just doesn’t quite click with people. It’s a hypothetical, but when you actually do it, all of a sudden it’s shocking. It’s like, wow, what an arrogant piece of crap. This guy is a total douche bag. And I did it recently just a couple of weeks ago for the first time in years, and the internet has gone crazy over it. People described me in the way that people like Tom Zebra have been describing cops for a long time, and it’s horrible the way that they were talking about me. I said, that’s it. That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you.

Taya Graham:

Wow, that great. And those new videos are really amazing. I

Stephen Janis:

Would encourage everyone to go to James Freeman’s channel.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. And of course, all the watchdogs channels as well, watch or Tommy. But it’s amazing. And there’s a moment, one of the videos where, I know it sounds like a strange thing to say, but you snap on these gloves and it’s like somehow it gives you another level of authority. You already had the authority in your voice, but then when you snapped on the gloves, it was as if the person, the officer you were interacting with just handed over her authority to you. It was amazing. So when you folks have a chance, definitely go check out his channel. And I wanted to mention, since I was mentioning Otto as well, when did you find yourself really interacting with other YouTubers and other cop watchers?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, that’s good question.

Taya Graham:

I mean, I think you connected with Eric Brant fairly early on, but when did you find yourself interacting with other cop watchers and forming that community?

James Freeman:

Actually, Otto Otto was one of the first that I really connected with because he was local where I was at. So I mean, I had talked to a few others. Johnny five Oh was out in California. He flew out to visit me, but Otto was actually one of the first that I regularly connected with because it was important when we were doing this stuff to have somebody close by because there is a good chance that you’re going to get arrested, you’re going to go to jail, you’re going to need help from somebody else. The truth is, you really can’t do this stuff alone. You’ve got to have some type of support group. I mean, these cops are 900,000 strong across the whole country, and they’ve got legislators and judges and prosecutors and a whole team of people to terrorize you. And so just having a small handful of people, it was David Borin and Auto, the Watchdog that were my local people that I regularly worked with and connected with. And Otto really got the poopies end of the stick on what happened out there.

Taya Graham:

And also, I think David Bore was in the chat. So Hi, David Boron.

Stephen Janis:

Hey, David. I just want two more questions. One, Alice one then to you, what did you learn about YouTube using YouTube as a tool for publishing your videos and showing people what you were learning? How did YouTube influence your work? And I know it’s kind of a weird question, but I think YouTube is always left out of this conversation. And what did you learn about YouTube in the audience too? What kind of audience you have?

James Freeman:

Let’s see. What did I learn about YouTube?

Stephen Janis:

Well, what I mean is, I guess YouTube is a big feedback machine. You kind of learn things when you do videos certain ways, and

Taya Graham:

Some

Stephen Janis:

People like something.

Taya Graham:

I mean, and do you feel like in using YouTube, do you think the activism or the work that you’ve done would be even possible without YouTube? How important is YouTube to this whole idea, to this whole idea to the work that you do?

James Freeman:

Yeah, it’s essential. My wife asked me when I recorded at a border patrol checkpoint again, just last week, we were just traveling. We traveled an hour to go have dinner with family. And on the way back ended up going through a border patrol checkpoint. And I yelled at him and told him, you don’t have the right to do this and blah, blah. I got out of the car, I was belligerent, I was nuts on this one. And I get back in the car and my wife says, would you do this if you didn’t have a camera in your hand? I said, no, of course not.

Taya Graham:

I love the honesty.

James Freeman:

But the truth is that in the nineties when I was being bullied by cops, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t right for me to do what I do and wrong for them to do what they do. It was just that if you tried to assert your rights back then you were guaranteed to get that crap beat out of you and be thrown in jail and or prison. And so just like a cop wouldn’t do what he does without that badge and gun. And so you’re right, but also, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing here if cops weren’t doing something wrong. But you’re absolutely right though the camera, the ability to publish this and show it to the world, I really wouldn’t do it if I couldn’t show the world. I just end up beat up or dead. It wouldn’t help anyone if I wasn’t showing it to the world.

Stephen Janis:

That’s deep.

Taya Graham:

That’s incredible. But the thing is, you’ve also like Otto, you’ve incorporated humor into it, I mean, I thought what you said, because you had me read that book by Lobar, and I appreciate that, but you incorporated humor and there are these moments that seem really spontaneous. How did you decide to evolve that and why did you Yeah, it’d be funny. Yeah. How did in

Stephen Janis:

Situations sometimes didn’t seem like they were funny, but

Taya Graham:

Somehow you made them funny somehow might make them work. I don’t know how you managed to do that. Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

How do you do that? Or why did you do that?

Taya Graham:

Yeah. Better was the question. Why did you one day do that? I mean, would you see the absurdity of the situation? How did you get there?

James Freeman:

Yeah.

I think that it was both from a necessity, because I get kind of depressed watching too much of this stuff and being immersed in it too much. It’s really sad, and I am sure that you guys experience it too. Day after day after day, you see people’s lives being destroyed. You see people being terrorized, good working people. And so the comedy comes from some people have been offended by me making jokes out of really horrific stuff. But I don’t know, like Otto said, you got to do something to lighten it up. You’re either going to laugh or you’re going to cry once you really see what’s going on. So I try to laugh a little bit, and I think that it does help people. Making jokes and comedy of it, I think helps people to really truly see the absurdity of what government does, what cops do.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I think it was funny because the one that we used, the famous one where he asked the cop for his ID

Taya Graham:

And just the look

Stephen Janis:

On his face. But what’s interesting, he pauses for a second, and then you see something click in his head like, oh, this is kind of weird. Right?

Taya Graham:

Because initially he does sort of react to the authority in James’ voice, like, oh, and you see him processing, wait a second, wait a second. I’m the one who does

Stephen Janis:

This. Wait, the Exactly.

Taya Graham:

And that power reversal James, that is so powerful for people to see. It’s incredible. I don’t know. It spoke to me on a different level and it helped me interrogate for myself how much of other people’s authority, especially with law enforcement I have accepted and how I’ve had to do a lot of work to distance myself from that and find my own autonomy. And your work really highlights that. James or

Stephen Janis:

The better one, have you been drinking to, we should be showing these, but you can go to his, not the poor guy, but the cop looks at him like

Taya Graham:

Just confounded, just flabbergasted. We’re shortcircuiting his brain in that moment. Okay. Obviously I think we’re showing we’re James Freeman fans. I think we’re kind of embarrassing ourselves right now.

Stephen Janis:

But anyway, James, thank you so much for joining us.

Taya Graham:

Thank you so much. Because we are going to have to get to the super secret special person that we’ve been talking about this whole time. So we have to make sure to go forward and speak to the legendary Tom Zebra shortly. So James, we just wanted to thank you and before you go, if there is anything that you want to shout out into the world, please feel free to do so.

James Freeman:

Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. And guys, congratulations on six years.

Stephen Janis:

Thank

Taya Graham:

You,

James Freeman:

Thank you, thank you for what you guys are doing. It’s always an honor to be able to come on your guys’ show. Thank you.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you

Taya Graham:

James. Appreciate that’s really kind. We appreciate you so much. And next time we have you on the live stream, we’re locking you in for a full hour and you’re just going to have to sit with us. Just letting you know

Stephen Janis:

I’m

Taya Graham:

There. We’re locked in. Alright, wonderful.

Stephen Janis:

Cool.

Taya Graham:

Thank you James. Thank you so much. And so

We will be turning to the man we mentioned at the beginning of the show the OG cop watcher who started filming cops. And it sounds almost prehistoric to say this when people were just recording video on VHS tapes. And if you didn’t already know, his name is Tom Zebra and as we’ve explained it already and have discussed at length, his work was both pioneering and instrumental in building this community known as Cop Watchers. And just to give viewers just a little of how dedicated he is to his work and how he practically invented the current form of cop watching. We have a clip from 2012 we’re going to show, and then we’re going to have his legendary cop watcher partner, Laura Shark, come on and talk to us about it as well. So let’s take a look at this clip. Yep.

Speaker 8:

Officer, I hate to be the one to bring you the bad news. I’m going to try to break it to you gently. It’s against the law for you to ride that motor vehicle on the sidewalk here. Did you know that? Has anyone ever mentioned that to you before? Nope. None of your police didn’t tell you that in your police training.

Speaker 12:

Do you have a point?

Speaker 8:

I made it very clearly. It’s against the law for you to be on that sidewalk for me to make that left. Turn in the middle of the road and cut off that car. You’re mistaken Bacon. You need to get your motorcycle off that sidewalk. Why is that? You guys, you guys ride people on bicycle tickets every day for riding on the sidewalk, don’t you? Every day you guys write tickets to people on bicycles, don’t you? For riding on the sidewalk. And guess what? That’s not an enforceable law, but you’re on a motor vehicle. Let me ask you this, do you have an ID with you? I’m asking questions right now, not you. No, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. Let me explain something to you.

Speaker 12:

I’m asking the questions now. No, keep filming. Lemme see your id.

Speaker 8:

No, I don’t have id. You don’t need to have an ID to record. It’s the camera. It has nothing to do with recording. It has to do with

Speaker 12:

You making an illegal turn

Speaker 8:

Here. I didn’t make an illegal turn. I didn’t cut off a car. I beg to differ, bro. Keep begging to differ. Do you have an ID with you? I already told you. Told me what? I already told you. I don’t need an ID to record. You’re missing the point. You’re missing the point. The reason you just pulled around and questioned me is because I was questioning you is because you made an illegal turn. Came over here to question me wrong. Do you have a supervisor, Mr. Garver?

Speaker 12:

I’ve got plenty of supervisors.

Speaker 8:

Who’s the watch commander right now? I don’t know. Why don’t you find out? Why don’t you have ’em come out here? First of all, I don’t have No, no, no, not first of all, you do work for me. I’m a taxpayer and you do work for me. Why don’t you find out who’s the watch commander and you haven’t come out here right now?

Taya Graham:

That was pretty amazing, don’t you think?

Stephen Janis:

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Taya Graham:

I mean incredible.

Stephen Janis:

I know because motorcycle cops, they have their own TV show, so Yeah,

Taya Graham:

They do. And I have a little,

Stephen Janis:

What do you

Taya Graham:

Have? Some have just some folks saying that they love Tom Zebra and Laura Shark. Thank you. Slushy 58. And then I have someone saying hello, just saying, hi Jeff. Thank you. Hi. Real news fam. Good to see you. And I thought there was something that was really powerful here that was written and this is Leonine. And they said, then they came for the socialist and I did not speak out. Then they came for the next trade unionist and I did not speak out. And then they came for me and there was no one left to notice. And I thought that was really powerful because something that James said that was really important to have community that you can get in trouble, you can need help with

Speaker 4:

Bail,

Taya Graham:

You can need legal advice. And so that’s why I think the fact that this became a community so important.

Speaker 4:

And

Taya Graham:

Also of course, I appreciate that I’m a union member myself. I’m a union steward. So shout out Leah Teen. Thank you for that.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Okay, now we are going to go to Laura Shark and Tom Zebra. Are they here with us? Do we have Laura Shark to join us? Laura Shark?

Laura Shark:

Yes. Yes.

Taya Graham:

Do I hear her? Lovely boys. I think I do

Laura Shark:

Tom

Taya Graham:

Now. So Laura and Tom, we got you.

Stephen Janis:

Oh, finally together. Great

Taya Graham:

To see you.

Stephen Janis:

Great to see you guys. Great to see you.

Taya Graham:

So first, thank you both so much for being here. And then we have to ask Tom, this is your video. Maybe you can tell us a little bit why you felt it was so important to let this officer on his motorcycle know that sidewalks are not for motorcycles. You seemed very determined there.

Tom Zebra:

You cannot imagine the amount of abuse that not just myself, five years before this, before YouTube or anything else, I had gone through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is something that I’ve never really published, but the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals already ruled in my favor. I had already been through depositions with high power attorneys. I had already destroyed them and proved every single one of them was a liar. So when that video rolled around and you could still hear the fear of my voice despite 10 or more years of being proven and the police’s courts, the law, it’s not my court, it’s their court. I had beat them repeatedly. I knew the difference between right and wrong. And I knew even you hear Dusty Garber in that video, he tried to say, I don’t work for you. Whatever he was going to say, I don’t think he got all of those words out by that time. I already knew what they were going to say before they could say it. And it was like I was just on autopilot.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Tom Zebra:

But that video, when I said mistaken bacon, I think that must’ve put me on the map because that’s what people just love that. And

Before we go any further, I just want to say thank you for having me on the show and Otto and James and Laura and all you guys, it is a pleasure to be here with you. The conversation, I don’t have the video playing like the audience, but all the conversation I’ve heard has just been inspiring. All these thoughts, comments. There’s no way the human mind would be able to remember all the thoughts I just had. So I’m just happy to be here and unfortunately my mind can’t keep up with all the brilliance you guys have already discussed.

Taya Graham:

Well Tom, you are part of the reason we’re here. You have inspired us and we are just so happy to have you and have all these people talk about how important you’ve been to the community. We should ask Laura, so we have to ask Laura, I mean, how did his work affect yours? And actually, actually even before I ask that, how did you guys meet? How did this connection

Stephen Janis:

Connect? We both cop watching. You just ran into each other? No,

Laura Shark:

No, no. Literally at a store. I was walking in and we both weren’t really paying attention and we almost ran into each other.

Taya Graham:

No, you’re kidding. That’s like a

Laura Shark:

Me too. And I had been shown a video, a friend of mine was like, look at this crazy guy on YouTube. And I remembered seeing it in passing and then so when we almost ran into each other, I was like, wait a minute, are you the guy from YouTube? And he was all, oh, and it kind of just kind of spiraled from there. He’s all messaged me or I think I made a comment on one of his next videos and then, I mean I really had no intention to be doing this as well, but it gets you. I went on a cop watch with them and I was terrified. I mean naturally I couldn’t do it by myself for the first couple of times and it was just kind of amazing how much I didn’t know at that point in my thirties it’s just like, how did I not know that this was happening? And then I kind of teamed up with Boxy just to be able to break the mold and not be afraid anymore. He was doing his own thing and then we met back, I guess he’d seen some of my videos and he started to take me seriously and I really appreciated that. And then we were kind of just did all that. It’s

Stephen Janis:

Interesting, I kind of think of you as a team, even though I don’t, you both have your separate channels.

Laura Shark:

Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

Do you work as a team a lot or is it just my impression?

Laura Shark:

We cop watch a lot, but we butt heads even more. We dunno what’s up. We have no experience with that.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, we have no experience with that at all. We don’t know how to relate to that.

Laura Shark:

Yeah, we definitely have. I’ve come a long way because of him and I admit that sometimes I don’t want to. But no, he’s taught me a lot, him, Catman, Ricky, just the people that I’ve met through him too. I mean, you can’t stop learning. Every time I pop watch, there’s always something new and something else that I absorb into the situation. Something shocking, something simple. When we experience the Christopher Bailey incident, that was shocking for me. Even though it happens when you see something like that, it changes you

Stephen Janis:

Just so people know.

Laura Shark:

Friedman was saying that it will start to mess with you if you really don’t try to make a little bit of humor out of it. But that situation, there was nothing funny that

Stephen Janis:

We could. Just really quickly, so

Taya Graham:

Everyone knows who might not have seen it, Christopher Bailey,

Stephen Janis:

Who might not have seen it, it was a man who was beaten near to death by police

Taya Graham:

And or

Stephen Janis:

By sheriffs.

Taya Graham:

And your recording was instrumental, was absolutely instrumental.

Stephen Janis:

And your recording in a lie to a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. Is that correct?

Laura Shark:

Yeah, it was almost a year to the day till we heard from the lawyer. I had almost had to accept that I would never know who he was, if he survived what his story was. But we kept on the story one way or another because of the deputies we would see day in and day out. So I kept posting about it and I also did a sent video to the, I think the, forget who it was, they were doing a whole thing. They were trying to Department of Justice, sorry? Oh yeah, department of Justice, department of Justice, because they were calling for any video of sheriff abusing that stuff. And I was like, oh, I had a couple. I had a lot. And that was the first on the list that I sent them and I think that’s who contacted the lawyer or something behind the scenes.

And then she contacted me and it was literally I had resorted the fact that I would never know and then boom. And yeah, we took part in that case from beginning to end and it was a weird experience. It taught me a lot and Chris couldn’t have been so undeserving of that. There are bad people in the world, I’ll admit. Police can serve a purpose. It’s just too much that we see is the abuse part, but this is so undeserving of it, the nicest man you’ve ever met. It broke my heart when we did a Zoom. We never met him in person, but we did do a zoom with him and the lawyer and he was so sweet. He actually said he was glad it to him being in his health and just being able to take that opposed to somebody that might be on drugs or just be kind of health wise. And I was like, what? He was an amazing man and he did not deserve that and I’m glad he was able to have his resolve.

Stephen Janis:

Tom, do you remember when you decided to pick up a camera? Do you remember that moment? I know when we interviewed before, you said it was to protect yourself. Do you remember that day? Oh, you do. Okay. Can you talk about that?

Tom Zebra:

I remember it was to protect me. No, I couldn’t tell you when At first I put a bunch of cameras in my car because they would pull, I had a Cadillac that I think the stereotype is they’d expect to find a black person driving it. I don’t know if that’s the reason, but I just had a really shiny, beautiful car and I, there were certain agencies I couldn’t drive through without being pulled over. I mean, even though nobody would look at these videos, I couldn’t show them. Nobody cared to watch ’em. Not even my girlfriend friends, it didn’t matter. But

Stephen Janis:

No one wanted to watch it.

Tom Zebra:

Nobody gave a shit. There was no such thing as video sharing or whatever. It wasn’t like people’s phones probably. I don’t know if they had cameras or they didn’t, but they probably didn’t. So it wasn’t a thing where everyone just makes videos and whatnot.

Stephen Janis:

That’s so interesting. And you did it. I’ve got question, Steve. Yeah, no, no, I’m sorry. I’m thinking about that. I’m trying to understand. You’re making these videos and probably at that point you had no idea YouTube was going to and you just kept doing it.

Tom Zebra:

Go ahead. Well, I knew that they’re not going to keep pulling me over and searching me. Gosh, sorry. That’s okay. They’re not going to keep pulling me over and searching me. I wasn’t very smart, but I was wise enough to know because they had already started framing me, but they were framing me for little irrelevant things and the more they would frame me and make me have to go to court and all these stupid things just because they’re mad that they were wrong when they pulled me over, the more angry I got. Eventually I didn’t want to get out of the car and be searched again.

And so the camera thing, it was just like I said to protect me and it would confuse them and throw them off so it wouldn’t have matter if I had a hundred dead bodies in the trunk. Once they seen the camera, they’d be like, what’s that for? I’m like, the video you showed just today, you hear the guy said, well, what’s that for? Well, it’s a device, it records audio and video. I guess you never heard of such a thing, right? It’s sitting there, it’s recording you. So act accordingly. And usually at that point they would just disappear so I could continue on with my a hundred dead bodies in the trunk. Yeah. So it was to protect myself. Yeah. I mean neither of them or myself, none of us understood at that point that these videos would ever even have a purpose.

If I was smart enough to think, oh, one day there’ll be, and I told you this Steven the other night, when if I was smart enough to think ahead and realize one day I’ll be able to share these videos with the world, and if the police were smart enough to realize the same thing, we could have brought some police accountability around sooner, but unfortunately adopted. Yeah, exactly. If I would’ve been that smart, I would’ve been the inventor of YouTube. And unlike the inventor of YouTube who only published one video, he published the very first video, I think, and never to this day never published a second. I would’ve never stopped publishing videos and nobody would’ve been able to terminate my channel and take my videos down. So I think police accountability would’ve went much further. I was as smart. Unfortunately I’m not, and I wasn’t

Taya Graham:

Tom, I was sort of curious. We have our theories on why sometimes police are so aggressive in communities. Why do you think the police were so aggressive in your community? I mean, there’s one of the videos we showed. There’s a clip and I see you just sitting there and eating your chicken nuggies just looking as innocent as the day is long. And I’m like, why is this cop harassing him? And so I’m just curious, why do you think the police were so aggressive in your community and aggressive towards you?

Tom Zebra:

Okay, well, let me try to explain what I think is the reason it’s part of it. I can answer that question a hundred different ways depending on my mood. But this is according to the sheriff. I know you guys are well aware of their budget. All the money that’s spent a billion dollars goes towards what I would call unlawful traffic stops. They call it pretextual. Lemme try again. Pretextual traffic stops only half of 1% of these stops results and any contraband whatsoever, according to them, that’s their story. I don’t know if is the truth better or worse, but according to them, despite all these searches, they only find something illegal 0% of the time. Wow. They sure have a whole lot of motivation. Why would you search 200 cars and you’re only going to find something once.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, it’s a very inefficient way of police

Tom Zebra:

Make what you will that either they’re finding shit more often than they’re willing to admit and taking it home or their supervisor’s taking it home. Somebody’s taking it home because you’re not going to search 200 cars, find out a damn thing, and then next week you’re going to search 200 more cars. Why not just go have lunch

Stephen Janis:

Now, Laura, it seems like every cop knows Tom at least, and a lot of ’em know you was going out with Tom a little fraught. Everyone would see you with Tom Zebra and then the cops would be like, oh, it seems like they talk to you guys. They’ll use your names.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. It seems like they know you. Do they

Stephen Janis:

Respect you? Or they just saying, Hey, we know who you are. We’re going to retaliate. What’s that about?

Laura Shark:

I don’t know if it’s respect. I would say maybe they loathe us. They’re like, oh, great

Stephen Janis:

Here. I

Laura Shark:

Mean, yeah, they always recognize, Daniel’s got so much history with most of the police in our area. I mean, there are a lot, especially when we were doing sheriff, there’s just no way to get away from me on and around 2020, I was just put to the ground. I was just doing it almost every day. And yeah, they could not know me. But overall, just the surrounding cities, I appreciate the history that he has with them. I do feel like I’ve kind of paved my own path when it comes to it. We do kind of post in different kind of formats, but for the most part, yeah, I do appreciate when they do remember me, to be honest, like good. That’s what we’re dealing with now. Okay,

Stephen Janis:

That’s back. That also means your work’s having an impact. They wouldn’t recognize, you know who you are if they weren’t all watching your videos. So that is a good sign.

Taya Graham:

Oh no, I just wanted to mention, no, there’s Chuck Bronson is in the chat, actually have watched him. I’ve lurked during some of your videos while you’re driving around listening to the police scanner, Chuck. So hi, it’s great to see you. And Laura, I had put a comment on the screen that you’d mentioned that there are a lot of great women cop watchers, and I feel like they’re maybe not quite as well known. I was wondering if there are any cop, female cop watchers that you like in particular? Any names you’d want to shout out at

Laura Shark:

All? Oh, I love a lot of them. Yeah. And Jody of course.

Taya Graham:

Is that Jody Cat Media who you’re referring

Laura Shark:

To? Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Okay.

Laura Shark:

Hi, Jody Kat. She’s close friend. I met a lot of, I mean, I don’t want to just kind of throw out names like that mean, sure, I do do Miss Denise. We lost her and I’m

Speaker 4:

Sorry.

Laura Shark:

I do know that. I mean, so many flooding my mind right now and I don’t want to forget to say one.

Taya Graham:

Sure.

Laura Shark:

But I feel like I’ve been, it has blown my mind, the evolution of women cop watchers and it’s always so great to see when I see their posts, I’m like, and they’re doing way more than me, better than me, and I can’t express how much I appreciate their work.

Stephen Janis:

Tom, you heard what people said, James Freeman, all the watchdog about your work. I mean, how does that make you feel to know that people learn from you and how much they respect you and how much you’ve meant to their lives, and also just the fact that it’s all about YouTube connected you. How do you feel about that?

Tom Zebra:

I kind of feel like I’m not allowed to say bad words, but Tom f and Zebra, whatever, I know that’s my name, my moniker, but that’s just a persona. I’m Daniel, and I feel like the town zebra, that wasn’t really a choice that I made. Didn’t, it’s going to be tough to talk about this.

Speaker 4:

It’s okay.

Tom Zebra:

It wasn’t a conscious choice. I didn’t say, oh, I’m going to hold these police accountable. I felt like they didn’t give me any choice except to defend myself. And I feel like Otto, I can’t speak for him, but I feel like he might feel that same way, James. I don’t know if James had a bad experience or not, but just in general, it wasn’t something that I chose to do. It was something that they either I had to bend over and just spread my cheeks and take it and try to smile, or I had to turn around and stand up and it wasn’t easy. But I don’t deserve all the credit. Like I said, Tom Zebra, anybody could be the Tom Zebra in their town or the Jodi Cat or the Laura or the James or the Otto. But I’m not going to suggest anybody should. You got to be willing to probably take a beating and if you have kids, if you have a wife, if you have a mortgage, it’s going to be really difficult to accomplish anything because you can’t be going to jail and court. It’s going to be rough. You guys have all said so many brilliant things. I can’t remember all. I feel like I had a comment for everything and I’ve lost track of all of them.

Taya Graham:

No, but Tom, I think you brought up a really good point, and I think it shows the sort of self-sacrifice that I see and a lot of people in the community because like you said, if you’ve got a kid at home and let’s say you’re working two jobs, you literally can’t afford to go out and cop watching. So someone’s got to go out there and take the hit, so to speak.

Tom Zebra:

Look what happened to Eric Brandt. I mean, I can make a whole show I did. I spent weeks, if not months riding around. They put a bunch of laws in his name. That’s because he’s righteous. That’s because he’s the one telling the law what it is. It’s true if they named it after him. So how do a bunch of corrupt judges send him to prison when the same corrupt judges a year later are buried in their own corruption? If they were smart, they would’ve embraced Eric brand because instead of being embarrassed and all this by their own corruption, they could have avoided it. But they’re not smart because there’s no damn consequence for ’em. So they’ll never care. They laugh all the way to the bank. I’m sorry,

Stephen Janis:

Thomas. Okay, that’s perfect. I think you had a clip that you wanted to play.

Taya Graham:

There is a clip I do want to play. I just want, so actually I will play this clip. I have one more question for Laura before we lose, have our guest leave. Let’s play the clip, but let’s play this clip. This is very special. First, it’s a very special thank you to The Battousai who, because unfortunately because of a scheduling conflict, he couldn’t be here with us today, but he wanted to make sure to say hi to us.

Stephen Janis:

Let’s watch.

Taya Graham:

Let’s watch this.

The Battousai:

Hey Tom. Unfortunately, I was unable to make the live stream however, I wanted to make a quick video in my absence. I just wanted to say that you are one of four people who inspired me to record the police. Now, I did have the honor to meet you a few years ago back in California, and we did some cop watching together. I never forgot that moment. In fact, it was probably one of the biggest highlights of me recording police. Just wanted to wish you well and hope that you’re doing well, and hope to hear from you soon. Take care, buddy.

Taya Graham:

Wow. So we want to thank Philip of the infamous well-known Philip Turner of Turner V Driver. If anyone doesn’t know that case law, go look it up right now. It’s named after that young man who in his work has helped affirm and protect the right to record police as well as support your first amendment rights. So either one of you, Laura or Tom, I just wanted to know what you thought of, but two sides stopping in to say hi.

Laura Shark:

Yeah, no, he was great. We got to meet him and when he came out, I actually went to Texas before that and met up with him. Super sweet. Just the knowledge he has is amazing, and everything that he’s accomplished is makes me a little jealous, right? He’s so young. I know. Yeah. I mean, he is a great guy.

Tom Zebra:

If I could add, it was wonderful. We made a spoof video. We also made serious videos. He went through DY checkpoint with nothing, but I’m sorry, with his, instead of giving the license, he gave his carry concealed weapon id. I think something so outrageous that that’s kind of an outrageous thing to do. You don’t get my license. I’m not rolling the window down, but I do have a gun is basically how we went through that DUI checkpoint.

Speaker 7:

Wow.

Tom Zebra:

Obviously not my id. I would’ve never put him in that situation. But besides that, everybody here, you guys too. Happy anniversary. I’m going to shut up. If you don’t shut me up, I will talk forever. Thank you guys for having me and James Otto, everybody. Laura, even I told the one guy to put his name because I don’t remember it now. Is it Adam?

Taya Graham:

Did I

Tom Zebra:

Get it

Taya Graham:

Right? Yeah. Adam behind the scenes. Yeah. Adam, that’s Adam. Absolutely. Adam, thank you Adam. Adam’s

Tom Zebra:

Making friends.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome.

Tom Zebra:

I’m going to mute my microphone and just tell you guys, I love you and the viewers, everybody. I love all you guys, and I’m so happy to be back. I’m finally healthy again. I never stopped being on the street, but hopefully one of these days I’m going to start publishing again. And I look forward to seeing each and every one of you again. I’m going to mute.

Stephen Janis:

Okay.

Speaker 4:

Thank you. Thank you

Taya Graham:

So

Stephen Janis:

Much. And Laura, thank you too.

Taya Graham:

That’s

Laura Shark:

Beautiful. No problem. Yeah, thank you. And congratulations to you.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you.

Taya Graham:

Thank you, Laura. We really

Laura Shark:

Appreciate it you guys so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated how much you’ve done for my channel, for our channels, I mean in publishing about some of our stories and things we’ve seen. So

Stephen Janis:

Is our pleasure, the

Speaker 16:

Community for the world, happy to do it.

Laura Shark:

Oh, I thought you were going to mute

Stephen Janis:

Tom. You

Taya Graham:

Said I love the interaction

Stephen Janis:

Between them. It seems familiar.

Taya Graham:

You know what, Laura, I really appreciate that. And we are just grateful that you were willing to trust us because we are journalists and the media has a certain reputation and some of it is well earned.

Speaker 4:

So

Taya Graham:

We really appreciate that you trusted us with your stories. Thank you. We do.

Stephen Janis:

And keep up the great work out there in la.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, keep up the great work you guys. We love you too.

Tom Zebra:

One more thing, guys. I told you I’m coming through town Baltimore, right? I’m putting them motor homes. It’s going to have the mistaken baking pig on the back on both sides. I’m going to stop in as many cities as I can, and when we get there, I want you guys to tell me and teach me all about the Gun Trace Task Force and the work that you guys have done in your community. Make sure you mute me so I can’t come back on, please.

Taya Graham:

That was wonderful. We would be delighted to take you on a tour of Baltimore. We can show you where the gun trace task force dealt drugs. We can show you, we can take you to the courthouse where Sergeant Ethan Newberg shot us both daggers

Speaker 4:

As

Taya Graham:

He read his statement to the courtroom if he was being convicted on how many counts was it

Stephen Janis:

32? It was nine counts of false arrest. It

Taya Graham:

Was

Stephen Janis:

A lot.

Taya Graham:

It was 32 counts overall, but nine counts were false

Stephen Janis:

Arrest. I don’t remember exactly.

Taya Graham:

It was, it

Stephen Janis:

Was significant.

Taya Graham:

It was a significant number of counts. So we would be absolutely delighted to,

Stephen Janis:

And thank you both for being here to take you on our

Taya Graham:

Tour through Baltimore. We appreciate you.

So we have to thank all the wonderful cop watchers who joined us today. All of them are special to us because they have helped guide us through this meaningful movement. But now, just for a moment, we’re just going to spend just a little bit of time talking about us and what it means to have reached our sixth anniversary. And with that, the announcement about something we’ve been working on for quite some time now. One of the aspects of the most overlooked aspects of copy watching Cop watching is unlike much of YouTube is that it’s not all talk. What I mean is that it is about action. Literally the people we spoke to, the others who do it all must decide to go out, get a camera, find and film police. And that’s what makes it so unique in the offerings of YouTube. It is a hands-on assertion against the policing of space, against the policing of movement and against the policing of behavior and all the other sorts of psychological aspects of policing that would be hidden or less obvious if not for the work of these folks on YouTube. And that’s one of the reasons Steven and I decided we needed to explore this collection of YouTubers in more detail, tell their stories in conjunction with ours. So Steven, do you just want to talk just a little bit about what that means?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, we had encountered just today listening to the cop watchers that we had so many insights about things that you wouldn’t even expect beyond the realm of cop watching, about the psychology of how our government works, the psychology of how law enforcement works and the way it affects everyone’s life. And what we thought was very interesting to us, because we had to learn as journalists who adopt to YouTube and kind of become YouTubers. And through that, through the Cop watchers, we learned how to make that work on some level. And we wanted to tell that story, how our work evolved with their work. Wanted to tell through the prism of one particular cop watcher, which is Eric Brand and his story, and sort of uses a lens for which to view this whole movement, the movement, not just about cop watching, but about journalism, right? I mean you, like I said before, I started a newspaper and suddenly I found myself in our basement recording you and producing shows. And it was a journey for all of us. I mean, we kind of wanted to share how we learned from them and also look at some of the extremes and some of the questions that Eric raised as a cop watcher going to extremes that got him in a lot of trouble and celebrate this community. So we put together a film,

Taya Graham:

And it is a film that examines cop watchers, and it does so through the lens of Eric Brandt, but it’s not just about cop watching and cameras in YouTube. It’s about an aspect of YouTube that contravenes a lot of how we characterize it. Now we have to say Eric is considered very controversial. His tactics have been criticized and sometimes even condemned. And he has also been sentenced to 12 years in prison by Denver Judge for alleged telephone harassment of judges. And this story of how it unfolded and the consequences we cover in this film is just part of explaining why YouTube is not just a platform for videos, because we also covered the improbable community that emerged from the cop watchers who met on YouTube through Eric. And these connections are forged by activism which evolved into friendship, and I would say even into a family.

And the pushback from law enforcement that wreaked havoc on their lives is also explored as well, and the way they supported each other and how they endured the consequences of watching cops and how this collective fight forged real friendships and family that led to meaningful new achievements. But most importantly, as we told the story, one aspect of it seemed increasingly clear all of this, every single aspect of it was again, premised upon taking action, along with identifying the problem, policing these people decided to do something and do something specific, not just talk, not just speculate, not just debate, but act. And that was critical because through action things changed. People picked up cameras, watched police for hours on end and create videos. They were doing something specific about a specific problem. Now, by acting, things changed and by connecting their lives were transformed by using YouTube to come together in this, I don’t know, tactile sphere we call reality.

They changed it. I mean, as we mentioned earlier, I think we might have an issue with the Washington Post article. Even the Washington Post finally acknowledged in this article that cop watchers had changed police behavior. But enough of that kind of analysis onto the official announcement, Steven and I have filmed multiple documentaries, including the Friendliest Town, which is on policing on the eastern shore, about a Maryland police chief who was fired under very controversial circumstances and tax broke, which is a feature length investigation into the ways wealthy developers get even wealthier off the backs of my city’s taxpayers. And hopefully we might have a few links to those in the chat. We now have a new film that I’m excited to announce. It’s called I Am, but The Mirror, the Story of American Cop watching. It’s the story of the evolution of the YouTube version of Cop watching through not one, not two, but possibly three separate lenses. But let’s watch the trailer first and then maybe we can talk about it a little

Speaker 4:

Bit. Global. Globaltel Link has a collect call for you

Speaker 11:

From Eric.

Stephen Janis:

Our top story, a controversial Denver activist, is facing sentencing for threatening, not one, but three Denver judges.

Speaker 10:

Eric Brandt is an agitator. This is why I now advocate for the random shooting of judges. Judges have absolute

Otto The Watchdog:

Immunity, nothing that they do can they be held accountable for. I met Eric through YouTube. I really didn’t like the guy when I first saw his stuff. I thought that I’m going to watch his poor guy get his ass whipped on tv.

Speaker 16:

He’s going to say something, this cop’s going to flip the and whip his ass.

Speaker 10:

Here’s what he did in this case, he told Judge Rudolph’s staff, it is my thought that Judge Rudolph should be violently murdered. Who in the world thinks that that’s okay, Mr. Brandt, on each of these three counts, you’re sentenced to four years in the Department of Corrections. For those of you who do not know, a congregation of adult pigs is called a sounder.

Stephen Janis:

When TERs came to me with this idea of we’re going to cover these people called Cop Watchers, I was like, what? And I watched a couple videos and I was like, no.

Taya Graham:

So I finally come in, Stephen, to look at this video of a man who got arrested for filming the police.

Speaker 12:

Hey, what’s up everybody? It’s James Freeman. You doing all right over here? What department are you with? You got ID on you.

Speaker 16:

I’d say there’s about 800 people that have their own channels that are filming the police and either going live and doing it or posting in their videos later.

Speaker 17:

One of the things that, in talking about all that’s gone on is that without Eric Brand, none of this would’ve come to be.

Taya Graham:

Well, Steven, I’m sure you might have something to say since you’re the one who put together that trailer and also is the one playing the guitar and doing that music. So

Stephen Janis:

Do you want me to sing the theme song?

Taya Graham:

No, that would Maybe next time, maybe next time everyone, he can sing for you. But this time, maybe just give us a little bit about the layers of the film.

Stephen Janis:

Well, the layers, like I said, you have Eric’s, I guess, the evolution of Cop watching through the eyes of Eric and how Eric became sort of tested the extremes. And then you have the other layer of this community that was formed by YouTube of all things where people met online, but then ended up doing something active in the actual world and the tactile existence. And then you had the evolution of our journalism, as I said before, of how we learned become journalists on YouTube, and how we covered a movement that actually ended up changing the way we covered things. I mean, literally, it was like a mirror effect in some way where we adopted the way Cop watchers kind of adopted to YouTube. So all those things are told in the story,

Taya Graham:

And

Stephen Janis:

I thought it should all be put together in one place, what I like to do. And it had 1500 edits.

Taya Graham:

Yes,

Stephen Janis:

It was very,

Taya Graham:

This took a lot of work traveling out to Colorado, back and

Stephen Janis:

Forth.

Taya Graham:

And if you think cops cop watchers chasing cops or something, we were chasing the cop watchers around as they were chasing cops.

Stephen Janis:

So

Taya Graham:

We put a lot of heart and effort into it, and we really hope that you’re going to check it out when we do our launch.

But one of the reasons though, I really wanted to tell the story myself is to show how my evolution as a journalist was actually accelerated by reporting on the community of cop watchers that we feature in this documentary. And I wanted to share that I learned a lot from people I really didn’t even know and would’ve never have known at all if it hadn’t been for YouTube. And I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in Baltimore City and that I understood police misconduct, of course, which is something I experienced personally, but I had seen it as an urban issue. Cop watchers and auditors and independent journalists and people who are literally this comment section right now, they reached out to me and they helped me understand that I should investigate rural communities. That those communities were also enduring pain and harassment and exploitation at the hands of police.

And this was critical to me understanding that the police industrial complex has a boot that steps on many necks, and we need broad consensus across racial lines across city versus country, right versus left. We’ve got to agree this needs to change because it’s hurting all of us. And that for me is what makes this whole story so critical that these social media platforms that normally just keep us isolated and divided can actually be used to accomplish real change, but only if we act together and only if we use the ability to communicate, to translate our ideas into practice. And it taught me a lot about what journalism can do. That by covering a grassroots movement with all the effort and energy that the mainstream media normally heaps on the elites, we could help connect the dots. We could be part of accelerating ideas and connecting the people to each other in a way that made the push for progress more tangible, not just theoretical.

So on this the six anniversary of the Police Accountability Report, I want to express more than anything gratitude. Gratitude to the people who openly share their stories with us, despite the threat of police retaliation to the guests on our show who talk to us about some of the worst moments in their lives, and the brave souls from small towns to big cities who are willing to push back simply because they know it’s right. I know I’ve been inspired by them. I have seen Stephen Bees inspired by them, and we both understand that independent journalism is wholly dependent upon people being willing to speak to us and share with us and trust us. So please let me say this as my final thought. Thank you, all of you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for watching. Thank you for caring, and thank you for being willing to push for knowledge, the truth, and hopefully seeing the best in all of us. Thank you all. I really appreciate you.

Last week, we attended a protest outside the US treasury to oppose Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal purse.

It was raucous and impassioned but also revealed something that we had not fully grasped until we tried to peek our cameras over the surging crowd: the current lethargy of the left is more than just a temporary illness.

Several key Democratic legislators, along with a federal workers union, called the demonstration to push back against Trump’s historic executive overreach. At issue was the seemingly unfettered access to sensitive data and financial records bestowed upon anonymous tech bros working at the behest of Trump and his co-president, Musk.

The attendees were crammed into a small sliver of sidewalk. An array of democrats blasted Trump while accusing Elon Musk of being an unelected illegal actor tearing down constitutional safeguards with the carelessness of a child.

Still, the event itself—despite several thousands of vocal supporters—felt more hollow than substantive. The rallying cries of “if we fight, we win” seemed almost laughable, given the recent election results, which conveyed the Republicans’ stranglehold on all three branches of government.

Part of the dilemma for Democrats was that, once again, Trump had maneuvered them into the posture of tragically ineffectual opposition. Liberals were playing defense, defending institutions that the public mistrusts, fighting back against often fictive waste and abuse, and being loud and angry about being loud and angry.

Constantly being on defense sucks. And the Democrats always seem to be playing it.

But liberals can’t exclusively blame Trump for forcing them to constantly fight uphill. The problems for Democrats actually begin far from the capital.

As reporters, our coverage tends to be more thematic than geographic. This means we report on specific topics like criminal justice and economic inequality rather than the goings-on in a particular area of governance or geography.

This affords us the opportunity to observe party dynamics vertically, from top to bottom, from national to local. And in our opinion, backed by the facts we will recount, Democrats need to start playing offense at home. And that means enacting politics that actually work.

We recommend that instead of just fighting Trump’s fusillade of Constitution-wrecking executive orders, Democrats pivot to implementing progressive local policy as the true form of meaningful resistance.

That’s right: Start small. Fix the places you’ve broken. It would be a markedly better use of civic fortitude to advance effective initiatives in locations where they still have some say—namely, the bluest of blue states and cities.

It’s worth noting before we delve into the details of how this would work that the pushback against Trump has turned the Democratic party into a reactionary—and, often, regressive—entity that has been unable to even tout its occasional wins.

The years-long priority on pointing out how Trump is a norm breaker, de facto criminal, and just generally corrupt has rewired progressivism. Too angry to think about much else, progressives are in a constant state of outrage that not only distracts from focusing on better policies—even worse, it actually empowers the man they seek to contain.

I mean, why else would healthcare have been totally absent from the 2024 campaign?

Democrats wrongly bet on the power of Trump’s foibles to persuade—a mistake that became even more glaring after the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, when Americans of all ideologic stripes let the world know how much they hated the particularly cruel way our country pays for healthcare.

What were they thinking?

It seems mostly about Trump. Simply put, good policy has become anathema to Democrats, who are measuring their own capabilities and accomplishments against the ineptitude of a malignant narcissist.

Not a good place to start if you want to improve people’s lives through governance.

This criticism does not diminish or deny the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Bill, among others, were bold initiatives that, in part, enacted solid progressive ideas.

But in enclaves where Democrats have no opposition and should technically be able to thrive, they often fail to proscribe effective government-backed solutions. Places that should be a laboratory for sound progressive policymaking have become fierce economic inequality machines.

We know this because we live in one of these so-called blue oases where establishment Democrats allow legislation for transparency and accountability to wither and fail. We have witnessed firsthand how bad governance leads to outcomes that are astounding—given liberals’ alleged allegiance with the working class.

All of this failure is due to a simple, uncomfortable fact: the Democratic playbook often eschews the policies that directly improve people’s lives. Instead, they have conjured neoliberal solutions frequently tied to corporate subsidies, public-private partnerships, and corporate welfare that only heighten our currently historic economic imbalance.

This is not a new argument, but it is worth examining in detail if the party and our country want to move past the left-right debate and genuinely start solving problems.

In fact, we have a detailed example to illustrate precisely how this works, a front-row seat in one of the bluest epicenters and most efficient purveyors of this bad policy admixture: Baltimore.

The city hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Theodore McKeldin left office in 1967. But even with an absolute governing supermajority for decades, Baltimore’s political leaders have engaged in a myriad of ill-conceived, if not embarrassingly flawed, policy initiatives that have left the city depopulated, at times dysfunctional, and, worst of all, a generator of extreme economic inequality.

A recent report by the Baltimore Sun and some of our reporting illustrates this point. 

The Sun revealed that some 80% of all new apartment construction in the city since 2020 was deemed ‘higher-end’ or ‘luxury.’ That means the rent for most of the 6,700 units constructed since 2020 is simply unaffordable for residents of the city, which has a median household income of roughly $58,000.

It’s an astounding fact for a city that has one of the highest proportions of people living in poverty in Maryland. But it’s also mind-boggling because many of those same residents subsidized it.

As we outlined in our investigative documentary Tax Broke, the city has relied on an array of tax breaks to spur development and build those luxury apartments. There are so many incentives with acronyms like TIFs and PILOTs that it takes a glossary to define them all. 

Almost every new apartment complex built over the past 10 years has been constructed with a taxpayer subsidy. And it was a Democratic plan full of twisted policy prescriptions that made this questionable policy push possible. In Baltimore, Democrats have used the PILOT to engineer an entirely new form of corporate welfare.

PILOTs were originally designed to encourage tax-exempt organizations to contribute money to fund city services, hence the name: Payment in Lieu of Taxes. Johns Hopkins has a PILOT agreement with the city, though a recent analysis determined it is woefully inadequate to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars which Hopkins would have paid if its property were taxed.

The city’s primary PILOT program, known as High-Performance Apartment, gives 10 years of tax breaks for building an apartment complex anywhere in the city. The taxes are eventually phased in, but the costs to the city over that time are substantial.

Consider the high-end luxury enclave known as Harbor East.

Our investigation found that the 20-acre high-end dining and apartment sanctuary collected at least seven PILOTs. Over the 10-year period for which we were able to obtain records, the city paid out over $110 million in subsidies. Among them was a 25-year PILOT for the towering luxury Marriott Waterfront Hotel. That deal netted developers $57 million over its lifetime. And the residents of this shining city subsidize all of it.

But it gets worse.

Baltimore has been at the forefront of using another tax break, known as a TIF, or Tax Increment Financing, to keep development humming. TIFs allow a property owner to invest future property taxes into the property itself.

Some cities, like Chicago, divert the money into special tax funds. Baltimore, however, turns it into a lucrative financing mechanism for wealthy developers. The city sells bonds to Wall Street to refund up to 30 years of future taxes to a developer upfront. The developer then pays off the bonds by simply remitting their normal property tax payment.

This type of tax incentive contributes mightily to economic inequality, first by exempting massive developments that use city services from paying for them, and second by funneling tens of millions of interest payments to Wall Street that would otherwise go into the city’s general fund.

Baltimore’s last annual financial report showed the extent of the city’s commitment. TIF deals have led to an excess of $660 million in future taxes and interest diverted from the general fund. That means a poor, struggling city mired in poverty is paying the interest on bonds used to fund luxury developments out of projected future revenues.

This is an extraordinarily regressive policy for a city that touts equity as its unifying philosophy. It has led to a variety of tax-exempt zones in the middle of a city whose residents shoulder the highest property tax burden in the state.

Excluding wealthy developments from paying for services is just the beginning of the public largesse doled out to the rich.

That’s because many city-financed projects have been sold for extraordinary sums. The aforementioned hotel commanded a $122 million asking price. Another property—the former Legg Mason building—in the Harbor East development sold for a record-breaking $468 per square foot.

The city had a profit-sharing agreement with the Legg Mason developers in exchange for a tax break. However, the building’s owners forced the city to forgo that profit-sharing in exchange for a one-time $1.5 million payment. The details of that deal remain secret.

On top of the extraordinary financial benefits granted to developers, the way Democrats have managed this policy is even more troubling.

Last year, State Senator Jill P. Carter introduced a modest piece of legislation that would have authorized a special Tax Break Transparency Task Force to study the effectiveness of these policies. That task force would have gathered a variety of stakeholders to obtain the data and then analyze whether the city had actually benefited from this type of tax break. 

But the bill died in the House Ways and Means committee. Not because a member objected to it—at least not publicly—but because committee Chair Vanessa Atterbeary would not bring it up for a vote.

Bear in mind that this bill did not have a fiscal note. In other words, it would not have cost taxpayers a single dime. However, the questions about tax breaks it was designed to answer—including their total cost to Baltimore City and its residents—remain a mystery.

The city did pay for a firm called Municap to analyze TIFs.

Municap’s report was mostly laudatory, citing statistics about increased economic activity due to subsidies given to projects like Harbor Point and Baltimore Peninsula. The problem is that Municap profits from the same deals it analyzes. It makes money preparing applications for developers and also profits from the bonds that are used to finance them by, again, providing analysis.

That city officials have touted this system as an unbiased check on the wisdom of forgoing hundreds of millions of dollars in future tax revenue is, again, bad policy. So bad that it makes one wonder why the Democratic Party continues to debate how it became estranged from the working class. It wasn’t pronouns that did in liberals; it was policies like Baltimore’s tax break bonanza and the arrogance that surrounds them.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this recipe is that Baltimore’s predicament was predicted almost three decades ago. Then, a former mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico, an esteemed urban planner named David Rusk, wrote a book called Baltimore Unbound. In it, he argued that the city’s high tax rate and “inelastic boundaries” had doomed it to population loss and wealth extraction.

And that is exactly what has happened.

All of this is to say that if Democrats can’t fix Baltimore, how can they run a country? Because despite all the tax breaks and corporate welfare, the city’s population continues to shrink. People are voting with their feet.

The point is that the resistance to the Trump administration should be focused on fixing issues that have been ignored—improving people’s lives not by fighting ideological battles but by thinking like progressives. This means every policy move should be premised upon answering the following questions:

How do we solve the problems that people care about? How do we build affordable housing? How do we make a tax system fair and progressive? How do we create a process of governance that devises effective solutions instead of ideological cage matches?

This is an idea we plan to test in this purportedly blue state. That’s because a state delegate, Caylin Young, has decided to reintroduce the Tax Break Transparency Task Force. The bill is largely unchanged, but the political landscape is decidedly different. Still, Young says the issue needs to be addressed.

“I think that it’s a good issue,” Young said. “Transparency is always a positive thing. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

And that’s not the only bill we’re going to follow.

Maryland currently faces a $2 billion deficit. Gov. Wes Moore has said everything is on the table, including an ambitious school funding bill that sought to bolster education, particularly in poorer cities like Baltimore.

That’s why we’ll also monitor several other efforts to bring economic equality to the state in our reporting this year.

Delegate Gabriel Acevero will attempt to legislate a common-sense change to the tax code that seems like common sense but has proven quixotic: roll back a tax law that exempts country club golf courses from property taxes.

Maryland carves out a special tax exemption for country clubs with more than 100 members. The land used for golf courses is specifically included in a statute that exempts “open space” from being taxable.

Acevero says it cost the state tens of millions of dollars over the years and is misguided, given that the assembly will soon be considering cuts to public education to reduce the deficit.

“I think first we have to take a look at Maryland’s tax code as a whole, which is very regressive,” Acevero told TRNN. “I think that’s really the overarching issue, it’s not necessarily only the issue of the country clubs that are manipulating a tax incentive.”

Another piece of legislation we will be watching is even more quixotic than attempting to make country clubs pay taxes.

The Maryland Prescription Affordability Board is another Democratic artifice that has done very little to fix the problem its name invokes.

The board was chartered by the general assembly in 2019. Since then, it has only issued reports that advise the state to tamp down high drug prices. The lack of actual results may be in part due to the fact the first chair of the hoard was a drug company lobbyist. But it also was the victim of last-minute changes to the enabling legislation that turned it into little more than a glorified “study group,” according to STAT, a healthcare journalism site.

In this legislative session, new powers have been proposed for the board that might actually allow it to fulfill its titular purpose.

At a press conference in Annapolis this week, supporters of the bill said it would expand the board’s reach beyond patients covered by government plans and include private insurers.  Vincent DeMarco, who heads the advocacy group Maryland Healthcare for All, said it had approved “upper limit” prices for two drugs: Jardiance and Farxiga.

But if that price range is purely advisory or actually a cap remains to be seen.

That’s why we will be watching to see what happens with the proposed change as well, to see if Maryland can create a new blue wall to stand up to the pharmaceutical lobby.

Stay tuned for that.

All of this is an effort to shed light on the often obscure and unseen process of passing legislation. Bad policy often results from good ideas being buried under an avalanche of self-interest and petty politics. This year, we promise to shine a light on all of it, for better or worse.

We will report regularly on progress, or lack thereof. This time, at least, we hope the closed doors will not have the deciding vote.

On the campaign trail and beyond, Donald Trump and MAGA right have repeatedly presented themselves as the true representatives of America’s beleaguered working class. And yet, like the Capitol rotunda on Inauguration Day, Trump’s administration is filled with billionaires, mega-millionaires, and corporate oligarchs whose staggering wealth is increasing year after year while working people struggle to get by. How are people, voters and nonvoters alike, supposed to square this seeming contradiction? In this special post-Inauguration interview, returning guest and legendary economist Dr. Richard Wolff explains how the naked oligarchy on display in Trump’s inauguration and in his administration is not a contradiction, but a clear sign of a society hastening its own collapse under the weight of historic, unsustainable levels of inequality.

Studio Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Written by: Stephen Janis

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to our special postinaugural report, and it’s an extension of our reporting for our Inequality Watch show. And today we’ll break down what we like to call here at The Real News the Second Gilded Age, and that seems perfectly aligned with Trump’s ascent to power.

Now, the first one occurred nearly 100 years ago, and it didn’t end well. Now the chasm between the rich and poor is as extreme as it was in that era. Now, back then, wealthy industrialists like J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller ran the country while elected officials stood by. Now it’s tech bros like Tesla’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google. All of whom, mind you, had front row seats at President Trump’s inauguration. And we thought this was worth discussing in light of his inauguration, which seemed to us like peak Gilded Age.

In fact, there were so many billionaires in attendance and so many in his cabinet — I think it’s more than 10, right? — That we were wondering if it was some sort of fire code violation in the Capitol when there’s more than 50 billionaires in a room. What do you think?

Stephen Janis:  Well, I think billionaires are accelerants. So yes, it’s possible that they were treated differently in terms of counting for fire code, yeah.

Taya Graham:  I think you’re right. But you know what? In all seriousness, it’s pretty odd that an administration that purports to be the champion of the working class is pretty much run by union busting, employee downsizing, planet killing, and private equity hoarding vulture capitalists.

Now, the reason this seeming contradiction exists and what it means for us and how we can understand it will be the focus of our show today. We’re going to delve into the reasons why we’re witnessing this growing marriage between a boomer and a bevy of tech bros and what it means for all of us, because, as obvious as it might seem, there’s way more to this coalition of a few than meets the eye. Mechanisms that make this work that might surprise you, right, Stephen?

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, yeah. No, I mean there’s mechanics to this. This is all purposeful. This is not some sort of surprise. We’ve been building towards this for years. So it’s a feature not a bug of this system, and we’re going to talk about that with Dr. Wolff.

Taya Graham:  So Stephen, as we know, the upcoming Trump administration is stacked with billionaires, from Elon Musk to the former worldwide wrestling executive Linda McMahon. Media outlets estimate the cumulative net worth of this incumbent aristocracy is hovering around $460 billion.

Stephen Janis:  Wow.

Taya Graham:  And that’s why today we’re going to discuss what we like to call an economic imbalance and to see it for what it really is: a scam against humanity. To start, we’re actually going to borrow a phrase from President Trump’s speech, which we’ll listen to in just a moment. You’ll hear how he talks about how elites have extracted wealth and the American dream from the working class.

And that is a critical concept: extraction. Now, technically he said extracted, but we’re going to expand it a little bit. So let’s take a listen, and I think we might actually agree with this statement.

[CLIP BEGINS]

President Donald Trump:  For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair. We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad. It fails to protect our magnificent, law-abiding American citizens, but provides sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals.

[CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now, I think it’s interesting he would use the word “extracted”, and I wouldn’t disagree with the statement that wealth has been extracted from our citizens. It’s a pretty important word when we’re talking about the assorted billionaires that will be running his administration. But it’s also crucial for another reason — Stephen, maybe you can talk a little bit about it.

Stephen Janis:  Well, I think we’ve moved into an extractive economy [where] there is no value given to the people who are supposedly building this economy, who are creating this wealth, no value exchange. The idea is we’re not going to give you something, anything meaningful, anything substantive. We’re not going to give you good healthcare. We’re not going to give you the ability to afford education. We are going to extract wealth from you.

And I think that’s the only way you can have this much wealth amassing at the top in an extractive economy. You can’t have it in a balanced economy. And I know there’s some people who say, well, capitalism, whatever. But that’s the system we live in, and that system has been corrupted to the point by this massive wealth into being extractive of us.

And it creates a psychology. It creates a psychology where people actually cheer the people who are oppressing them; we love you. And they build systems that put us in conflict. So it’s important to think about psychologically what that means. We are being extracted. We are not part of an economy. We are part of an extraction system that serves the people that were up on that dais or podium.

Taya Graham:  I think that’s an excellent insight.

And I know our guest needs no introduction, but I’m pleased to give him one. Professor Richard Wolff is one of the most renowned and respected economists of our time, and he is celebrated for his ability to unravel the complexities of capitalism and inequality with clarity and depth. As the author of numerous groundbreaking books, including Democracy at Work and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens, and he’s the host of his own YouTube channel, Professor Wolff has dedicated his career to exposing the structural forces behind our economic system. And his expertise in worker-centered economics and his passion for empowering workers makes him the perfect person to help us understand the political and economic shifts we are witnessing today.

Please join me in welcoming Professor Richard Wolff. Professor Wolff, we are so happy to have you join us again.

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Thank you, and I will work hard to live up to your very generous introduction.

Taya Graham:  Well, thank you. Well, Professor Wolff, last time you were here, you helped us break down this extractive economy and what consequences it does have for working people. So what did you see on Monday with Trump’s billionaire-stacked inauguration? What do you think people might be missing, and what kind of concrete impact do you think this could have on our lives?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Well, sometimes the most impressive reality about a situation like that is not what’s present, but what’s absent. As a philosopher once said, sometimes absence is the most powerful part of what is present. And that’s how it was for me watching the inauguration. Because for me as a professional economist, the most crucial aspects of the American economy today were carefully and studiously kept away. It was like an absence, which, at least for me, was screaming louder than Mr. Trump or anybody else.

So let me briefly explain, and for that a little history is in order. Many years ago, about 75, at the end of World War II, the United States emerged as the absolutely dominant economic power in the world, a position it had never held before; Before, the British Empire dominated the world. Indeed, what became the United States was a small colony in a corner of that global empire.

In 1945, by contrast, Britain was destroyed. So were Germany and France and Britain and Japan and Russia and China. They were all either destroyed by the war or destroyed before and as a consequence of the war, leaving the United States — And we all know that. The dollar became the world currency. America spread its military bases, 700 of them now all over the world, just to let everybody know who the policeman on the corner was or is. The American economy produced so many goods and services that we could and did help Europe rebuild, et cetera, et cetera. We were dominant. We set up the World Bank, we set up the International Monetary Fund. We literally organized, managed, and ran the world economy. And we made America grow very spectacularly in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, even into the ’90s. Very impressive.

But as anyone with the slightest knowledge of history would have known — And there were plenty who did — They said, this is an exceptional moment. You’re not going to have this situation of being the only one at the top. It comes out of the worst war the world has ever seen — And we don’t have that every day, thank God — And therefore it’s going to erode. It’s going to fade. Also, remember that every single empire that the world has ever seen: British, French, German, Dutch, Russian, Greek, Roman, it doesn’t matter, they all went up, and then they all went down. The American empire built up after World War II, went up. So it was only a question of when would it go down?

Here comes the first reality that was nowhere in sight on the inauguration. What are we as a nation going to do? How are we going to go through a declining empire? And lest anyone have a doubt, we are declining, the United States now, the dollar is less and less a global currency. A few years ago, central banks around the world kept 80% of their reserves in the dollar. It was considered as good as gold or maybe better. Now that number is about 40%. The dollar is still important, but nothing like it was.

Let me give you another example. These are big numbers everybody knows. The United States has a group of seven nations, of which it is one, called the G7, the Group of Seven: the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. That used to be the powerhouse core of the economy of the world. The United States as the big one in the middle, and then the other six as its allies. Well, let’s look at it today. If you add ’em all up, they together, all of them, the US and the other six, produce about 26%, 27% of the world’s output.

But there’s another group that has emerged. It’s called the BRICS, B-R-I-C-S, that stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. And the original five, they started about 15 years ago. Now they are 22 countries.

Now let me tell you very briefly about them. If you add up all the goods and services they produce in a year, the way I just did for the G7, the total portion of world output that they account for is about 35%. Let me remind you, the US and its allies account for 27% world output. BRICS, China and its allies, account for more, much more. They’re an alternative pole in the world economy. That is the more enormous reality about our economy than anything else.

Stephen Janis:  But that brings up a great question, Dr. Wolff, when I was listening to you, I was thinking about this, and yet our economy is not producing as much or not growing in the way you’re talking about the other economies, but we have more billionaires than any other economy. What does that say about the way our economy operates, that even when we’re declining, there is a smaller and smaller group of people becoming wealthier and wealthier and wealthier and wealthier? How are those two…? Those seem contradictory to me. How do we reconcile that?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Not at all, not at all, because it’s exactly what happened in every other economy, every other empire, and it’s easy to understand why. When an economy is going up, the people at the top can afford to be generous. They’re making a ton of money, they’re becoming wealthy. Sure, they can pay an extra 4%, 5% a year to their workers, keep ’em happy, avoid a strike, and there’s so much money in the growth period that you can afford it.

But when the economy goes down, what the people at the top have always done — And are doing now in America — Is those at the top, the CEOs, the people who we all know who they are, they use their wealth and power, shouldn’t surprise you, to hold on. And because they have wealth and power, they can do that, they can hold on. Which means the costs of the downturn, we, the rest of us, it’s offloaded onto us. So what you’re seeing is that the inequality in the United States gets worse.

And look at the irony — I’ll give you a statistic. Earlier this week, the most important research outfit in the world — Oxfam, located in Britain, keeps track of this — Gave their annual report, and it added up the experience of the roughly 3,000 billionaires that exist in the world today. And, as you rightly said, many of them are American, not all by a long shot, but many of them. And here’s the statistic it gave: across the year 2024, just ended, the collective wealth of the 300 billionaires rose by over $6 billion per day.

Taya Graham:  Oh my God, that’s incredible.

Dr. Richard Wolff:  OK, so look at what I’m telling you. Capitalism as a global system is making those already super wealthy even more super wealthy.

Stephen Janis:  But what’s amazing, extraordinary is that you’re saying as our economy declines, as working class people’s lives get worse, their wealth gets more concentrated and higher. That really seems, to me, a horrible prescription for people.

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Unfortunately, if we had better leaders, they would be talking to us about it. What are we going to do as a nation, the road we are on of a declining empire becoming more and more unequal? Look, you don’t need rocket science to understand that’s not sustainable. That situation is going to blow up, and it’s not going to be pretty, not even in a country that didn’t have everybody with a gun. We are in a very strange [place]. That’s what our leaders should be talking about. What do we do about it?

Instead — I have to say this, in all honesty. Instead, what I’m watching at the inauguration and in the days since is a kind of lunatic theater. It’s a theater in which the lead actor, Mr. Trump, pretends to be the world’s tough guy. I’m going to take back the Panama Canal. What? [Crosstalk]

Stephen Janis:  You’re saying he’s not?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  I’m going to snatch Greenland for a golf course. I’m going to make Canada the 51st state, and I’m going to stick it to the Mexican — My God. Every one of those issues, whether it’s drug traffic or anything else, the war on drugs is at least 65, 70 years old. Every president has announced he’s going to fight it, and every single president has lost that fight. We are [crosstalk] with drugs today every bit as much as when I was 10 years younger, 20 years younger, 30 years younger. I’m not fooled, and I don’t think anyone in America is.

The biggest change in drugs is that we, the Sackler family, which just made a settlement, produced enough opioids to kill 700,000 people over the last few years. We don’t even need Mexico. We’ve got a drug problem in which Mexico doesn’t figure.

And as the new president of Mexico said, and she’s quite right, the drug problem is a problem of supply and demand. Part of it is the supply that comes up, in part, through Mexico, but an enormous part of it is the demand. There is no drug trade unless America, as the single largest buyer of that crap, weren’t doing it. I mean, what are you doing? He’s trying to suggest to a frightened America that the problem is over there, the bad Panamanians, the bad Canadians. This is childish. [These are] gestures of desperation.

There’s an old scene that comes to my mind to explain this. It’s in the cowboy movies we all saw when we were younger. It’s when the sheriff can’t prevent the bad guys from riding into town and robbing the bank. And there he looks. The useless sheriff didn’t stop it. So he says, with great bravado, round up the usual suspects. He wants to look like he’s tough because that’s better than looking like the failure he was.

Stephen Janis:  That’s a really good point.

Dr. Richard Wolff:  [Crosstalk] Trump has been the president before. Let me assure you, during his time as president, inequality in the United States, by all its measures, got worse. Now I don’t want to be unfair — They got worse under Biden too, and they got worse under Obama too, so he is not outstanding. But did he stop it? Not at all.

The tax cut that he gave in December of 2017, the first year of his office, was the worst blow to equality we could have had — Made the government bankrupt because it didn’t have all the revenue that corporations and the rich no longer had to pay. So the government had to borrow, growing the deficit. And who did it borrow from? The corporations and the rich. The money they didn’t have to pay in taxes, they turned around and lent to the government instead, which means we the people are on the hook to repay all that money plus interest because our leader, Mr. Trump, gave them that tax cut. Instead of being shamed, he goes around celebrating it. And we live in a country — And this scares me, this is what’s scares me —

Stephen Janis:  It’s pretty weird. Taya, you had a question?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  [Crosstalk] We live in a country of denial, and that is a very big danger we have to face

Taya Graham:  Professor Wolff, I really appreciate that you brought up the historical context, talking about that, perhaps, we are in an age of decline. When you were last on the show, we were talking about how we might be living in a Second Gilded Age, but now what I’m hearing from you is that we are an empire in decline. Well, just like with the Gilded Age, that didn’t end well. What does it look like for America to be an empire in decline, like on the ground for us regular folks trying to hold onto our jobs? What does the decline of empire actually look like for us?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Well, I’m afraid it means that we are now governed by those people you saw up on the dais during the inauguration. The only dynamic center of the American capitalist system today is high tech, Silicon Valley. Those people now are the ones that are still making money. Everything else is either better done, or more cheaply done, or both, elsewhere. Indeed, the United States’s corporations have moved, ever since the 1970s, in huge numbers.

Look, half the cars produced in China now are produced by subsidiaries of American companies. The abandonment of America is something led by the corporations. Mr. Trump likes to point to the Chinese, but they didn’t do it. They couldn’t make the corporations go there. Those corporations went there because it was profitable.

Here’s my fear: The United States’s mass of working-class people are being prepared to function the way the poor of the rest of the world function. They are the backwater. They are the hinterland. They’re what you see when you leave the capital city and you go to where the mass of people are much, much poorer. Look at it. This government wants to attack social security and Medicare and Medicaid. It wants to take away the few remaining supports.

Look at us another way. When my fellow economists from around the world ask me, they ask me about the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage in this country is $7.25 per hour. It has been at that level since 2009. Every year since then, prices have gone up, some years only 1% or 2%, other years, 9% or 10%. That means for the last 16 years, 2009 to now, the poorest of the poor amongst us, people living on $7.25 an hour, have been savagely abused. Because every year with rising prices, that $7.25 buys you less. What kind of a society goes to people with $7.25 and does that to them? We are seeing levels of cruelty —

Stephen Janis:  It’s interesting you bring up that policy, because one of the things that people that blame, liberals that blame, or we blame, is the idea of neoliberalism, where you have public-private partnerships, and that’s led to this bad policy. But I was wondering, are we now, because listening to you right now, what I’m thinking is, are we in the postneoliberal age? Should we just cast aside that boogeyman we use a lot of times to explain bad policies and think about this whole what we’re seeing now as something different?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Yes, it’s different. It is important that you understand over the last 40 years until 10 years ago, we lived in an age called neoliberalism, globalization. You might remember we were told over and over again that it’s good for the whole world that corporations close their shops in Cincinnati and move them to Shanghai, that we will all be better off to get these marvelous… For 30 years. And the corporations went; They had to, their competitors were going, and they would’ve been outcompeted if they didn’t go. China offered cheaper wages than Americans demanded. China offered the biggest growing market in the world because of their size. So every corporation sent its people over there.

I teach in business schools. We teach people if you want to have a successful business, go to where the wages are low and the market is growing. They listened to people like me and they went over there. That’s why this is the area that is growing. We are becoming what they were, and they are becoming what we were, and that’s very upsetting. But you don’t solve it by pretending that it isn’t there. We don’t have the empire anymore.

Let me remind folks, the war in Vietnam, which was a big turning point, was a war between the United States and the Communist Party of Vietnam. The United States lost the war. The people who have been running Vietnam since, to this moment, are the Communist Party who defeated the United States. I know this is upsetting, but you ought to face the reality. In Afghanistan, we went to war against the Taliban. That war is over. We lost. The Taliban now runs the country. In Iraq, we lost. In Ukraine, we are now losing. How many hints do you need? You are not the big cheese in the world anymore. The best rocket, the best missile in the Ukraine War to this moment is a Russian one.

Taya Graham:  Professor Wolff, I have to ask you, because you brought up something really interesting about jobs. Basically, manufacturers sending jobs and goods to where it’s cheaper. If Chinese workers can produce a good for cheaper, then they’re going to produce their goods in China. But now President Trump is coming in at least saying that he has a focus on nationalism and protectionism. That might pit the US worker against global economic corporations. So I’m just wondering, how is this going to affect worker solidarity? How is this going to affect businesses? Some of our most important union movements were international solidarity movements. What do you see happening here?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Well, I think you’re absolutely right. We are shifting to a nationalism. That’s because we have to protect our industries because they can’t compete with others. All will blame the Chinese, and they’re all cheating. That’s very boring and very old. It is what every country that loses in the competition says.

But the fact of the matter is, to give you one example, 15 years ago, every automobile company in the world went to work to try to develop the best, cheapest electric car because that’s the wave of the future. And we now have an unqualified winner. One country and one company produced the best, cheapest electric car. It’s called the BYD corporation. And if you’ve never heard of it, it’s because it’s Chinese.

And you know what Mr. Biden, our president, did? He took the tariff — And remember, a tariff is a tax levied by the United States government on United States people, paid to Washington — The tariff of Mr. Biden on the BYD electric car was 27%; Mr. Biden raised it to 100% percent. That means if BYD produces a $20,000 electric car and you in America want to buy it for your company as an input or for yourself as your personal vehicle, you would have to give 20 grand to China to get the car, and then another 100% percent, $20,000, to Uncle Sam as a tax, costing you $40,000, which is why you don’t see BYD cars on the roads in the United States. But if you went to Europe, as I recently did, you’ll see them all over the road.

Here’s the irony: The United States thinks it’s isolating the bad guys around the world. What the rest of the world now thinks? Their job is to isolate a rogue capitalism in the United States. We are putting tariffs on everybody. We’re slapping everyone — Take back the Panama Canal, make Canada the 51st… You know what that looks like? Exactly. We all know what it looks like. Will Americans find it heady to think of themselves as powerful? Not as they understand. That’s not an expression of power. That’s a desperate theater because they can’t face the loss of power that is our reality, and which we could handle if we were honest enough to admit it.

Stephen Janis:  Well, it’s interesting you bring that up because now that the Trump administration is saying they’re withdrawing from the Paris Accords and they’re not going to be really competing to build green energy, green products, alternatives, are we just conceding the future to these countries like China? Are we saying, you know what? We’re out of this. If you want a gas guzzler, come to the US, but if you want a nice, cheap electric car, go somewhere else. Are we conceding the future to these people?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Whether we understand it or not, we are making a future in which everybody who wants a green version of whatever there is will be buying not American goods, because they’re not made that way. We are so strong and tough, we won’t do it, and we’re screwing ourselves. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot. Every company in the world that competes with an American company and that buys cars and trucks as part of its business will be buying the Chinese car because it’s the best deal any capitalist around the world can get for a car, whereas the American can’t get it because of the crazy tariff. That means, sure, we’ll have a few more jobs for autoworkers, but everybody else’s job is becoming more uncertain because their employer can’t get the competitively lower priced goods around the world that the American… It’s awful to watch.

[Crosstalk] The American people by telling them, we’re going to protect you. You’re not. You can’t. We live in an interdependent world which the United States helped to create, and now it wants to withdraw, to which the answer that history will give: way too little way too late.

Stephen Janis:  Wow, Taya —

Taya Graham:  Professor Wolff, I have to ask you this because you made me think about something that’s actually quite personal, which is AI, and I saw that there was a $500 billion promise to create AI infrastructure for OpenAI and other companies. And it is mind boggling to me, especially because it’s not tied to any kind of regulation. And I would say there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about AI, whether you’re concerned about deepfakes being used to spread misinformation, or you’re worried about a friend becoming attached to an AI person instead of a real partner, or if you’re just worried about all the jobs that will disappear because of the chatbots because so many customer service jobs are being wiped out. And it’s even harming our industry as journalists. I know people who are graphic designers and writers that are in big trouble now. Or you could be worried that an AI bot is going to deny your healthcare just like UnitedHealthcare did.

So this seems like instead of our government protecting us, they’re throwing fuel on the fire. Professor Wolff, what are your thoughts on AI and its impact on our jobs, especially in light of this $500 billion promise?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Well, let me break that into two parts. First off, $500 billion, that’s just Mr. Trump bloviating. It has no meaning. And he got attacked by his buddy Elon Musk within minutes of issuing that because there’s no money to do it. It’s just I’m going to do $500 billion. Where are you going to get the $500 billion? Musk really raked him over the coals. How these guys are great buddies after this is going to be a mystery to watch — Unless neither of them listens to what the other one says, which I doubt. So this is all very early, vague speculation.

But now let’s turn to your bigger question: What about AI? My reaction to that is the same as what about computers? What about robots? What about all the big technical advances? They were always vehicles that could be used in different ways. Don’t listen when someone tells you AI or electricity or robots must be this way.

And I’m going to explain it with a simple example because it gets the idea across. Suppose there was a machine, AI, robot, doesn’t matter, that made workers twice as productive as they used to be. So instead of 10 widgets an hour, they could now make 20 widgets an hour. That typical AIG is supposed to allow one person to work the machine and get the output.

OK, here’s what happens in capitalism: The capitalist says, oh, great, he buys the machine, fires half his workers because he doesn’t need them anymore because the other half are twice as productive. What does he do with the money that he saves from the half that he fired? He keeps it; more profit for himself. He’s overjoyed. And that’s how he uses the technical breakthrough.

OK, now let me give you an alternative. Suppose there were an enterprise that looked at the new AI or whatever it is and says, wow, it’s twice as productive. Here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to buy that equipment or that machine. We’re not going to fire anybody. We’re going to reduce the workday from eight hours to four hours. Why? Because now with the new machine, the AI in four hours can do us twice the work that it used to. We don’t need people to work four hours. We can be the same firm. Instead of firing the people, you lowered the workday.

Now let me ask you something. If you live in a democracy where the majority rule, we know which way the majority would want to go: Give me half my workday off as leisure because I can be more doubly productive. We don’t do what’s democratic, we do what’s profitable for the tiny minority of people who own the business, so they fire half the workers. That’s why we are afraid. It’s not AI that’s the problem, it’s capitalism that uses each technological advance in order to do what they say they’re going to do: maximize profit.

I have taught in business schools. That’s what businessmen and women think their job is, to maximize profit, but that helps the people who earn profit. It doesn’t help the people who live on wages, but they’re the majority. A democratic workplace would make the decisions that are best for the majority. We don’t live in such a system. Capitalism is the enemy of democracy, and it always was.

Taya Graham:  Professor Wolff, that is so incredibly powerful what you just said, that we don’t actually need to be afraid of AI, that we need to be afraid of how capitalists might use it [crosstalk] to line their own pockets. I really appreciate your insights.

I almost feel bad that I’m going to ask you such an unserious question now in light of these important issues we’re discussing, but it’s being debated quite hotly across a lot of social media platforms, and that is, did Elon Musk give a Nazi salute? So just allow me to run a clip for you, and then I would like to hear your thoughts, and I’m also going to share with you a few of the social media posts and things people had to say.

[CLIP BEGINS]

Elon Musk:  And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you [gestures]. My heart goes out to you.

[CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  So let me just share with you a few of the social media posts that were also made in light of that. Now, @JonathanPieNews posted, “Now, I know what you’re all thinking, but who hasn’t accidentally done a Sieg Heil on their first day in government?” Now interestingly, the Anti-Defamation League wrote that “[…] @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.” And what was amazing is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to the ADL with, “Just to be clear, you are defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity.”

Stephen Janis:  It’s interesting too, Taya, that the epitome of capitalists there would be associated with a fascist symbology. It’s interesting the way — And I don’t know if Dr. Wolff feels anything about this — But does corporatism lead to fascism when corporatism has too much power and the profit motive becomes too embedded in the political system? Does it become fascist in some sense?

Taya Graham:  And what did you think of his gesture?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Well, let me deal with Elon Musk first.

Stephen Janis:  OK.

Dr. Richard Wolff:  The gesture could mean a variety of things. I’m not inside Elon Musk’s mind. I don’t know what he intended or didn’t, if it were there all by itself. It’s open to interpretation. But Elon Musk has also gone out of his way to make himself aligned with the most right-wing forces in the world. He is now a major supporter of the right-wing party in Germany, a party which is widely considered in Germany to be the inheritor of the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. If he were concerned not to have his gestures misunderstood, why in the world would he choose to endorse a political party? Which makes, by the way, everybody else in Germany who doesn’t like this right-wing party, all of the other parties, all of the other parties have made a declaration they will not work with this right-wing party because of its… He’s chosen to go along with that.

He’s also wealthy because of what his parents got out of Apartheid South Africa. You’d think a kid with that in his background — I’m not blaming him for whatever his parents did — But a kid with that in his background might want to go out of his way not to do anything that might suggest that that commitment to Apartheid, which made his family rich, didn’t live on in him. No, this man is taking many opportunities to show that he is. He’s erased tweets — I won’t repeat them — But that also point in that direction.

Given all of that, I would have to join Ocasio-Cortez in wondering what in the world agitated the Anti-Defamation League, which is supposed to be on guard against symbols like this, from bending over for Mr. Elon Musk. Isn’t it enough to see our president do that? Do we all have to mimic this sort of behavior? That would be my first response.

Stephen Janis:  Are we headed towards something? As inequality keeps rising, is it inevitable to be a collapse? Is there any way to fix it politically before we get to that point? Or are we in no way able to avoid the consequences of this historic inequality in the Second Gilded Age we talked about?

Dr. Richard Wolff:  I don’t predict the future. I don’t believe in it. I can’t do it. I don’t think anyone else can. So “inevitability” is a word that I don’t think, it’s not in my vocabulary.

Stephen Janis:  Got it.

Dr. Richard Wolff:  I don’t know. I believe it’s always possible to make interventions, to change things, and in any case, that’s what we have to try to do, otherwise we’re not really full citizens and full human beings.

But I want to make it clear: I believe the United States is heading headlong into a dead end economically, and therefore also politically and ideologically. We as a nation were remarkable in the 19th and 20th centuries. We provided roughly from 1820 to roughly 1970 rising real wages for the American working class every decade for 150 years. That made us special. No other working class in any other capitalist country got that story. That’s why millions of people came to the United States from Europe, for example, during the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, because they expected a better deal here than they could get in Europe, and they got it.

Alright, that made us think we were very special. The religious amongst us thought that God somehow smiled more on America than he or she or whatever you think it is smiled elsewhere. But the reality is it had to do with a particular position in the world at that time that we occupied.

I don’t want to take us away. We made an effort, took advantage of that situation, and we did pretty well for a while. That is now over and it’s not coming back. And the question of the world right now is will there be a new empire to replace the American the way the American replaced the British? And will that new empire be Chinese? Is that one option? You bet.

Let me remind in closing, the United States and its G7 allies together comprise somewhere around, let’s be generous, 12% to 15% of the world’s people. The BRICS today, with their 22 countries, comprise roughly 60% of the world’s people. The future is with them, not with us. We can work a deal, we can work an accommodation, we can make it work for both sides, but we have to be willing to do that. Instead, our leaders are full of bravado, and ugly bullying, and we’re going to shut you down and close you off and bomb you into the — Wow. That’s not an auspicious sign for a loser.

And I know that’s hard for Americans, but that’s the reality. But we can make it work. I believe so, and we can make it a good time for the American people, if not for the billionaires. But we have to face the situation we are in and how to make the best of it. We are not doing that, and we’re losing precious years while we go through these desperate gestures of self delusional make-believe.

Stephen Janis:  Well, thank you Dr. Wolff.

Taya Graham:  Professor Wolff, thank you so much. Those are some hard truths that I think we all need to accept and understand so that we can chart a path forward that will actually benefit the majority of us.

Stephen Janis:  Well, it’s interesting because the picture he paints, it makes Trump seem even more inevitable because if you’re in decline and wealth inequality is increasing, you’re only going to have one emotion that comes out of that, which is anger and resentment. If you don’t, as he points out, acknowledge it and say, look, this is a new reality. We’re not the same as we were 50 years ago. We have to acknowledge it before we can get through it. So what you have —

Dr. Richard Wolff:  What Mr. Trump is doing is cashing in unjustified fear and anger, but carefully doing his job, focusing it away from the billionaires, away from the capitalist inequality, and making us learn to hate the Chinese, and maybe now the Panamanians, and the Canadians, and the Mexicans. It’s disgusting, but you understand the logic of why it’s unfolding that way.

Taya Graham:  Professor Wolff, thank you so much for making that so clear for us. We hate to let you go, but maybe when you leave, you’ll just give us the promise that you will join us again soon.

Dr. Richard Wolff:  I’d be glad to. I believe in these kinds of conversations. I think that The Real News Network is doing a great job producing them and disseminating them. That’s what the country needs. If Americans get a chance to understand the situation, something other than the drumbeat of the mass media, then we have a chance. So I’m as much in your debt as you ever are in mine.

Taya Graham:  Thank you so much, Professor. That was very kind.

Dr. Richard Wolff:  Good to talk to you.

Stephen Janis:  Good to talk to you too.

Taya Graham:  You as well.

So, Stephen, I have some thoughts. Do you have anything you want to say before I get started?

Stephen Janis:  Well, again, I think it was interesting that everything he said, the psychology of it, is so natural. As a country loses its position of dominance, it turns in on itself, and there’s nothing more turning — And then meanwhile, there’s a few people, fat cats who are profiting off that decline. And that’s why we have this extractive economy, not an economy that improves people and their material existence, but actually puts them in a horrifying psychological position of being extracted from. So what he said made a lot of sense and really explains a hell of a lot.

Taya Graham:  And it’s an extraction and distraction economy, which is fueled by those social media billionaires.

Stephen Janis:  It’s so true. You need both distraction and extraction at the same time.

Taya Graham:  So as we reflect on these sweeping promises and executive orders that President Trump has unleashed in his first days back in office, it’s clear we are facing a profound moment in American governance, and one that demands careful scrutiny, honesty, and compassion. From the deployment of ICE agents to Chicago to the aggressive push for more drilling, these policies seem to serve a really narrow set of interests, consolidating power, deepening inequality, and widening the chasm between the billionaire class and the rest of us. And let’s be clear: these moves are not just policy decisions. They are calculated steps towards entrenching a system of oligarchy where the very wealthy few dictate the terms of our lives.

When you see Tesla’s Elon Musk, or Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, or Google’s Sundar Pichai, or Apple CEO Tim Cook, or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos literally sitting at the right hand of our president, does that not concern you? Don’t you think they will leverage their money and power for more money and power? The appointment of individuals like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami, and even Linda McMahon, and other billionaires to positions of power only underscore this reality. These are people who epitomize wealth hoarding and corporate influence, now wielding even more control over public policy. Musk, appointed to oversee government efficiency, has made his billions breaking unions and hollowing out the very safety nets that working families depend on. Oh, and I think Vivek Ramawwami, I think King Musk sent him packing.

But Tuesday, Jan. 21, we saw the anniversary of Citizens United. It’s an infamous case that gave corporations a say, literally a First Amendment protection to use their money as a form of speech. How are regular folks supposed to compete against the power of billions in lobbying dollars? Money talks, and billions can talk over us.

What we’re witnessing isn’t even an oligarchy; that might be more pleasant. What we’re about to experience is more frightening: a government that is run like a company store, where we have no other options and are forced to buy what they’re selling.

And just let me expand on that a little bit. So there was a time before unions were able to push back against rapacious capitalism when people lived in what were called company towns. Miners in particular were subject to these feudal arrangements. Employees lived in company-owned homes on company-owned land. They bought food and essentials from company-owned stores, and then they went and worked in the mine. The point is that every aspect of their lives was monetized and turned into profit. And if they lost their jobs, they lost everything.

Well, I think we’re headed towards something similar in outcome, but different in how it’s implemented. And that is how this extractive capitalism works: to extract from us constantly and mine our lives for personal profit.

It’s drilled down into facets of our personal existence that were once unthinkable. Zuckerberg and Musk literally make money every time we post something about ourselves. A picture of our birthday or an anniversary fuels the attention economy for their profit. The platform Musk now uses to impose his political will was, in large part, fueled by our industry, journalism, as we posted our stories and worked just to get a few crumbs of attention from his vast digital audience. And even worse, our worth was measured and is still measured by how many followers we have. In other words, our value as journalists is tied to how much we can enrich a tech bro, and that is not a great idea for journalistic integrity or even for a steady paycheck.

And if you want to get some of that scrip to spend at the company store, maybe you should pick up Trump’s meme coin. It’ll probably be part of the official reserve currency soon [both laugh].

But in relation to the company store analogy with our healthcare system, your healthcare insurance is often tied to your employer. If you are sick, you have no idea how much it will cost. You have no idea [if] your insurance will even cover it, and you could even lose the job that provides the needed health insurance. And if your debts are overwhelming, you try to purchase a digital lottery ticket of a GoFundMe page so that you can hope to pay off the debts that have been incurred by the private equity firms that have turned US medical care into a nightmare.

But I’m going to change my tune a little bit. I’m going to ask us to do something that might be the only option left: resist, resist it all. Tell them to take their overpriced medical bills and stuff ’em. Tell ’em to take their overpriced cars and park them permanently. Tell them to take their rents jacked up by algorithms and pay it themselves. And let’s stop creating content for and arguing amongst ourselves so that Zuckerberg can take Judo classes or buy another yacht. Let us all say enough is enough. Let’s resist making a few rich people richer and richer. Let’s resist the Second Gilded Age and end it now.

Stephen, thank you for being patient with me [Janis laughs]. I had to get that off my chest.

Stephen Janis:  I totally understand. when you listen to some of this stuff that Dr. Wolff says, it affects you because you want to feel empowered on some level. And so I appreciate that.

Taya Graham:  Well, I want people to know that we can resist. And I want to thank everyone for watching, for being here, for listening, and for caring. Until next time we see you, stay informed, stay passionate about your politics, and stay compassionate to your fellow Americans. Remember, united we stand, divided we fall. Let’s try to find some unity, because we’re going to need it. Thanks for joining us.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised that, if elected, “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.” Trump’s administration has wasted no time since re-entering the White House on Monday, and communities around the US are currently bracing for a wave of ICE raids. In plans that were publicly leaked ahead of Trump’s inauguration, the city of Chicago was identified as a key target for immigration raids, putting immigrant residents and their neighbors on high alert. To discuss the impending threat to Chicago and cities around the country, and how communities can fight back, The Real News speaks with Moises Zavala, Workplace Justice Campaigns Organizer for Arise Chicago, and Natascha Elena Uhlmann, a writer for Labor Notes and immigrant rights activist from Sonora, Mexico.

Additional links:
–Immigrant rights toolkit (English)
-Immigrant rights toolkit (Spanish)
–How Labor Can Fight Back Against Trump’s Mass Deportation Agenda

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

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to a special emergency report created to help those who are immigrants or might be helping innocent people who happen to be immigrants in our country.

And it’s no small matter. We’re tackling one of the most urgent human rights issues of our time: the weaponization of immigrant officers and law enforcement officers against working people, and it’s under the guise of law and order. This new administration has revived and expanded policies that threaten to tear families apart, destabilize communities, and target some of the most vulnerable people among us. And yet, amid the fear and uncertainty, there is resistance, resistance from those who refuse to let cruelty and chaos define our workplaces and our neighborhoods.

Today we’ll be speaking with organizers and advocates and reporters who are pushing back, creating sanctuary in unexpected places, and proving that solidarity is our strongest shield. From teachers standing up for their immigrant students to unions rewriting the rules of what it means to protect workers, these are the people finding innovative, compassionate ways to challenge the unchecked power of ICE. Leaked plans show that ICE will be heading into Chicago, and we will be directly speaking to the organizers on the ground, and we’ll try to get for you the most current updates on the situation.

We’ll also explore how deportations are not just acts of cruelty, but tools of economic control throwing lives into disarray, creating fear, and reinforcing inequality. But for those who might think, well, this doesn’t affect my life, we’ll also explain the economic disruption that will occur across the board for those of us understandably worried about the cost of groceries and other goods.

And there is solid data that shows that when President Obama deported a record 3 million people, it did not equate to 3 million jobs for Americans or proportionately higher wages. In fact, in President Trump’s first term, he only deported 1.9 million people, and I was somewhat surprised to discover that Biden deported even more than both Trump and President Obama — Although, allegedly, this was because more people entered the country during his tenure.

It is interesting to note that both Democrats and Republicans have engaged in mass deportations, but the type of deportation policies that are currently being proposed can target people here legally under temporary protected status, children born in the US to noncitizens, or people without criminal records who’ve been working here for decades who might’ve had trouble renewing a work visa or have been waiting years for the asylum process to be finalized.

So, to get a better understanding of what our country is doing, let’s dive into the policies that make this possible and, more importantly, the people and movements fighting back. Because while this is a time of fear, it is also a time when we can show our humanity, our compassion, and our resourcefulness, and to demonstrate the power of collective action.

I’m fortunate to be joined by senior investigative reporter Stephen Janis to help me break down this difficult topic.

Stephen Janis:  Absolutely. Glad to be here.

Taya Graham:  Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis:  You’re welcome.

Taya Graham: First, can you give me just a brief overview of what the Trump administration has been doing?

Stephen Janis:  I mean, it’s so complex and so expansive and sprawling, it’s difficult to connect all the dots, and we’ll be talking to our guests about this. But for example, he wants to revoke birthright citizenship for children who are born to people who are not here, I guess, legally, from his perspective. Another thing he wants to do is deputize, as we were saying before the show, all sorts of law enforcement agents to be able to deport people. So he’s ratcheting that up. He’s created a national emergency at the border, he has mobilized the military to the border, and he has issued an executive order to conduct emergency raids and to deport people on the spot. I don’t know if it’s a mass deportation, but it’s sprawling. It’s like in every aspect…

Oh, and even more importantly and even more astounding, it used to be you can’t grab a person at a church or a school. We’re not going to have people storming in there with jackets. Well, guess what? That’s absolutely on the table now, that people can go into a school or a church or something and just snatch up people. It’s scary, really, and it is an expansion of law enforcement, I think, that’s unprecedented in our recent history. But we’ve seen some of this before in the history of this country.

But it is so sprawling and so expansive and so permeates every part of life, I think it’s going to change a lot for people who thought they might’ve been voting for Trump, and they’re going to see up front how cruel this can be.

Taya Graham:  Absolutely. We want to get started as soon as possible. We are joined by two guests —

Stephen Janis:  Absolutely.

Taya Graham:  …To help us understand who is at risk and what we can do to help. First, we have Natascha Uhlmann, staff writer for Labor Notes and an organizer. Her reporting covers Unite Here, farm workers, immigrant workers, and Mexico’s growing independent labor movement. And she’s already active in cross-border solidarity. In fact, she’s the editor and translator of former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s book, A New Hope for Mexico. Natascha is a member of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, and she’s the author of Abolish ICE.

Natascha, thank you so much for joining us.

Natascha Uhlmann:  Thank you so much for having me.

Taya Graham:  And next we have Moises Zavala. He is an accomplished union organizer with over 25 years of experience. He has developed strategic plans to organize workers for union membership. He trains junior organizers. He serves on the local 881 UFCW executive board, and he’s an organizer at Arise, a faith-based labor movement, where he helps workers to learn their rights and how to enforce them, including through making collective demands and building workplace committees.

Moises, thank you so much for being here. We really do appreciate it.

Moises Zavala:  Thank you for having me.

Taya Graham:  So let me turn to you first, Moises. Just tell me a little bit about your organization, Arise, that you work for, because it’s a faith-based organization, but also tell us what your concerns are for the people who are at the risk of deportation. And I just want to mention, we heard there might be an update on some of the raids across the country, so if you want to step in and speak about that first, please feel free.

Moises Zavala:  Sure. First of all, Arise Chicago is a worker center, not-for-profit, and what we do here is we support workers that are non-union to organize and protect their rights, organize collectively to improve their working conditions. We have been very involved in creating a rapid response to the problem that we have now of these mass deportations.

What we did to create this rapid response was to have our members and community be ready for this. How? By creating trainings with our members and in the community of what to expect and how to be ready for this. Because when a worker is detained by ICE or there is a raid, people get paralyzed because of fear, because of the shock, and it is very hard then to be able to fight that deportation and provide to an attorney what they need to defend these workers.

We have created an organizing toolbox for the community and for our members so they could be ready, such as what are the documents that they need to have with themselves at all times? What happens if there is a raid or they’re detained? Who is going to pick up their children? Who is going to take care of their last paycheck or be able to go into their bank accounts and be able to provide for the children or the family that’s left behind? If the children are sick, who is going to know what kind of medication the children have to take or what are the illnesses?

So there’s a huge area of readiness that our members and community have been developing now in case the worst happens. If the worst does not happen, then our community is one step ahead.

Stephen Janis:  Aren’t they going to classify family members who are actually citizens as collaterals or something? Taya and I were hearing about this as we were driving into work to do this show. Do you know anything about that and what that means for people who have families?

Moises Zavala:  All I could say is that from the looks of things, it sounds like ICE will pick up anybody that they run into. They have a list of names that they are looking for, but clearly that’s not going to stop [them] from asking others, say, in a household or in a facility where people are working, if they have documentation or not.

Stephen Janis:  Okay. Yeah, go ahead, I’m sorry.

Taya Graham:  No, I just thought it was really interesting because I believe Tom Homan had been saying that if people who we would say are at risk for deportation don’t voluntarily leave on their own, he was basically saying people are concerned that families will be separated. He said, we’ll take the family with them.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, the whole family. They’re not going to separate them. Yeah.

Taya Graham:  Right, and people were referring to families being deported as collateral —

Stephen Janis:  Right, I just said that.

Taya Graham:  …Like collateral damage in the war. So that was really disturbing.

Stephen Janis:  Natascha, I want to ask you, your work is amazing on all this. We were reviewing it. How historic is this? We know the first couple raids have happened across the country, about 400 or 500 people. First, what do you know about this, and how unprecedented is this effort by the Trump administration, historically speaking?

Natascha Uhlmann:  Yeah, I mean, we’re definitely seeing an escalation. Some employers are already instituting non-mandated employment authorization checks. 100 custodial and kitchen workers at New York City’s Tin Building were fired after building management carried one of these out. They’re effectively called silent raids, and they’re every bit as damaging as the more visible raids that tend to get more publicity. So a lot of this stuff can happen quietly too.

Stephen Janis:  What do you mean by silent raids, so people understand? I didn’t know exactly what that meant, so can you just give us a description of what a silent raid is?

Natascha Uhlmann:  Yeah, absolutely. So basically your employer can, in a way that it is not mandated to do, say, I want to check that you’re authorized to work here, even if you’ve been working here for a year, for 10 years. And it’s a way of clearing out, if you are knowingly hiring undocumented workers. It’s every bit as damaging to get rid of them, but in a way that often goes unnoticed because it’s not the showy ICE bursting through the door.

Stephen Janis:  That’s really interesting. That’s horrifying too. And do you know anything about the raids that have occurred with the 400 or 500 people in Illinois and Maryland and a couple other states, Utah? Has anyone said anything to you about these?

Natascha Uhlmann:  So it’s really a rapidly developing situation, but I think a few things are clear. The first is that bosses are absolutely going to abuse this atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, and the second is that ICE and Border Patrol are going to throw a lot of things at the wall and see what sticks. And we’re going to need to do the same. Experiment with tactics, see what sticks, but always with an eye to building power in a strategic way.

Taya Graham:  Let me ask you, Moises, something. When you’re speaking to immigrants in your community, what are their fears, and what are they trying to do to address them? I know you’re doing organizing, I know you’re trying to prepare people, but what are their fears at heart?

Moises Zavala:  The fear is the unknown. What’s going to happen? How is it going to happen? And we don’t have those answers, but what we do have is the ability to organize. And more than ever, we are sharing with our members that this is the time to organize with their coworkers, with their community, with their churches, the schools where the children go, to really solidify that network that we have and use it to organize support.

Because this is not the first time that working families [have been] attacked in this fashion. It’s happened before, and in the past, workers and communities organized, organized very sophisticatedly to be able to win those types of oppressions, and we have to do the same thing. We have to continue that effort of unity, of organizing and information so that people do not feel or do not have that fear that is going to paralyze them. We don’t have all the answers, but what we do know is that people want to live in peace and people can organize, and that is the avenue in which our members are taking to be able to have some stability in their lives at this moment.

Stephen Janis:  Natascha, one of the executive orders was getting rid of birthright citizenship. How destructive do you think this will be? Do you think it will stick? Do you think the Trump administration will be able to make this stick? It really is contradicting the Constitution. But nevertheless, how destructive is this to families, and what are your concerns about that?

Natascha Uhlmann:  Yeah, absolutely. First, can I say, can I jump in on the fear question after this?

Stephen Janis:  Absolutely.

Taya Graham:  Oh, please do.

Stephen Janis:  You can jump in now. If you want to start with that, go ahead.

Taya Graham:  Yes.

Natascha Uhlmann:  Yeah, thank you so much.

Stephen Janis:  Absolutely.

Natascha Uhlmann:  On the topic of fear, this is, without question, a scary moment, but it is really essential that we don’t do the right’s work for them. They want people to be afraid. They want to project way more strength than they have in hopes that people will self-deport or remove themselves from public life. I am seeing a lot of bad actors who are seizing on this moment to spread terror.

I heard from one organizer that a photo circulating spreading panic of an ICE van was actually photoshopped. And I’ve also seen someone screencap a photo from an ICE raid in 2018 and post it and say it was this week. So a lot of organizers I talk to right now are saying spread power, not panic. If you’re sharing information about a raid, verify it first. It can be tempting to just want to get that info out there, and I certainly feel that urge, but it’s really important not to play into the right’s hands and not to spread fear and uncertainty.

Stephen Janis:  Do you have any sense of who is spreading this fear and why they would want to do that? Are they trying to exploit workers, or is there some motivation behind that? Just curious.

Natascha Uhlmann:  I mean, it’s all very developing, so I can’t —

Stephen Janis:  I know. Totally understand. It just struck me like, wow, what a horrible thing to do to people. What’s your motive there?

Natascha Uhlmann:  I think just abject cruelty. I certainly do think bosses are very much prepared to take advantage of this moment, no question. But I can go back to the birthright question now.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, sure. Of course. Of course. Absolutely.

Natascha Uhlmann:  Cool. Yeah, it’s absolutely heinous, and it’s just a complete mess because where do you draw the line? Babies born today, a year ago, 10 years ago? And also he’s claimed that the US is the only country that offers birthright, [which is] just actually, factually wrong. Canada and Mexico, for starters, our literal backyard, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, this is not an uncommon practice.

Stephen Janis:  Wow.

Taya Graham:  And just to make this clear, because one of the things that was mentioned in the inauguration speech was the idea that the people who are in this country that are immigrants are somehow criminals, and I don’t think anyone would argue that if someone is engaged in transporting narcotics or human trafficking, no matter what your status is, you’re committing a crime. But we’re hearing that there’s so many people like clergy and teachers and employers, they’re worried about protecting community members that are valued, hard-working people and even children.

I was hoping, and this is either for you, Moises, or for you, Natascha, maybe you can just tell us a little bit about the people at risk. Describe who they are, help put a face to it so people understand who you’re trying to protect.

Moises Zavala:  It’s everyday people. Everyday people are at risk. Students, restaurant workers, grocery workers, factory workers, everybody’s at risk because we don’t carry an ID that says “I’m a US citizen”, “I’m a permanent resident”, “I’m undocumented”. Hey, if you look Mexican, hm, we’re going to have to pull you over. Show me some papers. That’s the kind of world in which we live right now. If it was that simple where, hey, here’s a list. These are people that you have to go and find, that’s one thing, but that’s not what we’re hearing.

So again, we’re living in a moment where we have to inform faster than before, broader than before, and really organize to be able to push back, to be able to make sure that workers know what their rights are. For example, if there is a raid or they get pulled over or they’re stopped on the street, what’s the first thing that we mentioned in our trainings? Remain silent. Remain silent. We have little cards that say, “I’m going to remain silent, and I want to speak to my attorney.” They look something like this, where the worker can put it in their pocket and show it to an ICE agent.

So this is what we’re doing to be able to fight off this environment of fear. Attacking birthright citizenship, it’s just another way to create fear and to create anger and to try to point at people and wonder, hey, I wonder if he or she is a US citizen. Well, let’s ask them. I hope it doesn’t get to that point, but it sure as heck looks like it is. So we have to be ready for that. We have to push back.

Stephen Janis:  Natascha —

Natascha Uhlmann:  [Inaudible].

Stephen Janis:  Oh, go ahead. You go ahead. Absolutely. I don’t need to ask a question.

Natascha Uhlmann:  Great. I think Moises makes some excellent points. Just to add to that, there’s often this sort of outrage of, well, they broke the law to come here. Why didn’t they come the right way? Why didn’t they get in line? Well, first of all, for many people, there just simply is no line to get into. But secondly, often the people who say this are often the same people who say things like, I would do anything for my child. I would kill for my child. And I think it’s really important to tap into that shared humanity. People are coming here because they have hopes and aspirations, and they want to give their kids something that they didn’t have. And you cannot tell me, as a parent, if you could not feed your kid, you wouldn’t cross some damn line for them. I think these are the conversations that we need to be having.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah. Natascha, I think [crosstalk] —

Moises Zavala:  Another thing that I would add —

Stephen Janis:  OK.

Natascha Uhlmann:  Sorry.

Moises Zavala:  Another thing that I would add when we talk about criminalizing undocumented workers is, well, what are we talking about? They just pardoned 1,500 criminals that attacked our capital.

Stephen Janis:  Oh, good point.

Moises Zavala:  And what is it? What are we talking about when we say criminals?

Stephen Janis:  Well, one of the things, and I wanted both of you, if you want to jump in on understanding, have they canceled the ability to ask or seek asylum, speaking of cruelty? I think that was in part of the executive orders. Is that playing out? Is that correct?

Moises Zavala:  I believe that’s what it was.

Stephen Janis:  Because seeking asylum is an important part of that process you were talking about for people trying to come here, right? If that goes away, what happens?

Moises Zavala:  People continue to see the United States as a place of hope, and people will continue, like Natascha mentioned, they will continue to walk the miles and miles for their children. I don’t think it’s fun to be walking through the desert or through a jungle. These are needs. But there are different ways to welcome people into this country, but the way this new administration is going about it, it’s simply just to create chaos and create fear.

Taya Graham:  I think you brought up such a good point that these people are doing what any American would say they would do for their family, which is I would do anything for my child. I think you brought up such a great point, both of you.

And I hate to bring up something that stokes more fear, but there have already been instances of anti-immigrant violence. Back in December, there were two teenagers in New York. They were asked by a group of men if they spoke English. When they said no, they didn’t speak English, they were both stabbed and one died. Of course, in Springfield, Ohio, after Haitians were falsely accused of being in the US illegally and harming pets and spreading disease, there were marches by white supremacists, and there were 30 bomb threats in one week.

So I have to ask you both, are there any concerns that there could be vigilante actions against the immigrant community?

Moises Zavala:  Look, it could very well be, but I think it’s also on all of us to play a role in making sure that this changes. It’s not just for immigrant rights organizations like ours to be fighting this off. We will. That’s what we do. But it’s also the participation of the rest of our communities to stand up and to fight against these kinds of attacks on all of us.

Natascha Uhlmann:  I would just add, I think a lot of this work will come down to talking to people who don’t agree with you, building bonds of trust and solidarity, and then you can have that conversation. It’s not the undocumented worker making five bucks an hour under the table who’s getting the better end of the deal. He didn’t choose that, the boss did, and if there wasn’t some arbitrary designation of immigration status, the boss couldn’t get away with paying him five bucks an hour. It is the vulnerability of immigration status itself that creates the conditions where a boss can undercut you.

I just wanted to flag, we’ve got a great piece in Labor Notes called “Worker Solidarity is the Best Strategy to Defeat Rising Fascism”, and it talks about exactly that. It is in the boss’s interest to have us at each other’s throats, keep us divided, and see each other as a threat. I think it is going to take talking to people who don’t agree with us — Not violent people like that, but I think it’s what it’s going to have to look like.

Stephen Janis:  One thing I want to note, I think what happened with the asylum process is now people have to remain in Mexico, I believe. Just a little correction there, or clarification.

As a reporter, is there any story that stands out to you or something that shows the cruelty and the inhumanity of this or that has affected you in any way?

Natascha Uhlmann:  I think there’s so many, but unfortunately, they largely precede Trump. Even under Obama we had kids in deportation hearings, and I remember reading their feet couldn’t even touch the floor is how little they were. They didn’t know their last name is how little they were.

So unfortunately, this is a bipartisan affair, and I think that it’s… It’s just a total abdication of leadership on behalf of the Dems, and that handed us Trump. If you’re going to condemn Trump’s rhetoric and fall all over yourselves to top it in the support for the Laken Riley Act… I don’t know [sighs sharply]. It’s not only morally reprehensible, but yeah, it’s a total abdication of leadership, and it’s just bad politics. You want to tell us come election time that Trump’s a fascist, that this is the most important election of our lives. But then if you’re going to fall right into place and advance his agenda, what is the political calculus?

Stephen Janis:  That’s a great point.

Taya Graham:  I actually have a dozen more questions I want to ask, but I want to make sure that I ask the most important question, and this is for people who want to take action but maybe, let’s say, they aren’t directly involved in a union, what are some ways they can support immigrant workers and help create sanctuary workspaces or just safe spaces in their own communities? And I’ll go to you first, Moises, and then to you, Natascha.

Moises Zavala:  A number of things that they can do. One is they can reach out to a church in their community, find out if their church is doing any work or is willing to do some work and take on some of the responsibilities to create that support base in the community. Talk to the schools. Obviously, contact a worker center like us. We’d be more than happy to share the work in supporting our community. So there’s a range of ways that they can support. They can contact their aldermen, their elected officials, find out what is it that they’re doing. If it’s obviously a state like in Illinois, what are they doing, and how can they participate to strengthen the work that those elected officials are doing?

So thank you for that question. That is what we need to be thinking about. How can we incorporate and encourage others to have a role in this support base for these workers?

Natascha Uhlmann:  There’s a lot of good language you can include in your collective bargaining agreements. The Chicago Teachers Union has some good language about how you don’t let ICE through the door unless they got a signed warrant.

But a teacher I spoke with for a recent story with Sarah Lazar, the teacher’s name was Catherine Zamarrón, she made a really important point that good contract language is only useful if people know their contract. Someone’s going to have to be the person when ICE is at the door that says, hey, don’t open that door. We don’t have to let them in. So this piece I referenced at Labor Notes and Workday, Sarah Lazar and I collected the best collective bargaining agreement language that we found with these sorts of protections, protections against retaliation against nonmandated audits, stuff you’re going to want in your contract. So you can find that on both the Labor Notes and Workday Magazine websites.

But in addition, I think worker centers and community groups also have a really important role to play. There’s all the work Arise is doing, which has been integral. Escucha Mi Voz Iowa, a faith-based community org has committed to having 6,000 one-on-one conversations with church members in the area. And interestingly, they likened it to how organizers build a union. Talking to people who don’t agree, it’s going to be a slow process of building trust, of being in dialogue. It’s going to be exceptionally frustrating, but you gotta bring in people who don’t agree or we’re just going to be talking to each other.

And finally, I would just point to there are very practical things you can do in your community. I spoke with one organizer who turns out a crowd when a community member needs to go to an ICE check-in because ICE will generally not make detentions during public events as a safety precaution for their agents. So there’s a lot of stuff you can do. If you’re not in a union, organize. Reach out to one of the incredible worker centers supporting these organizing efforts or to EWOC, the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. But I think everyone has a role to play, and it’s going to take all of us.

Taya Graham:  Well, you know what? We’re going to make a point of putting in our YouTube description perhaps a link to that article that you wrote with Sarah Lazar. I think you might also have some tips. That would be great. I think the same with you, Moises. At the beginning, you held up what looked like a little pamphlet or handbook. Perhaps we could post a link to that as well so that people can see for themselves things that they can do if they want to help protect their fellow community members.

I want to thank you both so much for joining us for this emergency livestream. We know we grabbed you last minute, and we know you both have a lot of important work to do, so we want to thank you so much for your time.

I feel like you want to add one thing, Moises?

Moises Zavala:  Yes, one thing, very important, despite the fear that is being thrown at us, I think that it is these moments that draw out the best in us to organize, to change, and to create power. And we just gotta remember that because our communities have done that in the past, and we need to continue to do it today and teach it for the future.

Taya Graham:  I’m so glad that you ended us on such a positive note, to not give into fear, but that this is a time where we can join together to do something positive. Thank you both again for your time.

Stephen Janis:  Yes, thank you.

Taya Graham:  We really appreciate you.

Natascha Uhlmann:  Thank you so much.

Moises Zavala:  Thank you.

Taya Graham:  Take care.

Once again, I want to thank our guests, Moises Zavala from Arise and Natascha Uhlmann of Labor Notes, for discussing this human rights issue with us.

Stephen Janis:  And get her book, Abolish ICE.

Taya Graham:  Yes, that’s right. Thank you.

Stephen Janis:  A great book.

Taya Graham:  But most importantly, we want to thank you for not only working in your communities to provide protection, but teaching us how we can help. We appreciate your time and your work, and we want to thank you again for joining us.

And we also want to thank everyone for watching and taking the time to listen and taking the time to care. Our immigrant neighbors aren’t our enemies. They’re our friends, our co-workers, and they’re even our family. Let’s keep sharing the things that make our country truly great: being open, being innovative, being welcoming, and being compassionate, and being a place where anyone who works hard at least has a chance at the American dream. Thank you so much for joining us.

Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas, are facing scrutiny following the release of body camera footage capturing a ticket issued to a local pizza delivery driver—who says that officers have pulled him over more than seven times in under a year. The driver, Christian Mobley, says police have destroyed his livelihood after he lost his job due to receiving so many tickets. Police Accountability Report investigates the case as an example of how police departments around the country employ dirty tactics to maximize city revenues through ticketing.

Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Written by: Stephen Janis
Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose: holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. To do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible.

And today we will achieve that goal by showing not one, not two, but multiple questionable stops by police of a pizza delivery man trying to simply make a living. It’s an ongoing pattern of writing tickets, pulling him over — And yes, even an arrest — That we will investigate to reveal just how problematic the actions of these officers are.

But first, before we get started, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com, or reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter @tayasbaltimore, and we might be able to investigate for you.

And please, like, share, and comment on our videos. It helps us get the word out, and it can even help our guests — And of course you know I read your comments and appreciate them. You see those little hearts I give out down there. And I’ve even started doing a PAR comment of the week to show you how much I appreciate your thoughts and what a terrific community we have.

And we do have a Patreon: Accountability Reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. Alright, we’ve gotten that out of the way.

Now, there is no doubt that times are tough for the working class in this country: Grueling jobs, underpaid work, and insufficient benefits are not only commonplace but a veritable addendum to the American dream that, for some, has turned into a nightmare.

And that is why today we are telling the story of one man who personifies both the challenges and obstacles of making an honest living under extreme duress. The man in question, Christian Mobley, has been working as a pizza delivery person in Jonesboro, Arkansas, for years. There, he has been diligently delivering food, working late into the night to make ends meet.

But soon he found, along with the occupational hazards and inherent dangers of delivering food, another unexpected challenge he had to overcome to make ends meet: the Jonesboro, Arkansas, Police Department. That’s because in spring of 2023, police began pulling him over for minor traffic violations, car stops that often became confrontational and ever more contentious as police turned traffic enforcement into something entirely divorced from public safety. Encounters with police that changed his life.

Now, Christian’s story begins, like I said, in June of 2023. Christian was driving to work to start his delivery shift when a Jonesboro officer, Michael Starnes, pulled him over. Take a look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Michael Starnes:  What’s going on man? You all right? My name is Officer Starnes, Jonesboro Police Department. The reason I stopped you is you got a brake light out, your passenger side brake light. Is there a reason you’re not wearing your seatbelt today, sir?

Christian Mobley:  No, I’m trying to get to Walmart so I can pick up [inaudible].

Officer Michael Starnes:  You going to Walmart? You’re going the wrong way.

Christian Mobley:  [Inaudible] go north, pick up the [inaudible].

Officer Michael Starnes:  You got a driver’s license on you?

Christian Mobley:  Yes, sir.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now as you notice, the officer is already questioning Christian about circumstances that have nothing to do with his allegedly broken tail light. I’m not sure why he has to explain where he is going or even why. But the officer asks, let’s say, provocative questions, that heightened the tension of this stop. Just listen.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Michael Starnes:  OK, Mr. Mobley, is there a reason you’re nervous? What’s wrong, man?

Christian Mobley:  I mean, you’re telling me from all the way, who wouldn’t be nervous? You’re telling me all the way from back there. Well —

Officer Michael Starnes:  You have a brake light out, man.

Christian Mobley:  You tell somebody that long, I mean, you going to pull me over. You could have pulled me up —

Officer Michael Starnes:  Well I thought you were going to turn to a residence back there. I wasn’t going to bother you because you were going to be at home, but I saw you driving. So I mean, you need to know your brake light’s out, don’t you? For your safety, right?

Christian Mobley:  Alright.

Officer Michael Starnes:  I mean, right? And you’re not wearing your seatbelt. That’s not safe either, man. I’ll be right back with you, OK?

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now, I won’t judge for you, but I think Christian looks annoyed rather than nervous. And truly, if the officer was concerned about Christian’s safety, why were they focusing on his state of mind? But apparently Mr. Mobley’s answer did not satisfy the Jonesboro Police Department, because again they escalated the encounter. Just look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Michael Starnes:  [Inaudible]. Visibly shaken.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now, before I play the next section of the video, I want you to notice how police often needlessly escalate a routine car stop. That is because, since the initial contact, at least two other officers appear, including the one I’m showing you now on the screen. They approach Christian’s car from the back. So how would any rational person not be afraid? How could you not be fearful of a rapid and, frankly, questionable ratcheting up of police presence? Just take a look at what happens next.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Michael Starnes:  Hey Mr. Mobley, go ahead and step out for me, OK?

Christian Mobley:  Did I do something?

Officer Michael Starnes:  I’ll explain all that to you in just a second. Just go back here. So this is a high drug traffic area. So what I’m going to do is I’m just going to run a dog around your vehicle, and if it doesn’t hit, we’ll be out of here. Is there anything in your vehicle that’s illegal?

Christian Mobley:  I’m just going to Walmart. I’m a pickup driver for Walmart.

Officer Michael Starnes:  I get it man. I get it man. That’s all I’m trying to prove, man. Trying to prove your exact [inaudible]. OK? Is there anything on you illegal?

Christian Mobley:  Nothing [inaudible].

Officer Michael Starnes:  Mind we search you real quick? Is that OK? Yes or no? Yes or no?

Christian Mobley:  Yeah, sure. [Inaudible] nothing in the car.

Officer Michael Starnes:  Go ahead and turn around for me. [Inaudible]. [Inaudible] your hat. Just want to spray [inaudible]. There’s nothing illegal in here at all?

Christian Mobley:  [Inaudible].

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  So the overarching crime under investigation here is an allegedly broken tail light — Although, the cop never uses his body camera to record the evidence. From that point, police construct a narrative that Mr. Mobley, because he’s driving in a so-called “high drug crime area”, should be subject to a drug-sniffing dog to test his car.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Michael Starnes:  She’s been letting it go.

Police Officer 1:  So dispatch let her go.

Officer Michael Starnes:  Yeah, essentially. Hey dude, I appreciate your patience, man. On your brake light, I’m going to give you a verbal warning, [inaudible] give you a citation for no seatbelt [inaudible].

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  So after the entire ordeal of being personally searched, then his car subject to a drug-sniffing dog, Christian is given a citation. That’s right. All the assorted officers, including a drug K-9 unit, deployed to battle a broken tail light. But for all the duress Christian experienced with this stop, he was soon pulled over again in March of 2024. Let’s listen as an officer justified stopping him.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Police Officer 2:  Adam nor zebra, 86 M ANZ 86 M on Nettleton by the country club. Send me another unit over here. I’m not sure what he’s doing.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  “He’s over by the country club. I’m not sure what he’s doing.” I mean, that’s interesting. So driving by a country club is suddenly a crime. First he was driving in a high drug and crime area and that was justification to search his car, and now he’s driving next to a country club. Apparently Jonesboro is just a bunch of no-go zones for delivery drivers.

And like the previous stop, apparently one officer was not enough to corral Mr. Mobley. Shortly after he was pulled over, another cop showed up on the scene. Take a look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Christian Mobley:  How was y’all harassing me? I just told you, cops are always following me. That’s harassment.

Police Officer 3:  That’s not harassment.

Christian Mobley:  It is harassment —

Police Officer 3:  There’s officers who drive every day, every [crosstalk].

Christian Mobley:  You on it too. You want to harass me too?

Police Officer 4:  I just came here because he asked for backup, man. [Pause]. He’s clear.

Christian Mobley:  I’m always clear. I ain’t never committed no crimes. I’m always clear. You ain’t never going to catch me with nothing, no drugs or nothing.

Police Officer 3:  Listen, dude, bring it down [crosstalk]. Just bring it down.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now, the car stop then takes a troubling turn as the officer says something that seems very pointed and, honestly, a bit disturbing.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Police Officer 4:  Where have I talked to you before? Your name sounds familiar.

Christian Mobley:  Yeah, I got these cops always following me, and harassing me. So if I don’t come home, you know where I’m at. They’re arresting me for no reason.

Police Officer 4:  We’re not arresting you for anything, man.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  But yet again, this car stop ends without charges. Not even a ticket, as the officer never fully articulates what Christian was apparently doing wrong other than driving adjacent to a country club.

But this is not the last encounter in the series of stops that have pervaded Mr. Mobley’s life. That’s because, just months later, he’s pulled over yet again, this time just outside his workplace. See for yourself.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Christian Mobley:  Yeah. What’s up?

Officer Odie:  What’s going on?

Christian Mobley:  Yeah, what’s going on? I’m working.

Officer Odie:  [Crosstalk] JPD —

Christian Mobley:  I’m working right now. I know.

Officer Odie:  Officer with JPD. The reason I stopped you is because you didn’t use the turn signal [inaudible].

Christian Mobley:  Yeah, I did use the turn signal. Yeah, I did.

Officer Odie:  You didn’t use it 100 [inaudible].

Christian Mobley:  I used the turn signal. Yeah, I did. [Crosstalk] What’s your name?

Officer Odie:  — 100 feet prior to turning into the parking lot.

Christian Mobley:  What’s your name?

Officer Odie:  Can I have your driver’s license [crosstalk], registration, and insurance? What?

Christian Mobley:  What’s your name? Name and badge number?

Officer Odie:  [Pause] Driver’s license, registration, insurance.

Christian Mobley:  Name and badge number. Name and badge number [crosstalk].

Officer Odie:  Driver’s license —

Christian Mobley:  OK.

Officer Odie:  — Registration, insurance.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  OK, so I’m just going to have to be blunt for a moment. I understand enforcing the law is not easy and is often complicated. I understand officers have to do their jobs to make sure we obey certain rules of the road. But to pull a man working to make a living for not signaling quickly enough within 100 feet, is that really worth anyone’s time, let alone a police officer’s?

How many times have we been told traffic stops are one of the most dangerous facets of policing? How many law enforcement officials have repeatedly claimed that they take a mortal risk simply by pulling over a driver to procure their license and registration? My point here is why? If indeed this is so risky, why bother to pull over a man for a traffic infraction that is so minor and of such little consequence? Why take the risk if the alleged misdeed is so inconsequential?

Well, Stephen has been working on that question, and we’ll discuss it later. But despite the questionable nature of the allegation, the Jonesboro officer presses on and actually escalates the encounter. Just watch.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Christian Mobley:  Hey [censored], I need to get my, uh, my driver’s license out of there.

Officer Odie:  Driver’s license, registration, and insurance.

Christian Mobley:  I need to go in there and get my driver’s license out of there.

Officer Odie:  You not going inside.

Christian Mobley:  It’s inside.

Officer Odie:  Well you not going inside. I’ll take your name and date of birth. Matter of fact, step out for me.

Christian Mobley:  We have to lock our stuff up in the car — Up in the job then. All right, cool.

Officer Odie:  You [inaudible] away? Do you have any weapons on you?

Christian Mobley:  No, I don’t have no, no weapons, nothing on me. Alright, cool. I’m working right now. As you can see, Papa Johns, I’m working.

Officer Odie:  What’s your name, date of birth, man?

Christian Mobley:  Christian Mobley.

Officer Odie:  [Inaudible].

Christian Mobley:  I did use the turn signal. I did.

Officer Odie:  You didn’t. If you stop talking over me and let me explain.

Christian Mobley:  OK.

Officer Odie:  You didn’t use the turn signal 100 feet prior before making this right turn into this parking lot.

Christian Mobley:  I used the turn signal fully, and you know I did.

Officer Odie:  Not 100 feet prior. That’s what I’m saying.

Christian Mobley:  100 feet prior. I used the turn [crosstalk] —

Officer Odie:  You keep trying to talk over me and you giving the wrong information.

Christian Mobley:  OK, man. OK. This is clearly harassment.

Officer Odie:  Do you have any registration and [crosstalk] —?

Christian Mobley:  Yeah, I got everything you need in the car.

Officer Odie:  Where is it?

Christian Mobley:  Can I get in the car?

Officer Odie:  Of course, go ahead.

Christian Mobley:  OK.

Officer Odie:  Registration and insurance please.

Christian Mobley:  OK.

Officer Odie:  Hold on, hold on, hold on.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now, as the stop continues, I want you to notice something as I run the video. Again, these car stops are not being conducted by a single officer. No. This apparently serious offense of not signaling more than 100 feet before the turn has actually warranted not one, not two, but seemingly three cops at least. That’s three law enforcement officers for one pizza delivery man who apparently made an ill-timed use of his turn signal. Take a look at how this increased police presence makes this stop even more tense.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Christian Mobley:  This is clearly harassment.

Police Officer 5:  I’m only going to ask you this one time, OK? Stay right there. Don’t move. You understand what I’m telling you?

Christian Mobley:  Yeah, I understand what you’re telling me fully, officer.

Police Officer 6:  …Name and date of birth [inaudible]?

Christian Mobley:  Am I being detained?

Police Officer 6:  Yes [crosstalk]. At the moment, yes.

Christian Mobley:  I’m being detained?

Police Officer 6:  At the moment, yes.

Officer Thomas:  Where is it at in the glove box?

Christian Mobley:  It’s in the glove box. My insurance and everything’s in the glove box, officer.

Officer Thomas:  Are you giving us consent to go in there and get it?

Christian Mobley:  You said I’m being detained, right?

Officer Thomas:  Yes sir.

Christian Mobley:  So if I’m being —

Officer Thomas:  — [Inaudible] have to have consent for you to go inside there so we can get your —

Christian Mobley:  So if I deny, if I deny…

Officer Thomas:  If you deny it, we’ll cite you for not having proof of…

Christian Mobley:  OK, go on there and get it. Go on there and get it. Come get my keys out the car and get my driver’s license out the box.

Police Officer 6:  Because you’re supposed to have it while you’re driving. So we just won’t even worry about that. You shouldn’t be driving without a license.

Christian Mobley:  Yeah, yeah. Come get my keys out the car.

Officer Thomas:  No, stay over there.

Christian Mobley:  Come get my keys out the car so you can get my driver’s out the box.

Police Officer 6:  [Crosstalk] If you keep yelling, I’m gonna detain you and put you in the vehicle. Stop yelling [inaudible].

Officer Thomas:  Until we tell you to, don’t throw nothing. OK? Thank you.

Christian Mobley:  OK.

Officer Thomas:  Let’s get this right. You’re not in control, you don’t get to tell him what to do. You don’t get [crosstalk] —

Christian Mobley:  I get you officer. I got you. What’s your name and badge number?

Officer Thomas:  D. Thomas. 1533.

Christian Mobley:  Thank you. Thank you, officer. Yeah, they harassing me [censored]. They harassing me.

Officer Thomas:  Get your hands out your pocket.

Christian Mobley:  Ain’t no weapons on me.

Officer Thomas:  Get your hands out of your pockets. I’m just telling you [crosstalk] —

Christian Mobley:  My bad. I’m used to putting my hand in my pocket, man. That’s all it is [crosstalk].

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  OK, just wait a moment. I think I actually undercounted the number of cops at the scene this time. It looks like there are at least four officers who’ve joined this investigation. And guess what? More cops probably means more problems. And that’s exactly what happened, as police decided to put Christian in handcuffs. Just look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Christian Mobley:  Huh? What’s your badge number? What’s your badge number?

Police Officer 7:  [Inaudible].

Christian Mobley:  Thank you. Who is that right there?

Officer Thomas:  He’s not a part of this traffic stop. It doesn’t concern you.

Christian Mobley:  OK. Hey, hey, hey [censored]. They won’t let me get my license out the box. They won’t let — He’s my manager.

Police Officer 7:  Don’t be yelling back and forth.

Christian Mobley:  He, yeah, they harassing me [censored].

Police Officer 7:  What did I just say?

Christian Mobley:  Hey, [censored], they harassing me [censored].

Police Officer 7:  Hey, put him back in there. Put him back in the truck.

Officer Thomas:  Here’s what’s going on. [Inaudible] behind your back.

Christian Mobley:  I’m being arrested?

Police Officer 7:  You’re being detained.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  That’s right. They detained him — Although this looks like an arrest to me. And again, this entire ordeal did not lead to any actual charges, just more mental anguish for Mr. Mobley. But it wasn’t over, not hardly. Just 48 hours later, just two days after the stop we just watched, Christian was pulled over again by the same officer.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Odie:  [Inaudible] Jonesboro Police Department.

Christian Mobley:  I know [inaudible].

Officer Odie:  The reason I stopped you is because you was following too close.

Christian Mobley:  No I wasn’t.

Officer Odie:  Yes you were.

Christian Mobley:  No.

Officer Odie:  You flashed me with your high beams. No I wasn’t. When I pulled over into this parking lot, you was so close, you almost rear-ended me. OK. What was the purpose of you —

Christian Mobley:  You harassing me again, Odie.

Officer Odie:  Can I have your driver’s license, registration, insurance?

Christian Mobley:  What’s the traffic infraction, Odie?

Officer Odie:  Driver’s license, registration, and insurance.

Christian Mobley:  You harassing me again, Odie!

Officer Odie:  Mr. Mobley.

Christian Mobley:  OK.

Officer Odie:  Driver’s license, registration, insurance.

Christian Mobley:  Do you know that’s BS, Odie.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  But this time, the crime was apparently following too closely. But this time as well, the officer seems to have decided that he would employ the full extent of his police powers. Take a look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Odie:  Set out. Step out. Step out.

Christian Mobley:  Here’s your driver’s license here.

Officer Odie:  No, step out. It’s too late.

Christian Mobley:  Here it is. Here it is. What you doing man?

Officer Odie:  Step out.

Christian Mobley:  What are you doing?

Officer Odie:  Turn around.

Christian Mobley:  What are you doing, Odie?

Officer Odie:  Hands behind your back.

Christian Mobley:  What are you doing?

Officer Odie:  Hands behind your back.

Christian Mobley:  What am I being arrested for, Odie [handcuffs close]? What am I being arrested for?

Officer Odie:  Obstruction.

Christian Mobley:  For what?

Officer Odie:  1-42 dispatch.

Christian Mobley:  Oh damn, this is bullshit.

Officer Odie:  15 one time.

Christian Mobley:  You know this is bullshit, right?

Officer Odie:  Turn around. I asked you three times to give me your information.

Christian Mobley:  I gave it to you. It’s in your hand.

Officer Odie:  I’m only required to ask you once. You gave it to me once I came over here and told you to step out the vehicle.

Christian Mobley:  You know what you’re doing is BS, man.

Officer Odie:  Let’s go.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Obstruction. Well, that’s interesting. Bear in mind obstruction is premised upon obstructing an investigation into a separate crime, and since the officer did not articulate what the underlying crime is, we have no idea how he is justifying the charge — A lack of full disclosure that is not addressed during a postarrest discussion. Let’s watch.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Odie:  Mr. Mobley.

Christian Mobley:  Yeah?

Officer Odie:  What’s a good phone number for you?

Christian Mobley:  What am I being arrested for?

Officer Odie:  Obstruction.

Christian Mobley:  I’m being arrested for obstruction?

Officer Odie:  Yes sir. What’s a good phone number?

Christian Mobley:  How did I obstruct, Odie?

Officer Odie:  Are you going to tell me your phone number, Mr. Mobley?

Christian Mobley:  What’s the number for?

Officer Odie:  For your citation.

Christian Mobley:  How did I obstruct, Odie?

Officer Odie:  What’s your current address?

Christian Mobley:  You know my address, Odie. It’s on the driver’s license.

Officer Odie:  OK. You mind telling it to me?

Christian Mobley:  It’s on the driver’s license.

Officer Odie:  All right. Well, like I said, you going to jail tonight for obstruction. I asked you three times to provide me with your identification.

Christian Mobley:  I gave it to you.

Officer Odie:  After the fact. I came over there [crosstalk] —

Christian Mobley:  How was I obstructing though, Odie? How was I obstructing?

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  And so Christian is taken to jail without sufficient justification, and truly without understanding what crime he’d committed. And as you’ll learn later, this had devastating consequences for him and his livelihood.

But there is more to the story, so much more that we’re actually not showing all the video now. Instead, there will be a part two of our investigation into the Jonesboro Police Department. And please feel free to reach out with your own stories of your interactions with the Jonesboro Police Department. And we will be soon joined by Christian to tell us how this continuing series of police encounters has impacted his life and what he wants to happen as a result.

But first we will be joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been reaching out to the police and examining the documents. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me

Stephen Janis:  Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:  Now, first, I know you sent a lengthy email to the Jonesboro, Arkansas, Police Department. What did you ask and how did they respond?

Stephen Janis:  Well, I was very specific because I was very concerned about the probable cause for putting Mr. Mobley through all these car stops and some of the searches. So I asked them very specifically, how do you designate a high-crime area in the city? Is that like an official designation? What is the process you use? Secondly, I asked about the country club: Is driving within the vicinity of a country club actually a crime, and how do you establish this? Basically I was looking for a criteria for how they decide when to pull someone over and what that means.

Now, you sent an email to answer the Jonesboro Police Department. We actually sat and talked to them on the phone. We actually spoke to a traffic sergeant there who said he would get back to us. I have not heard, but we’re going to keep following up. And I just want to let people know we did our due diligence to get these people to respond. We let them know the questions we had. We asked specific questions, and we did not get a response. But they have certainly been put on notice about this.

Taya Graham:  So you have reviewed all the video in depth. Do you think the officers had probable cause to stop Christian?

Stephen Janis:  Well Taya, certainly not, because I have a lot of experience with being pulled over myself and living in a city where part of their crime enforcement was to pull random people over all the time. And these stops, saying high-crime area, that’s so subjective. Driving near a country club, even more odd. And I can’t even call it subjective, just kind of crazy.

And then the stops occurred later when he was driving 100 feet. I mean, how on earth is any person supposed to know? How is a cop supposed to know that? How do you know when someone’s not put a turn signal on 100 feet before they turn? That’s just impossible. So to me, these stops are highly questionable. I don’t think the law backs it up, and I think the questions need to be asked.

Taya Graham:  Stephen, can you give me some background on the Jonesboro Police? How large is the department and what their crime rates look like?

Stephen Janis:  Taya, there are a lot of different ways to look at crime statistics, and we’ve seen some reports that say Jonesboro has somewhat of a high crime rate, although it’s not that much different from the rest of major cities in Arkansas. Some people have given them a B-plus for certain types of crimes and a C for violent crimes, so they’re all over the board. Obviously they have some problem with crime.

But I will say as a word of caution that pulling people over randomly does not reduce crime. They did that a lot in Baltimore and it didn’t work. And if that’s the department strategy — And I really wish they would talk to us about this — Then I think they’re going in the wrong direction.

Taya Graham:  And now to give us a sense of how his ongoing encounters with police have affected his life and his livelihood, and how his perception of law enforcement has changed, I’m joined by Christian Mobley. Christian, thank you so much for joining us.

Christian Mobley:  No problem.

Taya Graham:  Now first, please walk me through what we’re seeing in this video. You’re working in food delivery, driving back from a stop, I assume. What happens when the officer pulls behind you? What did they say, and why are they pulling you over?

Christian Mobley:  I didn’t use the turn signal at 100 feet before making the turn — But I used the turn signal.

Taya Graham:  So the officer initially says you’re not using your turn signal and then admits, well, you used the turn signal, you just didn’t use it within 100 feet of the turn. What were your thoughts when he said this, and do you agree with his assessment?

Christian Mobley:  What you don’t see, what you don’t see is there’s another cop on the left side of me. He’s right on the left side of me, and Odie is behind me. So it’s like they kind of got me boxed in. But yeah, it’s just harassment. The police department is actually across the street from Papa John’s, so they sit over there all the time stalking me, trying to make their presence felt. It’s like they’re just trying to agitate me all the time, and it’s just what they do.

Taya Graham:  This seems to be a simple traffic enforcement issue, and really, if you were guilty at all, there should have just been a warning. Why did it escalate? It seemed like there were four officers on the scene just for a turn signal infraction.

Christian Mobley:  Simply put, they don’t like me. They don’t like the fact that I stand up to them and they can’t bully me or intimidate me, and I speak out against them. So they just got a problem with that. But like I said, I’m not really necessarily doing this for me. I know I’m not the only one in this town dealing with this kind of stuff, so this is more so for the other people that’s dealing with this. And somebody needs to do something about it. I feel like I’m the one to do something about it.

Taya Graham:  Now, you were trying to communicate with your manager or one of your coworkers. You tried to explain to the officers where your information was. Why do you think they were so adamant about stopping you from communicating with your manager?

Christian Mobley:  They knew that if he could get my driver’s license they probably wouldn’t have, they probably wouldn’t be able to get me with that charge of failure to present driver’s license. But when I come into work, my driver’s license is always in my wallet, and I lock my wallet up in my locker, so I forgot it that day. So that’s why my driver’s license wasn’t on me at the time.

Taya Graham:  So what surprised me was that they placed you in cuffs, effectively, for trying to speak. How did they treat you? Did they put you in the back of the car? You can’t really see because the video goes dark for a little period of time.

Christian Mobley:  Well, they didn’t put me in the back of the car, they just cuffed me. They just took my phone, placed it on the hood of his patrol vehicle, and that’s why the screen went dark. But I was in front of the vehicle, handcuffed.

Taya Graham:  So this wasn’t the first time Jonesboro police officers have followed you looking for traffic infractions. Can you tell me how many other times you’ve been pulled over this year, and for what?

Christian Mobley:  If I could, off the top of my head, I could say at least five times. It’s like they would pull me over to try to find out where I live, try to get my… They would issue me warnings, but they would pull me over. It’s like they trying to find out who I am and where I live at so they can monitor me or something.

Taya Graham:  So I know you mentioned that after one of your traffic stops with Officer Sgt James D. Stout on March 3 this year, you said he followed you into a Walmart afterwards. Do you believe this is harassment?

Christian Mobley:  It is something they do. It’s like this little thing they do. It was after the encounter. I was doing Walmart Spark. And while I’m doing Walmart Spark, he drives by me and kind of nods at me. It’s something they do. They’ll drive by you and they’ll nod at you, like, we’re watching you. It is just something they all do. It’s like a little gang thing that they do. And yeah, he drove past me. He nodded at me like he’s trying to intimidate, like he’s trying to send me a message. They all do it.

Taya Graham:  They said they aren’t following you, but pull you over because they thought you were brake checking them? Can you please explain?

Christian Mobley:  I was just coming from Natural Grocers, and they have this thing where they’ll always get behind me and start telling me, and he was just doing the same thing. And what you don’t see is him looking in his mirror. I can see him looking in his mirror, making a face, trying to intimidate me. It’s what you don’t see in the video. So I’m just slowing down to see what he’s on, and then he turns his lights on and said, I’m trying to brake check him. It is what it is.

Taya Graham:  So Officer Michael Starnes of the Jonesboro Police Department pulled you over June 27 this year, allegedly for having a brake light out. But then he started saying you look nervous. Considering how often you’ve been pulled over this year, I would be nervous too. Do you think he was hoping to search your car? And he was talking about smelling deodorizing spray in your car, and talking about running a K-9 around your vehicle, and that you’re in a very high-crime area. I’m familiar with that sort of police procedure as a Baltimore City resident. Do you think he was fishing for a bigger crime than a traffic infraction?

Christian Mobley:  It wasn’t a high-crime area, not at all. But I think he was just targeting me. But the very next day after that incident, I’m in Dollar General on East Johnson. He walks in. My back is to him. He walks in the dollar store and, like I said, as I turned around, I seen him standing there. He gives me this nod. He’s trying to send me a message, like, we’re going to be watching you. It’s what they do. It’s like they target people. It’s like a game to them.

Taya Graham:  So you were driving your mother’s car during that stop, which is a nice looking car. And the officer said you were in a high-crime area. Do you think that you were being profiled? There were at least four officers on the scene and a K-9, so it seems like they were expecting you to be the catch they were fishing for. Is Jonesboro a place where there’s lots of criminal activity?

Christian Mobley:  Not at all. I mean, nah. Even if you say you live in the hood in Jonesboro, it ain’t dangerous. Give me a break. Nah, it’s not high-crime at all.

Taya Graham:  So Christian, how much has this cost you personally? I would imagine it is stressful just getting into your car for work considering how often you’ve been followed and ticketed and how much it costs in tickets and time going to court. What has this cost you, either financially or even emotionally or psychologically?

Christian Mobley:  I would just say I’m built for it. No, I’m not. And like I said, they’re not going to intimidate me. I’m not the one they’re going to intimidate. I’m going to stand up, I’m going to stand up against them. But in the beginning it was kind of stressful because it was new to me. But it started to anger me, and that’s when I decided, you know what? I’m going to stand up against this. I’m going to bring light to this situation because I can’t be the only one in Jonesboro, Arkansas, dealing with this from these officers.

One time it got the best of me where I made a mistake and thought someone was following me, and I ended up getting arrested by Deputy Jordan Drum. But that was in the beginning when it was new to me, but now I built a tolerance for it and I know how to deal with it, and I know how to manipulate it and catch them in the process of trying to do it to me.

Taya Graham:  Christian, I hate to ask this, but do you have any sort of criminal history that could explain why these officers have chosen to keep such a close eye on you?

Christian Mobley:  No. The only thing, if you want to consider it, is when Deputy Jordan Drum from the Craighead County Sheriff’s Office, he arrested me. The only thing they charged me with was obstruction. That’s the only, I guess, major thing you can say that’s on my record. Everything else is just traffic tickets.

Taya Graham:  By any chance, do you know why Officer Peyton Perkins was fired? He was one of the officers that was involved in your interactions.

Christian Mobley:  I don’t know. I went in there, I went in there one day to get a FOIA video. And yeah, Trevor, I was talking to Trevor, Officer Trevor, and I said, I was talking to him about Perkins, and he said he got fired, and I asked him why. He wouldn’t disclose to me why he got fired. So I’m not really sure, but I’m happy he’s fired.

Taya Graham:  If you could speak to the Jonesboro Police Department right now, what would you say? If you knew they were listening to you right this moment, what would you want to tell them?

Christian Mobley:  Personally, I just want to tell them they cowards. They cowards. For you to do for them to try to put that type of… This is the type of stuff that can make people commit suicide. So for them to find some sort of satisfaction out of doing this type of stuff, they’re cowards. That’s what I would tell them. They’re cowards, and that’s all you’ll ever be.

Taya Graham:  OK. I have a lot to say about what happened to Mr. Christian Mobley. Part of what I’m thinking about is directly related to the constant and, I think, obviously unnecessary police interactions we just witnessed. It seems, based upon the video evidence, that these traffic stops were the result of concerns other than just enforcing the law. One can only imagine the stress that Christian must have experienced when a drug-sniffing dog was deployed to search his car. Or one can guess how he felt when a police officer told him he was pulled over because he was driving near a country club.

All of these interactions with law enforcement hardly build a connection with the community. In fact, all of this police intervention for noncrimes only increases the distrust of institutions — And not just policing — That has become endemic in this country. And I don’t think policing like what we just witnessed is simply the result of officer overreach.

But that’s not the only aspect of Christian’s ordeal that concerns me. Something else bothers me about what we just watched that more than likely will get less attention than the stops themselves: an idea about law enforcement in this country that deserves to be discussed so that we understand what we’ve truly seen.

And to make it more comprehensible, I’m going to explain it as a story, a tale about people like Christian who work hard, struggle, keep trying, only to discover that the biggest obstacle to carving out a good life for himself is the government that’s supposed to serve him. The story starts almost 50 years ago, before Christian was even born. That’s when the working people of this country had benefited from one of the most robust expansions of the middle class in history. High union membership and less income inequality meant that the American dream was alive and well and, more importantly, actually possible.

But over the past 50 years everything changed: Union membership fell, income inequality rose, the road to the middle class was filled with potholes of neglect. As the wealth of the top 1% expanded to engulf the bottom 80%, it seemed like the hope for a comfortable middle-class life turned into an unattainable dream, a mirage of a long-forgotten social contract that seemed to move further and further away the harder we reached for it.

Now, the reason I bring this up is because the excessive policing we just witnessed is part and parcel of the lack of opportunity for the middle class. It’s something I’ve been thinking about because I’ve witnessed so many cases like this where police seem inexplicably drawn into conflicts with people whose biggest crime is being economically vulnerable.

Now, it made me think about something I heard about, one of the reasons America seemed so invested in the middle class 50 years ago. I don’t remember who it was, but their argument went like this:

The country’s political leadership, concerned over the Cold War with Russia, felt they had to prove that democracy could deliver for the people. The idea was that the best life prospects for the greatest number of people would lead to proof that a democratic society was an effective society. It would be proof that the whole system actually worked.

So what happened? That’s a good question. Apparently, after the end of the Cold War, our country’s elites decided to abandon the egalitarianism of making the greatest number of lives better. Without the so-called Red Scare, it seems like we all veered in the opposite direction, extracting the biggest gains for the smallest number of people. And I think, along with that decision, was the idea that, in order to prevent such an imbalanced system from collapsing, the elites turned to an institution that could, in some sense, keep the declining middle class and working class in check by sowing chaos in their midst.

And that’s why we see so many questionable car stops and ordeals like Christian’s. That’s why police roll out drug-sniffing dogs because you simply drive in an area they deemed, well, basically poor and off limits, or while you’re stopped a second time for driving next to a country club. No need to worry if you’ve committed a crime. No need to think about if you’re a threat to public safety. The whole idea is containment, to make you feel less capable of demanding your rights or of expecting a fair shake or of being treated fairly. The unnecessary scrutiny and inexplicable traffic stops is all a part of the same process to make you feel estranged from the rights that are bestowed upon you by the Constitution.

And to make this point even more salient, I want to share some news with you, a development to reinforce my argument that overpolicing is a consequence of rampant inequality.

Just as we were finishing recording our show, Christian sent me an email, and I want to read part of it to you: “I just found out I lost my job because of this arrest.” Christian wrote me. Not only that, his car was impounded and he spent three days in jail, and now he’s unemployed.

So I ask you, what exactly did law enforcement accomplish here? What exactly was the goal, the purpose, the public interest that was served by causing a hardworking man to lose his job? I am at a loss to explain the underlying societal justification for a process that culminates in this type of economic loss, that bolsters such unnecessary hardship, that conscripts humiliation to justify the deleterious effects of a society that are intrinsically unfair.

Honestly, when I watch videos like these, I feel like all the mainstream media pundits who say discussing economic inequality is class warfare are right, except the abuse runs downhill to those who can least afford it, to people like Christian, who were struggling but working hard, and now must struggle even more just to overcome the government that he literally funds through his taxes — But only if the police department will allow him to work.

One of the things that is most discouraging about Christian’s ordeal is, like many cities we cover, Jonesboro spends more on policing than any other facet of city government. As Stephen pointed out, the city dedicates less to firefighting, sanitation, parks, recreation, and fixing city streets than to law enforcement. Basically, 37% of all the money their city collects goes to cops, cars, arrests, and jails.

But how do city leaders justify this expenditure? What do they say to residents who might ask why they need to find countless numbers of officers to conduct countless numbers of questionable stops? How do they explain the dedication of communal resources to a process that seems so unnecessary?

And Jonesboro is not the exception. Throughout this country, we invest more in handcuffs than we do in housing; more on cages than in keeping our cities clean; more on traffic stops than healthy recreation. And that’s what’s really intriguing. The recent trend in crime calls into question the entire justification for this hard-to-fathom spending.

As you may already know, there has been a historic drop in violent crime in many of the largest cities across the country. In our city, Baltimore, homicides reached a record low, dropping by nearly 40% over the last year. But what’s also intriguing about this good news is that it occurred when the police department also had a record number of vacancies. And Baltimore is not alone. Departments across the country have raised concerns about a dearth of new police officers, shortages that they simply can’t fill. Vacancies that have remained vacant.

So then how can we explain the historic drop in violence? If more police and increased spending on police will somehow deliver more public safety, then why did crime drop when fewer officers were on the streets? What exactly am I missing here when fewer cops translates into less crime?

I think what we’ve considered and truly examined is that perhaps all the spending on policing has less to do with crime than police partisans would want us to believe. That pumping tax dollars into shiny new SUVs for cops isn’t really about keeping us safe, but perhaps about keeping us in check.

Maybe, just maybe, cops have another purpose, an often unacknowledged role in the economic inequality that has engulfed people like Christian. Maybe, along with traffic stops and minor crimes, they are the guardians of the border between extravagant wealth and soul-crushing poverty. Maybe they are here not just to enforce the law, but impose boundaries on the chaos that communal poverty creates.

Just consider that roughly only 20% of property crimes and 40% of homicides are solved. I’m not saying it’s easy to catch a thief, but certainly that doesn’t seem to be the focus of police who have the time to constantly pull over the same man over and over and over again.

That’s why we take the time to report on cases like Christian’s. That’s why we produce a detailed show to scrutinize the actions of police that deserve the attention. And that’s why we tell the stories of people who end up on the wrong side of police overreach. That’s why we produce this show, so that someone other than the cops holding handcuffs can tell their side of the story.

I want to thank our guest, Christian Mobley, for bravely coming forward, supplying us the video evidence, and, of course, sharing his story. And we really hope that things are going to take a positive turn for you soon. Thank you so much for your time, Christian.

And, of course, I have to thank intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research, and editing on this piece. Thank you, Stephen.

Stephen Janis:  Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:  And, of course, I want to thank mods of the show, Noli Dee and Lacy R, for their support. Thank you. and a very special thanks to Accountability Report Patreons. We appreciate you, and I look forward to thanking each and every single one of you personally in our next livestream, especially Patreon associate producers Lucita Garcia, David K., and John E.R., and super friends Eddie Clegg, Kenneth K., Shane B., Pineapple Girl, Chris R., and Matter of Rights.

But also I want to thank a very special supporter of the show, Scott Rushing. Scott was kind enough to share his family story with us. Unfortunately, this case is a tragic use of excessive force that resulted in the death of his unarmed son, Tyler Rushing. 34-year-old Tyler Rushing was tasered, attacked by police K-9, shot, and killed on July 23, 2017, in Chico, California. But Scott has never given up on the hope that his family will receive justice for his son’s death, and neither have we. Scott, we appreciate you supporting our work, and we hope you’ll join us soon to update us on your progress on reforming the excessive force policies and training practices of private security guards. Thank you for your support, Scott.

And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us, and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately to par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram, or @eyesonpolice on Twitter. Or, of course, you can message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter or Facebook. And please like and comment. I do read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below for Accountability Reports. If you feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads and never take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated.

My name is Taya Graham, and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.

The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has gripped the nation and revived a passionate debate on the dismal state of healthcare in the US. With suspect Luigi Mangione now in custody, the police manhunt is over—but the real political fallout may have only just begun. In this special edition of Inequality Watch, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis react to the media’s response to the killing, and also speak with Kat Abughazaleh of Mother Jones, Prem Thakker of Zeteo, and activist Jeff Singer on the predatory nature of the US healthcare system.

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

Transcript

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

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to a special breaking news edition of the Inequality Watch, our show that seeks to analyze, comprehend, and seek solutions for the existential threat of unjustly concentrated wealth. Now I’m calling this a breaking news edition because of the events that transpired late last week. I’m sure most of you already know. UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson was gunned down on Thursday while arriving at a midtown Manhattan Hotel by a mass man who police now allege was Luigi Mangione. Now, Mangione was arrested earlier this week in McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He has been charged with a crime of second degree murder. Police found a manifesto on him critical of our unequal American healthcare system. But while Mangione is fighting extradition from a Pennsylvania jail, the murder has prompted massive fallout on social media that has launched a different conversation altogether, namely the company where Thompson worked and its role in the healthcare of millions of Americans, UnitedHealthcare and beyond that, the obvious cruelty of a system predicated on denying care and pursuit of profit.

Now, first I do want to be clear, violence is not the solution to any problem, let alone our dysfunctional healthcare system. And we do not condone or in any way think the problems we’re about to discuss justify violence. However, the job of independent media is to drill down into these issues that are often given superficial coverage by our mainstream media brethren. So we cannot ignore the outpouring of criticism about UnitedHealthcare’s business practices that have accompanied this event. It is a wave of pain and sorrow about a system that regularly denies the care people need, and a system predicated on profit that often fails to achieve the goal of the most expensive healthcare system in the world, treating people with dignity and improving their lives. And also, we want to know what you think about our callous healthcare industry and what you’ve learned about it from firsthand experience and what if anything you think can be done to fix it.

So please let us know your thoughts in the chat and comments, and I’ll try to get to some of them as well as to those who took the time to comment on our YouTube community post. I’ll make sure to show some of those comments at the end of our discussion. And one other point I want to make before we get started, this broken system has nothing to do with the people who deliver our healthcare. There are nurses and doctors and physical therapists and specialists of all kinds who do heroic work daily, and we all appreciate their dedication. I mean, just remember the critical care workers who stayed on the job during the pandemic to take care of patients under horrible conditions and many actually gave their lives to save ours. So first, we’re going to discuss the public reaction and then provide some context as to how the American Health Insurance operates, and we’ll share facts and figures to reveal why America pays more for healthcare than any other country and why that massive financial commitment leads to less than stellar results.

Then we’ll talk to Jeff Singer, the former executive director of Healthcare for the Homeless, a Baltimore-based nonprofit that provides health services to the people who can least afford them, and he has been fighting for healthcare justice and equity for decades. And then we’ll be discussing the massive online response and the mainstream media elites with two people who can analyze it better than any journalist out there, namely Kat Abu of Mother Jones and Prem Thakker of eo. So we have got a great discussion for you today, but first I want to go to my reporting partner, Stephen. Janice, just to set the stage. I want to play some clips just before we get started. And these clips flooded TikTok and other social media apps after Thompson’s killing. Let’s take a look.

Speaker 2:

UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, fatally shot and mute. No, let me fix that for you. Greedy man who siphoned $10 million a year from sick and poor people who was the CEO of the health insurance company that denied the most claims while simultaneously being number four on the Fortune 500 list was clapped today in New York City.

Speaker 3:

I’m going to be honest with y’all, defend, deny, depose sounds a whole hell of a lot like Liberte egalite for eternity, which was the battle cry for the French Revolution. Do not be surprised if we start seeing defend, deny depose spray painted on buildings.

Speaker 4:

I think that this guy is going to be this generation’s DB Cooper. They are just never going to find him. He’s going to turn into an urban legend. He knew exactly what he was doing and he disappeared immediately. And the best part about all this is that he drastically amplified class solidarity because no matter if you voted for Trump or Kamala, a lot of people are agreeing that insurance agencies are some of the most predatory companies out there. You pay into them for your entire adult life. And then they deny 32% of claims that could have been for lifesaving care that probably resulted in the suspect’s loved ones or family members passing away unnecessarily.

Speaker 5:

So I got a question for you. If they catch this person who un alive the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, if they catch this guy, how big you think the GoFundMe is going to be for his legal defense? I mean, I’m just curious because I know a lot of people I bet who throw $10 at this guy’s legal defense because I think the American public is just fed up with all these rich pricks, especially in the healthcare industry where they’ve been over the middle class in the working class since way before I was even born.

Speaker 6:

Hey, if you’re an electric bike backpack and firearm enthusiast who happen to be hanging outside a certain hotel in New York City this morning and you’re looking for a place to lay low, I got you. Send me a message. I’ll come pick you up at the time and location most convenient for you, and you can crash here as long as you need. Drinks are obviously on me, but honestly, so is everything else. Food, clothing, whatever you need, your money is no good here.

Taya Graham:

So that young man was actually talking about providing an underground railroad for Luigi Mangione, and I just want to mention I do keep my eye on the live chat. I noticed sth, Lord Prince said that it’s corrupt, not broken. That’s just me. And FPV Frodo said, everyone must stop paying all medical bills until the insurance companies come to their sense, it must be unanimous. Let’s stop paying all medical bills. Now, Stephen, I just want to get your thoughts about the outpouring of anger regarding our healthcare industry.

Stephen Janis:

What astounded me when I watched some of the outpouring after this was that we had talked about consistently why aren’t the Democrats or why isn’t healthcare an issue in the presidential campaign? It really didn’t come up. And then you see the universal passion for the problems with this healthcare system. I was just kicking myself because I’m like this great consulting campaign that we just watched, which was funded by over a billion dollars, never thought that maybe people care about this issue. So to me, in many ways it showed how the Democrats have lost touch with the working class. And I know this has been a point that many people have made over and over again, but still it’s really almost like, what were you guys thinking? Were you listening? And then to watch Josh Shapiro, who’s the governor of Pennsylvania during a press conference after the young man was caught scolding people for two or three minutes about the moralizing, about saying, how can you bring this up in this context? Well, you didn’t listen before. You don’t listen at all. And if you don’t listen, people get angry and they find other ways to express it. And I think the shock of the democratic elites and the consultants that avoid this were probably the biggest thing that just struck me right away.

Taya Graham:

Stephen, to your point, while I was watching this, I couldn’t help but wonder why this issue didn’t engender much discussion during the campaign. It made me think about our previous discussion regarding billionaires, specifically the group that we called conflict

Speaker 8:

Billionaires,

Taya Graham:

Which are the uber wealthy who profit off dividing us with their social media companies. And it really seems like this applies to the issue, especially because despite the anger we’re seeing now, neither party campaigned on the issue. I mean, Stephen, what do you think?

Stephen Janis:

Well, on the inequality watching is the Real News Network. We try to give people a handy guide to identify billionaires in the wild,

Taya Graham:

Right?

Stephen Janis:

So we had the carbon conflict and the conflict billionaires are the ones who make money off getting us to hate each other, and basically profit people who own social media platforms like El Musk, Elon Musk, and let’s remember Elon Musk probably doesn’t have a copay when he goes to the doctor. And I don’t think Elon Musk has to worry about his healthcare. Well, I mean, come on, that’s a fair point. And then he’s on Twitter making us all hate each other while we’re sitting there with this horrible healthcare system that doesn’t really serve us. And I think the absurdity of it is apparent to the people out to live with it, but none of these conflict billionaires have to live with it, so they don’t care about it. And so they sort of construct arguments between each other instead of actually paying attention to the problem, which they don’t have to worry about it. Elon Musk can pay his medical

Speaker 8:

Bills.

Stephen Janis:

He doesn’t have to worry about it. So I just thought conflict billionaires, this is a perfect example of how they keep an important issue out of the public forum and discussion.

Taya Graham:

As a matter of fact, I think you could probably help out with everyone’s medical bills actually, but just

Speaker 8:

About

Taya Graham:

Not to be callous

Speaker 8:

Though, true,

Taya Graham:

But just to put your thoughts in perspective, let’s provide some context on how the Uber rich get richer as we get sicker. And so I’m going to just throw some numbers on the screen. So private health insurance spends more money administering healthcare than Medicare, and this is multiple times more expensive. Administration costs about 2% for Medicare versus 12 to 20% for private health insurers. Now, the CBO estimates that we could save roughly 500 billion annually with Medicare for all. The United States will spend a projected $4.7 trillion or 18% of the national economy on healthcare in 2023. On a per capita basis, United States spends nearly double the average of similarly wealthy countries. Nonetheless, health outcomes are generally no better than those of other countries, and in some cases are worse, including in areas like life expectancy, infant mortality, and diabetes. Now, United Healthcare Group is the umbrella company that Mr. Thompson worked for, and it shows just how profitable this system is. The company has earned nearly 30 billion over the past four quarters. So there is no doubt that this system is making people rich.

Stephen Janis:

Can we make one quick point? Sure. It’s really interesting is the A a, the Obamacare actually limited the amount of money that an insurance company could spend on administration, but what they did is they bought other healthcare concerns so they could overcome that. That 20% is kind of meaningless now because these bigger companies are buying pharmacy benefit managers. So it just shows why people are frustrated even when legislation has passed to limit their profitability, they find ways around it. I just wanted add that.

Taya Graham:

No, that’s an excellent point. And I found this graphic to emphasize how profitable this company is and how profitable the industry is. So lemme just throw just one more graphic on the screen.

Speaker 8:

Okay, one more.

Taya Graham:

Okay. So this is a list of the Fortune 500. Number one on the list is Walmart. Number two is Amazon. Number three is Apple. And number four on the Fortune 500 is the United Healthcare Group. United Healthcare Group is the parent company of United Healthcare, and it’s on the Fortune 500 list. And in fact, if you take a look at the bottom, they’re making more money than ExxonMobil. Okay. So how is that for the tip of the iceberg in terms of how bad healthcare is good for a very wealthy few, but we are very lucky to have someone help us sort through this, namely Jeff Singer who spent his entire career fighting to deliver healthcare to the people who can least afford it. He’s the former executive director of Healthcare for the homeless in Baltimore City, our hometown, and he’s been the advocate for affordable dignified healthcare for decades, and his activism extends to a variety of topics, including affordable housing, living wages, and law enforcement reform. Professor singer, Jeff, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. So I’m having a little trouble hearing Jeff,

Stephen Janis:

But why don’t you ask him the first question,

Taya Graham:

But I’m going to go ahead and ask him the first question in the hopes that he’ll hear me shortly. So Jeff, first, you were surprised by the response to, were you surprised by the response to the killing of CEO Thompson? I mean, you’ve seen some of the worst aspects of this system. So what were your thoughts when you saw how people were reacting to crime when you saw how the public was responding? Oh gosh. It looks like I’m still not hearing Jeff. That’s unfortunate.

Speaker 8:

Yeah,

Taya Graham:

Well, oh, he can hear me now. Okay, great. Hi, professor Singer. Can you hear me?

Jeff Singer:

I can.

Taya Graham:

Okay, terrific. Terrific. So I gave you, I know you didn’t hear me, but I gave you a glowing introduction and told everyone out there how much we appreciate you and how you are literally an institution in Baltimore for the activism that you have engaged in over the decades. So I just want to ask you our first question,

Speaker 8:

Which

Taya Graham:

Was if you were surprised by the public’s response to the killing of CEO Thompson, because like I was saying before, you have seen some of the most cruel aspects of this system firsthand. So what were your thoughts when people were reacting and responding to his murder?

Jeff Singer:

I was pleased that there was such an outpouring of political and political economic analysis. So yeah, that’s what we used to call propaganda by the deed, and haven’t seen too much of that in this country in a long time.

Stephen Janis:

Jeff, why do you think politicians took such a, they didn’t really want to engage in the discussion about healthcare. They wanted to shame people for this outpouring of anger. Why were they so reluctant to speak to the people about it and not engage with people rather than kind of say scold people for responding to this?

Jeff Singer:

Right. The mainstream media has been its usual heedless self, and there’s been very little analysis of what any of this means, particularly in Baltimore, the mainstream media here, the sun and the banner. There’s just, and the governor who just announced that, of course he isn’t in favor of violence. Well, yeah, we kind of knew that, although that remains to be seen, but that’s true throughout American society, that nobody’s in favor of violence and the people in power aren’t in favor of doing anything about it

Stephen Janis:

In the sense of doing anything about the healthcare system. You had another question. I’m sorry.

Taya Graham:

Oh, well, professor Singer, I was hoping that you could help us by maybe unpacking some of the myths regarding Medicare for all. I mean, there are a lot of falsehoods out there. The idea that Medicare for All or universal healthcare would be, let’s say even a form of socialism. What are some of the falsehoods people believe and what is the truth?

Jeff Singer:

Yes. Well, only if were a form of socialism, but it isn’t necessarily, that’s one of the ways that the ruling class tricks people into not working for what they want and for what they need by using the derogatory form of socialism that of course, all good Americans are supposed to be opposed to. And they’ve been very successful with that for 150 years.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting. We were talking before the show with our esteemed editor in Chief Max Alvarez and a couple other people who have had access to nationalized healthcare. He was in England, he said, that was amazing.

Speaker 8:

Yes.

Stephen Janis:

Why have our politicians been successful in scaring people about a nationalized health system? It seems like it makes total common sense, but on the other hand, we have this sort of running through that we all like our private insurance or whatever. Why have they been so easily able to tarnish the idea of a national healthcare system?

Jeff Singer:

I don’t precisely know the answer to that, but as I mentioned, there’s been almost 150 years of negativity around the term socialism. Although nationalized health insurance isn’t really a socialist solution. On the other hand, England has had socialized medicine since World War ii.

Speaker 8:

It’s

Jeff Singer:

Very, very popular and it’s very, very effective. The Commonwealth Foundation released a report a few months ago called Mirror Mirror, and it evaluates the healthcare situation in 10 countries, 10 advanced industrial countries,

Ben Shapiro:

And

Jeff Singer:

One that spends the most and has the worst outcomes is of course, the United States.

Speaker 8:

Right.

Jeff Singer:

Number three in their analysis is the United Kingdom, which is socialized medicine.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, technically speaking, Medicare is socialized medicine. I mean, technically speaking by definition, right? Medicare.

Jeff Singer:

Well, Medicare though paid private providers.

Stephen Janis:

Well, there’s a Medicare advantage, but then there is a Medicare system that doesn’t, right. Or I guess you’re right, they’re providers. So yeah, I see what you’re saying. That’s very distinct. They don’t have private providers in England or other countries. You’re right.

Jeff Singer:

Very few in the United Kingdom. Now, other countries like Germany and France, they do have private providers, but treated pretty differently than they are here.

Taya Graham:

Jeff, I wanted to ask you something just so that you could speak from your personal experience. I mean, you have really dealt with a system that denies healthcare for poor people or for people who can’t afford housing, and you actually did something about it by helping build healthcare for the homeless. What did you see and experience trying to get people who are left out of our system and denied by it?

Jeff Singer:

Well, it’s interesting Teya that most of the people with whom we worked, and that was, well, a hundred thousand different people that we worked with for 25 years at healthcare for the homeless then, and that was 15 years ago. So there’s more now, but they were and are people who have not had access to health services, which exacerbates all their health problems. So they can’t take advantage of the wonderful possibility of advanced health services that the United States does have. But it benefits a small number of people.

Stephen Janis:

And you’re in the process. You were working, we talked about the administrative costs in our private health insurance. How much was that administrative state a problem in terms of delivering healthcare because it’s so expensive and sort of usy, how much was that a problem for you to deal with?

Jeff Singer:

Well, we were required financially speaking to become integrated into the existing health system. And that is complicated and expensive. There’s lots of reporting that has to happen, and computer systems. We had spent a lot of money building, buying computer systems. People spend a lot of time using the systems that exist, and a lot of that is unnecessary. Not all of it, but a lot of it is, there’s a huge amount of money that is wasted on those systems.

Taya Graham:

I wanted to ask just about some of the lessons that you’ve learned from doing healthcare at such a grassroots level that maybe we could learn from to help us push for a more comprehensive healthcare plan. I mean, is there a way to change this system and perhaps you could share with us some of your ideas to do so

Jeff Singer:

Aside from having a socialist revolution?

Stephen Janis:

No, you can talk about that

Jeff Singer:

Until we do that I don’t think will have an equitable and effective healthcare system. But there are non socialist countries that have much better healthcare systems or a lot more equity for sure. And higher life expectancy and lower morbidity. So all of the data shows that when everybody has access to decent healthcare, everybody benefits not just their health but their pocketbooks. It is so much cheaper to make sure that everybody gets good preventive care, and maybe that’ll happen with our new health secretary.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, I want to ask you, if you’re organizing a ground this idea, what is the biggest roadblock to, I mean, there’s a million of them, okay. I mean the political system we have now, who’s in power, but is it like entrenched special interests like the A MA or something? What makes it impossible to even have this conversation? Or is it propaganda? I mean, just curious what you think.

Jeff Singer:

Yeah. Well, the A MA has been involved in assuring that there isn’t equitable healthcare for many, many since there was an A MA every time a national figure would advocate for healthcare for all, not necessarily Medicare for all. That’s one example. But the A MA would spend as much money as they could, and that’s a lot of money to make sure that the discussion isn’t a real one. That people are tarred and feathered when they talk about socialized medicine or when they talk about healthcare for all. And it is unfortunate that so much time and money is spent on making sure that we don’t have the system. Well, that’s

Stephen Janis:

Amazing.

Jeff Singer:

We spend twice as much as any other country, and yet our health outcomes are the worst among advanced industrial countries.

Taya Graham:

Jeff, I wanted to ask you a question. I had been looking, I was on open secrets and they do great work. If you ever want to find out what your local politician is receiving in their campaign coffers, go take a look. You’ll see, and I was looking and I saw that there was a lot of donations from the healthcare industry, and in particular, I was looking at the United Health Group and Vice President Harris received a large sum of money, actually even larger than the sum of money President-elect Trump received. But there was plenty of money sloshing about both with Democrats and Republicans. And I was wondering, I mean on your thoughts of how many layers do we have to unpack here? I mean, if our politicians are, let’s say, being influenced by this money, I mean, can you give us some suggestions on how we can start taking this power?

Jeff Singer:

I wish I could effectively do that because the health industry is one of the largest and most profitable in the US, and they spend more money on lobbying than anyone else except maybe the oil industry. I don’t know. I haven’t seen the figures recently. But because so much money is spent on maintaining this system, that does not work well for most people in this country. But that’s backed up by the propaganda, as you said, Stephen, they reinforce each other. The industry, I mean, there’s billions. Hundreds of billions of dollars are made by these profiteers. And until that gets addressed, nothing changes. Right? Well, who supports that? Some nice people do, but not the captains of industry because that’s how they have their three houses and jaguars. So they’re going to do whatever they can to assure that real changes don’t happen. Obamacare, that’s not a real change that didn’t in any way interfere with the privatization and financialization of health.

Taya Graham:

Well, professor, lemme just ask you one last question before we bring on our guest Kat and Prem. I mean, I am starting to think here, we just, I’m getting the impression from you that perhaps Professor, we might just need a revolution. I mean, is it time for us to just start getting in the streets and protesting and ringing our Congress people? I mean, is it time for us

Stephen Janis:

To folks have a revolution on

Taya Graham:

YouTube? Well really take action and pushing our politicians to do what we want, which is reform the system.

Jeff Singer:

Yeah. Well, my old friend Gil Scott Heron famous, said that the revolution will not be televised, but it might be on YouTube. Yeah,

Speaker 8:

It could be. Well,

Jeff Singer:

This could be a time when some changes will happen. And that’s exciting about the reaction to this event.

Taya Graham:

Thank Well, professor Singer, thank you so much for your time. And I want to quote of that, the revolution might not be televised, but it might be on YouTube. That makes a lot of sense. I need that.

Stephen Janis:

I

Taya Graham:

Need that t-shirt right now.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you, professor. We

Taya Graham:

Appreciate it, professor, singer, it’s always so great to see you. We really appreciate you.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you.

Jeff Singer:

Yes. Delightful to speak with you all.

Ben Shapiro:

Thank

Taya Graham:

You. And we also really appreciate the service he has done for our community, both as an educator and a healthcare provider.

Stephen Janis:

Listening to him, it’s like we had talked about the political economy, which is when sort of politics and business fuse. And I feel like we’re in this huge glacier of political economy that seems immovable at this point, but we’re not going to give a pope. But still, it’s a pretty solid sort of fusion between business interests and the government in this case. And that makes it, I think, pretty hard for us to have real change. But we got to keep talking about it.

Taya Graham:

And I just want to throw up a few. I’ve been keeping the

Stephen Janis:

Island, which just might becomes irrational, but No, but seriously, it’s why people react to a murder and with glee and everyone’s like, why would this happen? It’s because the system is completely immovable. It doesn’t respond to people’s needs. And when democracy becomes incapable of responding to people’s needs, people respond in other ways. I mean, just listening to it just, anyway.

Taya Graham:

No, Stephen, you make a very fair point and there’s some really great comments in the chat. And I just want to throw a few on screen before I bring on our guests. Bud. Roland said, the CEO shooter appears to be connected to the radical middle. We have, I know they have some great comments here. A Ophelia Moon Monroe said that I think if Luigi goes to trial, they’re going to have to stack the jury to get a guilty verdict. They don’t stack it. They will stack it. Don’t be fooled.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you, Ophelia.

Taya Graham:

And let’s see this person Anon Mouse. Good to see you again. Anon Mouse. It says, heart attack stent installed with insurance, $74,000 heart attack stent installed without insurance. $198,000.

Stephen Janis:

So to pay $74,000.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, that’s horrifying. And I just want to also to acknowledge Dre with without, it’s very weird that we, the people have to be nice about someone who knowingly profits from destroying lives. We have to be nice because he has a family owe the family. And a little thanks for no name coder who said the people should have hit that thumbs up button. So thank you. You cool? No name coder. We appreciate it. And now

Ben Shapiro:

To

Taya Graham:

Talk about the online reaction to and some of the, let’s just say hot takes on the state of American healthcare. I’m joined by Kat Abu and Prem Thakker.

Speaker 8:

Welcome

Taya Graham:

Kat Abu and welcome. Kat Abu is a freelance video creator as well as a contributor for Mother Jones and sat her explainers on right-wing journalism have accrued tens of millions of views. Wow, that’s cool. And Prem Thakker is SAT’s political correspondent also writing a weekly column called Sub, excuse me, subtext with prem. And please make sure to follow their work. We should have their social media tags on this screen and hopefully in the live chat for you as well. So I just want to thank you both so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you.

Taya Graham:

Thanks for having us

Stephen Janis:

Be here. Thank you.

Taya Graham:

So I’d like to put my first question to Kat. You have seen the outrage from the public when scolded by various politicians and media figures for not having enough empathy for Brian Thompson and his family. How do you view or explain what you’ve seen online?

Kat Abughazaleh:

I mean, I’ve seen what everyone else has been seeing. Not a lot of empathy. And honestly, I mean, can you blame them? Can you blame this country where our healthcare system is so messed up? Where when I was a bartender, my coworkers and I used to take fish antibiotics because we didn’t want to pay to go to the doctor if we were sick. And you just got to hope that it’s an infection. If you’re living in a country like that where you’re paying $74,000 instead of $148,000 to get a heart stint, it’s really hard to feel empathy for the person that is making $10 million minimum per year off of your misery. And honestly, except for people with power and influence, and of course boot liquors, I haven’t seen many people rush to defend this guy. I can feel bad for his family. I can acknowledge that vigilante violence is not a good solution.

I mean, that’s a fun thing about the right is there’s people on Fox News, for example. People that have power on the right are super upset about this. But they’ve spent the last four or five, 10 years cheering on vigilante violence. Kyle Rittenhouse attacks against trans and gay people. So many Tucker used to go when he was on Fox monologue for 20 minutes about how he need more vigilante violence. And then you have to act surprised when this guy gets iced. I mean, you can recognize that there’s a very slippery slope here. And also not be surprised.

Stephen Janis:

Just to get your take too on this sort of outpouring, what’s your take on it? And as a journalist who reports on a lot of this stuff, what do you think about it?

Prem Thakker:

I think,

Stephen Janis:

Oh, prem. Sorry. No prem. Sorry. Prem.

Prem Thakker:

Well, just going off what Kat said, I think let’s start by just setting a premise. You and I, we have with this collective odd life, this also shared burden of existence, it is kind of this sacred experience. They all kind of share. And so taking that away from someone is vulgar. In many ways. It’s personified, vulgar what more can be said. So let’s work backwards from that premise to then figure out, as Kat’s gesturing towards why so many people can either make jokes about a killing to be indifferent or to even cheer at the thought of it, at the symbolism of it. And one thing that we wrote on at the EO is that there’s a lot of contradictions that need to be addressed in something like this. I mean, you guys talked about this in the intro of the show. Some of the same politicians who insist that such a killing of an innocent man, a father, a husband, is indefensible, have spent the past 15, 14 months not only defending, but funding the mass killing of tens of thousands of parents, husbands, and wives and kids, to use their words of how we describe people.

Days after Thompson was killed, two migrant teens were stabbed after being asked if they spoke English, no mass police or media mobilization. And of course, as we saw as Mangione was apprehended, Daniel Penney was acquitted after choking. Jordan Neely, a homeless black man brought to desperation to death on the subway. And the point is not to equalize these case, but to realize that putting them together sort of brings us to look at these contradictions of who we see are human asks, or for us to ask who gets our empathy and to figure out what kind of society we tolerate. How many migrants has this government killed either by causing havoc all over the world and creating these migrants in the first place, or when they try to come here and meeting the militarized border that we have, how much tax dollars have gone to those campaigns and wars? How many people do we live without a bed and then meet them with violence? And doesn’t this violence just beget more violence? So these questions are worth asking and interrogating.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, and I mean, I think as you point out, if there’s one system that lacks empathy, one government institution, it has to be our healthcare system seems completely devoid of empathy. And so that’s a really good point. Tay, you had want to,

Taya Graham:

Actually, I wanted to ask Kat a question. Do you think this public frustration with the healthcare costs could actually catalyze broader support for Medicare for all or some other form of universal healthcare? Do you think this could become a movement?

Kat Abughazaleh:

I mean, it already is and isn’t. People by and large want Medicare for all? Especially if you take away the politicization of it. It’s why so many people support the Affordable Care Act, but they hate Obamacare. If you’re just saying everyone gets healthcare, everyone supports that. And it’s been like that since forever. I mean, some people buy into the propaganda, but once again, when you strip it all down, that’s what every average American, every average person wants. And our politicians know that. Our lawmakers know that. Our health insurance companies know that. Every single organization of power in this country knows that. And they have purposely stopped us from doing that. They have purposely kept us from getting the care we need. And that’s not an accident. This country loves to pay more to make their own people miserable. I was listening to a Behind the Bastards episode the other day while I was cleaning my house. I was re-listening to some of the old ones, and there was one about the creation of the FDA, which started because we were cutting milk with horse piss and there was just poop and everything, and every food was disgusting. It was like barely even food. Highly recommend

Not the food, the podcast, and any of the sources in there. And so that’s Make

Prem Thakker:

America healthy again,

Kat Abughazaleh:

Make America healthy again. That’s why the FDA was created because people realized this was a problem. But before it was created, all of these giant food manufacturing, meat packing industries got together and tried to launch a campaign saying they are trying to stop your freedom. They are trying to stop you from drinking milk with sawdust and wriggling worms in it. This was an actual campaign by them, and it worked for some people, but it’s the same idea at that point. It’s just cheaper to pasteurize your milk, just boil the milk. Oh my God. But they refused because they would rather continue to hurt others.

Speaker 8:

And

Kat Abughazaleh:

It’s the same thing now. It’s cheaper to have healthcare for all, but we continue to pay so much money just to put those dollars in 50 guys’ pockets.

Stephen Janis:

That’s a great

Kat Abughazaleh:

Point.

Stephen Janis:

That’s a really great point. Per prem, a lot of people, a lot of corporations now are beefing up security. I heard they spent $250,000 to protect the CE of UnitedHealthcare. But do you think this outpouring will actually, they’ll ever say, well, maybe we need to change our behavior a little bit, or maybe we need to alter the way we do business. Do you think this kind of pushback can actually have an effect on corporate behavior? I know it’s a strange question, but I’m just curious if you think any of it’s working or getting through to them.

Prem Thakker:

I think when I think about this question, I think about 2020 where we had this coalescing moment of millions of people across the country, regardless of their politics and backgrounds, all for a moment being forced to think about a lot of questions at once. One is with regards to race, their relation to race, their relation to the people around them, their neighbors no less. During a time where this awful, unpredictable, uncertain pandemic is sweeping the nation, bringing people to, in some respects have much more relatable experiences than they had had previously altogether. And all this combined in the lead up to the election, I think brought a lot of people in this country, again, regardless of their politics, to ask these bigger questions about what kind of society they want to be a part of and to contribute to and how do they want to be alongside their neighbors. But then of course, in the ensuing months, we saw a lot of that energy, a lot of that frustration, questioning intellectual humility that is very beautiful, get quelled or subside or just brought into very antithetical to solidarity type of spirits and movements. Yeah, true. We saw a lot of radicalization that we’re seeing the consequences of now in this election over the ensuing months because there was no vessel for that. There was no

Welcoming of that. The people who tried to channel that in something where we’re set aside, we’re pushed aside. And of course, it’s hard to bring a lot of people who are all dealing with all sorts of questions and their own relation to those questions into one sort of coherent movement. But to at least welcome those questions and to give space and time to people, to ask them regardless of who they are is important. And so moving forward in the next weeks and months, I think we will get a cousin of that and seeing will this energy and these questionings and these very sincere and earnest grapplings by all sorts of people, will they be welcomed by not just the people in power who maybe want to push that aside, but also all of us, we all play a role in that.

Stephen Janis:

That’s a good point. And I mean, I think one difference in this, well, you talked about maybe the George Floyd movement, which really did change policing. We saw it on the grassroots level here. We saw in our legislatures when they actually passed reform. And I hope that the fact that people are trying to focused on healthcare with a focus on something specific, it can translate into a movement that focuses on something specific right here. We have to change healthcare. We’re not just trying to change everything all at once, but even though that is kind of everything everywhere all at once, however, hopefully that kind of focus can maybe bring some fruition in terms of actual change.

Taya Graham:

I hope so as well. And I have to say what Kat’s comment on why we needed the FDA just keeps ringing my ears. Oh God. Because I remember learning about how, let’s say problematic, our food distribution system could be beforehand.

Kat Abughazaleh:

Don’t worry. Read the book, the Poison Squad, by the way, just going to plug that book. Really good.

Taya Graham:

No, that’s great. I appreciate it. I really want to follow up. Sorry,

Stephen Janis:

Cable fixes. Don’t worry.

Taya Graham:

But what I wanted to do is I have a clip that I think kind of speaks to some of the things you were talking about earlier, Kat, and it’s a clip, and I think some of the people we’re watching right now, they might find it a little puzzling.

Speaker 8:

And

Taya Graham:

It’s a video from Ben Shapiro where he responds to the murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Now, I’m sure most of you are familiar with fax over Feelings. Ben Shapiro, he is a conservative firebrand, best known for his work as host of a Daily Wire. And his YouTube videos receive millions of views where he’s primarily known for destroying those who dare to discuss policy with him. But what’s interesting about the video, or at least what I think is interesting about the video I’m about to play, is that Shapiro tries and fails to characterize the reaction to violence as a left versus right story. And namely, that was the left that was insensitive and even blood thirsty. So let’s just take a listen.

Ben Shapiro:

According to the New York Times, none of this stopped social media commentators from leaping to conclusions and showing a blatant lack of sympathy over the death of a man who is a husband and father of two children, thoughts and deductibles to the family. Read one comment underneath the video of the shooting posted online by CNN. Unfortunately, my condolences are out of network. A TikTok user wrote, I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for it by insurance. It makes me physically sick. I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all those patients and their families. And these sorts of messages were incredibly common across the internet. Be discussed yesterday, a Columbia professor who wrote something very similar, unfortunately bubbling under the surface of all this, is something very serious, really serious. What is that serious thing? The revolutionary left is creeping into the mainstream. Yesterday we talked about liberals versus the left. Liberals are people who disagree with me on public policy but aren’t in favor of the murder of their opponents. The left is a different thing. The shooting of Thompson has unleashed a wave of evil from members of the left. Thompson was not a criminal.

Taya Graham:

So as you see, he blames Democrats and in particular, the left for the

Stephen Janis:

Revolutionary left, which is creeping into the mainstream

Taya Graham:

Really for the apathetic and negative online response. So Kat, I was wondering what your take was on Ben Shapiro’s rendering of the public response.

Kat Abughazaleh:

Oh, I am so glad you asked. Thank you so much. I had to bounce after this question. But if you look at the comment section of this video, it’s pretty much just people who are identifying as right leaning or even fully right wing, realizing the entire point that there’s no war but the class war, they realize, wait, you just want us to hate us hate each other, because guess what? I grew up conservative. I’m from Texas. I know plenty of people are. We all get fucked in the ass by health insurance premiums. It’s death taxes and being screwed over by the American healthcare system left or right. It doesn’t matter. It’s just rich or poor. And I don’t just mean like a hundred K, 200 KA year, rich, I mean obscenely rich. You can get bankrupted so fast in this country if you just get cancer like curable cancer. That’s unbelievable. And so his characterization, I have seen some people express sympathy over Brian Thompson and I recognize that, and I think that’s totally valid. That’s how you’re feeling. But they also recognize why other people are angry or see him as a symbol rather than a person, because for him, we’re all just faceless bags of cash when he was alive. And so it makes sense that people would see him the same way, but rather a faceless corpse for the healthcare industry.

And Ben Shapiro just completely misses the point. He’s so focused on protecting the rich and powerful because he’s part of them that he forgot to do his fake populism thing. His, oh, I’m not from California, and desperately wanted be in Hollywood, but no one would take me shtick. It’s pathetic. And I was just thinking, this is how a lot of people get to class consciousness. I’m down, but some people won’t be convinced on Fox. They switched to Daniel Penny real fast to talk about how great he was. And the cognitive dissonance probably didn’t click for a lot of viewers, but will that racism still override their hatred towards the healthcare industry next time they’re signing a hospital bill? That’s what I keep thinking right now. People are mad, but of course it’ll die down. It’ll ebb and flow, especially as trial comes all this stuff. But what about every time someone has to sign for their chemotherapy or hell, when I get my narcolepsy medication every month and I never know how much it’s going to cost left or right, it doesn’t matter. All of us are going to be dealing with this.

Stephen Janis:

Well,

Kat Abughazaleh:

Wow,

Taya Graham:

KA, that was amazing. And

Stephen Janis:

That was the first time I saw our editor-in-Chief Smile during the, that was his first smile with your

Taya Graham:

Use. Used

Stephen Janis:

Some colorful language. I

Taya Graham:

Think there was some smiles that I wish you could have seen behind

Stephen Janis:

The first time. Most time he’s been kind of glaring at us. I just wish you could have seen. Thank you for that. Thank you for

Taya Graham:

That. Yes. Well, thanks for having me, guys. Sorry we have to let you go, but next time, we’re going to have to keep you for a little bit longer. Okay? Yes, absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you.

Taya Graham:

Bye. Y all. Okay. We appreciate you.

Stephen Janis:

Now, crem, I know you’re a fan of Ben Shapiro. I’m sure I can just tell by your thoughtful commentary that Ben wrote, but do you think this is an issue that can transcend ideology? Is this an issue where people can actually come together and say, let’s push back rather than just fight amongst these other?

Prem Thakker:

Yeah. Yeah. I think there has been for years and years and years, just a broader appetite by people of all political stripes for something different, something that feels different in your experience of living in this country. And a lot of that obviously relates to the political nature of this country. And I think Kat put it so beautifully that there’s certain things for which that experience of how a medical insurance company treats you is radicalizing in so many ways for people, as we’ve seen over

The past week in terms of how people are expressing their interactions with companies like this. And for many people who have gone through political changes, I know I’ve gone through many worldview shifts, a benefit of just wonderful people around me, teaching me things, strongly things, opening my eyes to things. All it takes sometimes is one thing, and especially if it’s a personal thing. And that can just be a gateway to seeing that you deserve more, that to being a society and to contribute to it and to be part of it and to be just screwed over and over again is just a dissonance, a discrepancy that can become so overwhelming to lead someone to even do something as drastic as we’ve seen this week.

Stephen Janis:

It’s really interesting, given some beautiful metaphysical descriptions of this problem, is this in some sense a spiritual crisis for people not being able to reconcile the irrational nature of a system with their own views of their own country. And somehow this is creating a certain anger and separation from the system itself. I mean, it’s, you brought up so many interesting ways of looking at this that I didn’t even think about.

Prem Thakker:

Yeah, I guess I’m just so, and I apologize if any of it seems just too

Stephen Janis:

Cloud. No, I thought it was really cool. That’s why I

Prem Thakker:

Just wanted to get some, I guess I’m just so in this moment, keyed into this sense of contradiction, putting these cases all together, juxtaposing them together to really think what we’re building, what we’ve inherited also as well, of course, we are individuals that are inheriting something, but by permission or not, we have inherited it by choice or not. We haven’t inherited it. And I think as much as there is exhaustion, especially over recent years for so many understandable reasons, regardless of your politics, there’s also just this keen thirst for this exhaustion to either end or to lead towards something. And so

Stephen Janis:

I agree.

Prem Thakker:

I guess one thing I think of is with regards to Thompson, who, again, to me, Thompson shouldn’t have been killed. And in this question, what is also at stake that we should ask is how can we be in a society for which Thompson or a symbol now of the echelon that he represents can rise, can climb the ladder to oversee a company that denies healthcare coverage through artificial intelligence, through algorithm that leads to all this mass suffering that thousands of people have been expressing over the past week to us. How can someone over time come to oversee that and look it in the eye and not want to rip up that crushing status quo?

So we should ask whether he Thompson should have been brought up in a world where he could have risen to such a position for such a position to exist for such consequences to it be real. In the same way that we worry about the dehumanization of migrants, of people in Palestine, of the homeless. There is this sense of the way we set up society now to also dehumanize us in the roles that we play in either allowing this to continue or for someone to rise up to have that job that separates someone from their own humanity. You’d imagine, for instance, you or I or any person listening that you could say, oh, if I was in that position or if I had all this money, I’d want to help people. And that might be true, but somehow some way for a lot of people that get to that level of power, they don’t do what we think we would’ve done. And so there’s a sort of different kind of dehumanization that’s at stake here as well that I think is worth interrogating.

Stephen Janis:

That is profound.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, it is actually an excellent point, and I’m glad you added that layer of depth to the conversation. We really appreciate it. And so I actually kind of feel bad because I’m going back to Ben Shapiro now after a beautiful moment like that, but I thought it might speak to some of the conversation we were having earlier. And I just want to share just a few of the comments from his subscribers and from his longtime viewers. And please don’t think I was being petty by doing this, but I went and looked for the dislikes ratio on the video. Now, I took this screenshot, I think probably two nights ago, and there’s a good chance that it has increased since then. I think it’s probably increased quite a bit. So let me share some of the comments that were in the YouTube section. I just pulled out just a few

Stephen Janis:

To his video,

Taya Graham:

Specific video.

I’m not buying this left versus right S anymore. Ben, I want healthcare for my family. According to Ben, I went from Trump voter to revolutionary leftist in the span of a month. Remember guys, Ben has more in common with that CEO than he has with any of us. One death is a tragedy, 1 million is a statistic, except Ben took this at face value. Ben’s net worth is around $50 million. He’s a peer of Brian Thompson, not of us, the average American citizen. He makes money by generating hate and division. Oh, and last one, not going to lie, these comments are making me feel patriotic. That has 7,200 upvotes.

So as you can see from the comments, this issue is hardly partisan. Many of his viewers expressed their own pain and difficulties with healthcare. As a matter of fact, there’s one comment I want to put up there, but it was very long. But suffice it to say there was a young man who would be considered a Democrat, and his uncle is a Republican, and he said they both watched his father die. And he said, when his father, me, his uncle was on Facebook, he basically put F that CEO. And that’s a divided household there. And they both agreed that the healthcare system is, let’s say, leaving people short. So just to emphasize this point, these are not unsympathetic radicals that Shapiro had described as barbaric and homicidal leftists. So I’m sure it was probably to his surprise that this was not a left right issue and instead seems to be a class issue. And it seems to span the political spectrum. And I’ll just say this, after a very contentious election, it was actually a relief to see something that all of us could agree on.

Stephen Janis:

I think that what most of us, someone say said the prem, and we’ll get back to prem in one second. It’s just interesting that for people, this isn’t political, but it’s very personal, I think is what he’s saying in the sense that you are seeing something that’s supposed to work absolutely fail, and you feel helpless that you can’t do it. It just seems like it’s set up to make us helpless. And I think that’s kind of the spiritual crisis that we’re talking about for people because how do we fix it? I mean, Jeff Singer who’s seen it from the ground up was not, let’s say, optimistic about fixing this. So

Taya Graham:

Yeah, and just to be fair and balanced and to show how deeply entrenched the problem is of let’s say our media elites not understanding how the healthcare system can be so devastating. Let me share with you the story that comes from Democrat and former C Nnn anchor, Chris Cuomo, brother of New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Let’s take a short listen to his analysis.

Speaker 13:

Now, what is the reaction to this? To me, it’s the biggest surprise I get. Not liking insurance companies. My family is sideways with one right now, but these tweets, these tweets that came out about this, I’ll get to ’em in a second. Don’t put ’em up yet. Don’t put ’em up yet. What does history tell us about when things like this happen? CEOs are killed very rarely. Okay. When it does happen, it is usually for political purposes, like when in this country. I can’t give you any examples until this one. Great. But here’s one things for sure. There are a lot of people who are happy about this. Yes, hiding in the nice anonymous dumpster fire that is Twitter, but show these tweets celebrating his death. Even people who called themselves journalists, Ken Klippenstein and Taylor Lorenz tweeting about how bad a man he was the day he died. Don’t these people understand? Won’t someone in their life if these are their real names, explained to them, you are worse than what you oppose when you celebrate murder as a justifiable end for disagreement over policy. I mean, what the hell is going wrong here?

Taya Graham:

Wow. Worse than what they oppose. And amazingly, both Ben Shapiro and Cuomo cited Taylor Rez and Ken Klippenstein. So I thought it was really interesting how a right wing, conservative and a Democrat could somehow come to the same conclusion that these reporters tweets are the problem, not the system or the profiteering and prem. I would love for you to respond to seeing this Democrat media elite from a family of Democrat political elites respond to the public. I mean, I think some might see this as multimillionaires perhaps banding together. How would you interpret both the Democrat and Republican elite outrage with the public response?

Prem Thakker:

So when I see reactions like this, or ones we’ve seen in the so-called papers of record, the magazines of record, for some reason, my mind goes back to the late and great Michael Brooks, who of course told us to be kind with people and ruthless with systems. And I think of how many of these institutions of power really focus on the former, but only kindness towards certain people amongst themselves, and certainly do nothing with the latter of being ruthless with systems. It is, of course, again, so important that Thompson should have been killed. It’s awful that he was killed. And still at the same time, the stakes here is not about, or rather, the stakes is about a much larger thing that these people in these establishment circles really do not want to engage with, which is this broader frustration that sure people might be projecting onto one individual, but it’s not about Brian. And as a human, of course, we care of as humanity. The issue at stakes is something that these people are apparently not interested in engaging with of the system that so many people feel so shut down from. I think of another headline that I saw today, I think it was in The Atlantic that talked about how this moment was a moment of civilization

In a similar respect to what Cuomo was saying of when you look at history and you think about moments like this, we are living through current history of mass de civilization, of mass dehumanization, no less than over the past 14 months of tens of thousands of people on US taxpayer dollar, a dime being killed, being ethnically cleansed, displaced. There was just a headline from the other day that I believe it was upwards of 90% of children in Gaza find that their death to be imminent, that scores of them would want to even maybe end their life. That these people and their livelihoods, their lives as they know it, are fundamentally changed, if not

Speaker 8:

Over.

Prem Thakker:

And so this concern that we see among some circles of the media now with regards to de civilization dehumanization, strike me as I mean insensitive, to put it lightly, but really out of touch in a functional sense. And I think sure, you can be concerned about someone being killed, and I think we all can get behind that.

Speaker 8:

There’s

Prem Thakker:

Just also, not even just, there’s many more people who deserve that same proportional level of concern. If we are going to have a nationwide media frenzy, police frenzy over one individual being killed, and then at the same token, the same tax dollars that pay those police also bomb 45,000 generously, probably more. That is a stakes contradiction of our humanity. And so I would invite Ben Shapiro or Mr. Cuomo or people of the Atlantic to engage with those questions. I am very glad that they’re so concerned with the humanity and life of one husband, of one father. I would love to see that same energy in those same words towards tens of thousands of people over the past 14 months withstanding the millions of people in this country that in a variety of ways, whether it’s because of the way that we’re destroying their environments, whether the way that we allow them in the richest country on earth to be one mistake away from poverty, from homelessness, from doing all that with injuries that are just devastating for the rest of their lives. I would love to see if they could spare that same humanity towards those people too.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. It seems like rather than dec civilization, we’re going towards mass insanity. When you talk about the contradictions that we see in the response to things like Gaza versus the response to the killing of the CEO, and I wondered how much that has to do with, in your mind, the algorithmic insanity that has been constructed by these billionaires in which we’re supposed to have these conversations and where we’re supposed to have empathy and connect. I mean, how much are we just subject? I mean, because very interesting how the algorithms all point us toward the humanity of A CEO and away from the humanity of people in Gaza. And I wonder how much that corporate, billionaire, algorithmic world that we inhabit is responsible for this lack of empathy and then the defensiveness of the people who constructed it. Basically what it is, Cuomo is being defensive because he has benefited from the system he has constructed around us under the auspices of journalism, which to me is ridiculous. All he is advocating for the elites, in my opinion. So how much do you think they’re just responding to protect themselves in some ways?

Prem Thakker:

Yeah, yeah. I think there’s a lot to that and it’s very frustrating. You speak to these algorithmic forces that kind of push us one way or another. One thing that I found frustrating is especially over this whole Twitter, blue sky situation of describing blue sky as more of an echo chamber than Twitter, when in reality every space to a certain extent is an echo chamber. And I mean, of course that’s not meant to be a reductive meta statement. I mean,

Whether it’s Twitter, whether it’s blue sky, whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s a physical space, whether it’s the bar across the street that you and your friends go to every week, there is a certain level of normalized conversation that you experience. And what’s been frustrating for me is that of course, things have gotten much worse in the online landscape over the past few years. And with conversations like this, when you’re talking about contradiction, when you’re talking about things that people can either empathize with or intimately understand themselves, it’s not always that hard to really connect with someone. As much of a cliche as it sounds when you just sit down with them and then chat about where you’re seeing something and where they’re seeing something, it really isn’t that impossible when you come into something with a lot of humility and openness and generosity, but also candidness and also conviction. And of course, places like Twitter, places like Blue Sky, or not necessarily Blue Sky, but places like Twitter, places like Facebook, especially in this moment, incentivize the exact opposite places like YouTube. And so to your point about these people who have become the fore, the standard bearers, the protectors, the defenders of these spaces, their reaction right now is so telling, because it’s this, in some ways it feels almost desperate, this

Stephen Janis:

Last

Prem Thakker:

Ditch effort to defend these spaces, these positions that they’ve been able to accrue over time, these almost captive audiences that in some ways they’re preventing them from connecting with you or or anyone else on our common humanity.

Stephen Janis:

Can we just take a Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Prem Thakker:

I’m sorry. I was just going to say, I guess as a final note, it’s just like on this question that in some ways it’s up to independent new media that we occupy to really try to meet that challenge.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. And Taya, just before you ask your next question, I just want to say, I want to say thank you to all the million dollar consultants in the Democratic party who decided that healthcare was not an issue worth raising during this campaign. I just want you to enjoy your yachts and your boats and your condos and all the things you bought because you told the Democrats not to talk about healthcare. I hope you enjoy your money. I hope it was worth it. Sorry, tey, I just had to say that.

Taya Graham:

No, that’s okay. I mean, I thought it was an

Stephen Janis:

Interesting premise, inspiring

Taya Graham:

Prime, talking about engaging with humility and you chose to engage with sarcasm, but I think they’re both

Stephen Janis:

Effective tools useful, both useful.

Taya Graham:

They’re both valuable tools. Oh,

Stephen Janis:

Call me out live. That was not sarcastic. I was sincere.

Taya Graham:

Oh, okay. Pardon me.

It’s actually interesting you brought up campaign and politics because this economic discontent, it’s showing self in other areas. This is just, as we were talking about earlier, a very, very personal place where it’s showing, I think almost everyone has some sort of interaction with the healthcare system or a loved one of theirs, ASN interaction with the healthcare system that went could have gone better. So I think it’s very, very personal. But the thing is, in the most recent election, you can’t argue Republicans swept the board and they have in the past voted against any form of universal healthcare. But as I was mentioning earlier, my research showed that Democrats also receive a great deal of campaign support from these health insurance companies and Super Prep pacs. So I was just curious, prem, if you thought that this discontent and particularly the energy that and emotion around healthcare, do you think there’s a chance that it could help shape the political landscape? The next elections that are coming up? Do you think that you’re seeing a movement build here?

Prem Thakker:

Yes. So as we saw after November the election, there was a lot of, whether it’s anguish, shock, no surprise at all, we told you so all sorts of reactions. But one particular thing is that there’s this broader exhaustion amongst a lot of the liberal base, whether it’s organizations get out the vote efforts, pundits figures, members of Congress. And there’s also seemingly this, even before the events of the past week or two, this soil rife for some sort of something for some sort of planting of something different for hunger and anger at how the election played out, particularly amongst the left. And I find that a lot of people on the hill, members of Congress, people who work within and inside of outside of Congress are really trying to figure out, again, even before this week, how to really affirmatively present a new case, a stronger case, a different case, a case that rejects maybe some of the features of the campaign we just saw by the Kamala Harris campaign that really distinguishes itself a movement more than just a one year campaign.

And one thing I think about with regards to the moment now in terms of whether there will be really a stronger push to change, not just the way Democrats go about things, but also how they treat this issue of healthcare, is this question of persuasion that keeps coming up amongst a lot of the pundits of how do you meet these Trump voters? How do you change their minds? Clearly it seems like a lot of people of all political persuasions believe things need to change. There’s these sort of veering on condescending questions of, oh, these people keep voting against their interests. And I think one aspect that parts left I think are really trying to hone in on is that persuasion is not just about trying to code switch in different dialects and try to appear like everything and nothing all at once. We’ve seen that in fact, that fell on its face this past year,

And I think Kat was getting to as well, is that part of persuasion is seeing people as individuals that are not just definitively a MAGA Republican or a liberal or what have you, these labels and not sort of no labels fashion, but I mean quite sincerely that these labels really prevent us from understanding that people are dynamic. They’re not static, they’re not chess pieces, they’re people in the same way that you and I have changed our opinions or viewers on something. So of these people, which is to say voters. And so I think there’s this burgeoning appetite on the left to view voters as such and to thus treat them accordingly, which is to have an affirmative message to not water it down based on who you’re talking to, but to actually argue the case and to say, look, you might see yourself as this political identity or a Trump voter or what have you, part of the MAGA movement or a never Trump Republican, and that you don’t necessarily want to go so far. But these are ideas we’re talking about. We’re not talking about political identities. Go,

Stephen Janis:

I’m sorry, go ahead. I was just saying it was just so frustrating to watch the campaign where they said, well, Kamala Harris has perfectly positioned herself in the middle because she went against her idea to have Medicare for all. And then I watch a response of people like Josh Shapiro who is literally lecturing people for having an emotional outburst about a horribly unjust system. And I don’t know, do you think the Democrats get it at this point, how off they were and how wrong they were? They see that it is a communication and narrative problem when you can’t make the connection between people’s anger at healthcare and there’s a better system we can sell you. If we could just tell the story. I mean, they seem to be horrible storytellers and they seem to be amazingly insulated. I find it very frustrating. Do you think that Democrats are really getting it at this point?

Prem Thakker:

I think the question is less about the individual actors and more about a struggle between those actors, which is to say the question is not whether the Harris campaign staff or the DNC will all of a sudden wake up. It’s rather a matter of who’s going to take the switches, who’s going to take the steering wheel. I think that over the next coming weeks and months in terms of not just committee assignments, who’s going to be the ranking member of what committee, but moreover, who is going to really try to take charge, whether by official levers or by messaging and by just getting more of the will of the people point to get them to trust them. I think that is the bigger power struggle that I think is only starting to brew. I think there’s a lot of people who are really trying to figure out, again, both members of Congress and also people who work with and around them, how they can sort of jockey and figure out which message can sort of carry the day, which one will be the Democratic party. So I think it’s reasonable to ask to your point of seeing how insular some of these people were, if they’re all of a sudden going to listen or learn. And I think, again, I see individuals as individuals as much as I can, but I think the question is much more interesting and pressing as far as who will win the broader power struggle as far as will the critique, the criticizers, the people who are critical, the people who are sort of fielding these criticisms and thoughts, will they be the ones to actually get to make

More of the decisions? I think that’s something we’ll have to watch for.

Stephen Janis:

That’s interesting. Leads us back probably to Bernie Sanders, but go ahead, te, sorry.

Taya Graham:

But a prem, we were all talking about Democrats and Republicans and the Democrat run city of New York as well. And in your article in eo, which is titled 2 26 year Olds, one killed a Homeless Man, another is suspected of killing Healthcare, CEO. You mentioned that two young non-English speaking migrants were staffed and one was killed. How would you characterize the responses to the death of A CEO versus the death of a teenager, although now currently police are alleging that this was related to Venezuelan migrant gang activity. What has your reporting revealed about the bias in the media?

Prem Thakker:

Right. Yeah, I think the question itself is kind of brings about the self-evident contrast, which is that some of your listeners might not have even heard about the latter case. And of course, this is not unsurprising to us. We live in a society for which, not to say we live in a society, but we live in a society for which this is almost to be expected that of course, someone who is a CEO of big company, the face of success, someone who perhaps has rubbed shoulders with the same people who govern, legislate or oversee editorial agendas of newsrooms would then get more attention than two migrants. And I think this also gets to this other sort of question of, or even just dynamic of accepted, normalized dehumanization. This reminds me again of a sort of unsurprising dynamic of which, and something that’s been concerning for me, especially over the past few weeks, is this almost getting approaching towards normalization of the suffering. And Palestine even in some respects, Lebanon and so on the Middle East, broadly amorphously in so far as how people think about that region. Much of this country especially, particularly those in power, I should say, not necessarily everyday people see that side of the world as again, definitionally in almost a static way, a hotbed of violence, a place where those people over there were always find something to fight about, to kill each other about.

It reminds me of politicians who sort of superficially say, oh, Israel Palestine has been going on for thousands of years, which what are you talking about? And so in this same respect, not only is this sort of dichotomy of, oh, how much priority is there for a rich person versus migrants in this country, especially given how both parties tell us we should treat migrants. It doesn’t shake the boat at all that two migrants would be stabbed, if anything, it’s like, oh yeah, right, of course. And so it’s sinister, it’s horrifying. It again, I think gets to this broader question of accepted dehumanization, accepted civilization that we’ve allowed to be normal for far too long in this country. And it’s unfortunately, yeah, self-evident when you look at the cases just juxtaposed together. Of course, again, there’s different contexts for every killing, every murder that exists, but broadly speaking, in terms of just the generic human concern and what is manufactured concern is obviously drastically different.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, it’s interesting that we would elect someone in this particular cycle speaking about what you’re speaking about, who is inherently cruel. I mean, Trump is, if anything, just a cruel man. And it seems like we’ve sort of submerged ourselves in a sense of cruelty that sort of transcends almost every ideological boundary that we just want to be cruel. And I wanted to ask you a question because this show is the Inequality Watch, and we deal a lot with questions of inequality, economic inequality, and we’d had either Professor Reich on the last show or it was, I don’t know if it was Dr. Wolf, but they talked about the Gilded Age period and how much wealth inequality is very similar in terms of the extent and the extreme. And I was wondering what your thoughts are about wealth inequality and driving some of these issues and some of the conversations that people might be reacting to a healthcare system, but they’re also unnerved by the incredible inequality, especially when they’re lectured by millionaires and billionaires who seem to control the conversation. I mean, how much is inequality driving the conversation and the anger that people are feeling about our healthcare system?

Prem Thakker:

Definitely, definitely. And I would just note that of course, this is a huge conversation that Val has raised, class, gender and so on. Understood. I’m certainly not going to flatten race, gender, or No, no, I wasn’t asking. Of course, of course. I just as a preface to say that regardless, I mean putting that, factoring that in there is this broader sort of, and I think this relates to something I was getting at in the beginning, which is that there is this general experience that regardless of who we are, we share in how we live our lives, which is just this uncertainty of what life even means of the beauty of it and the pain of it. And again, taking into account that of course our relations to that obviously very fastly on our backgrounds, on our race and so on, but there’s this flailing that many people relate to mentally, spiritually, physically, when you live in such a society for which the contradictions of the haves and half nots are often on such brazen display.

And again, this is not to somehow say that this country is just a bed full of sleeping class conscious people waiting to be woken up. It’s not necessarily to glamorize that or to simplify it. It’s just to say that there is a sense, especially particularly in this country, more than just any western capitalist nation on earth, particularly this country, that we ought to be living in a different way. That the daily flailing, frustration, anguish, or even just confusion or uncertainty that we have doesn’t have to be as such. And some people feel that in an optimistic way. Some people feel that in a very pessimistic way, in a way that this sucks my life sucks that I feel insecure in a certain way, I feel whether it’s financially or otherwise or socially I feel lonely, I feel depressed. This country has a flavor and variety of sicknesses that I think all relate to this broader flailing, this broader separation from one another. That is, to your question, fomented fostered, encouraged by those at the top because it supports them, it allows them to continue to be there, it benefits them, and it prevents people from asking, what if we could have something different?

And so it’s this ever present question of given that broader, relatable experience in one way or another for most people, how can there be a tap in into that given? Of course, people have their own individual lives and life stories that brings them to want to see each other as each other and to figure out where we go from here. And of course there’s no easy answer to that, but I think engaging in those questions are more interesting and compelling and necessary than these superficial hollow incurious and insincere narratives we’re seeing from some of these bigger box outlets.

Taya Graham:

This is going to be, first off, I want to thank you for staying with us and adding the level of depth that you’ve had to this conversation. Absolutely.

Speaker 8:

It’s been,

Taya Graham:

I have a final question for you, and I feel like we’ve got the right person for this question. Honestly, I wanted to know what you thought storytelling and journalism would play in shifting public opinion and creating accountability for the healthcare industry because already social media has had an impact allowing people to share their feelings and their uncensored thoughts. But surely media, both independent and mainstream, has an obligation here as well. But places like ProPublica and the nation and democracy now, even the Real News, we’ve been reporting on healthcare for years, so what do we need to do different? What more can we do? What is the obligation of a journalist right here?

Prem Thakker:

So I think back to what we were talking about earlier when we were talking about Cuomo, the Atlantic, the New York Times and so on, where by benefit of being in the power center of being in the establishment, they get to have the monopoly on objectivity, the monopoly on

Norms, the monopoly on what is and is not radical. And I think it’s important to underscore, and it cannot be said enough that there is no journalist in the business that has no bias, that has no lens for which they’re looking through things too, because that is definitionally inhuman, that is definitionally not how we work. We come to whatever we do with our experiences, and you can say you remove yourself from them, but then you’re serving something else. You’re serving someone else. In the same way that our media ecosystem can be described as political or radical or this or that or what have you or not objective, the people who are saying that are often making a judgment case, they’re making a value judgment, they’re making their own subjective view on what is and is not objective. But I can tell you what, I might not be a lawyer.

I might not be a scientist, but I might not even be a weatherman. But I can tell you if it’s raining outside and I look outside, it’s raining, I will tell you it’s raining. And I think about this with regards to the US government’s response to what’s happening in Palestine where human rights groups, where the United Nations, where people themselves who are suffering this tell us this is a genocidal war. Again, I might not be an international lawyer, but I can look at that. I can look at the facts of the matter and say it’s a genocide. So there’s this, firstly to answer your question, this basic understanding and really ownership that, yeah, we are coming into this business, the royal we with certain premises of what is and is not true, is or is not sort of a world that we see as radical or not radical.

Is it radical for millions or thousands, if not millions of people across this country to feel frustration at the industry? Or is it radical for that industry to do what it does to those people? These sort of basic parameters are I think, ones that our ecosystem should not be sort of shy to claim as premises we’re operating from. And to not only say that, to be transparent, because I think one thing that people always appreciate no matter where they come from is for you to be straight up with them, is to say, look, in the same way that we’re being honest with you about where we are coming from, you should take a look at these other entities to see how transparent they’re being with you about where they’re coming from. And B, if they’re pretending that they’re actually being just this sort of amorphous, unreal objective source, I think being honest, being real with people is really important.

I think that is the first sort of task that we have to really embrace rather than sort of tiptoe around. We have these premises about this world and our role in it. I think that’s the first big step. I think the second thing that I’ll add is just going back to something I said earlier, which is again, to really see the people that we cover as ourselves, which is to say regardless of whether we relate to them or sympathize with them as much as we can to empathize, sympathize with them, is that they are as dynamic as we are. They are as beautiful and interesting and worthy of consideration and generosity and humility as we wish others would treat us. And I think that is especially important both in how we cover stories, how we talk to people, how we interview people, how we navigate our work as journalists, and also just sort of how we navigate online.

I am definitely not one to be a scolder or a child by any means, but just it is also self-evident that sometimes the online world brings out the worst impulses in us and brings out the very true, just the worst reaction. It’s very easy to be very reactionary online, especially if you feel fronted in some way, but in the same way that you wouldn’t want to really be piled upon either online, you’d reckon the person on the other side of the screen probably wouldn’t either, and it’s surely not going to get you anywhere. It might feel good in the moment, but that in its own kind of lets you see people less as human and more as people you just got to be ready to go to combat with. And that again, in a lot of ways, violence begets violence. And then if we’re going to build a world for which there’s less of that, you sometimes got to be a little less combative yourself, which is not easy, especially we’re all subject to it. But those are some things that come to mind for me,

Stephen Janis:

Which is not easy when we’re talking about the death of a CEO E and then the reaction to it. I mean, what you say really brings up the complexity of the issue and how difficult it is just to navigate this, to think, to parse the people’s anger from the actual suffering of a human being, no matter how we feel about what that person did with their lives.

Taya Graham:

And I think you made several excellent points. I mean, something I had to learn even just in the process of becoming a journalist is that there really was no objectivity with a capital O. And I realized in this new space of independent journalism that I was in is that being transparent saying, look, we all admit that every one of us has a lived experience and that is going to affect how we view this world. So let me just be transparent about where I’m coming from, and that way I’m giving you the respect to judge for yourself and decide and look directly at what I’m doing. And I feel like our attempt to do so with our police accountability reporting, I think, I think people really appreciate that respect that we’re giving them by being transparent about who we are.

Stephen Janis:

To that end, I think on a very practical level, given all the people that have responded just to our meager posts about experiences they’ve had, we should just run a 24 hour seven channel with people talking about what they’ve experienced with this healthcare system.

Taya Graham:

Well, I

Stephen Janis:

Really

Taya Graham:

Did consider that we should do a show just all healthcare all the time, honestly.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, no, we talked about that a while ago because we had so many stories and people contacting us and saying, this happened to me. It was more so than police, bad police encounters.

Taya Graham:

That’s true.

Stephen Janis:

So to me it’s like, well, one thing we can do in journalism is just amplify the stories of the people that suffer from the system and just keep running it until somebody pays attention.

Taya Graham:

I think our editor in chief might be listening to that. Be

Stephen Janis:

Careful. Oh yeah, he just gave me a thumbs up. So again, he seems happy for now. But anyway, listen, we really want to thank you. Yes, you were incredible. And I think I love the fact that you brought up some of the metaphysical and philosophical aspects of this, which we should all pay attention to, just human empathy for everyone and some of the parallels between what we consider to be empathetic and what is not, which is clearly like when you said digitalization, which I did read that article, it seems like madness when you see what’s going on in Gaza versus, so I really appreciate you bringing that context to this discussion.

Taya Graham:

Thank you so much, premier, it is a pleasure to meet you. We

Stephen Janis:

Hope we have you on again soon.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

Please thank you so much and keep much the great

Prem Thakker:

Work both. I appreciate both of you and the work that you guys do. Very much so. It’s really a treat to be joining you guys. Great. Great.

Taya Graham:

All right. Well then we’re going to hold you to coming back,

Prem Thakker:

Please.

Taya Graham:

Great.

Prem Thakker:

All right.

Taya Graham:

So just once again, I want to reiterate how much I appreciate both our guest Kat Abu and Prem Thakker for joining us and sharing their insights. And I really hope they’ll both be back to join us again soon. And remember, you can follow Kat’s work on Zeteo and a Mother Jones, and she’s got her own TikTok channel. Prem’s work is on EO where we mentioned the article that he wrote. He’s got plenty of other work there as well.

Speaker 8:

Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

Subtext with prem. So we might have some links dropped in the chat for you to look at. And I just wanted to just throw, just because I keep my eye on the live chat, I just want people to know I’m paying attention. Hi, Michael Willis. Hi Lacey. RI see you guys. Thank you for joining us. So lemme just throw up a couple comments for you to take a look at.

Stephen Janis:

Sure.

Taya Graham:

You don’t like my music set, I just have my hip replaced for free in the US It would’ve cost 30,000 to 40 grand concern, said the citizens in this country will go down in history as having the greatest amount of learned helplessness,

Speaker 8:

Which

Taya Graham:

I thought was a very interesting comment. Here we have Ramin Ives, and I do apologize if I’m not pronouncing the avatar names correctly, the widespread frustrations, denied claims, exorbitant costs and systemic corruption reflect a healthcare industry, prioritizing profit over people. Let me see here. You don’t like my music again, says I’m so sick of this left versus right bs. I want human rights. Any quality.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, is there any more?

Taya Graham:

Oh yeah, just a few more. Once upon a time said, won’t someone please think of the CEOs, I think was a response to some of the Cuomo and Shapiro’s takes. And Michael Willis noted, pulled out the same quote that really stuck with me,

Stephen Janis:

Be

Taya Graham:

Kind with people, be ruthless with systems. Wow, isn’t that powerful?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah,

Taya Graham:

I thought that was really

Stephen Janis:

Powerful. Well, it kind of reminds me of David Grabber talking about the sociology of indifference, how bureaucracies create this kind of violence of indifference to people who need help. And it’s always going to be there in some form or another, but it seems like other countries have learned how to do it better than we have. And I think that becomes irrational, right? It makes us irrational because there’s no good reason for us to suffer like this. And so I just still can’t get over the Democrats and their responsiveness and their lack of their tone deafness and how they just, people got paid so much money to be stupid, just professionally stupid about this and not this issue and how it’s been painted is medical has been painted as radical.

Taya Graham:

Why

Stephen Janis:

Isn’t the healthcare system denies care for profit radical? Why isn’t that radical? That seems much more radical on a common sense level, and I think that’s why people are so angry. Common sense. That’s radical to have a system in the wealthiest country in the world where you can die and go broke getting sick, that’s pretty radical. Medicare for all is pretty sensible, not radical.

Taya Graham:

I think

Stephen Janis:

That’s great one. We should remind people of that.

Taya Graham:

I think that’s an excellent point. And I think Vincent Massey actually made a good point

Stephen Janis:

Here

Taya Graham:

Saying 68,000 Americans die each year due to preventable sickness caused by the for-profit healthcare insurance industry. Their source, the Lancet, which is a medical journal.

Speaker 8:

So

Taya Graham:

Case closed is what they said here. So I just want to let you know that I appreciate you so much, everyone that was in the chat, everyone that was having such a fruitful conversation that we really do appreciate you joining us. And now I’m going to take a moment where I do a little speechifying and I’m also going to take the time to, I look

Stephen Janis:

Forward to it every

Taya Graham:

Time. I hope so. Is that that sarcasm again?

Stephen Janis:

No, no, I’m not being sarcastic.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Just

Stephen Janis:

Checking. I just want people to know I’m not a sarcastic person.

Taya Graham:

Okay.

Stephen Janis:

I said that one thing that sounded a little sarcastic and now everyone’s branded me because you did

Taya Graham:

Sarc me

Stephen Janis:

For a sec.

Taya Graham:

Was just checking.

Stephen Janis:

I

Taya Graham:

Was just checking. And also at the very end, I’m going to include one or two of the YouTube community posts because I did ask for your thoughts. And I want you to know when I do a YouTube community post, I do pay attention to what you write me and I will be in the comment section later as well, just in case people want to continue the conversation. Alright. Here’s my little speech. I am not a healthcare expert or an academic, but like most of my fellow Americans, my personal experience with the healthcare system has taught me plenty. I remember my mother spending hours on the phone attempting to get just an iota of reimbursement for the healthcare I needed. And I literally wouldn’t be sitting here today if she hadn’t fought so hard for my mental healthcare treatment. So let me state it in the simplest way possible how I see the problem.

We pay money every month into a risk pool that’s supposed to cover us when we need a doctor or treatment. But the insurance companies turn that very reasonable idea on its head instead of ensuring that we have access to what we need when we need it. They use algorithms and bureaucratic indifference to keep it, or actually I really should say, to steal it. And their indifference creates billions in profits for shareholders and for CEOs. And it is a uniquely grotesque scenario, delaying and denying coverage and healthcare profits to procure obscene profits all while we watch our loved ones wither and sicken and pain and confusion, fearful of dying and leaving us with a financial burden. Some families have continued to spend the rest of their lives paying off. So let me just read you some of the people that reached out to us via the YouTube community post on our channel who wanted to share their stories of their interactions with the healthcare community.

So I have from Bubs, Bubs 3, 3, 5, 6. Two years ago, I was slotted for back surgery to alleviate weakness and extreme pain. Less than 12 hours before I was scheduled to arrive, I got a call that BCBS denied my claim based on three criteria that were blatantly false. Luckily for me, I’m an RN and understood the language they used and was able to appeal it and have it reversed. But my procedure was delayed weeks and required numerous more appointments and copays. I thought a lot about people who perhaps didn’t read well or understand healthcare, who might just give up. And that was my first thought when I saw this news. And now I’m going to share a post that I think speaks to a pain that too many of us can understand. And it’s from most over 7, 9, 7 4. My sister told me she needed $30,000 to continue treatment.

She took her own life the day before she turned 65. And this particular comment just really broke my heart because I actually know people I love who would rather end their lives than be what they think is a burden to their family. And no one should ever have to feel that way. So now I have a screenshot of another comment from Ms. Penelope, 6, 3, 7 4. And she writes, being a good parent to your children does not cancel out or alleviate the evil decisions and actions made in one other arenas of life, particularly impacting millions of innocent people. The decisions of this person should never be forgotten. Human rights violations of such magnitude denying basic healthcare must be competently and thoroughly prosecuted. This is Marcus Aelius, 7 0 3 9 UHC, which is UnitedHealthcare denied me a CAT scan for lung damage post covid. And the last one is from Mr.

Sprint Cat. My father, 90 years old had a hematoma removed from his leg, walked after the surgery, doctor decided to put him in rehab, never walked again. Now they send bills, paid this by the end of the month. The highest bill so far is $3,000. How is an elderly person on a fixed income going to pay for that by the end of the month? What an impossible situation for someone to be put in draining someone of all their resources. So not only do they have nothing to leave their family, but they will be put so far in debt, they could lose everything and put their family in debt as well. Personally, I just don’t understand how someone can turn their back on people in pain like this and how the profit motive can harden your heart so that you simply can’t hear people’s cries for help.

And this is the soul consolation I’ve had is that for the first time since the election, I have heard my fellow Americans united on an issue that this system needs to change. So what can we do? Well, first we’ve got to acknowledge that both parties ignore this issue, which begs the question and why would they ignore this issue around which the working class us average citizens are actually united? And I think I know it’s because this issue of all issues points out the one truism of politics that the elites want us to ignore. The one thing we all have in common with each other and not with them, the system they created is meant to enrich them at our expense. And yes, sometimes actually kill us so they can profit. And they know if we figure this out together and come together that they are in trouble.

I mean, there will be no yacht big enough, no bunker remote enough, no hedge fund will be wealthy enough to stop people from taking power back through activism and protest and better policies. And that’s why they don’t bring up issues. They bring up issues like the culture wars because truthfully, they’d rather have us fight each other and snipe at each other over little things that don’t matter, instead of focusing on how they rip us off day in and day out. And let me be clear, life and death should never be line items on a balance sheet. Pain and suffering shouldn’t be a revenue stream and premature death should not be a cash cow. But there’s another truism about the issue that is even more potent. We can change this. We just have to have the will and the willingness to work together. Now, in one of our previous show, we created a category for billionaires.

And one of those categories was the conflict billionaire, the uber wealthy who actually get rich while we literally fight each other on their social media platforms. They sow discord. So we can’t think they create hatred so we won’t unite and they make a fortune on the synergy of the conflict. But if we want healthcare, it’s time to cast aside their social engineering. It’s time to stop filling their pockets while we empty ours. And it’s time to take the energy dunking on each other and owning each other and instead demand an equitable system for all, not just the few. And there are many people, including as Stephen mentioned, governor Josh Shapiro, who think it’s undignified to raise critiques of a cruel system after a man was shot dead. Be has not said a word about the cruel system that will literally deny care to a dying patient, make that thousands of dying patients who might have lived with the right care. So at least for now, let’s acknowledge the truth about this country and our healthcare that these elites want us to ignore. It is simply unacceptable and the people refuse to accept it anymore. Stephen,

Is there anything you would like to add to that?

Stephen Janis:

I’m not following up your amazing rant too. I think I said enough at this point,

Taya Graham:

But

Stephen Janis:

I appreciate everyone watching and sharing.

Taya Graham:

Well, thank you. I just wanted to make sure to say hi to Lacey R, our mods for help, and I want to thank everyone. I think I even saw David Boron out there, one of our cop watcher friends from our police accountability reporting. So I just wanted to say I see you all out there and I appreciate you so much and hopefully I’ll see you in the comments later. Also, all the people who reached out with sharing these stories, they can be difficult to share. They’re so

Speaker 8:

Personal

Taya Graham:

And we want to thank you so much for doing so.

Speaker 8:

Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

And of course, again, I have to thank Kat Abu and Prem Thakker and Professor Jeff Singer.

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

And of course the help of my real news colleagues, Kayla, Jocelyn, Adam, Cameron, David, and of course our editor in Chief Max Alvarez,

Stephen Janis:

Who I would say I’ve been monitoring the whole time. Yes,

Taya Graham:

You’ve been keeping a close eye on

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, it’s kind of tough because

Taya Graham:

You, okay, I look forward

Stephen Janis:

To your report. I look at your facial expressions. I’m like, uhoh, we need to veer a little this way.

Taya Graham:

Okay. I look forward to your full report later.

Stephen Janis:

Yes, I will give it to you.

Taya Graham:

And thank you all for watching, and if I don’t get a chance to see you before then, have a happy holiday or a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and be safe out there. Thanks for joining us.

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

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

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello. My name is Taya Graham, and welcome to The Inequality Watch on The Real News Network.

Now, as you may or may not know, myself and my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, normally host the Police Accountability Report. But we also focus our investigative reporting skills on another topic we think is just as important: the explosion of economic inequality in the US. It’s an issue that affects almost everything we do. It’s why our healthcare system pushes so many into bankruptcy. It’s why working people have been working longer and harder, yet, their real wages have barely risen over the past 40 years. And it’s why discussions about problems like climate change are submerged — No pun intended — In a tsunami of misinformation. It is, in a sense, the issue that none of us can afford to ignore.

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s just watch a brief clip of him talking about it in 1994, almost 30 years ago through the day. I would love to play every moment of this video. But when I get a chance, I will post a link in the chat for you.

[CLIP BEGINS]

Robert Reich [recording]:  If American business continues to pursue short-term profits at the price of insecurity and falling living standards for a large portion of our society, it will sooner or later reap the bitter harvests of popular rage.

The American public is basically pro-business. But that support rests upon an implicit bargain. And American business betrays that bargain every time it fires an older worker in order to hire a younger one at a lower cost; every time it provides gold-plated health insurance to top executives, but it cuts health insurance or denies health insurance to its regular workers; every time it labels an employee who had been a full-time employee an independent contractor for the purpose of getting that employee off the payroll and lowering various benefits; every time it discards its workers rather than investing in their future capacity to produce, and produce more, and produce better and produce smarter, particularly when profits are booming.

What America must do, fundamentally, is empower every man and woman to earn their way into the new middle class.

[CLIP ENDS]

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

Stephen Janis:  Yeah. It’s really interesting because when I watch that clip, I have an epiphany because we had been at the Republican National Convention and we had talked to people and tried to push them on like, What specific policies? And there was this real sense of nostalgia, and angry nostalgia, in the people that we talked to. And I think now when I’m watching the clip, I get the sense that what they were nostalgic about was a time period when this country actually cared about the middle class and working class.

I think they were really… They would be angry about immigration or something, but it seemed to me all focused on this idea, we need to go back. But go back to what? Go back to when there were people who were leading this country who actually cared about how policies affected working-class people.

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

Taya Graham:  Stephen, I think that’s an excellent way to categorize some of the grievance that we saw, as well as —

Stephen Janis:  — It’s grievance policy.

Taya Graham:  — It was nostalgia as well. And it was nostalgic as well. That’s a really excellent point.

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

Taya Graham:  But before we go back to Professor Reich, I want to revisit some of the ideas from our last show so we can build on them.

Now, this is a method we use on the show to add some context to the facts of how wealth inequality impacts all of us. So, last time, we came up with a way of categorizing billionaires to help us understand this idea. We wanted to discuss the relationship between how extreme wealth is acquired and how that process infiltrates our political discourse, shapes public policy, and influences how we vote. So, I want to take a minute to review these ideas so that we can explore their mechanics, and I want to examine the operating system of our inequality economics.

So, Stephen, we came up with three types of billionaires that we argued had an outsized impact on our political discourse. Can you review them for us quickly and tell us why they’re important?

Stephen Janis:  Well, we came up with carbon billionaires, who are billionaires that make money off fossil fuels; we had conflict billionaires who are billionaires that make money off creating social media and a media ecosystem that thrives off of discourse, discord, and strife, and anger; and then we came up with capture billionaires are the people who extract money through private equity or through investment banks or whatever. So, we came up with those three to say, here is a political economy that emerges from these three kinds of billionaires.

And especially today, we’re going to focus on the conflict billionaires because of the way their ecosystem has created this public square that is all about conflict and not about solving problems. So, those are the three, just quickly, overview of how they work.

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

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

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

So, we need to remember that as we try to evolve our thinking about this topic of economics, because that system can simply bury the information, bury the discussion, and bury the analysis that seeks to hold it accountable.

And that brings me again to our guest, former labor secretary and labor rights champion, Robert Reich. Let me give, or at least try to give a brief introduction. His latest is The System: Who Rigged It, How [We] Fix It. He served as the secretary of labor in the Clinton administration for which Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the 20th century. And of course, he has a Substack, Robert Reich, a YouTube channel named after him, and he’s the co-founder of Inequality Media, a nonpartisan digital media company whose mission is to inform and engage the public about inequality and the imbalance of power in our society. And if any of you watching want to learn more about the economics of inequality, please follow Professor Reich and his colleagues at Inequality Media.

Professor Reich, welcome to The Inequality Watch, and thank you so much for joining us.

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

Stephen Janis:  Thank you.

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

Robert Reich:  Well, I don’t want to take credit for knowing what other people did not know. I think that, oh, Washington, DC, has a tendency to exaggerate things that are politically powerful and sell politically, like conflict, but submerge, as you suggested, Taya, a few minutes ago, submerge some of the real important structural issues that we ought to be talking about. And as secretary of labor, it seemed to me very important to talk about those structural issues. I took some heat for it, but I think it was worth it.

You mentioned before that the conflict industry, particularly with regard to social media, tries to sell various time and goods and services on the basis of conflict, and that’s absolutely right. But there’s something else going on here as well, and that is that the more we are angry with each other, working-class people, middle-class people in America, the less we look up and see where all the wealth and power in our society has actually gone.

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

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

Stephen Janis:  Wow. Professor, so is it OK if we refer to this as a Second Gilded Age from on? That would be helpful.

There’s this idea, this notion, that politics are irreparably divided, but how much of that divide is a result of the economic inequality and the forces of inequality you talked about? Is it really a divide, or is it really just that this sometimes unexpressed notion of inequality is driving us to loathe each other in some way?

Robert Reich:  Well, I think you have a huge number of people in this country, Stephen, who, although they’ve worked harder than ever, they’re playing by the rules, they are not getting ahead. Now, the American dream used to be that if you did play by the rules and you worked hard, you would do better and better economically over your lifetime and your children would do better than you.

And that was what happened in the first three or four decades after the Second World War. We created the largest middle class the world had ever seen, larger than America had ever seen. And people did better and better and better, and their children did better than they did.

But that all came apart. It came apart in part because of corruption, because the rules of the game changed, because you had a really fundamental shift in the structure of the economy brought about by a few extremely wealthy people and extremely big corporations.

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

Stephen Janis:  Agreed. Agreed about that.

Taya Graham:  Wow. That’s a powerful analysis.

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

Taya Graham:  Yeah. And the Democrats have, unfortunately, missed the [inaudible] there.

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

Taya Graham:  And it is ironic that they’re considered the elitists, but at the same time you see them with the great celebrities. But then, of course, the Republican Party, you have a cabinet full of billionaires. So, how’s that not elitist?

But I actually wanted to address something, and I have this clip I wanted to share with you, because there had been criticism of a policy that had occurred under the Clinton administration, which is NAFTA, with regard to alienating the working class and costing jobs for blue-collar workers. So, I just want to play your critique from your Coffee Klatch podcast and just have us all take a listen to it.

[CLIP BEGINS]

Robert Reich [recording]:  I was very proud to be part of the Clinton administration. I was a cabinet member of the Clinton administration. But that was an administration that embraced NAFTA, and Chinese ascension to the World Trade Organization, and deregulated Wall Street, got rid of the basic, basic 1930s acts that would’ve separated and did separate investment from commercial banking, said to Wall Street, go ahead, do whatever you want, and put antitrust and monopolization on the backburner and said, big companies, you want to merge, go ahead. And did not actually move toward labor law change and reform.

[CLIP ENDS]

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

Robert Reich:  Well, we can put the genie back in the bottle. In fact, I think the Trump administration, ironically, is talking about very, very large tariffs on Mexico and on Canada. Now, I’m not suggesting this is a good thing. But it certainly goes back to the years before NAFTA.

I think the real issue here is developing a set of policies — And I do not expect the Trump administration filled with billionaires and planning to give them even more of a tax break will do this, but the real issue is how to equip every American, even those without college degrees, with what they need to do well in this new economy. I don’t think we need to take globalization for granted. I don’t think we need to take for granted that Wall Street is going to become the center of the economy. I think that’s been an extraordinarily bad thing for most workers. We should not take for granted that big companies are going to be as profitable as they are or as big as they are. They should be broken up.

We can change the structure of the economy to make it an economy that works for everybody instead of working for just a handful of people at the top.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Janis:  That’s interesting.

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

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

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

Taya Graham:  Wow.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah.

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

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

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

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

I was weaned on the notion, by my parents and grandparents, that under Franklin D. Roosevelt, government really did save the country, saved the economy, saved the working class, saved the middle class. So, it didn’t strike me as very unusual. What strikes me as unusual is the idea the government is somehow the enemy.

It wasn’t until Ronald Reagan was president when he said government is the problem. Government is not the problem. The problem, really, is the corruption of government by big economic interests that have changed the rules to make sure that they do better and better and better, and everybody else is essentially stepped on.

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

[CLIP BEGINS]

Robert Reich [recording]:  Middle-class families have not been able to regain their footing. They push these coping mechanisms about as far as they can go, and they still feel that they are losing the American dream.

My friends, we are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group of Americans left behind whose anger and whose disillusionment is easily manipulated. Once unbottled, mass resentment can poison the very fabric of society, the moral integrity of a society, replacing ambition with envy, replacing tolerance with hate. Today, the targets of that rage are immigrants and welfare mothers and government officials and gays and an ill-defined counterculture. But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?

[CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  It makes me think of that saying, what’s past is prologue. It’s just so prophetic, and they seem to predict perfectly these recent culture wars have been inflamed by social media companies that profit from the outrage.

And I do think it can be argued that there are some problems at our border with how immigrants are processed in our country. But to see that foreign-born people who are producing food or working in fields or working in food processing plants or working in our dairies or harming us, it seems like a rhetoric designed to avoid looking at the real culprits of our economic distress.

So, I would like to know what you would say to people who are being inundated with this divisive and, arguably, inaccurate rhetoric to explain why the scapegoating is occurring and who it really benefits.

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

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

And if one party is making up excuses, talking about the deep state and immigrants and blaming communists and saying Democrats are socialists, and just making up all kinds of scapegoats. And the other party, that is the Democrats, are not actually talking about the corruption that comes from huge money infecting our politics from big corporations and from wealthy people and from Wall Street. Then who are you going to believe? Well, you don’t have much choice. You’re only given the Republican story.

This is one of the big tragedies of our time. The Democratic Party has not just turned its back on the working class. The Democratic Party has actually stopped telling the accurate story about why the working class and the middle class are in such trouble today.

Stephen Janis:  Professor, how much do you think that problem is because Democrats embraced — And I know this is a fraught word — Neoliberalism, because I’ve covered a lot of local governments and state governance, and it’s always public-private partnerships, we’re going to solve this with a tax break for a corporation, this will solve everything. How much has the Democrats succumbing to the notion of neoliberalism made it almost impossible for them to articulate an argument that they really care about the working class so that their policies are focused on the working class? How much is neoliberalism a problem?

Robert Reich:  Well, neoliberalism is at the core of the problem for the Democrats. If by neoliberalism you mean privatization, deregulation, international trade, all of the things that basically the big corporations and the wealthy and Wall Street wants.

But the underlying problem has to do with money. Once the Supreme Court began opening the floodgates to big money and politics — And I’m talking about really before the cases that we all know about. It really starts with Buckley versus Valeo in the early 1970s.

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

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

Robert Reich:  I think most Americans, average people, your friends, people in your community, understand the notion of the common good. People are generous. They see somebody who is in trouble on the sidewalk and they respond to those people. They see somebody who is in a car crash and they immediately call the police and they respond. This is not rocket science. This is not a perversion of the public norms. No. The common good is an alive, everyday reality. The people who are the first responders, the people who are nurses and nurses’ aides and social workers and teachers, they all understand the common good.

The people who don’t understand the common good, unfortunately, are trapped in a system in which big money has corrupted them and big money has corrupted the part of the system that they exist in.

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

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

Stephen Janis:  I think so.

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

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

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

Taya Graham:  I was actually really excited because you’re a former cabinet member, so I thought you would have some interesting insights into President Trump’s cabinet picks. And one that I’m particularly interested in is the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, which has been tasked to look for government waste and inefficiency, and, in my opinion, isn’t a bad idea in theory. But the fact that not one but two billionaires are in charge is something that I find extremely problematic. They’re great at accruing capital, but treating something that’s a public good as a for-profit enterprise, from what I’ve seen in my own city, Baltimore, doesn’t necessarily benefit the public.

So, I was just wondering, is there any way that a Department of Government Efficiency could be useful, and what would that look like, and do you think this one has any potential?

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

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

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

Stephen Janis:  Wait. Professor, I just want to assure you, we did a documentary called Tax Broke, which we did for five years following tax breaks given to corporate developers. Any time [crosstalk] —

Taya Graham:  And if you want to talk about people’s eyes glazing over, talk to them about tax increment financing.

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

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

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

Taya Graham:  Wow [laughs].

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

Taya Graham:  Maybe Vivek will do it.

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

Robert Reich:  You know better than I do. One of the great frustrations of my life, at least, is that the media, the mainstream media, and Fox News, and Newsmax, whether you’re talking about the right or even the center, they don’t go after what’s really important. They don’t try to educate the public about what the public needs to know. They just tantalize, or they talk about scandals, but they don’t talk about reality. And I don’t know how to change that. There’s more money to be made in getting people upset and fearful.

But you talk about some of these tax breaks that are warranted. You can make people pretty outraged. Why don’t we do that?

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

Taya Graham:  Absolutely.

Robert Reich:  Most people do not know. Most people know that they have to pay social security taxes —

Stephen Janis:  100%.

Robert Reich:  …But they didn’t know that Elon Musk finishes paying his social security obligations at 18 seconds past midnight Jan. 1 of the year [Janis laughs]. This is what people need to understand.

Stephen Janis:  That’s crazy.

Taya Graham:  That’s such an excellent point. I just wanted to follow up because you were the director of the Federal Trade Commission, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but you wanted children not to be targeted by companies selling sugary and unhealthy foods. And it seemed to me your reward for that was having the FTC being starved of money until it shut down.

So, I was just wondering if that effect of corporate interest on our government is still that naked, or do you think this could happen to other government agencies, especially under the new administration? As a reporter, to me, it’s an astonishing story. They cut the money off because they didn’t like the fact they were going to lose out on their sugary cereal money. So, I was just wondering, is this something that could happen again, and what can we do as investigative reporters, journalists, people to try to engage with this?

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

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

Taya Graham:  Wow.

Stephen Janis:  So, you have one final question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Reich:  First of all, it was not quite that.

Stephen Janis:  OK.

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

Stephen Janis:  He’s a Republican.

Robert Reich:  That was not even a Democratic administration.

Stephen Janis:  I know. I know. Amazing.

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

Robert Reich:  Well, that actual conclusion comes from a study done by two political scientists, a very famous study in which they looked at something on the order of 1,800 random public policy issues before Congress during a limited period of time, even before the Citizens United decision. So, this is before we had the degree of corporate money in politics. And their conclusion was that the concerns of average Americans have an insignificant effect on public policy, that corporations and very wealthy people and Wall Street really did determine the public agenda.

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

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

Stephen Janis:  This is a union shop here.

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

Taya Graham:  Yes.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah.

Taya Graham:  Ours as well.

Stephen Janis:  Ours as well. Well, thank you so much.

Taya Graham:  Thank you, Professor.

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

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

Robert Reich:  I want to talk about it all the time, so I’ll call you all the time.

Taya Graham:  OK. Great. I look forward to it.

Stephen Janis:  Thank you so much.

Robert Reich:  Bye-bye.

Taya Graham:  Thank you.

Stephen Janis:  Bye.

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

Stephen Janis:  I just hope he calls me about tax breaks because…

Taya Graham:  I do too.

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

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

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

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

Stephen Janis:  Yeah. That’s where all the action is.

Taya Graham:  Really is. Who would’ve thought.

Stephen Janis:  In this great inequality divide we have.

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

Stephen Janis:  Can’t wait to hear it.

Taya Graham:  OK. So, now, after diving deep into the two forces shaping and breaking the American economy, one thing is crystal clear: both wealth inequality and globalization are symptoms of the same disease. That disease is a system designed to prioritize the profits of the few over the well-being of the many. And the stories may differ, whether it’s a billionaire dodging taxes or a factory worker losing their job to offshoring. But the results are eerily similar: a hollowed-out middle class, skyrocketing inequality, and a political system that seems incapable or unwilling to fight back. So, let’s break it down.

Globalization in its current form has done more than just shift manufacturing overseas. It’s created a race to the bottom, where corporations scour the globe for the cheapest labor and the fewest regulations, leaving American workers to pick up the pieces. Wealth taxation, or rather the lack of it, ensures that profits from this exploitation stays concentrated at the top, untouched by the very policies that could help level the playing field. Together, these two forces create the two-tiered economy we’ve spent this conversation dissecting, a system where the rich live by a different set of rules than everyone else.

But here’s the kicker, it doesn’t have to be this way. The solutions we’ve discussed: implementing a wealth tax, rewriting trade agreements to prioritize workers over corporations, maybe even investing in green jobs and infrastructure, these aren’t just pipe dreams. These are viable, evidence-backed policies that could transform our economy into one that works for everyone. And the question isn’t whether we have the resources or the tools, it’s whether we have the political will.

And that’s where the stakes get even higher. Because, as Robert Reich so astutely pointed out, the wealth isn’t just money, it’s power. The billionaires who dodge taxes and the corporations that exploit globalization aren’t just enriching themselves. They’re shaping the very policies and systems that allow them to keep doing it. It’s a feedback loop that corrodes democracy, leaving the rest of us stuck in a system that feels increasingly rigged.

So, what do we do? First, we need to change the narrative. The idea that taxing billionaires or reigning in globalization is somehow radical is a lie perpetuated by those who benefit from the status quo. What’s radical is allowing an economy where the wealthiest 1% own more than the bottom 90%. What’s radical is ignoring the voices of millions of workers while bending over backwards for corporations. And what’s truly radical is thinking we can continue down this path without catastrophic consequences.

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

So, as we close, I want to leave you with this: The fight against the two-tiered economy isn’t just about money; it’s about dignity. It’s about whether we value people, not for the profits they generate, but for their inherent worth as human beings. And it’s about whether we’re willing to demand an economy and a democracy that reflects those values. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. But I think the solutions are within reach, and it’s up to us to decide whether we’ll keep playing by the rigged rules of the game or whether we will rewrite them entirely. Let’s make the choice together while we still can.

OK, Stephen, you know how I love to speechify. Is there anything you would like to add?

Stephen Janis:  Well, it’s really interesting having to come after, that’s a pretty hard act to follow. But I will say that movement building strikes me as very difficult and a very, let’s say, dicey proposition in the media ecosystem we talked about before, because it’s not structured around accumulating some sort of epistemology or knowledge of a subject like we do with tax breaks, it’s more about emotion and being aggrieved. And I just worry about that. I worry about the type of system we have to come to some conclusions about specific things we want to. You have to change something specific. You can’t just say, we’re going to fight for change. It’s got to be something that looks specific.

And we spent all these years, for example, trying to change this horribly unequal system about tax breaks for developers. And it’s been very hard, and we’ve been on our own. And we even received pushback from people who I think would actually think it was a good idea. And the Democrats completely punted on it, wouldn’t even allow a vote on the bill that would’ve shown people what happened.

Now, we’ve talked about this before, but I worry about that because it’s hard. It’s really hard to permeate people’s TikTok lives and say, OK, this is a very complex issue, but we don’t change it. And I think if we don’t address that, it’s going to be very hard to bring about real change. So, that’s my opinion.

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

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

Stephen Janis:  So, you’re doing Dave Chappelle.

Taya Graham:  So, my analysis will always be based on searching for policies that do the most good for the most people. And as far as I can tell, that’s not how billionaires think.

But as always, I do want to know your thoughts in the comments. You know I read them and I answer as many questions as I can. And I really do appreciate your input and insights. I always have more to learn, and that’s why I love being a reporter. You get to keep asking questions.

Stephen Janis:  Absolutely.

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

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

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

Transcript

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

Taya Graham:

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

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

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

Stephen Janis:

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

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

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Janis:

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

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

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

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

Oh, really,

Taya Graham:

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

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

Stephen Janis:

A misery

Taya Graham:

Machine

Stephen Janis:

Too.

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

That’s very true.

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

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

Taya Graham:

No, not all.

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

Taya Graham:

Thank you so much.

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 4:

Please do that.

Richard Wolff:

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

Question. I’m getting to that. I would

Stephen Janis:

Argue. Alright, my fault.

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 5:

Go

Stephen Janis:

Ahead.

Richard Wolff:

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

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

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

Please.

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 6:

Which

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 5:

Okay, interesting.

Richard Wolff:

I would argue that the link there is a very dubious

Speaker 5:

Understood

Richard Wolff:

Link.

Speaker 5:

Understood.

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 5:

I’m stating

Richard Wolff:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

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

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

Taya Graham:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

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

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Richard Wolff:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

That’s right. Democrats helped make

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

It sounds like tips and Baltimore tax

Stephen Janis:

Increment financing. Any comments in the chat or

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Speaker 5:

Good question.

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 5:

Yes, true.

Richard Wolff:

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

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

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

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 5:

They are.

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 5:

Absolutely.

Richard Wolff:

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

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

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

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

Speaker 5:

Wow.

Richard Wolff:

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

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. See, I think you want

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

Well, yeah,

Taya Graham:

The federal minimum

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. We

Richard Wolff:

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

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

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

Ought to be discussed.

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

So even in our higher o’clock

Taya Graham:

Class,

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 5:

That long,

Richard Wolff:

150 years of a steadily rising standard of living.

Stephen Janis:

So I clearly missed the boat.

Richard Wolff:

What

Stephen Janis:

I said, I clearly missed the boat.

Richard Wolff:

No, so to speak. Wait a

Stephen Janis:

Minute,

Richard Wolff:

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

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

Stephen Janis:

It

Richard Wolff:

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

Stephen Janis:

And we even had like a 92% market

Richard Wolff:

Starting,

Stephen Janis:

Starting

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 6:

Because

Richard Wolff:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

That’s right.

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

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

Taya Graham:

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

Speaker 7:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

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

Taya Graham:

That’s amazing.

Stephen Janis:

That is amazing.

Taya Graham:

I’m sorry, I’m just flabbergasted.

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

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

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

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

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

Speaker 4:

So

Richard Wolff:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

Absolutely

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

Why

Stephen Janis:

Don’t you wrap this up?

Taya Graham:

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

Speaker 5:

Point. Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker 5:

True.

Richard Wolff:

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

Speaker 5:

Well,

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Speaker 4:

Whether

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

Don’t buy a Tesla.

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

Than that though, don’t

Taya Graham:

Waste $60,000 on a Tesla.

Richard Wolff:

Yeah,

Taya Graham:

Okay.

Richard Wolff:

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

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

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

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Speaker 5:

Well,

Stephen Janis:

Words of wisdom.

Taya Graham:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Richard Wolff:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Richard Wolff:

Thanks.

Taya Graham:

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

Speaker 5:

We got a donation. Nice.

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

Right into your

Taya Graham:

Thing. Are you sure?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, yeah.

Taya Graham:

Okay.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, I think we’ve all said enough

Taya Graham:

That’s true.

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

Right. Well, that’s why we have to

Stephen Janis:

Present,

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

Okay.

Taya Graham:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Janis:

I did,

Taya Graham:

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

Stephen Janis:

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

Taya Graham:

See you on Blue Sky.

Stephen Janis:

Right.

Taya Graham:

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

Investigative reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis report on the ground from Milwaukee, explaining what they heard from voters in this key swing state on Election Day and the lessons for Democrats as they try to rebuild and rebrand.

Studio Production: Stephen Janis
Additional Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello. This is Taya Graham and Stephen Janis on the ground covering the 2024 Wisconsin election. And most of us woke up to a decidedly different country.

Donald Trump’s resounding victory exemplifies a nation that has shifted red and that seems unconcerned about Trump’s violent rhetoric and often racist statements. But our job is not to comment on President Donald Trump’s behavior, but rather to understand why people have embraced it. That’s why we’re out here today: to discuss some of the voters we spoke to and what they had to say about his support.

Stephen, I realized that this election was about to shift in a decidedly unexpected way when we were outside of Centennial Hall interviewing voters. Tell me about some of the things that you noticed.

Stephen Janis:  Well, yeah, we had a couple of people, random people that we just spoke to who had voted for Trump right in the heart of Milwaukee in a precinct that serves students from nearby Marquette University and University of Milwaukee. So I was a little stunned. I don’t know if you were, but I was, and I was also stunned by their reasoning.

Taya Graham:  And now let’s listen to a young woman explain why she voted for Donald Trump and her interesting reasoning on reproductive rights.

Speaker 1:  I voted for Donald Trump today, yes.

Taya Graham:  Now there are a lot of different policies former President Trump has. Are there any of his policies that he had from the previous administration that you’d like to see him carry out if he has another term?

Speaker 1:  I actually have no idea.

Taya Graham:  Well, let me ask you like this. I’m just curious your thoughts on reproductive rights.

Speaker 1:  I think that one too, that one’s probably the most controversial topic that I can think of. I think everyone has a right in their own bodies. I did hear that Donald Trump was leaving it up to the states to be able to decide what is going to happen with abortion and those rights for women. I believe that women should have a choice. But I also feel like Donald Trump does a great job in leading our country, and I think overall his policies are a bit better structured than Kamala’s. I’m 50/50 on that one, but I do believe that, overall, he would be the better candidate for our country.

Taya Graham:  My very last question, you mentioned that there are other policies of his that you think are good compared to Harris. Maybe you could just give me an example of one, because I can understand reproductive choice being a controversial one. Is there one that you like more than what Vice President Harris is offering?

Speaker 1:  I’m not sure on policies exactly. I think regarding the border, I do get concerned that there are so many people entering our country with access to a lot of things that I think US citizens don’t have access to. So I do believe in cracking down on the border and making it a little bit more strict on who can be in our country and what they have access to.

Taya Graham:  And then we had an encounter with a young man who had an unusual reason for voting for President Donald Trump. Take a listen.

So Brian, can you tell me what issue was important to you that brought you out to the polls today?

Brian:  So I’m originally from California, and I think immigration is one of the bigger issues. But apart from that, I’ve just noticed a lot of changes that I don’t like with regard to the media I typically consume, not news and stuff, but just artistic stuff or creative things. And I’ve just noticed a shift from creativity to toeing the party line or the social line, whatever is acceptable in the social context, and I don’t like it. Sorry.

Taya Graham:  Wow, that’s interesting. So when you’re talking about creativity media, are you talking about content creators, people who talk online, or are you literally describing visual media…?

Brian:  Visual media would be a really good example. For example, Lord of the Rings, that’s the one that really comes to mind right now because I just watched a video last night about it.

Taya Graham:  Do you mean the Lord of the Rings that Amazon produced?

Brian:  Yes.

Taya Graham:  So what did you take issue with?

Brian:  I don’t like how the original content produced by Tolkien has been changed to fit the social narrative that is accepted today. I don’t know —

Taya Graham:  Okay, that’s fine. So let me see if I can guess: Does that mean you didn’t like seeing a Black lady dwarf?

Brian:  No. That’s not why.

Taya Graham:  Oh, oh. Then I’m confused.

Brian:  That is part of it though.

Taya Graham:  Oh, okay.

Brian:  Because it’s not necessarily that she’s a Black lady dwarf, it’s just… It’s actually not even that, it’s just the creators of the current Lord of the Rings show have supplanted the original content in favor of pushing real life issues such as minority representation, LGBTQ.

Those things, yes, they’re important, but they don’t really have a place in… This is about elves, orcs, and dwarves fighting and stuff. What does this have to do with the current zeitgeist? I watch that stuff because I want to get away from what is currently happening. I don’t want to always be bombarded with this stuff.

Taya Graham:  I see what you’re saying. You’re looking for an escape, not another interpretation that brings in present day issues.

Brian:  Yeah, we watch movies because we want to be taken away from where we are.

Taya Graham:  You mentioned immigration. I’m curious, whose immigration policy do you prefer?

Brian:  I prefer Trump’s.

Taya Graham:  You prefer Trump’s. And may I ask what you’re hoping will be done at the border?

Brian:  More control. Yeah.

Taya Graham:  Now, there was a mention of a deportation of nearly 20 million people. What kind of impact do you think that might have on our economy? I mean, just as an example, California, in the agricultural sector, undocumented as well as documented folks working to put food on our tables is anywhere between 40% to 60% depending on what type of crop it is. So don’t you see there might be a possible economic impact, or do you think that that will be offset in some kind of way?

Brian:  There’s definitely going to be an economic impact, and it’ll probably probably be pretty severe initially, but I think we’ll adjust.

Taya Graham:  So Stephen, these young people, they’re part of what’s known as generation Z, correct? So these folks, what did you think of their reasoning? I was somewhat surprised by some of the cultural reasons that were suggested as well.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, it seemed very detached from policy and specifically understanding mechanics of policy, and more based on what people have been talking about, vibes. But I think there’s a reason for that. I think partially it has to do with the media ecosystem that younger people are immersed in like TikTok, where it’s very hard to parse very complex policy decisions.

Like the young woman talking about the fact that Donald Trump had returned it to the states even though that had meant that 20 states now literally banned abortion, and she seemed not to be cognizant of that. And conversely, the young man who seemed to be, I guess, focused on the Lord of the Rings as —

Taya Graham:  Right. It was interesting because the word he wouldn’t use, but I knew was there, was woke. And his concern was that his art, his visual culture had been affected by politics, had been affected by what he considered an agenda. He mentioned specifically LGBTQ issues and racial issues that he felt were present day issues that he didn’t want in his art. He wanted to escape, he said.

But I think he was genuinely uncomfortable with modern day issues being represented in art. But however, isn’t that what always happens with art? Isn’t the modern day always reflected in an interpretation of any sort of creative project, whether it’s a book that’s being adapted or a movie? Right?

Stephen Janis:  Yeah. I mean, well art is technically supposed to be memetic, that is, reflective of the society from which it is created. But I think there’s also another aspect of that. I think we’re dealing with what would be the first generational inequality election where the Democratic Party turned away from Bernie Sanders and kind of became a corporatist entity, even though really, technically, the Biden administration moved significantly from the idea of neoliberalism.

I think that what happened was we have departed from serious policy discussion to more ephemera. And obviously, these students to me who should be able to grasp it, were not able to grasp the technical or the specifics of policy. And I think that’s why they voted, basically, on more like a TikTok meme or something.

Taya Graham:  And it’s not just TikTok’s fault. There are plenty of other areas of our social media ecosystem that have essentially flattened the conversation. It’s very difficult to have a nuanced conversation when you’ve got a one-minute or a three-minute deadline.

Stephen Janis:  Let me ask you a question. As a woman, you saw the young woman saying, well, he turned over abortion rights to the states. How did you feel about that?

Taya Graham:  Well, I was somewhat shocked that she so deeply misunderstood the policy, whether one is for or against women having the right to choose, to state that turning it over to each individual state to decide means that it will interfere with a woman’s right to choose if that’s what you want. And in this woman’s case, she thinks women should have the right to choose. So her not realizing turning it over to the states actually resulted in abortion bans across the board, it was somewhat disappointing.

Stephen Janis:  And that’s something we’ve talked about, and we talked about after several debates, we have discussed at The Real News the disconnect between policy and people’s perception of how things work is really vast. We’ve had the Infrastructure Act, we’ve had the Inflation Reduction Act, very specific policies that have benefited people. We have one of the strongest economies in the world right now. We do have the strongest economy —

Taya Graham:  We recovered from COVID in a way other nations could only dream from.

Stephen Janis:  Yep, and low unemployment, and all these things. And it hasn’t resonated with people. I understand inflation, I personally understand inflation, but even inflation is down now and still people think this country is somehow wrongly positioned. And so I think we’re dealing with a different political reality that the old formulas won’t work.

Taya Graham:  Well, it’s interesting because so many people that are Republican, I would say, want smaller government, and yet at the same time expect the government to fix our grocery bills. So it’s kind of a conundrum. If you want smaller government, then you can’t expect government to fix all of your problems.

Stephen Janis:  Well, you make a really good point. No one in the mainstream media ever pushed back on the Republicans when they said, we’re going to lower inflation. But how? It’s the Fed that controls the money supply and the Fed that controls interest rates, which ultimately control how the economy responds to monetary incentives. So it really, no one ever pushed back on Republicans and said, how are you going to solve inflation?

But we do not want to end this totally on a bad note, right?

Taya Graham:  We don’t want to end this on a negative note either, throwing accusations at any party. What we would like to do is celebrate some of the first-time voters, because one thing that we can all feel good about is people becoming civically engaged as first-time voters. Whether they’re 18 or 80, we’re happy to see it.

[Crowd cheering] May I have your first name, please?

Jasmine:  Jasmine.

Taya Graham:  And I heard that you’re a first-time voter, is that correct?

Jasmine:  Yes, it is.

Taya Graham:  And so what brought you out today? What brought you out? What was important to you? Why does this election matter to you?

Jasmine:  It matters to me because I was able to make a choice. I was able to take my own thoughts and what I felt and take it in and be able to really show it in the world in a way [inaudible] us younger folks really can’t. So definitely that, being able to use my voice.

Taya Graham:  Now as a first-time voter, I heard the whole room burst into applause for you. How did that feel? How did it feel actually seeing everybody celebrate you?

Jasmine:  It’s exciting. You don’t get it much, so it was definitely warming. It was, okay, I’m being heard. This is the first step, this is the first thing. So it was exciting, it was warming.

I want people to know that it’s okay to have your own opinion, to not follow anybody else’s thoughts or comments, anything. We have our own opinion, we have our own choice. So I feel that’s the biggest thing right now.

Stephen Janis:  Taya, it was really… When you’re actually in the polling place, when someone votes for the first time, they applaud. And it was really…

Taya Graham:  [Inaudible] applause. It was beautiful.

Stephen Janis:  And it was nice because these were very enthusiastic young people who really were glad to be engaged. And it was heartwarming. No matter what happens in an election, whatever outcome you feel, it’s always good to see that we can still participate in this process, right?

Taya Graham:  Absolutely. And we saw some really adorable young children with their parents, and it was just so lovely to see them be interested in the process. And of course, those 18-year-olds voting for the first time, they seemed a little shy, but I could tell they loved the attention.

So it turns out you voters have something kind of special about you. What’s a little bit different about you folks?

Speaker 2:  First-time voters.

Taya Graham:  And are you excited to be a first time voter?

Speaker 3:  Yes, I am.

Taya Graham:  So was there anything in particular that brought you out that you’re excited about this election?

Speaker 4:  No. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say!

Taya Graham:  Well, as a first-time voter, is there any particular… As a first-time voter, is there any particular issue that’s very important to you?

Speaker 2:  Just want to make the environment better.

Taya Graham:  Okay. And for you, is there a position that matters to you? Any particular policy?

Speaker 3:  No policy, but besides the president, don’t forget about the legislative branches, and all the other branches.

Taya Graham:  That’s an excellent point. The down ballot really does matter.

Now, can I ask you a question? Would you be willing to share with me who you voted for?

Speaker 3:  Kamala Harris.

Speaker 2:  Kamala Harris.

Speaker 4:  Kamala Harris.

Taya Graham:  So Stephen, before we go, there’s one thing I had to ask. For those who were supporting progressive policies, those who were Democrats or even further on the left, is there anything for them to be optimistic about?

Stephen Janis:  Well, I’m going to put a pessimistic optimistic view on this — No, but seriously. So I think Trump is going to execute some really damaging policies that are really going to hurt all of us and we’re all going to suffer. But maybe, out of that, we’ll realize the value of progressive policymaking. And maybe, through that, we’ll understand how important it is to embrace the complexity of progressive policies, and we’ll see that it really isn’t great to vote on a vibe and to vote for someone who really has, I think, bad policy chops. And we will learn what happens when that person is allowed to execute those policies.

So I think the silver lining is that we can hopefully, out of what happens once Trump is president, we can actually see how valuable it is to talk about good policy and be progressives. And I think that’s really, really important. Get past some of the things that hold back the left and the Democrats and actually say, you know what? We can create great policies that can make for a better country. So I hope that’s kind of optimistic, not terribly optimistic, but somewhat.

Taya Graham:  Well, Stephen, I hope your optimism is able to reach people because I know there are a lot of people out there right now that are absolutely heartbroken, and of course, there are people out there who are celebrating. All we can hope is that, as a country, we can find some way to move forward in a united fashion.

This is Taya Graham and Stephen Janis reporting for The Real News Network in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Speaker 5:  Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network where we lift up the voices, stories, and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity forever.

What happened in the 2024 elections, and what happens now? Donald J. Trump is headed back to the White House, Republicans will control the Senate, and it’s possible they will control all three branches of government when the dust settles. Democrats’ “blue wall” crumbled in the face of the MAGA-led “red wave,” but that picture gets more complicated when we survey the results of other key races and ballot measures across the country. So, what really happened on Tuesday? What do the results tell us about the political landscape and the balance of power in the US? How did Democrats lose so soundly, how did Republicans pull off such sizable wins? And what implications do the elections have for the future of civil rights, immigration, protest and social movements, public policy, the climate, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and America’s place on the world stage?

In this post-election livestream, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and Marc Steiner, host of The Marc Steiner Show, are joined by a range of guests to help break down the wins, losses, and strategies for moving forward from the 2024 elections. Guests include: scholar-activist and artist Eman Abdelhadi; Rick Perlstein, columnist at The American Prospect and author of numerous books like “Nixonland,” “Reaganland,” and “Before the Storm”; Laura Flanders, host of “Laura Flanders & Friends” on PBS; John Nichols, National Affairs Correspondent at The Nation; Bill Gallegos of the Mexico Solidarity Project; and TRNN reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis, who have been on the ground in Wisconsin all week.

Studio: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley
Pre-Production: Maximillian Alvarez, Kayla Rivara, Jocelyn Dombroski

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  Welcome, everyone, to our postelection breakdown livestream here on The Real News Network. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News, and we are so grateful to have you all with us.

Marc Steiner:  And I’m Marc Steiner here, host of The Marc Steiner Show on The Real News. I’m also happy to be here.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Donald J. Trump is headed back to the White House for a second term. Republicans will control the Senate, and it’s possible they will control all three branches of government when the dust settles: the executive, legislature, and the judiciary. Republicans currently have the lead in the battle to control the House of Representatives, with 207 seats compared to Democrats 194 seats. But enough races remain competitive and uncalled as of this recording that the future of the House is still uncertain.

In the presidential race, however, Democrats’ blue wall crumbled in the face of the MAGA-led red wave. Trump not only won the key swing states of Georgia and North Carolina, but he also flipped Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. All of those states, with the exception of North Carolina, went for Joe Biden in 2020. And Trump currently has commanding leads in Nevada and Arizona.

In these last harried months before Election Day, Democrats made a cynical, dangerous, and fateful calculation. They bet that a winning coalition of today’s never-Trump Republicans, i.e. yesterday’s neocons, undecided “moderates”, and all manner of people terrified into submission to vote against Trump would counteract the precious working-class youth, Arab and Muslim American, progressive and other voters that they have hemorrhaged by recklessly continuing to fund and support Israel’s genocidal regime, by presenting Harris’s platform as a lockstep continuation of the Biden administration, and by failing to articulate a strong, populist vision that spoke to working people’s deeply felt lack of economic security. And they were wrong, catastrophically wrong.

So what happened on Tuesday, and what happens now? What do the results tell us about the political landscape and the balance of power in the United States? How did Democrats lose so soundly? How did Republicans pull off such sizable wins?

That picture does admittedly get more complicated when we survey the results of other key races and ballot measures across the country, and we are going to talk about that today as well.

But what implications do the elections have for the future of civil rights, immigration, abortion rights, protest and social movements, public policy, the climate, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and America’s place on the world stage? On today’s livestream, we’re going to dig into all of this. And this will not be the only livestream we have to address these issues.

But we’ve got lots of incredible guests with powerful voices and vital perspectives coming on over the next two hours to help us unpack your biggest questions about the elections. We’ve got scholar activists and artists and Eman Abdelhadi; we’ve got Rick Perlstein, columnist at the American Prospect and author of numerous books like Nixonland, Reaganland, and Before the Storm; we’ve got the great Laura Flanders, host of Laura Flanders & Friends on PBS; John Nichols, national affairs correspondent at The Nation; Bill Gallegos of the Mexico Solidarity Project; and Real News reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis, who have been on the ground in Wisconsin all week.

And we’re going to bring on our first guest, Eman Abdelhadi in a minute, but by way of getting us there, Marc, I want to turn to you at the top here and just get your thoughts on where we are right now and how we got here.

Marc Steiner:  We’re in a very scary place, and I think I have to lay some of what happened here at the doorsteps of the Democratic Party, who played a very narrow campaign, thinking they could go to the right to win, which was absurd. And we see what’s happened.

I think that it’s interesting to me how the Democrats have lost their ability to find their roots. By that I mean their roots were in labor unions and organizing and the Civil Rights Movement and organizing. They’ve lost the organizing roots. They weren’t out there at the grassroots. They weren’t pulling people in. They weren’t doing a media campaign that talked about not just the dangers ahead if Trump wins, but talk about what the vision was for a different kind of America. They didn’t do any of that, and I think they put the nails in their own coffin.

Maximillian Alvarez:  They tried to articulate a vision, and it was not a compelling one. I think that’s also a clear takeaway. It just wasn’t hitting. And we’re going to talk about why, over the course of this livestream and over the course of our continuing coverage and your coverage all the way up to the election and beyond has been incredible, so thank you for all that work, brother.

And thank you all once again for joining us. We know you’ve got a lot of questions, we’re going to try to get to as many of them as we can, but please do send us in your questions and we will try to address them in more segments, more livestreams with more guests in the coming days and weeks.

Right now I want to bring on our first incredible guest, Eman Abdelhadi, scholar, activist, and artist who has been doing incredible coverage for outlets like In These Times in the runup to this week’s elections. Eman, thank you so much for joining us on The Real News Network today. I really, really appreciate it.

Eman Abdelhadi:  Thanks for having me, Max.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, we need your powerful voice, sister, now more than ever. And you know as well as we do that right now, a lot of people in a lot of high places are going to be looking for people to blame this week’s results on, and one of the utmost obvious and softest targets that they’re already going after is the Gaza Solidarity Movement. Anyone and everyone who expressed genuine concerns over Harris’s continued support of Israel’s genocidal Zionist regime.

So taking those narratives out of our heads for a second and asking you to help us unpack this, what role do you see, from your perspective, what role has Israel and Harris’s support for the Zionist genocide seemed to play in this election writ large? And then, what is a second Trump presidency going to mean for Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and all of that moving forward?

Eman Abdelhadi:  I think we have to think about the voter who has been watching children under the rubble every day for the last year, for over a year now, watching a genocide unfold on their phones every single day. And knowing that this system, that this ruling elite has been completely committed to this genocide, has gaslit us about it over and over.

Then this moment of asking this voter to put all of that aside and show up to the polls and vote for the people who have not just enacted this genocide but have patronized the people protesting it, have criminalized the people protesting it, and are offering very little else, are not saying, OK, put aside the genocide because we have this great amazing vision for you on this other ground. They’re not doing that either. And so I think a lot of those voters stayed home. Kamala lost 10 million votes from previous elections.

I think that there’s this way that we ask the left to put on their big boy pants and, as a recent article said, to basically be these hyper-rational, focus on strategy voters, whereas we make a lot of room and leeway for other voters’ proclivities. There’s a sense that you are just going to be able to put aside Gaza. I think a lot of people didn’t, and they weren’t being offered anything meaningful — And, in fact, they were being told that they shouldn’t care at all.

Now, will Trump be worse on Gaza? It’s actually hard to tell. His rhetoric is certainly a lot worse. His foreign policy was really hard to pin down, I think, in his last presidency. He’s certainly no friend of Arabs. He’s no friend of Muslims. He’s no friend of the Palestinian people. His rhetoric has been terrible.

But I think that people need to understand that, in terms of US support for Israel, there has been no red line and there have no been no checks on the Israeli government. So it’s hard to imagine a worse case. It’s hard to imagine things getting worse in terms of the Middle East, which is what we’ve been threatened with this whole time, this whole campaign — Oh, it’s going to get worse, it’s going to get worse. And I think what voters have been saying is, what is worse than a genocide and an open tap of weapons and support that no amount of brutality has stopped?

So I don’t know what’s going to happen with Iran. We do know that Trump tends to be an isolationist. I think he’s less committed to the vision of the world with US leadership that Clinton and Bush era politicians seem to be arguing for. I don’t know what that’s going to mean on the ground. I think it’s going to be a question of what becomes lucrative for him.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And what about, I guess this is a question that’s on a lot of our minds. It’s a question that makes me think of the fact that the last time we were together in person was there in Chicago, covering Gaza solidarity protests around the DNC in August.

Right now, I think the knee-jerk reaction from a lot of folks is we gotta hit the streets. We gotta hit the streets even harder. We gotta protest even louder. And I’m not saying that we don’t need to do that, but I am saying that the first story I reported on in Trump’s first term was when his administration was cheering on the mass arrest and the attempts to charge mass amounts of protesters, journalists, legal observers at the inauguration protests with felony riot charges. So we are entering a new terrain when it comes to grassroots action, protest actions, and otherwise.

So as you see it, as someone who’s covered these protest movements all year, where do you see us heading in terms of the terrain of struggle, particularly as it pertains to protests moving forward in the Trump administration?

Eman Abdelhadi:  We always knew that whoever was going to be in the White House, headed to the White House in January, was going to be an enemy. And the question is which enemy do we have? And right now we have an enemy that has no qualms about calling the military, has no qualms about criminalizing protests.

Now, a lot of us have been facing off against the police and these repressive tactics under the previous administration. So I think we need to think about our tactics not from a place of fear and from a place of, well, what are they going to do, necessarily, in response, but more where are we as a movement? We need to think about where our movement is in terms of its potential, in terms of its energy. And I think that street mobilizations and street actions have been really important for growing our base, but we’ve also hit up against the limits of them a little bit.

And so I think that what I’m seeing on the ground is a lot of people turning towards organizing and power building as opposed to mobilizing just street actions. Thinking about your workplace, your school, your neighborhood, thinking about your local politicians and your local political scene and whatever other institutions are within your sphere of influence, and thinking about how do I hold these institutions accountable to their relationship with the state of Israel to their complicity in the genocide?

For me, it feels clear that the American public is going to have to divest from Israel before we force the ruling class to do it. And we are going to have to do that through all of this bottom-up work and grassroots organizing.

So I think we should still be on the streets. I think we have to protect the right to be on the streets, but I also think that we have been expanding into other tactics as well.

Marc Steiner:  I watched this whole thing unfold and the Democrats just blew it. Kamala Harris and her team did not come up with an alternative to what’s been happening. I don’t expect the Democrats to go, oh, we’re pro-Palestine and goodbye Israel. I don’t expect that at all. But what I did expect and what they should have done at the very least is to say, we are going to end the violence right now. We’re going to do something to build peace in the Middle East, to build a peace platform. And it may have saved them votes, but B, it just set it apart.

Because you can’t… It was just really disappointing to watch this unfold. And I think that I’ve been in this struggle around the Palestinian Israeli struggle since 1968, and we’ve been fighting against this occupation for that long, and organizing and coming up with a strategy is what has to happen now. The Democrats have seen what they’ve blown, and I’ve talked to a couple of people in the Democratic Party over the last two days, and people really have to push to change the way they approach the subject, period. It’s just obscene. And that’s a huge reason why they lost.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and to turn that into a question for Eman, I mean, again, I don’t want to ask you to speak for whole swaths of voting constituencies here, but again, having watched what we watch, having heard what Marc just said, I mean, what would a better alternative vision have been or needs to be moving forward to get the faith back from so many folks? Not just Arab and Muslim Americans, but working class voters, youth voters, folks around the country who feel like even in the face of a threat like Donald Trump, that the prospect of things getting better is just so hopeless that they stay home or they don’t put their faith in any of the options on offer. What does an alternative to that even look like?

Eman Abdelhadi:  I think a left wing candidate… Listen, I don’t think our full liberatory potential as human beings is ever going to be on the ballot in the current system as it is. We’re never going to have liberation on the ballot. But I think that, even within the current system, if you had offered people a left-wing, truly progressive alternative with actual policies.

At the DNC, she said, we’re going to build the most lethal fighting force on earth. She said this to her voters who largely are anti-war, anti weaponry. And there are these ways that they could have even lied. What’s so wild about having watched this campaign, it’s like, you could have lied and said you were going to do more than you did and then ended up doing what every Democrat has done, which has moved to the right when you’re in office.

But they couldn’t even offer that platform. And I think that speaks to the intense disjuncture between this party and the people who are supposed to be its base that somewhere there’s this consultant class of Democrats who truly believes that if you send Bill Clinton to Michigan to speak to Arab communities about how terrible Gazans basically deserve to die, that was a good election strategy on the eve of the election.

So I think there’s so many ways that they could have done things differently. And within our lifetimes we’ve seen that. We’ve seen the energy around the Bernie campaign. Bernie is not as far left as I would like him to be, but I even knocked on doors for him. We saw the energy that could happen if you had an actual progressive candidate on the ballot.

And here in this election, we saw that she lost states that voted for left-wing policies. In my own home state in Missouri, voters voted overwhelmingly for Trump, and they also voted for a minimum wage hike.

They’re trying to spin this right now as America moving to the right ideologically because they voted for Trump. And I don’t think that that’s what we’re seeing here. I think what we’re seeing is that there’s a referendum on Democrats’ economic vision, on their vision of the world as a world that’s led by US hegemony, and they’re losing that referendum, the people have voted against it.

And those two things, the domestic side and the international side, are two parts of the same coin. We need a candidate who says, I care more about Americans lives here. I’m going to actually invest in working-class people here, and it’s more important than protecting the interests of corporations or weapons manufacturers or Israel. And well, we haven’t seen that. And I think if we had seen that, there was a moment where Kamala could have pivoted to that and she didn’t, and she lost as a result.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Also worth noting that not only did Missouri vote to raise the state minimum wage, but it was also one of the seven states that voted to enshrine abortion rights in its state charter along with Arizona, Colorado, New York, Maryland, here in our home state, Montana, Nevada.

As I said at the top, the picture does get more complicated than just the red Trumpian wave when you look all the way up and down the ballot. And I want us to continue to unpack that over the course of this livestream.

But it does raise an important question here, Eman, that I wanted to pose to you because I know we only have you for a few more minutes here. As we said, the pundit class, the consultant class, Democrats at the top of the party, they, they’re going to do what they always do, and they’re going to look for a way to blame voters for the outcome that voters kept telling ’em they were going to get if they didn’t change course.

But they don’t really seem to have a case to make here the way that they tried and succeeded in doing in a lot of ways after 2016. Because, now granted, in terms of the national total voter results, there are still a lot of results in populous states like California that are going to be counted. So we’re expecting that the total voter turnout will be closer to what it was in 2020, but it still appears to be less than what it was in 2020.

And there also appear to be key dropoffs in Democratic support, but those dropoffs do not correspond to the amount of people who voted for say, Jill Stein or Cornel West. So it doesn’t even feel like Democrats and their supportive pundits in the media can even say all those people who voted third party are the difference that could have swung this to Harris. It feels like something else is going on here.

I just wanted to get your thoughts there with the caveat that more is going to become clear in the coming days and weeks. Exit polls need to be taken with a huge pinch of salt, but based on the results that we have, what do you actually think are the takeaways that people should have rather than trying to just blame this all on uncommitted folks or people who voted third party?

Eman Abdelhadi:  I think the takeaway is that the Democratic Party has abandoned working-class Americans, and it’s abandoned any pretense that it was the more peaceful anti-war party. And as a result, its base has abandoned it. And I think there’s this way that, if you don’t offer something exciting and something interesting in a world, in a country that is increasingly disillusioned with the whole system, is increasingly disillusioned with voting, you’re just not going to win.

And so I think that’s the key takeaway. But I think, broadly, as a leftist, as someone who, like I said, doesn’t believe liberation is ever going to fully be on the ballot, but that the ballot is worth engaging and that it’s not something to throw away and that it is important and that we should participate as leftists, we should be seizing any ground that we can. I think we have to think broadly about the world we need to build and what the hurdles are to getting there and how to push for that.

It became clear to me around the DNC that the electoral possibilities of ending the genocide in Gaza had been reached, that we were not going to push her any further, and that it was time to focus our energy back to local organizing. So I think for each of us, there has to be this question of what do I need to do to protect the people around me and to advance the causes that I care about in this moment of incredible weakness for the left?

Maximillian Alvarez:  Brother Marc, any final questions you have for Eman?

Marc Steiner:  Yeah, I am very curious, from all the work you’ve done and what we face now in the Middle East and building a coalition that makes some changes here in America, how do you see that unfolding? How do you see that happening? We talked a bit about organizing and more. Because it infuriates me watching these Democrats not be able to make the leap to say end the war in Israel-Gaza, stop it because we are the only country on the planet that has the power to stop it. So I’m curious, what do you think the next moves are to push that and to push that as an idea for the mass of Americans to take hold of and to change the Democrats, if you can?

Eman Abdelhadi:  I think that we need to make commitment to this war extremely costly. I think we do that by leveraging our power through things like unions. I think we need to basically create both social and economic costs to continuing to support this war. We sort of did do that in terms of the vote. I think Gaza was a part of why she didn’t win.

But I think also this is a long-term battle where we need to basically build power, whether that’s through street mobilizations that disrupt business as usual, or through moving… Labor has been solidly on the side of Palestine, but there needs to be more work in that arena.

I think the broader problem is that we are left after decades of neoliberalization in a version of this country that makes it incredibly hard to leverage any people power. The fact that we have so few unions, and we’re stuck in these kind of ideological debates without a lot of actual points of leverage.

So I think a lot of the work that’s been happening in the cultural realm has been really important. But what we’ve seen is that hasn’t translated into policy. And I think organizing locally, so here in Illinois for example, we are organizing around a divestment campaign for Illinois bonds. So I think there needs to be a systematic attack on all of these links that bolster the Israeli government and its murderous campaigns.

I wish I had a silver bullet —

Marc Steiner:  I wish we all had it.

Maximillian Alvarez:  None of us have a silver bullet, but… We only have a couple minutes left with Eman, and then we’re going to welcome on our next guests, Rick Perlstein and Laura Flanders. And so, by way of asking you this final question, Eman, Marc and I were talking about this leading into Tuesday about what the message was going to be if Harris won. Because I think for the left or whatever that means today, or for people who have principled commitments that you could define as more left-leaning or progressive, there was going to be a very sobering reality on the other side of a Harris win, which is that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is at its institutionally most powerless point.

It takes two election cycles to wash the Bernie Sanders stain out. And Harris would’ve gone into her administration feeling next to no compulsion whatsoever to even cater to that Bernie side, that progressive side of the Democratic Party that Biden felt compelled to cater to in 2020. There was going to be a real soul searching question of what is the left, where is the left, and what do people who believe in that vision of the world, where are we and what do we do moving forward into a Harris administration?

Now we got Trump. So in a lot of ways, the equation’s the same: Institutionally, we ain’t got no power in that administration, and we have less and less in all three branches of government. So that is both a terrifying prospect and a critical one because, for all the reasons that we can justifiably say people want an alternative so that we’re not in this same situation in four years, that needs to start now, that needs to start yesterday. And a lot of people are feeling maybe too scared and too anxious to even begin thinking in those terms.

So I wanted to give you the final word here. If you could speak to people who are in that position, people who desperately want an alternative but are currently fearful of what the next Trump administration’s going to be, don’t know where to start, don’t know what our goal needs to be beyond just defense of ourselves, our communities, and our livelihoods. What would your message be to those folks right now?

Eman Abdelhadi:  I would say start with the local level. I would say we need to build a bench of progressives that can move through these… I mean, in 2018 after there was a blue wave of folks that were elected all over on all levels of government who were progressive and on the progressive end of the party. And all of that dissipated, they got eaten up, either they got co-opted into mainstream Democratic Party politics, or they got marginalized. But I think that it’s important to think about these moments as of potential mobilization.

So I think on the electoral level, we need to build a bench of progressives who can move through local elections and eventually make their way up. And we need to keep them accountable through the movement, not by constantly immediately canceling them all the time, but constantly holding them back, accountable to their base.

And then I think people need to organize. The reality is I didn’t feel I had very much power in the previous administration either, and no one that I organized with felt like we had power vis-a-vis the last administration. And so I think we need to build coalitions and organize, again, in our spheres of influence, whether that’s our workplaces or our schools or our districts, and build these coalitions that can either be used electorally or, more importantly, for broader movement wins.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So that is the great Eman Abdelhadi. You should read anything and everything Eman has ever written, follow her on social media. Scholar, activist, artist Eman, thank you so much for joining us on The Real News. Thank you for everything that you’ve done, and we’re sending all our love and solidarity to you from here in Baltimore.

Marc Steiner:  Amen to that.

Eman Abdelhadi:  I’m sending it right back, Max. Thanks so much.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Thank you, sister. Thank you. So we’re going to bring on our next guest in a moment. We’ve had them on before — In fact, we had them on together to help us break down the Trump conviction news that feels like it happened 10 years ago, but it was only a few months ago.

And we said rightly then, and we were addressing this to all the folks out there who were taking a premature victory lap and hoping that the legal system of checks and balances would take the Trump problem off the country’s plate back in the spring. Our message was very clear: That’s not going to happen. What in the Trump era would make you think that he’s just going to go away or that the system is going to treat him with the same callousness that it does working people like us? And here we are, months later, in a much different world.

And so we’re very excited to have our guests Rick Perlstein and the great Laura Flanders joining us today at this critical and dark moment to help us make sense of this. Laura, of course, is the host of Laura Flanders & Friends, which you can catch every week on PBS. She is a journalist legend, a hero of mine, as is brother Rick Perlstein, the most brilliant minds analyzing the American right that the American left has ever produced.

Laura, Rick, thank you both so much for joining us today on The Real News Network. We really appreciate it.

Laura Flanders:  It’s great to be with you. Glad to be here, Max. Good to see you, Rick.

Rick Perlstein:  It’s a comforting place to be in a very uncomfortable time.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Good to see you both. Well Marc, let’s open it up with you.

Marc Steiner:  I’d like to hear both of your analysis about what just happened here, how the Democrats blew this and the growing power of the right. I’ve been covering the growing power of the right in this country for some time now here for Real News. And what we’re seeing now is they almost have a trifecta politically in Washington DC. It could be extremely dangerous for everything from Civil Rights to labor rights to the future of our country and our democracy, everything’s at stake. I’m curious, how did we get here? How do you think at this moment we came to this point?

Rick Perlstein:  Can I start, Laura?

Laura Flanders:  You’re the historian, Rick, go for it [Steiner laughs].

Rick Perlstein:  I’m going to lean away from any preliminary judgment at this point that the Harris campaign necessarily blew it. I mean, maybe they did. But I’m just going to give a little example of my day-to-day life. My car got towed, and at the impound lot in the middle of a neighborhood in Chicago, the Mexican American, clearly working-class clerk, we got into a conversation about the election and he said he was for Trump, and he said he heard that every undocumented immigrant was getting a $9,000 check.

I just got the latest issue of the Economist, and the cover is the American economy is the envy of the world. Of course, we still have a profoundly unequal economy. There’s lots of vultures, for example, in the housing market who are just stripping people clean.

But if you look back also at, say, in the Biden administration, the fact that we had a party where young Black men were called super predators, and now they’re nominating public defenders to the bench, or the fact that Kamala Harris chose as her running mate, basically, a Scandinavian social democrat who, when the federal government took away, the Biden administration, let’s be frank, took away the COVID stimulus checks for families, he just brought ’em back.

So I don’t think it’s as easy as just saying the administration and the campaign rejected the left, and that’s why they lost. I mean, here I am in Chicago and we elected the Bernie coalition, and they just screwed up everything. The mayor has a 15% approval rating.

I’m going to really place the blame on the fact that people only know what the candidates are saying or doing through mediation. And that medium is the media.

I just got a text from a friend of mine who works at a major metropolitan newspaper, basically in a blue city in a red state, and he said, journalism deserved what it has coming to it. Discussion in the newsroom — This is a newspaper newsroom about Project 2025. So very clear no one’s seriously grappled with anything before today.

Just one more example: inflation. There’s this huge debate over inflation. Did anyone in the media ever say that the president really has no control over inflation? So to me, the reason the word “fascism” is useful is because it’s only possible in this deranged information environment in which it’s very hard for people to grasp reality.

Here we have this guy, Elon Musk, and I was looking at Axios today, and Axios’s report was, well, maybe Elon Musk isn’t so dumb after all, maybe he’d made an amazing investment by buying Twitter. And by saying that, they’re saying this is a guy who basically was turned over the keys to something that’s going to be like state media, a state propaganda apparatus. He’s going to be the nation’s Goebbels. And one of these newsletters of the elite capitalist masters of the universe in Washington. All they can say about this is, great business move.

So yeah, I wish it was as easy as saying Kamala screwed up. I kind of dug what she was doing. I think that it’s a calamity and a disaster that she wasn’t able to say anything about Gaza that was productive in any way, shape, or form. But quite frankly, massacring Brown people is not a big problem for a lot of Americans, as we’ve seen from them choosing Donald Trump.

So I think the biggest crisis moving forward has to be dealing with this media that just does not know how to represent the truth to citizens in a way that allows them to act like citizens.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Laura, let’s toss it to you.

Laura Flanders:  Well, so many things there. I want to come back to the media, of course. Huge, huge issue. I will give just a few quick takes on the Harris campaign. For sure, I don’t think there’s anything she could have done that necessarily would’ve turned a totally different result, maybe incrementally different. But I do think it is really hard to run on and also against the economic record of the administration that you’ve been part of for the last four years.

I also think it is really hard to run against autocracy and war and for human rights and be part of an administration that is flooding weapons to a foreign autocrat committing genocide. I think it’s super hard to run a bottom-up, people-powered, we are democracy in action Democratic campaign that nonetheless relies on big dollar donors by private interests. That’s our system, that it fundamentally instills a level of hypocrisy and servitude into our political process.

Finally, I think it is really hard to run as the nation’s first woman of color president in a continent as big as ours with 330 million people, and do it in 106 days. So those are my hot takes on the Harris aspect of the story.

The other aspect of the story, though, that I think Rick is getting at so well is it’s not about one party or one campaign or let alone one politician. There have been structural phenomena playing out here over decades that finally came to roost this election. Did the media ignore important aspects of what was actually happening under the Biden administration? Absolutely. When Nicholas Lehman writes in The New Yorker, in the issue that comes out the week before the election, Bidenomics is working, why is nobody noticing? You’re like, well, because the media, so-called, most of our most influential media speakers are those cable network pundits who never leave the studio.

So while Nicholas Lehman, bless him, goes out there and actually talks to working-class people at the factory, making the school buses, making green school buses with union labor in a neighborhood that needed employment, employing people that were historically disadvantaged, all thanks to millions of dollars coming in from the Biden administration, it’s too little too late. And where was the reporting all this time about how this policy was actually playing out?

I’m with Rick. I was never a huge Biden fan during the financial crisis. We remember the role that he played benefiting, privileging banking over others. But heck, in this administration, Bidenomics showed the markers of the influence of the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren wing of the party. It really did. And there was a lot to actually run on and talk about. Not happy talk about how inflation is nothing and everybody’s lives are great and the market’s great, therefore you should feel better than you do. But actual real life stuff about what’s happening on the ground.

That’s about as positive as you’re going to get from me about a Democratic administration [Steiner laughs]. But I do think there were things to report on there that simply got missed, and Harris could have run on some of that, but she was so intimidated, I think, by the frames that the media had put on this election, which was that everybody was upset about the economy — What do we mean by the economy, anyway? Who’s out there talking about what that means? We have many economies in this country, people getting by in all sorts of different ways and people being helped by government programs in all sorts of different ways. We could have talked about a lot of it.

So I think there’s the problem of the media, what they actually do today. There’s the problem of how much advertising money they absorb. What if they just said tomorrow, we’re not running these ads? But instead they accept the cable companies, which are for-profit corporations, part of international global corporate capital, accept millions of dollars of advertising money to run ads that are lies. And we know that they were lies that worked. Lies around trans people, “men” in sports — Not true. That’s not the issue. And lies of every other possible kind.

And this comes back to our bigger fundamental problem we have — Well, two, they both have to do with capitalism. One of them has to do with you cannot have a democracy… I mean, Bernie’s right, we shouldn’t have billionaires. You can’t have a democracy when you have billionaires allowed to pump as much money as they want to into our elections. It just doesn’t work.

Secondly, we have had an extractive economy that has extracted culture and value and understanding and care and attention as much as it has extracted precious minerals from underneath the ground of our communities around this country, and concentrated all those resources and attention and information and caring in a few hands in a few places.

So we do have a lot of this country that has been ignored for way too long in terms of the culture, what they see reflected back to them through their media, the kinds of people they see talking back to them about the nature of the world.

And I think that that is a longstanding problem that has been going on for years. When people feel ignored, alienated, scared, alone, remote, disinvested in, not cared about, it is really easy for one to create a sense of community of the aggrieved, and a community of the aggrieved that are led to believe, through endless messaging, that it’s not the wealthy and the extractors that are the problem, it’s the scrappy immigrants who are coming to take their jobs.

And that’s what happened this time. It’s not magic, it’s not rocket science, it’s not breaking news that that’s been going on, but that is, I believe, at the heart of what happened today, and leaves us with an enormous job of how do we reinvest attention, caring, consideration, not to mention resources, into communities that don’t make it into our news?

Marc Steiner:  A couple of things here that popped up as both of you were talking. One has to do, we don’t have to belabor this, but the Democrats had a billion dollars to spend. They could have told the story, hired organizers, really pushed a different agenda, exposed the things you were just talking about, Laura, all across the media. They could have done that and had people on the ground organizing. They didn’t do it. They did not organize this. And I guess having spent years as an organizer and running campaigns, give me a billion dollars, I’ll help you change it. That really drove me nuts.

But the other thing is, let’s talk about what’s going to happen now.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, let me hop in there real quick. I want us to end with the what happens now question. But by way of getting there, I want to comment on the economy and a question about the media, if that’s cool. Because again, agree with what you guys are saying, taking it all in, appreciate your perspectives as always, and I want to just also offer a perspective here.

As folks watching this know, The Real News Network is a nonprofit newsroom. We’re not competing with CNN or stuff like that, but we’re small, mighty, we care, and we try. And we talk to working people around the country week in, week out. I interview tons of them on my show working people all the time.

And what I also want to add to the conversation here is that in those conversations, you will hear how the people’s perception of the economy and people’s lived experience, it produces a mixed bag when we’re talking about the economy. It is not as simple as saying Bidenomics is working, why aren’t people talking about it? Depends on what people were talking about.

I interviewed railroad workers last week on my show saying, hey, Biden and Congress broke your guys’ strike. How are people feeling right now? How are they going to vote? The answer was people are feeling demoralized. Our strike was broken under Biden’s administration and the rail companies got everything that they want. Then two months after we were forced to accept a contract, the derailment in East Palestine happened. They’ve been left behind. Railroad workers feel just as demoralized as they did three years ago before the country started to care about ’em again. They barely got any sick days. They got a little pay bump, but they’re still being run into the ground. So in terms of Bidenomics working for them, it’s not.

In terms of public school teachers in counties all across the country, especially in places like Minnesota where I’ve interviewed folks, they can’t hire educators because the pay is so low and they can’t retain folks. Nurses, healthcare workers, education workers are constantly telling us that they are being burnt out because they’re having more work piled onto fewer workers at pay that is not keeping pace with the cost of living.

If you add into that young people who are dealing with a massive debt burden from getting the education we were told to get when we were young, those student loan repayments started up a few months ago. Housing costs still are skyrocketing. Bidenomics is not working for a lot of folks there, and they’re feeling it.

Now, again, Trump’s not going to address that, but it paints a really complicated picture. As Laura said, there are many economies.

Laura Flanders:  Well, it’s a complicated picture though, Max. If you had been, I bet if you had been running for office, you would’ve said, listen, it’s not working for everybody. We want to do more, do it better. If you were a Democrat, you would’ve run on, we’ve been at least doing this and we could be doing more instead of we agree it’s been a big problem, which is what she basically ran on. So instead of saying, we need more of this, and this is what’s been happening, and this is what still needs to be done, she ran away from the whole story, which I think was a big mistake.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yeah, I agree. I think also people have a very distorted picture, which brings us back to the media, about what the scene is for working-class people and organize labor in this country —

Laura Flanders:  Yes, they don’t have a picture.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Folks still think we’re in the midst of this great organizing wave, when the organizing wave that emerged out of COVID is still running through the mud of an underfunded NLRB in a viciously anti-union corporate class that has managed to stall so many of those unionization efforts.

So again, complicated picture, point very well taken. This brings us back to the question of the media, because I wrote this piece last week for In These Times and The Real News, a deeply personal piece trying to address this question. Because I went back home and visited my grandfather who’s dying of Alzheimer’s, who’s obsessively watching Trump and Fox News and OAN. And I sat there in his living room watching the screen that he watches that connects him to the world outside of his window, and the world looked very different than the one that I see watching the world in my social circles through the media that I consume, the reporting that I do.

And that is a huge unspoken crisis that we are experiencing in the digital age right now, where you could be seeing and imagining a very different country than the person who sits next to you on the bus depending on what channels you watch, what apps you use, what podcasts you listen to.

So there’s been a fracturing of not only the mass public that maybe television commanded a large audience of 30, 40 years ago, but that has translated into a very fractured sense of the country that we’re actually living in.

And so, I wanted to ask, Rick, the media is one of the core pillars of the Infernal Triangle that you’re writing about so much at the American Prospect. Can you talk a bit about that reality warping and reality encasing effect of the fractured media ecosystem we’re living in now? And Laura, as someone who has been working in media and journalism, you’re still on public TV, how do we fight that?

Rick Perlstein:  Imagine if your work and your reporters in Wisconsin or East Palestine, if that was happening on the scale of the resources of a New York Times or a Washington Post or a CNN instead of your hard scrabble crew, literally probably literally a thousandfold resources, we would have a different country because the politicians would receive different signals, because they’re very solicitous of what the media says about them and what’s going out there.

Take something like crime and crime committed by migrants. Every educated person knows that immigrants commit violent crimes on a level far lower than native born people. So logically speaking, if you want a less crime-ridden country, you let in more immigrants, not less. And the lie that immigrants are “invading”, which is just fascist rhetoric. The idea that a poor, huddled mass is yearning to breathe free are the people who are the threat to the country, it is like something out of Nazi Germany or Pravda and the Soviet Union.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in New York and I went to Ellis Island. So I really saw Ellis Island — I don’t know if some of you guys who are older might remember that Ellis Island was rehabbed and reopened after a long closure in the 1980s during the Reagan era. At the same time, they restored the Statue of Liberty. There was all this scaffolding around it, and it was really a time when the civic religion had a basic grasp and basic beliefs that immigrants were a good thing.

And one of the things I found so fascinating was they had all these oral histories in which people told their stories, what it was like going through Ellis Island. One guy was like, there was a law that you had to have $25, so we would pass the same $25 down the line, and the immigrant inspectors looked the other way. They knew we didn’t have $25.

And the fact that this was upheld in the museum as a story that we were supposed to celebrate, showing the gumption and hustle of immigrants, instead of the story now — Which is told also by, unfortunately, Kamala Harris, did she ever say once that we want more immigrants? That immigrants are good? She said, we are a nation of immigrants, which is a very mild thing.

Instead, the story about immigrants passing that $25 down the line would be, wow, these immigrants are cheating us. And that’s somehow become this bipartisan thing, and it is backed by this lie that’s also passed on in the media because the Republicans say it. And if the Republicans say it, we have to report it without fact checking because fact checking would be bias, that America is suffering an epidemic of violent crime. I think, really, it’s very fundamental.

And then you get to the issue of social media and their algorithms that basically valorize people, basically lying in order to create fights, which creates more engagement. I think that the revolution now flows through the media. If we had an honest media that provided a reasonable picture onto the world, everything would change. Everything would change.

Laura Flanders:  Rick, you mentioned in passing Goebbels, and I wrote a piece for The Guardian earlier this year that referred to Musk as today’s Goebbels. And I didn’t just mean because of the role he is playing in communication, but structurally. People perhaps don’t remember Goebbels, the communications director for the Hitler administration, as it were, the Hitler regime. He didn’t just do propaganda. He distributed cheap radio sets to Germans all across the country so that they boosted the economy of the people that owned the manufacturers, but also gave people a free new medium that they could engage with and get their news from, that they were excited about. It was very similar to Twitter or X.

And I think that that idea of distributing not just content, but also form the pipes as well as what runs through the pipes, owning your own media platforms. The Trump team have several of them now. Trump has his own, which is increasing in value after the election, and Twitter, Musk has X.

I think that we, and always, Max, when I talk about the failings of the media, I am not talking about you or me or the whole media, independent media ecosystem that has provided us our community over all these many decades. And it’s exciting to know that there are new generations of independent media makers and movement media makers and a new alliance that I know that you’re part of, the Movement Media Alliance that’s thinking about how can we independents move more closely together, work more closely together, help one another survive better.

I assume my days on public television are numbered because I think public television is to be zeroed out of the budget, at least according to Project 2025. Not that anybody at public television covered that part of Project 2025, but hey, I read that chapter with care and concern. I think they mentioned it on page two.

But I do think that this media piece also, another thing that I’ve thought about a lot is we have monopoly media. And when I talk about extraction, the extraction takes resources from a place, attention, people, care, all of that, and concentrates it somewhere else. And if you think of what’s happened in our media, national networks have taken over where there used to be local media. And that local media that reflected back to you, perhaps, what was happening in your town, the little league scores, and the stores, and what’s happening in the church, and the food pantries, and anything would reflect back to you your actual reality. In most parts of this country, there is no such thing.

And I think that is another phenomenon, that it’s not just the addition of propaganda mechanisms, but the subtraction of the other media that made people feel that they lived in a community with other folks.

Marc Steiner:  I’d like to ask a quick question in the time we have here —

Maximillian Alvarez:  We’ve got a few minutes till our next segment, so take us out.

Marc Steiner:  OK. So when you have people like Elon Musk, J.D. Vance in positions of huge power, these are both very bright and shrewd men, and you have Project 2025, which they’re going to implement. We touched on it briefly, it was brought up, but it seems to me one of the biggest issues we’re going to face is people like that running the government and implementing Project 2025. I’m curious, what’s your analysis of that is, where do you think it’s going to take us, and what’s the struggle against it?

Rick, you want to jump in first?

Rick Perlstein:  Project 2025… One thing that is very important to understand about Project 2025 is how just thoroughly comprehensive it is. I tried to read through the whole thing, and it gets to the most molecular, granular levels of these agencies you’ve never even heard of.

Marc Steiner:  It does, I read it.

Rick Perlstein:  The contrast to power building on the left is we don’t have that kind of granularity about where the levers of power live. We say the right things, we have the right ideals. But one reason I personally preferred Elizabeth Warren over Bernie Sanders is she knew those millions of federal agencies and who worked there.

And just to kick a quick example, one of my friends running for office, running for governor, said he supported Elizabeth Warren because he told a story about how when he was running for governor, he said he was trying to create this certain financial reform, and in order to do it, he had to pass this law. And Elizabeth Warren said, no, you don’t have to pass this law, that’s already a federal law. You just need it enforced by this person and this place and dah, dah, dah, dah.

So I think that kind of granularity, that kind of seriousness about power, that kind of really unglamorous stuff is what Project 2025 accomplishes that there isn’t much of a parallel to on the left.

Laura Flanders:  Yeah, I would agree. I think that we talk about the writers being anti-government, but Project 2025 showed just how good they were at thinking about the role of government and what government can do.

Another aspect, of course, of that whole initiative is not just the policies on paper, but the people that were recruited to line up to be appointed into these offices in a way that enabled there to be a lot of scrutiny of those candidates long before any transition team comes into play. So unlike the last Trump administration, there won’t be the same kind of lag in populating government.

And I would just echo Rick: while they populate with loyalists, we need to look closely at local government and see where we can also shore up positions of influence at the local level. Because heck, we have got to look at any possible place in our entire government system where we can fortify resistance, fortify mechanisms that would act as at least a slowdown on this administration’s plans

Rick Perlstein:  [Inaudible] based decisions wherever we are that are going to have an effect on this resistance. And I wrote a column, Google it, “What Will You Do?” And it’s about the questions all of us will individually face under an authoritarian government, whether we’re in a government job, or we’re lawyers, or we’re working-class people, we might have to stand in the gap.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, we’re going to go to Wisconsin in a minute, but while we still have Rick Perlstein and Laura Flanders on with us, I want to ask you guys in a second to help center our viewers and listeners right now. Where does the fight go from here? And what is your message to folks right now who are feeling scared, anxious, uncertain about why they need to be part of that fight?

But I wanted to also underline the point about the importance of independent truth telling, principled, transparent, honest media. And if you support us here at The Real News, first of all, thank you. Secondly, please go support Laura Flanders & Friends if you don’t already. It is vital. The entire team there is great. They do incredible work week in, week out. And as you’ve seen here over the past 30 minutes, we desperately need Laura’s voice heard by as many folks as we can. Same goes for Rick. So if you are watching this, you support The Real News, please go support our friends at Laura Flanders & Friends. Please support the American Prospect, where Rick’s invaluable column is published every week.

So I wanted to put in a plug there for both of our guests and their incredible work, and I wanted to throw it back to you guys to have the final word here. Again, what would you say to folks out there watching and listening about where the fight goes from here, why they need to be part of it, and how we steel ourselves for what’s to come?

Laura Flanders:  I don’t know [laughs]. Well, I had a question for Rick if we had more time, and I guess we don’t, but I’ve been thinking how does this moment compare to the worst of the Nixon years, and is there any courage or any comfort to be had in the idea that we have seen bad times before? I’ll tell you —

Rick Perlstein:  Yeah. Nixon had a lot of this in mind for his second term, and that was all scotched by Watergate. And Watergate, in a lot of ways, was the political elite and institutions in this country having the courage to stand up to someone who really had authoritarian designs in mind.

So I’ll just say that we need all of us, whether we’re Democratic office holders or radical grassroots activists, to figure out some way to find every possible lever of accountability, and make it hard, make it hard. And that can just mean putting your body in front of an immigrant who’s going to be deported. Make it harder.

Laura Flanders:  [Crosstalk] immigrants. Just very briefly, Max, I will say, and first off, thanks for the pitch. If you absorb any independent media out there, fund it, send a contribution, whatever it is, support whatever avenue of information that you value, send them some money.

Secondly, I had a show. We recorded a show yesterday that will be aired tomorrow at 5:00, and all frontline activists, and one of them is Lene Yosef, who works with the Haitian Bridge Alliance, the only Haitian-American organization working with migrants on the border. She personally, with her organization, brought a citizens’ lawsuit against Trump and Vance over what they had done in Springfield, Ohio. And she knows for sure she’s on any enemies list that the administration’s going to have. She said, I’m Haitian, I’m indomitable. Don’t think for a minute that we are going to pause in our action.

And while I was there, white lady saying, oh my God, worst night ever. She’s like, eh, we’ve seen many worse nights. And the other guests that we had on the show too, who have spent years fighting segregation in North Carolina or genocide on the reservations, they all looked at me like, get over yourself, get down to work, get busy. I think art, culture, we’re going to need to really exercise our imagination and every possible tool of connection and place of connection that we have, into which we can invite the next generation, age-wise and every other kind of wise that will help us build a better day and connect us to one another. So save the places that you care about and invite new people into them.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Absolutely. Hell yeah. So that is the great Laura Flanders, host of Laura Flanders & Friends on PBS and the great Rick Perlstein author of numerous books, including Nixonland and Reaganland. And you can catch Rick’s column, the Infernal Triangle at the American Prospect.

Rick, Laura, thank you both so much for joining us at this critical moment. We need your voices now more than ever, and we appreciate you joining us and sharing them with our audience today. Take care of yourselves, and we’re sending love and solidarity to you guys from Baltimore. Good to see you both.

Laura Flanders:  Keep up the great work.

Rick Perlstein:  Yep.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Right back at you, sis. Thank you guys.

So we have another hour to go here. We really appreciate y’all sticking with us, and we really want to hear your questions, your comments, your responses to what’s being said here. As I said at the top of this livestream, this will not be the only chance that we have to address the questions that are on your mind. We want to take the questions that you’re asking us now in the live chat, in the comments of this video, and respond to them in future livestreams and segments. So we are going to stick with you, we’re going to stick with this. We’re in this for the long haul, and we’re going to keep doing what we can to get you the information and perspective that you need to act.

And today, in the second half of this livestream, we’re going to kick off the hour by going to one of the key battleground states that all eyes were on heading into Tuesday. It was a key pillar in the so-called blue wall in the Midwest, including Wisconsin, Michigan, both of which went for Trump.

And we actually had our intrepid reporters, my incredible colleagues, Marc’s incredible colleagues, Stephen Janis and Taya Graham on the ground in Milwaukee this week, where they also were reporting from during the RNC earlier in the summer. 

They’ve had a hell of a week. And we want to get an on the ground update from them on what they’ve been seeing, hearing, feeling there on the ground in Wisconsin as folks went to the polls and as the results started coming in. We are hoping to also be joined by John Nichols, national affairs correspondent at The Nation to help us also get some perspective on what Wisconsin can tell us about the larger political realignment taking place in this country.

But for now, I want to bring in my amazing colleagues Stephen Janis and Taya Graham. Guys, thank you so much for, first of all, all the incredible work that you’ve been doing. The entire team here is so proud of you and so grateful —

Stephen Janis:  Thank you.

Maximillian Alvarez:  …For your hustle and for everything that you’ve done to execute our mission. So I wanted to start there. I know you guys are tired, you’ve had a hell of a week [Janis and Graham laugh]. So why don’t we start there? A, how you doing, and B, can you give us a sense of what this has all looked like from your vantage point reporting there on the ground in Wisconsin from Monday to now?

Stephen Janis:  Yep. It’s interesting because Taya and I always say when we’ve reported on the ground for presidential elections since 2016 for The Real News, and there’s always moments that we have where we encounter someone or something that gives us a cue. And I would say that this particular, we were on the ground out going to polls like we always do, and we went to Centennial, what was it…?

Taya Graham:  Centennial Hall? Yeah, Centennial Hall. It was for wards 183, 184, and 185.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, Centennial Hall. But basically it serves Marquette and University of Milwaukee.

And we interviewed several people and there were a couple of things that came to mind. First of all, there was a young woman who we thought was, you presume would be talking about reproductive rights or whatever, who said, and she’s like, I voted for Trump. And Taya and I both looked at each other and we’re like, wow, that does not bode well that we’re in downtown Milwaukee. And then another young man, who was a student as well, voted for Trump.

But what was interesting about it, relating back to our previous guests, was the information ecosystem from which they made this decision seemed so murky, and so really not within the realm of how policy actually works. And it harkened back, for me, to what we had talked about right after the debate, Kamala Harris, where she soundly defeated Donald Trump. And we asked the question, would it matter?

And I was just reading an article today in The New York Times about a Republican strategist who was stunned that, after that horrible debate performance by Donald Trump, that Kamala Harris didn’t rise up much in the polls.

And these students exemplify that because they’re getting their information from places, I think, that don’t really have a concrete rendering of the vagaries of policy. And in this case, I think, Taya, you wanted to talk a little bit about the young man.

Taya Graham:  If I may.

Stephen Janis:  Talk about the young man that was really interesting, because you challenged him. And just talk about that.

Taya Graham:  So I don’t think people realize how much the culture war that has been promulgated by the Republican Party has been incredibly effective. So this young man we spoke to was actually from California. He’s an Asian American. And he essentially said, and in not so many words, that he didn’t want his media to be woke.

And what he cited was J.R.R. Tolkien’s Rings of Power on Amazon Prime. He cited that he did not want, I guess, present-dayism put into his fantasy. And I said to him, quite pointedly, I said, so you didn’t like the Black lady dwarf is what you’re saying [Steiner laughs]? And he smiled, and he looked down, and he said, well that, and the LGBTQ ideology that I found in the art as well.

And I did challenge him a little bit. I said, well, isn’t art supposed to reflect the zeitgeist of the age? Isn’t that the point of any form of art, whether it’s a book being adapted, that it’s supposed to reflect the culture of the time? And he said, no, I just want to escape when I watch whatever creative form that he’s interested in. So I was somewhat surprised by that.

So essentially he’s saying, I’m rejecting woke ideology, and that is why I’m voting for Trump.

Stephen Janis:  The thing is, what you saw in some of the voters was the Democrats have a very professional rollout, talking points, and somewhat, I think, seemingly in this media ecosystem, an inauthentic approach. As opposed to Trump who permeates and gets through that morass of social media because he seems to them — And I’m saying to them — To be a more authentic alternative.

That’s the only thing I can figure, because their grasp of the policy aspects of both the Democratic administration and what really is going to happen. This young woman was like, well, Trump improved abortion rights because he sent it to the states.

Taya Graham:  Exactly.

Stephen Janis:  She said that to us. And Taya and I are looking at each other…

Taya Graham:  A little puzzled, little puzzled.

Stephen Janis:  Taya, you can talk a little bit more about that. But I think that, just to emphasize that this is a social media tumble world they’re in, and the Democrats are coming forward with a very professional campaign, but maybe that doesn’t work.

Taya Graham:  Right. The one thing that I can tell for certain from all the different people that we spoke to at the polls is that the Democrats did not do their job communicating to the public effectively. And people can discuss for the next four years how Trump was so effective, whether it’s that he’s the perfect man for the social media ecosystem that we have, that he’s able to push through in a way that, as Stephen said, granular policy analysis simply dies on the vine.

But these young people, I would say — And I don’t mean to say this to be rude to the Trump voters in any way — [When] we went to the Republican National Convention, and also the people at the polls, when I spoke to delegates at the Republican National Convention, they could not cite specific policies. It was based on their feelings about Donald Trump as a leader.

And that is exactly what that young woman said. She could not name a single policy from his previous administration that she liked, but she just felt that he felt stronger as a candidate. And so it’s an emotional connection. And for whatever reason, Democrats have not been effective at making that sort of connection with the public.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that’s a really critical point. The emotional economy of vibes is playing a huge role in shaping voter attitudes and perceptions of the reality that they’re living in.

I want to return to that point for sure in a minute, but I’m excited to welcome on our other guest for this segment, the great John Nichols, who is national affairs correspondent of The Nation, has been writing on and analyzing Wisconsin and its place in the political terrain for many years. We’ve had him on Marc’s show. He is a brilliant, brilliant mind, and we’re so grateful to have him on to help us unpack this.

John, are you there with us?

John Nichols:  I think I am. I can see folks.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Beautiful. Good to see you, man.

Marc Steiner:  We can see you [laughs]!

John Nichols:  It’s a pleasure.

Marc Steiner:  John. How are you? Good to see you.

John Nichols:  Good to see you, my friend.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Thank you so much for joining us, man. We know you don’t have much time. We know you’re working your butt off right now —

John Nichols:  Amazing, we’re still trying to figure this one out.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yeah. So while we’ve got you, I want to give our audience access to your rich perspective here, ’cause we need it right now. And there is a lot to be unpacked about the current results in Wisconsin that I want to ask you to try to help our viewers and listeners understand what they’re seeing and where it came from, but to also offer us some larger historical perspective here.

I was watching on MSNBC, they were showing the map from 2008 to 2024. It’s basically mirror images of each other in terms of, especially in the rural counties across Wisconsin that [are] now deep red when they were blue not so long ago. And this, of course, is taking place in a longer political trajectory in a state that, in many ways, is the heart of modern progressivism.

So I wanted to ask if you could, A, help us unpack what we are seeing now in Wisconsin, what is happening in Wisconsin and what that tells us about the national scene right now, and how the heck we got here. What can Wisconsin tell us about how we got here?

John Nichols:  Well, that’s a great way to frame the question, frankly, because Wisconsin, of course, we begin with the fact that it’s the ultimate battleground state, more of a battleground state than any other in the country. Now, in the last seven presidential elections, the last seven presidential elections, five of them have been decided by under 35,000 votes, four of ’em by under 25,000 votes. So you can’t find another state in the country that has that pattern of deep divide. This is a state that has a Democratic senator and a Republican senator. It’s a state that had a Republican governor, now it has a Democratic governor. It is constant. Out of this election, we just had a result that made our state legislature, our state Senate, almost exactly tied.

And so in that context, obviously, small movements in one direction or another mean a lot. And you are basically right to focus on rural, and that’s a place where progressivism was, in Wisconsin, at its strongest at one time. It was a combination of Milwaukee socialists and rural populist farmers. It was a very effective coalition.

And interestingly enough, it helped. The Milwaukee Socialists faded and so did some of the progressive tradition, but still, you had a state that voted Democratic in 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012, this whole pattern.

And then Trump comes along and he cracks into that. He doesn’t win by much in 2016 — And he didn’t win by much this time, 20,000, 30,000 votes is what you’re talking about. That still makes Wisconsin, and when all is said and done, Wisconsin will end up being closer than most of the battleground states.

Here’s the fascinating thing about Wisconsin, though: Tammy Baldwin, US Senator, who’s clearly to the left of Kamala Harris on a number of issues, she won. She pulled it off. And just as Trump won Wisconsin, it looks like we had roughly 30,000 votes, Baldwin won by roughly 30,000 votes. So there’s a space there.

But I think you have to be careful to assume that there were Trump people voting for Baldwin. There was a drop off. There’s, I think, a portion of Trump voters who just vote for Trump and don’t even vote for the rest of the Republican ticket. That’s something to take into the mix. But there were some folks who actually did cast a Trump-Baldwin vote. It seems bizarre to us in many ways because that doesn’t compute. Tammy Baldwin, an out lesbian who supports Medicare, has supported Medicare for all, who has been very progressive, not always, and not as good as I might want on some issues, but pretty solid record winning in a state where Trump’s winning.

How does that happen? What’s going on there? Why do you have this? Well, the answer, and we saw a little bit in Michigan with Slotkin winning the Senate seat narrowly over there. The answer is that Tammy Baldwin did something that the national Democratic ticket didn’t do, and that is she wedded her campaign to trade unionism, to the working class, to the labor movement.

And this morning, not long before I joined you today, I was at an event where she formally declared victory. She didn’t do it at a downtown hotel like Democrats always do, or almost always do. She didn’t do it in an office, some office someplace, or even, frankly, at her alma mater or the University of Wisconsin campus. She did it at a union hall on the edge of town. And the place was packed with union members wearing their shirts, steamfitters, electricians, Teamsters, all sorts of other folks. And when she walked in the room, there was this epic cheering.

And that’s, frankly, what Democrats need to have. They need to have union members cheering them on. They need to have an excitement about their candidates. Just as, I guess, as an example, the Christian right gets very excited when a Republican walks in the room.

And one of the things that Baldwin did in Wisconsin — This is the last I’ll say on this because I want to hear more of your questions, of course, but one of the things that Baldwin did in Wisconsin was a wholly different set of ads. You wouldn’t have recognized them as compared to the Democratic Party in a lot of other places.

Her ads, one set of her ads featured Teamsters who were sitting, one after another, sitting in a chair talking about when they lost their pensions and when they were in very dire straits: the plant had closed, the pensions taken away, and each Teamster after another talked about an aspect of the story. It’s a very short ad, but they’re saying, when we lost our pension, we thought we were going to lose everything. And a couple sitting there saying, we thought we’re going to lose our house. These are real working-class people talking about a profound issue.

And then toward the end of it, one of ’em says, and so we called Tammy Baldwin and she went to work for us. And then — I’m paraphrasing here, but the close of it was, if you’re in trouble, if you’re having a hard time as a worker, you need Tammy Baldwin on your side. That is a kind of classic outreach to working-class, multiracial, multiethnic voting class.

And she had other ads with people working in shipyards, people working on farms. And so she ran a campaign that reached out to the working class, and it paid off. She won. Other good Democrats didn’t. That’s something to pay attention to.

Marc Steiner:  I’ll extrapolate that a bit more. When I think about Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s always been, people look at it as a progressive state, but it’s always been a deeply divided state as well, politically. George Wallace did well there, Joe McCarthy bloomed out there. And so I wonder, what you just said about Tammy Baldwin, what does that say strategically to you about what progressive leaders in this country have to do to build a majority and to take the fight to the working class and bring people together? What is the Wisconsin lesson?

John Nichols:  Well, the Wisconsin lesson is a pretty simple one. For about 150 years, Wisconsin hasn’t liked elites, hasn’t liked people in New York or Washington or LA or other places that tend to tell ’em what’s going on. And there’s a reason for that. Wisconsin was historically a farm state, and the farm products that they produced had to be shipped by train. The railroads charged extreme rates, and that was very damaging to people.

And so they developed this sensibility: that which we do not control is probably going to harm us. And it’s one of the reasons why historically Wisconsin was a more anti-war state. Wisconsin tends to think wars came from Washington.

Wisconsin was a state that was historically a very strong union state, very strong on a lot of different issues, and also very anticorporate in a lot of ways, and very antimonopoly, et cetera, et cetera.

Our politics has become so muddled in recent decades that I think most people don’t necessarily see the Democratic Party as an anticorporate, antimonopoly party. So if you’re going to get those votes, you have to remind people of that, or there’s a real chance that they’re going to vote for somebody else who sounds like they’re attacking elites. That’s how you ended up with a Robert M. La Follette, the great progressive winning, his son Robert M. La Follette Jr. winning a Senate seat, which ultimately went to Joe McCarthy.

Now, you and I don’t get very excited about Joe McCarthy. We don’t like where Joe McCarthy was coming from, but in his time, he was seen by somebody who was attacking a certain set of elites. And that’s the thing to understand. That even came in through Russ Feingold more recently as a US Senator from Wisconsin losing his seat to Ron Johnson. All of this is kind of a muddled politics. You have to cut your way through it.

And what Baldwin did was her way through it, she said, hey, by the way, I am the candidate of unions and of working class people. I don’t just tell you that in a speech or something. I don’t put ’em on my ads. I’m going to actually use them talking to the people of this state. It didn’t mean that she deemphasized other issues, her strong support of abortion rights. She’s arguably the leading supporter of abortion rights in the Senate. Didn’t mean that she played down her stances on a host of issues, but she turned up volume on these working class issues, and it paid off.

I think you saw a little bit in Michigan with Slotkin in her Senate race as well, but you didn’t see it in the presidential race. And I think that’s a subtlety of this thing. Kamala Harris had extremely strong union support, and unions went to the mat for her and really worked hard all over the country. Even when the Teamsters didn’t endorse her, Teamsters regional and local councils jumped in to back her and gave her a tremendous amount of support. And so they did a lot of internal work.

In fact, fascinatingly enough, the exit polling shows that one of the few demographics that didn’t decline for the Democrats in this cycle was union members. So the unions did great work with their members. The problem is that the Harris campaign — Which did many things right, I’m not here to just purely complain about the Harris campaign — But they did not put that broader emphasis on working class issues as central to their campaign. And so as a result in the nonunion working class, they experienced a lot of loss. And again, that multiracial, multiethnic challenge that they faced.

Here’s the simple thing I would offer, yes, for Wisconsin lesson itself, maybe to some extent upper Midwest, and that is this: people need to clearly know where you’re at, and you need to remind ’em. You can’t assume people remember it from past elections or things like that. Our friends here were just talking about the social media landscape and all these other ways that we get our information now. It’s bifurcated. It’s not the same daily newspaper or local radio station. It’s all sorts of sources. And in that cacophony, you lose sight sometimes of core messages.

What struck me is that Kamala Harris — Who, again, I thought did many things right, but why didn’t she, in every single speech, say, we are going to raise the minimum wage to a living wage? Why wasn’t that part of every speech? Why wasn’t it part of every speech to say that Donald Trump renegotiated NAFTA and made it worse, actually undermined the auto parts industry, and all sorts of industries, and call it Trump’s NAFTA. Why not say that? Why appear everywhere with Liz Cheney, but almost never with Bernie Sanders, and only rarely with Shawn Fain?

The equation, it’s so easy to figure this out, and it always frustrates me that the Democratic Party has such a struggle to get to it at the national level. Again, some people like Baldwin and Slotkin are figuring it out.

But why not? When you’re in that situation, why not take the step, deliver the message, appear with the people that are going to be useful to you politically? This isn’t just moral politics, although I think being pro-union is a morally good stance. This is also practical politics.

And the fascinating thing about it is that I looked at the data, all those places that Kamala Harris went with Liz Cheney, all that outreach to conservatives, the percentage of conservatives voting for Kamala Harris in 2024 was down from the percentage that voted for Joe Biden in 2020. They didn’t get anybody over. Nothing happened there. In the suburban areas that they went to where they actually had these sitdowns with Liz Cheney. They didn’t move numbers. Things didn’t get better for them there. And so it was wasted energy that could have been spent going to, not just physically, but messaging wise, to working-class people of all races and in all communities.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yeah, man, that’s making my blood boil, man [Alvarez and Nichols laugh]. That’s a powerful analysis though. No, really helpful and vital information. And I do have a follow-up question if we got time. We only got brother John Nichols for a few more minutes. I did want to give my colleagues Stephen, Janis and Taya Graham, the chance, if you guys are still with us, since you guys have been reporting there in Milwaukee, if you guys had a question for John based on what you’ve been seeing there on the ground, I did want to prioritize that, but no pressure if you don’t.

Taya Graham:  Well, first off, I just want to say I’m so glad that he mentioned Sen. Tammy Baldwin. We were actually at a Harris-Walz rally. What was the name of that event center? Was that, was that the State Fairgrounds?

Stephen Janis:  Expo? State Expo?

Taya Graham:  It was at the state Expo,

Stephen Janis:  Yep.

Taya Graham:  And we were there, and there was so much excitement when she came onto the stage. People love her here, and I feel like I wish I could be a fly on the wall as the Democratic Party is doing the autopsy right now.

Because I think there’s a lesson, and perhaps you can confirm this for me, that they did not learn either from watching Sen. Baldwin or from seeing how much Sen. Sanders was actually able to generate enthusiasm, which is when the Democrats, as they normally do when they start doing a national campaign, they start moving towards the middle thinking that they’re going to bring people over — Instead of, perhaps, taking a different alternative of leaning into being authentic, and just leaning left, just going completely into progressive policies, completely embracing unions. And instead of worrying about being characterized as leftists or Marxists, or what have you, just so you know what, we’re going to be progressive, we’re going to stop trying to play the middle. Because I think they didn’t learn anything from Sen. Sanders’s campaign, or Sen. Baldwin’s.

John Nichols:  I think it’s a brilliant question, and you’re spot on. Bernie Sanders came to Madison about eight days before the election, Monday the week out. And they had about a couple hours, basically, to organize the event. It was in one of the main theaters on State Street in downtown Madison. Big, big cavernous theater.

It was packed. I walked over to where the event was, there was a line out the door, around the block because Bernie Sanders was coming. He had AOC with him as well. They got up there, delivered a pure progressive message, and people were on their feet, excited, engaged, and they talked a lot about these issues that we’re talking about.

But there’s a deeper thing in your question that I think is really vital, and that is leaning into a progressive stance. I think Democrats often think that makes ’em look weak or something. That somehow, oh, you’re off in this place, or whatever. It’s the exact opposite. As Sanders has proven, when you come out as a genuine progressive and you’re proud of it and you speak about it strongly, people come to you. And I think that’s even people who aren’t ideologically necessarily with you, but they’re like, wow, that’s somebody who really means it.

And I can give you an example on an issue that we haven’t talked about, but I think it’s vital here, or at least relevant, and that’s Gaza. Joe Biden’s stance on Gaza is that he would like what’s happening there to stop. He officially says, oh, we want the killing to stop. We want the horrors to end. He says that as the president of the United States of America, one of the most powerful countries in the world and a very close ally of Israel.

And does that project strength? No, I think it projects weakness. I think it says, on this fundamental issue that tens of millions of Americans care about, you’re not willing to step up. You’re not going to use the power of your office to take a stand. And I think the same thing happened to Harris on that, such a muddled position on Gaza. So little messaging that, I think, could have reached a ton of people.

And then you look around the country, you say, well, it’s a drop off in votes, hm, obviously, among many Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, but also on campuses, where students were so passionately concerned about these issues.

And I guess what I would tell you is that, on a host of issues, having a strong position makes people who don’t even necessarily agree with you say, wow, that person believes in things. I know that they get to Congress, they get to a position of power, they’re going to fight for me. And that is an intangible… In fact, you two were talking about just a second ago where you were talking about these kind of personality things and all the media influences and things like that. Well, in that cacophony, if you’re a strong voice, it has meaning. It gets heard.

And again, I think that takes us back to what we’re talking about with Baldwin a little bit on these working class, on these union issues. She jumped right in. She stood there strongly and said, this is who I am. She’s running against a very wealthy guy from California, as you know from watching the state so well. It was perfect. It’s a perfect juxtaposition.

And so what I would say for the Democratic Party as regards our very good question there that led us into this whole discussion is the Democratic Party, I think, needs to have a radical rethink, a deep, deep rethink about this. Because this campaign should not have ended this way at the presidential level, and frankly, even at the congressional level, it just shouldn’t have ended where it did. Something about that doesn’t suggest strength on Trump’s part, in my view — It suggests weakness on the Democratic Party’s part.

If that is the case, then the most important thing, I would say, about this rethink is please don’t say you want to rebuild the Democratic Party. Because the fact of the matter is, we have had this cycle on and off for decades now where the party wins and you say, oh, it’s perfect, and then it loses, and you say, well, we’ve got to rebuild stuff. But you keep going back to some of the models of the past. Politics has evolved. The Republican Party is a very different party than the one they ran against in the past. And the messaging, the outreach to the Republican Party now, in many cases, aimed at working-class voters, at very frustrated, angry folks who have, in many cases, reasons to be angry at the system.

If that’s what you’re up against, don’t rebuild; build something new. Build a political party that is multiracial, multiethnic, that respects people where they’re coming from, but also respects the fact that they’re struggling economically, that in this capitalist system, it just doesn’t work very well for them. And speak to that in a way that is of the moment and looking to the future. Talk about these issues we’re talking about, but, finally, and perhaps most importantly, talk about the issues that are never discussed.

Do you want to know what builds anxiety in America? There’s a lot of stuff. Inflation builds anxiety. No question of that. The inability to buy a house, all sorts of economic issues. For women, the threat to their bodily autonomy, the assault on abortion rights, for LGBTQ people, who were literally targeted in advertising throughout this campaign all over this country. All of that builds anxiety.

You know what else builds anxiety? AI, artificial intelligence, the rise of machine learning. People’s lives are being radically transformed on a daily basis. How we communicate, how we work, how we study. You talk to a university professor, they’ll tell you everything is different in the classroom because everybody’s using ChatGPT and all this stuff like that. That was never brought up in this campaign. A Democratic Party that brought up how technology is changing our lives. It is a very future-oriented party, but also one that understands the anxiety of working-class people in this country.

So again, If we’ve got to be stuck with a two-party system, let’s have a new Democratic Party that actually takes in all the stuff that you are talking about, that you are, that all these people are talking about, and gets us to a point where, ideally, ideally, the counter to a cruel and angry, and, I think, in many cases, awful Republican message — One that is very dark and it has nothing to do with the history of the Republican Party or anything like that, but that it’s one that’s really aimed at dividing people, aimed at really building out that anxiety. The counter to that is a party that’s capable of looking at the future, explaining it, and offering a better route forward.

Marc Steiner:  Very well put, John.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I wish I could keep this segment with everyone here going for another half hour, but I know brother John Nichols has a deadline to meet.

John Nichols:  I’m actually writing about some of the things we’re talking about [laughs].

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, let me help out. That’s good. We can’t wait to read it. Everyone who’s watching this needs to go and read it. Stephen and Taya, I’m going to ask you guys if you can hang on for just a little bit. And brother John, I will say thank you and goodbye here. If you’re able to hold on for 30 seconds, cool. If not, we thank you so much. But I just wanted to add there, because I’m worried that folks are taking, once again, the wrong sort of lessons from the political map here, especially as it pertains to the rural and urban divide in places like Wisconsin.

John Nichols:  Let me give you 30 seconds on that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Please, please. What are the anxieties in rural Wisconsin? We were reporting there on the CAFOs, on climate affecting their crops. For folks who are just thinking that people in rural America, they’re all driven by racism and uneducation and whatnot, what are the anxieties that folks there’re feeling too?

John Nichols:  Well, the town I was born in had 970 people when I was born, and so I grew up in the most rural places — And that was actually one of the biggest communities members of my family had ever lived in. They route back to places with 300 people and 200, and farms. And so that’s where I come from.

And one of the things that I always start with is telling people that rural America is multiracial, multiethnic, and far more diverse than I think our national media even begins to understand. If you look at the main streets in rural towns, they’re being revitalized, particularly by Latino immigrants, but also by Asian American immigrants. There are real amazing things happening. There are now small towns in Wisconsin that are majority immigrant families, because people have come, they have revitalized those towns, they’ve rebuilt those towns. It’s an amazing thing.

Now, it doesn’t mean that rural areas aren’t predominantly white in many states, but I always remind people that roughly a quarter of Black Americans live in rural counties, mostly in the South, but a substantial population that the boom areas for, obviously, the Latino population, but also for Asian American population is rural areas because they’re moving there, they’re working there, they’re creating things.

And so if we understand it as that, first off, we have to recognize rural America isn’t what our media tells us it is. It’s much more, it has a lot of diversity, a lot of distinction within it. The other thing that I always emphasize to people is this: that those blue and red maps are useless. They’re a nightmare because they don’t tell you the actual percentages in those counties. Many of those counties that you look at that are red on the map are 45% blue, right? They’ve got fights within ’em, real battles.

And what in Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin would not have been re-elected if it wasn’t for rural Democrats. She got a great vote out of Madison, a very liberal town, great vote out of Milwaukee, a multiracial, multiethnic town. She got great votes in these places, but she also held her own in the rural areas. She was endorsed for re-election by the Farm Bureau. That’s wild. But it was there because she’s been good on farm issues.

What that means, what that translates to is that, for the Democratic Party, which has been such a mess on so many issues for so long, is that they need to get better on rural. They need to talk to these folks. There are rural Democrats out there doing the work. They’re opening their headquarters, they’re knocking on doors. I can take you to the places and show you people that are putting so much effort and energy into this, but they do need messaging from the national level.

And one of the things I would tell you is that the Democratic Party will do dramatically better in rural areas if Democratic nominees for president simply include three lines in their speeches: Not another rural post office will close if we are elected; not another rural school will close if we are elected; and not another rural hospital will close if we are elected.

Go out and say just those three lines in a speech, and you stick to it, you watch some of those numbers shift. The reason Trump and Republicans do well in rural areas is often because people don’t think there’s a big difference between the two parties, and then they default to the anger of the division.

But if you gave ’em a real alternative, I think we open up a whole new avenue for politics. That does not deny the reality of ugly politics and people who do vote on the basis of race and, typically, toward folks — That happens. I know that there’s no denying that, but what I’m saying is one of the counters to that is an outreach that actually says to rural people, we see you. We hear you. We want to respond to your actual problems, not to try and make you hate somebody else or not to try and make you see somebody else as a problem. There’s space there. There’s so much space there.

And even though we’re staying longer than usual, I love talking about these rural politics issues because it’s, frankly, one of the spaces where both parties have so much to learn because both parties tend to treat rural folks as an afterthought that they just throw slogans — Good slogans are [inaudible] rather than actually going out and talking to the people. So I really thank you for giving me a chance to say that.

Marc Steiner:  I’m glad you did.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Thank you so much. John Nichols, the great John Nichols national affairs correspondent at The Nation. We can’t wait to read your piece. We depend on your work. So please, yeah, keep doing it, brother, and let’s have you back on very soon.

John Nichols:  I appreciate it. And hey, I really appreciate what you folks do, and I love the reporting that you folks have been doing in Wisconsin. Some people come here and they just come for a minute and they pop in on the tarmac of the airport. You’ve got some reporters that have embedded themselves, and that’s a really big, big deal. It makes the reporting so much better. So thank you for treating Wisconsin and America seriously.

Marc Steiner:  Great to see you, John.

John Nichols:  Thank you.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, speaking of those incredible reporters, Stephen Janis and Taya Graham, do we still got you guys over there in Milwaukee? We may have lost Stephen and Taya —

Stephen Janis:  — Hear, can you hear us? [Crosstalk] .

Maximillian Alvarez:  Of course they’re there. They’re always there. Stephen and Taya are always there [Steiner laughs]. That’s what you get with these incredible folks on the Police Accountability Report and elsewhere. I wanted to A, bring you back in, ask if you guys had any additional thoughts after what John just said about Wisconsin, but also we are going to be wrapping up this livestream by bringing on our final guest, the great Bill Gallegos of the Mexico Solidarity Project.

Bill’s been on Marc’s show recently. We’ve been working with him on some really great historical segments. Bill also has years of experience in racial justice, Latino justice organizing, immigrant justice organizing, climate justice organizing.

And so one of the things we wanted to talk to Bill about is helping to unpack the narratives that are emerging about changing voter trends, specifically in Latino populations, Latino men being one of the current groups that are being talked about the most as having swung more for Trump.

But this is also an area of reporting that you guys have been really committed to and have done great work in recent months, where Taya has been out there going and talking to Black and Brown Republicans about how they are thinking about the election and voting for Trump. So I wanted to include that as a way to bring Bill in here and continue the conversation that we’re having.

So I’m going to toss it to you guys here. And yeah, we’ll have Bill Gallegos on the other side to hop in as well.

Taya Graham:  Well, I would be happy to speak on the Black conservatives that I spoke with. I spoke to Tia Best, who is national engagement director for Moms of Liberty. I spoke to, I think dozens, literally dozens of Black Republicans at the Republican National Convention the last time we were here in Wisconsin. That was so kind, to hear Mr. Nichols give our work such a compliment. That was a huge boost.

But back to the Black conservatives, something I thought was interesting is that they said Black people are naturally socially conservative. So this shift to the Republican Party should be expected. But I’d like to say that the loss of Black male voters was not that huge. I think depending on what state you’re looking at, 74%, up to 80%, of Black men voted for Harris. In any other ethnic group that would be considered a landslide. There was a slight peel off of Black male voters and male Latino voters towards Trump.

But in general, Black voters held for Harris and held for the Democratic Party, whereas the Democratic Party was hemorrhaging votes from youth and, actually, so many different minority coalitions that, in theory, should be under the tent of the Democrats.

But the one talking point I kept hearing from Black conservatives is that we’re socially conservative. Black folks are church folks. It’s natural; The Democratic Party is moving away from us, we didn’t move away from them. And that is what I’ve received from Black conservatives.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So I want to bring in Brother Bill Gallegos here as well, because this is an issue that we’ve been talking about with him and that he’s been talking about and trying to get folks to pay attention to in the many months leading up to this election.

So Bill, do we have Bill Gallegs of the Mexico Solidarity Project with us?

Bill Gallegos:  I am here, and I’m glad to be here, and I’m really glad to be here with the folks in Wisconsin, from John with you all, and I really appreciate it.

I got to say my take is probably somewhat different than what we’ve been hearing so far. I think race was at the center of this campaign, and the only really significant increase in the electoral voting patterns was from white folks, and they overwhelmingly went for Trump.

And his campaign didn’t start a year ago. This has been his consistent message since he started, but especially since he lost the election in 2020. There’s been a consistent message that centered race, using immigrants as the focal point for it. But I think it was clearly aimed at dealing with this feeling that white privilege is at risk, the particular role of white people in controlling society. And we know it’s the 1%, but I think for a lot of white folks, this idea, Trump pretty much said, I will protect white suburban women from these immigrants coming into your neighborhoods and ruining not only the physical threat, destroying your property values.

So I am very concerned that this will get lost in the postmortem that we’re doing on the elections. I know I just saw something from Bernie where he said, the problem is that we focused on identity politics instead of class politics, as if if you focus on the attack on Black and Brown voting rights, that’s not a class issue. That’s a huge class issue. And the working class is not just white folks. It is a multiracial, working-class, majority women, and some of the most dynamic sectors are those in the Black, Brown, Filipino communities.

So I really feel like we should be very critical of how the Democrats ran this campaign. I’m particularly critical of for years and years and years and years, they have been told, do not take Latinos for granted. Forget the Cubans. I mean, I don’t care what you do, they’re going to go with the Republicans, and we know the historical roots of that. But for the Central American community, the Dominican community, the Puerto Rican community and the Chicano community, that is not the case, and has been solidly Democratic, even in the last elections in 2020 and 2022 — 70% to 75% of Latinos voting [for them]. Most political parties in the world would kill for those numbers.

They shifted this time, and we should look at that. But I think we really, really need to understand, just given the history of this country as a racial capitalism, how deeply embedded that is not just in the politics, but in the psyche, the political psyche of this country.

And if we run from it, I think what somebody said is that Kamala tried to run and hide on immigration. That was the exact wrong thing to do. All that did was give a much more open space to the racist messaging that was consistent from the Republican Party, and has been consistent for years, starting with the Tea Party. When the Tea Party came out, it wasn’t just against Obamacare. That was one of the first organized organizations outside of one of those anti-immigration rights groups that started talking about anchor babies and making that a part of their campaign and putting it into the Republican program.

So I think we have to really take on this issue, not identity politics versus class politics. We have to see the connection here. And for example, when John is talking about the rural areas, farmers, well, nobody’s caught more hell than Black and Brown farmers — They’re barely holding onto the land that they’ve got.

All those years when the Department of Agriculture was giving loans to white farmers so they could hold onto their land and not giving it to Black farmers, not giving it to Chicano farmers. And then when the Biden administration tried to send in some reparation money — That’s effectively what it was — For Black farmers, the Republicans killed it.

So yeah, I want to talk about rural areas. I mean, my family were farmers in New Mexico and Colorado. And the folks are trying to hold on desperately trying to hold onto that land there, as well as Black farmers in the South. So yes, we have to help our white farming brothers and sisters understand why they have to be the hardest fighters for Black folks to get the money that they’re entitled to continue their farming and make it generational for Chicano farmers to hold onto their land that Monsanto’s trying to grab up there in Northern New Mexico.

So I come at it a little bit differently, I think, than we’ve been hearing, and I think we have to be careful about this thing that advancing class dynamics somehow doesn’t include issues like voting rights and gerrymandering and women’s reproductive rights. Those are class issues. Those aren’t elite issues. Those are class issues. The women that are going to be dying from these back alley abortions are not going to be rich white women. It’s going to be poor working-class white women, and it’s going to be mostly women of color.

So I think, as we’re all sorting this out — And it’s too early to make any hard and fast conclusions, but there are some things that we do know: that the Republican Party has become a party of apartheid, of white minority rule. They pretty much say it; and Christian nationalism. And that’s rooted in mainly the white, Evangelical churches. I’m not discounting the impact of Latino Evangelical churches, I think they did have an impact in this election, but I think we need to really get a hold of that.

The second thing is I think we really need to understand that we’re not talking about a qualitative shift in political conditions now, I mean a quantitative shift, there’s a qualitative shift in political conditions. When they’re talking about replacing 40,000 or 50,000 federal workers in all federal departments, that’s huge. That is a vastly different attitude than we’re talking about if there was a Democratic administration. And we have to be ready — Talking about a labor movement and a working class movement — Ready to defend those workers, because we can’t just roll over and say, well, Trump’s going to bring in all these folks that Project 2025 talked about. So we have to be ready to defend those workers in the Interior Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the EPA. We have to be ready to do that.

We know that the right wing has been wanting to target the labor movement, and they feel the most vulnerable sector is the public sector. So when they talk about eliminating the Department of Education, that’s only a piece of the puzzle. What they really want to do is just destroy the power of teachers unions. They saw the strikes in Arkansas and Oklahoma and California and every other damn place, and they want to crush that. And they make it very clear. It’s very clear that’s a big part of their agenda.

So when we talk about class issues, I think that’s a key part of it. But we also need to understand that we are facing now a qualitatively different set of conditions when Trump talks about an ethnic cleansing campaign, yet that’s different than even the deporter-in-chief Obama or some of the shit that Biden has done. This is something qualitatively different, a massive ethnic cleansing campaign that, even if we take the lower estimate of 15 million undocumented immigrants and we make a low estimate of maybe two or three of their family members will be impacted, that’s 40 million people directly impacted. That will have an impact on small business infrastructure in these poor Black and Brown communities; on unions, where the most dynamic sector of the union movement has been among immigrants, Latino women especially; it will have an impact on social organizations. It will have an impact.

The impact would just be enormous. And Trump understands this, which is why he is saying it will be a military campaign. This is not just sending in the border patrol with a few trucks and vans. They’re talking about it because that’s the only way you could do it.

And we have to understand that the connection internationally is they’re talking about setting up a series of concentration camps along the border because the overwhelming majority of these people will be Mexicano. What kind of pressure are they going to put on this new left-wing government in Mexico, on the Sheinbaum administration, to take these millions and millions of working people? So we have to be ready to stand with our brothers and sisters in Mexico who will want to support their government in standing up to the United States.

And it’s not just a political question because the United States has enormous political leverage over Mexico’s economy, enormous. When they make threats about we’re just going to wreck your economy, we have to take that seriously.

But this is going to now become this question of immigration and this ethnic cleansing. It’s already an international question. Are they really going to ship 100,000 people back to Haiti? Are we going to sit and watch and let that happen? Where’s the labor movement? Yes, Shawn Fain, I agree with you, in 2028, we should all go out on strike. But now, right now, the labor movement needs to come out and stand for its immigrant brother and sister workers. We have to say that not a single ICE agent will ever get into our schools. We have to create sanctuary cities everywhere that we can.

In terms of the media, I’m worried about you all. I know they want to go after public television and public radio, that’s for sure. That scares me. But they hate the Pacific Radio Network. You can be sure about that. They hate The Real News Network. Y’all are vulnerable — Unless we build a strong and broad resistance movement. The few voices that we had, I know they got my address. Max, I’m guessing they got yours. They know where to find us. We haven’t been hiding, and this is going to become very vulnerable. I’m worried.

I work a lot in the climate justice movement. Most of these grassroots organizations are funded by foundations. These foundations are going to be under enormous pressure. There’s going to be congressional hearings: are you giving your money to [inaudible] be under pressure to just start funding services and not organizing.

So there’s so many [inaudible] now including Greg Palast’s talk about the complete elimination of the Voting Rights Act, all of the other things, the civil rights protections that we’ve had, the restoration of Jim Crow, this is real. This is real. It’s in Project 2025, but it’s also been very consistent in the messaging of the MAGA right since they’ve taken over the Republican Party.

And they got to the Latinos. I heard Maria [inaudible] talking about Spanish language, social media. The Republicans had 10 messages to every one that the Democrats put out on Spanish language social media, and those are young Latino men who were already [inaudible] I ain’t going to vote for a woman, a Black woman. Are you kidding me? We have issues to deal with in our community.

So I think as we’re brushing the smoke away and trying to pick through the ashes to see what happened, how did this disaster come about? We need to understand this didn’t just happen since Biden dropped out and Harris came in. There’s real strong roots to this campaign. [Inaudible] a lot of factors, a lot of white workers are concerned [inaudible] about the economy. It’s Black and Brown women who got the worst of it, or ever before all this stuff was going on and did not run to the Republican Party, did not run to the Republican Party because there’s a level of political sophistication and understanding.

I don’t think anybody has any illusions that the are going to bring out a totally liberatory society, but understanding that at least there’s some leverage there. And now [inaudible], I have to believe Milley when he says Trump’s a fascist and he believes it.

[Inaudible] earlier that’s talking about we really have to, [inaudible] I agree with that, [inaudible] but stand now that the Palestinian movement that we’ve had the last four years is going to be under considerably more risk under a Trump administration.

Marc Steiner:  We all will.

Bill Gallegos:  They will try to drown it in blood. And they’ve already said that their immigration policy includes deporting anyone who’s been part of the pro-Palestinian movement who’s an international student.

This is the reality that we face now. It shouldn’t panic us. What it should say is we have to build a broad-based resistance movement, which is going to include some folks that we ordinarily ain’t going to work with, but we have to build a broad-based resistance movement — Both at the local level, I totally agree with that, we have to root it locally, but it has to be broad.

And I’m not even getting into the whole climate thing here where Trump’s pretty much about ready to toast the planet, and he says it. And the first communities that are going to feel the impact of his policies are poor Black and Brown communities that are already choking like no other community on the toxicity and pollution that comes out of us capitalism [crosstalk] —

Marc Steiner:  Can you say just a little more about that Bill? I want to underscore the fact that you have deep roots in the climate justice movement. You know what you’re talking about on climate. For everyone watching this is not just like, oh, the climate’s going to get worse. I want you to listen to Bill in terms of what the implications are for our shared planet right now.

Bill Gallegos:  Well, I’ll just start by saying this, that under the Biden administration, the environmental justice community, one, policies that we have never had with anyone, not even Obama. So for example, Justice40, which is a federal policy that a minimum of 40% of all federal environmental spending will go to frontline communities. Frontline communities are those that get the worst. 40%. This is a larger allocation of federal resources than the war on poverty. It’s $100 and some billion, $190 some billion that could potentially get to frontline communities.

It’s been slow rolling out because the federal bureaucracy is very complicated. Every federal department gets a certain amount of money and they all have their own rules and regulations, but there are organizations that are trying to help frontline communities access these funds for cleanup, clean energy development, job development, all of those things, mitigation. A certain percentage of that is for affordable housing.

So this was a huge victory that we’ve never had. It’s going to be gone. They’re saying that anything that has to do with equity will be gone. So those resources probably won’t survive a Trump administration. The Biden administration also adopted some very positive policies related to certain carcinogenic toxins and other forms of pollution that affect respiratory problems. Not everything we wanted. And they did open up a lot of drilling.

I’m not going to paint a picture that this was, we’re not talking about Arundhati Roy making policy for the Biden administration, but there was a lot that we won. I don’t want to just say it was because of the goodness of Biden’s heart, but because this movement has been organizing for years, and we had support from a lot of the big green groups: the Sierra Club, the NRDC, Earthjustice, supported the climate justice movement in making these demands.

So this was a pretty significant victory for our movement that is now at risk. And I don’t see how we hold onto the things that we’ve won. And Trump is pretty much saying it. He’s going to put polluters in charge of the EPA, if not close it down, the Department of the Interior. We’re not going to have Deb Haaland in there. We’re going to have somebody who wants to open all public land to corporate development.

So we’ve got our fight cut out for us as a climate justice movement. What I think we need is we need unity within that movement, because it’s been fragmented, and we need unity with a broad sector of our sisters and brothers in these national green groups — As well as with labor. We’ve always gotten played labor versus the environment, but now’s the time when we’ve got to come together.

We’ve always said that it’s not one or the other that clean jobs should be union jobs, we don’t want it to be a sweatshop and that there’s already one of the fastest areas of job growth in the energy sector. So we need to make certain that that happens so that as we phase out of fossil fuel and that whole dependency on that fossil fuel economy, there’s a real just transition.

But all of these things are now going to become qualitatively more difficult because of the fact that the Republicans probably got Congress, the Senate, and the White House, and a Supreme Court that’s going to give them any damn thing that they want.

So we have a challenge, but hey, in the lifetime of some of us, I’ve seen Jim Crow go down. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen women win reproductive justice. I’ve seen our gay and lesbian sisters and brothers win the right to marriage. I’ve seen foreign workers with the right to a union. So I’m always optimistic.

But I have to say that I wouldn’t compare this to the Nixon administration. This is something qualitatively different here. In the Nixon administration, the John Birch Society was considered fringe; now they run the party. Those kinds of racist and reactionary forces run and control one of the big ruling class parties of this country. And I saw the list that Standing for Democracy had, There’s something like 30 billionaires that had been funding this project, funding this MAGA Project 2025 thing. So there’s huge sections of the ruling class that are behind this.

I’m sorry a little bit for my rant here, but I guess what I really want to make certain is we don’t lose sight of the importance of the fight against racism and misogyny in this, and not pit it against class politics. Those are class politics, and they’re so central to any change that we want to make, whether it’s in the environment or public health or education just in the area of democracy, of protecting and expanding voting rights.

It’s always at the center because that’s the country we have. The history starting with the dispossession of genocide of Native peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the theft of half of Mexico’s territories. That’s the history that has shaped the country we have now, and really contributed a lot to the electoral results we have now. And if we run from it, we lose. If we take it on, we have a chance to win.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Ain’t got to apologize for that rant, brother, because I feel like that is absolutely the truth that folks need to hear right now, the sobering truth, but a truth that is not without hope.

And Marc, I want to toss it to you in a second to offer your closing thoughts in that realm as someone who, like Bill, has seen American history change in significant ways that my generation only learned about in books, but you’ve seen it happen.

And we have also seen major change in our lives. I remember when gay marriage became legal, I mean as one just minor — Not minor, but one example.

Marc Steiner:  It’s not minor, right.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So I do want to give you the closing word in a second about where we go from here and your closing messages for our audience. But I did want to pick up on something that Bill said about the importance of race and understanding the dynamics here and how it shapes our vision of the world that we think that we’re living in.

Because if you do the thought experiment here where you have aliens from Mars airdrop in and look at what they’re seeing, what they’re going to see in this election is a monster’s ball of billionaire oligarchs surrounding another billionaire oligarchy serving politician, from Musk, the richest man in the world literally campaigning with Trump, taking over X, using it as a propaganda platform, to the billionaires that own the Washington Post and the LA Times, putting their thumbs on the scale and not letting their papers like endorse a candidate, to the crypto bros and the financial Wall Street interests that arrayed to defeat senators like Sherrod Brown that are excited to get Lina Khan out of the government.

By all objective accounts, this is a billionaire’s takeover of what remains of our fledgling democracy. But so many people don’t see it that way because conditions that we’ve been discussing for the past two hours have allowed and enabled people to instead identify people who look like me, people who look like Bill as the enemy, people who don’t perform gender the same way that you do or identify the same way that you do as somehow the enemy.

They have managed to convince working people that their fellow workers to their left and their right, because of their race, because of their immigration status, because of how they identify, are somehow more responsible for our woes than the fucking billionaires up there who are destroying our planet, destroying our democracy, and are going to do a whole lot more damage in the coming four years.

That is an incredible feat that the oligarchy has pulled off, and they have done it through ages throughout history. This is the eternal struggle of working people: to realize who their true oppressors really are and to be able to cut through the noise and haze that makes us feel as if somehow our fellow workers who are different from us are responsible for our woes.

And I say that not just as a reporter, not just as a historian, but I say that as a person who is deeply worried right now that people in my own family are going to be deported. I want you people watching this to understand I’m not just a fucking face on a screen, I’m a human being just like you are, just like your neighbors are. And we are terrified for very justifiable reasons and we need to not succumb to that terror. We need to feel it but not become it. But I need people out there to understand that the terror is real and that it is going to change the terrain of struggle for all of us, and that we are going to need you to stand with us, and we are going to need to stand together to face whatever we are facing.

Bill, I’m sorry to cut you off. Please hop in there, and then Marc —

Bill Gallegos:  No, absolutely. You’re right. I don’t know about you, but I don’t carry around proof of citizenship with me and I’m güero, but they hear Gallegos, it’s dirty Mexican. And I live in a community in southeast Los Angeles. It’s a Black and Brown working-class community. Almost every house on this block is going to be at risk. They’re multigenerational. Yeah, this is for real.

And it brings me to one part of my rant that I didn’t get to drop in here, which is how the left and progressive women in this country have consistently overlooked the Chicano and Latino community as an important social force for change. There continues to be a mostly Black and Brown framework — And that’s only because Black folks, the Black liberation struggle has insisted on being taken seriously.

But it is another one of those things where I’ve been looking at a lot of these webinars that happen to talk about the elections and so on, almost never do I see a Latino or Latina voice here in those conversations. There’s a big one that’s happening later this afternoon. There’s a huge network, national network that’s developing as a resistance network, which I think is really important. But when I looked at the five or six speakers that they have, not a single one comes out of the Chicano or Latino, not the Puerto Rican community, not the Dominican community, not the Mexican American community. I know there’s only 37 million of us [Steiner laughs], but I could help them find some.

But I think this is a strategic problem: Do we want to win or not? Are we serious about building the kind of multiracial movement that really has a chance to impact our lives in the immediate and also for the transformative agenda that we have?

So this is kind of a consistent issue that I raise. I’m on the editorial board of The Nation magazine, I raise it to them all the damn time. I raise it in other arenas where, hey, we’re here. The unfortunate thing is that the left within those movements, both within the Puerto Rican liberation struggle and the Chicana liberation struggle, is very small. It’s weak. It’s, I think, stupidly fragmented when it doesn’t need to be. But that’s a problem because that leaves the political field open to more mainstream forces, more less progressive forces.

After all that happened with what the MAGA right and Trump said about the Puerto Ricans, they’re going to re-elect this Puerto Rican pro-Trump governor? What’s going on there? Well, I don’t blame the Puerto Rican people. I’m blaming us. Where are we? Where’s the attention that we’re giving to that movement? And especially the Democratic Party, they’ve got all these resources, but I’m also talking about the labor movement and the women’s movement. All these different movements need to direct their attention to an area where they have not had it. And that means not just with words, but with resources, with organizing. And don’t just come out every four years and ask for our vote.

The Democratic Party now is reaping what it has sowed, it reaped it in this last election. I was shocked even if I think the results are a little initial, clearly there were too many Chicanos and Puerto Ricans and other Latinos that were voting for Trump and the right against their own interests, maybe under some illusion that, well, we’ll finally get admitted into the club like the Italian immigrants did and the Polish immigrants did.

Since the 1840s, we haven’t been admitted into the club. I don’t think it’s going to happen now. Puerto Rico’s been a colony for how many years, They haven’t been admitted into that particular immigrant club. I don’t think it’s going to happen now. But I think there’s people who are desperate to believe that, and that’s affected them.

So yeah, we got a lot of work cut out for us. But what I really want to emphasize is for our folks on the left and progressive movements, don’t ignore us. You guys, Real News, you’re one of the few programs that ran something on the Chicano Moratorium. We hear a lot about Kent State, and we should, about the murder that happened when Nixon invaded Laos and Cambodia and the people that were shot there, but the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, three people were shot there. Why isn’t that an annual commemoration? And not just in our community, but in the broader progressive anti-war and peace community. Why is that not taken seriously as an important historical event that has meaning for us?

I guess I feel like I can raise this because I feel like I’m among friends and comrades when I’m raising this to comrades on progressive moments. And on the left, I feel like I can be honest and frank with you because you say that you’re for complete equity and equality and self-determination and liberation and all of those things. So I’m going to take you at your word and say, stop doing what you’re doing and start broadening your attention and enrich the movement that we’re trying to build.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that is a powerful point to end on from our amazing guest, Bill Gallegos of the Mexico Solidarity Project. He mentioned an episode of Marc’s show, the Marc Steiner show, where we had brother Bill and other guests on to talk about the history of the Chicano Moratorium. You should go listen to that episode, we released it back in August. So if you want to keep the conversation going after this livestream, go listen to that.

But for now, we are a little over time. I have had such a great time. It’s been very helpful for me to unpack the events of this week over the past two hours on this livestream. We are going to do more of these. We want to respond to more of your questions. We want to bring more guests on.

So I wanted to ask folks before I toss it to brother Marc Steiner here to close us out with his final thoughts, please subscribe to this channel if you’re not already, become a member of this channel if you’re not already, if you want additional perks and access to us and more engagement with us and our journalists. Please write into The Real News and let us know the topics you want covered, the folks you want us to have on. And please, please, please support the work that we do here. Go to therealnews.com/donate, click the donate button over here on YouTube to donate to The Real News now, because we can’t keep doing this work without you, and we know we are heading into hostile waters here and we’re going to need that support to hang on for as long as we can and to keep fighting for you. So our future depends on you and our collective future depends on what we all do next.

And so with that, I want to sign off and thank you for joining us. And I want to toss things over to Marc Steiner to give us his closing thoughts, and we’ll see you back here on the next livestream. Thank you all so much for watching.

Marc Steiner:  I’ll make it short and sweet because we’re a little bit over time, but we are in a very important moment here, a critical moment. And I just want to go back for two seconds to think about the things that Bill just pointed out, people like John Nichols pointed out and others on this broadcast is that if the Democrats had taken the ideas as you heard some of the people say on this program and turned them into a media organizing campaign, we’d have a different outcome of this election. If we fought for the truth and showed the truth to the world, to our country, it would’ve had a very different result than what we see today. I think that’s a really important point for us to realize.

And now the thing is we have to do that ourselves and we have to organize, and we have to make a broader coalition of all the media organizations on the left that’s being worked on. We’ve got to bring people together to say no, there’s a different way. And we have to do it because we’re not just facing a Republican Party, we’re facing a neofascist rise. These are very dangerous people who are now in charge of the United States government. They’re going to destroy the government Department of Education and more. Read Project 2025, understand what they’re about to do to us. And we have to stand up together to fight to stop it.

We cannot allow it to happen. This is our country. It’s all of us. It’s the greatest heterogeneous nation in the history of the planet. We can stop them. We have to stop them. And that’s part of our work right here at The Real News. And I want to thank you all for joining us.

Bill Gallegos:  Thank you all. Really appreciate it.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Thank you guys.

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.

On the ground in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a state crucial to the famed “blue wall,” one of the primary strategies for a Democrat win, TRNN speaks to voters, activists and canvassers to take the pulse of the city. We spoke to election commissioners, canvassers from California, Milwaukee Veterans Against Trump and socialists who may choose to not vote at all.

Written By Stephen Janis
Production: Stephen Janis and Taya Graham
Additional Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello, this is Taya Graham for The Real News Network. I’m here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And as you can tell behind me, I am at a Harris-Walz rally. And in just a few moments, Tim Walz is actually going to come out and speak.

But what is more important, I think, is the voters. And we’ve been crisscrossing back and forth across Milwaukee to hear from the voters directly. We have spoken to people who are evangelicals for Harris, we’ve spoken to people who are voting for Trump, and we even spoke to socialists who aren’t going to be voting at all. In a critical state, in a crucial city, passions are running high in the final day before the election.

Joel Polzlowski:  My name’s Joel Polzlowski. I’m from Cudahy, Wisconsin, and I’ve come to pick up some more Harris signs for my neighbors.

Taya Graham:  The Real News was on the ground in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, taking the temperature of residents, activists, and canvassers.

Why are you a veteran against Trump?

Joel Polzlowski:  Well, actually, of all the things, it’s him belittling the serviceman. John McCain was the first step. And you could see the writing on the wall, things he said about suckers and losers.

Taya Graham:  Milwaukee hosted the Republican National Convention in July, but the city is decidedly Democratic.

Gwen Moore:  When you look at Milwaukee plus Madison, this campaign has realized that it’s really important to focus on Milwaukee so that you don’t leave good voters behind.

Taya Graham:  Milwaukee is also one of several Democrat strongholds throughout the state that could determine the winner today. Which is why election officials are being as transparent as possible.

Patricia Ruiz-Cantu:  We are going to have in the morning a session where we’re going to open up and then there’s a central count. So if you want to see the actual process of accounting, you could go in at the central count, and then you could record what people are doing as they’re counting the ballots.

Taya Graham:  But that’s not the only concern on election day.

Sienna Steward:  Well, one of the biggest things that we’re seeing is that people are really confused if they’re isolated at home and they’re getting their information from the television. They’re asking us questions like, what’s the truth?

Taya Graham:  Two canvassers told us that disinformation is rampant among voters.

Sienna Steward:  And so it’s become really, really important for us to knock on individual doors and be able to answer questions and to just go ahead and say, what do you care about? What is the truth?

Taya Graham:  And fears that Republicans will flood the city with poll watchers.

Patricia Ruiz-Cantu:  We had a negative experience last time.

Taya Graham:  One election official we spoke to said that in the previous election, she actually feared for her safety.

Patricia Ruiz-Cantu:  As an election commissioner, I will tell you that for a minute I was a little bit afraid because some of the poll watchers or watchers that were there in the central count were screaming in our faces, recording us live to private groups, and that’s putting us in danger.

Taya Graham:  But not all Milwaukee residents were eager to vote.

Sara Onitsuka:  We have not endorsed a candidate this year. So our line specifically is that, of course, we’re not voting for Trump. Kamala Harris and the Biden administration have been the ones who have been perpetuating this genocide, and so that’s a red line for us. We aren’t endorsing Kamala Harris.

Taya Graham:  A local socialist activist who protested the Republican National Convention said that concerns about Palestine were motivating their member’s choice to not embrace either candidate.

Sara Onitsuka:  So there’s no specific candidate that we’re telling people to vote for. However, we’re also not abstentionists, so we’re telling people to get their voice heard, maybe through third parties or write-in votes to still show up and vote, but that we’re not telling people to vote for either of the two major parties.

Taya Graham:  They also told us young members of Black and Brown communities were disenchanted and not aligned with either candidate.

Alan Chavoya:  From a lot of the youth, we’re hearing a lot of disappointment, unfortunately, and that’s really difficult to hear. I’m an educator, and it’s difficult working with youth. You view the youth as the future, right? And they’re going to make the world better than what you leave them behind with.

But many are expressing just not necessarily a nihilism, but it’s just a disappointment with the state of affairs, that they have to pick between two presidents, or two candidates that don’t really represent their values.

Taya Graham:  But another important trend highlighted by the people we spoke to was the possible impact of women on the final results.

Audrey Heller:  I think women are tremendously important in this election. Both young women who are coming up and wanting to see a world of more opportunities for them, and then it’s been so interesting to see these older women who are fierce about their freedoms.

Taya Graham:  And that has prompted women to vote in greater numbers.

Gov. Tim Walz:  We get an opportunity tomorrow to shape the future for generations to come [crowd cheers].

Taya Graham:  At a rally Monday night with Gov. Tim Walz, reproductive rights were on the agenda.

Gov. Tim Walz:  Let me speak to the guys in this room. I want you to think about the women in your life that you love. Their lives are literally at stake in this election. More than 20 states now have abortion bans, and our daughters and those loved ones you’re thinking of now have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers. When Congress passes a law to restore the right to choose, to make Roe the law of the land, President Harris will sign it into law [crowd cheers].

Taya Graham:  But here in Milwaukee, the attention is firmly placed on getting people out and on the ground, an effort that will culminate today as people go to the polls to decide once and for all who will be the next President of the United States of America.

This is Taya Graham and Stephen Janis reporting for The Real News Network in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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. 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 outcome of tomorrow’s election is anyone’s guess. While the candidates are familiar, this election is very different from previous showdowns with Trump in 2016 and 2020. While old guard Republicans like Dick Cheney are throwing their weight behind Harris, the MAGA movement is persevering—and even courting support from unexpected places. Stephen Janis and Taya Graham look back on past conversations with Trump supporters from this election cycle.

Watch the full stories:

Are Black men really flocking to Trump? We asked these Black conservatives.

Republicans plan for 40 years of MAGA

RNC delegates explain their views—and stumble through fact checks

Black, conservative, and unapologetic: A deep dive with the Black women fighting to get Trump reelected

Behind enemy lines: ‘Blacks for Trump’ and Pennsylvania progressives play for undecided voters

Production: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis
Post-Production: Stephen Janis
Written by: Stephen Janis

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello. This is Taya Graham for The Real News Network.

Stephen and I are going to be on the ground in Wisconsin to cover what some are saying is the most consequential election in recent history. We’re going to be in Milwaukee, talking to voters, going to poll sites, and doing our best to keep you up to date on the vote count.

But we thought we should show you some of our earlier coverage and go back to where we began in Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention. There, we interviewed dozens of people from all across the country. And what we learned surprised us, namely the promise that if Trump wins, there won’t be just four, but 40 more years of magic.

Sen. Tim Scott:  Hello, Milwaukee [crowd cheers]. Are you ready for four more years of Donald Trump?

Crowd:  Yes!

Sen. Tim Scott:  We’re setting a course for the next 40 years [crowd cheers].

Taya Graham:  We actually heard a speaker say that we could be looking at decades of MAGA. What people may not understand is we are looking at the future of our country right now. Do not underestimate the passion, respect, and the inspiration people feel when they see Donald Trump as their leader.

And now that he has survived this assassination attempt, it has taken on almost a religious fervor.

Sen. Tim Scott:  A fellow came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but an American lion got back up on his feet [crowd cheers] and he won.

Edward X. Young:  Fight the party tooth and nail to get every Democrat unelected, marginalize the party, wash them away.

Taya Graham:  What about the poor folks who voted for the Democrats?

Edward X. Young:  Well, it’s a different party. This is not John F. Kennedy’s Democrat Party anymore. The Democratic Party is now… It’s a godless, depraved Marxist party.

Taya Graham:  We also spoke to a group of voters that pundits say are still in play, namely Black men. So we spoke to several Republican Black men who had an awful lot to say.

Taya Graham: Hello. This is Taya Graham for The Real News Network, and I’m here in Milwaukee Wisconsin at the Republican National Convention. And I had a question. Polls are saying that Black men are going to be voting more and more for former President Donald Trump, and I wanted to know why.

So I came to the Black Republican Mayors Association event to ask the source why they are voting for Donald Trump and why they think more Black men will be doing the same.

Michael Austin:  Michael Austin, Kansas Republican delegation.

Taya Graham:  Why are you representing the Republican Party?

Michael Austin:  I’m a guy that really likes to focus on facts, and of course, just is it easier to live your life, buy a house, run a business. And it’s clear that President Trump has done an amazing job for the African-American community, of course, for me and my family as well. And so I have no qualms about supporting him again this time.

Steven Mullins:  My name is Steven Mullins and I am part of the Connecticut delegation to the Republican National Convention.

Taya Graham:  I want to know what brought you to the Republican Party? What policies inspired you?

Steven Mullins:  I have been active with the Republican Party since I was a child. I was politically inspired by President Reagan as an elementary school student, and I’ve stuck with it. I believe in the conservative values that the Republican Party offers. Socially, fiscally, I think it is the way to go.

Taya Graham:  I also conducted an intriguing interview with two powerful Black women in the Republican movement, namely Tia Best, a national engagement director for Moms of Liberty, and Janaya Thomas, the Black media engagement director for Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign. And what they had to say might surprise you.

Taya Graham: Well, it’s interesting that you said that you voted for President Obama because he’s Black, because obviously we have Vice President Harris in the race who’s Black and a woman. People are very excited about this. They feel that this is historic. So it’s interesting. So let’s say 10 years ago, you would’ve voted for Vice President Harris?

Tia Bess:  Of course, because I’ll put it like this. Well, we’ll say Black, but everyone has their own definition of what is Black. You’re biracial. My son is biracial. My son is actually really African American. He’s half African and he’s actually African American and Caribbean. It’s just we understand how America is, how they have that one-drop rule. Doesn’t matter if your dad is white or your mom is white or whoever’s Black. They have a one-drop rule.

Taya Graham:  And I have to ask, how did you become the Black media engagement director for the entire Trump re-election campaign? What factors influenced your decision to take the role? And I have to say, especially in the light of what people view as President Trump’s controversial stances on issues affecting the Black community.

Janiyah Thomas:  I think overall, I’ve been doing this for a while. I originally was the Black media coordinator at the RNC. That was my first job. So I’ve been working with Black press and I love doing it because sometimes I feel like getting good stories, working with Black-owned media, I feel more rewarded, because it’s not as easy to do that all the time versus working with New York Times. They’ll do anything and write about anything.

So it feels more rewarding to work with Black-owned media and also a lot of, as you know, Black people rely on Black media to give them factual information, especially when we’re in election year.

So that has everything to do with part of the reason I took it, because it’s something I thought was really cool and I feel really passionate about working with Black media, and I love Donald Trump also.

But I think it’s important to have somebody that’s able to speak to those issues, speak to that community, and also someone that’s able to develop relationships with that community as well.

Taya Graham:  We were also on the ground when the Trump tour bus hit my hometown, Baltimore City. Attendance might’ve been low, but confidence was high. What exactly are we seeing here? I’m not with her. The Black Voters for Trump. What is this bus?

Kim Klacik:  Yeah, so President Trump, and of course VCF, they’re all in town today. Just visiting areas like here, Morgan State University, just letting these students know that there is an option. You don’t have to vote for the leaning left, comma, you don’t have to vote for this administration again, you can vote for change, which would be President Trump in this situation.

Speaker 1:  Challenge them on the, he’s a racist. What does that mean? Tell me, what do you mean? He’s a misogynist? What does that have to do about good policies, effective policies that work for our country?

Taya Graham:  Finally, to find out just how close this election might be, we went to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where we spoke to voters and activists to find out exactly what might happen in the keystone state that could decide this election.

Taya Graham: At a community center, Lancaster Stands Up is organizing in the critical swing state that most agree could decide the presidential election. The non-partisan group focuses on issues, supporting candidates that back their policies. That means affordable housing, a living wage, and reproductive freedom.

Lindsay [Lancaster Stands Up]:  So we’re a non-partisan organization. So our goal is really to just support candidates both locally and on the national level that represent our values. So our members vote on local candidates, and then once we endorse them, we like to offer support through things like canvassing, phone banking, hosting meet and greets, things like that.

David Miller-Glick [Lancaster Stands Up]:  We definitely do skew more towards Democrat than Republican. We tend to have a lot of problems with Republicans on labor rights and how they don’t really support workers.

Edwin Stubbs [Lancaster Stands Up]:  So we are running like IE phones for Harris and Walz because originally we weren’t going to do anything when Biden was going to be this presidential candidate. But now that it’s Harris, we feel like she’s someone that we’ll be able to organize with and potentially work with in DC.

Taya Graham:  But just down the road in Lititz, a divided town shows changing minds won’t be easy.

Speaker 2:  It’s a very polarizing time right now.

Taya Graham:  Passions were so high that one resident we spoke to says he avoids talking about politics altogether.

Speaker 2:  If you want to stay friendly with people, you don’t talk about politics. That’s the bottom line. Nobody’s getting convinced, and that includes my family. I don’t agree with my kids, you know.

Taya Graham:  Nevertheless, the people who did want to talk on the record about their choices were adamant.

May I ask who you’re voting for?

Speaker 3:  Kamala Harris. And I just don’t like his politics and do not like what he would like to see, which is the United States to become a dictatorship.

Taya Graham:  Phyllis, can you tell me if you’ve decided that you’re going to vote?

Phyllis:  Yes, I have decided. Trump.

Taya Graham:  Can you share with me what policies have inspired you to… If there’s anything in particular that really stands out to you as why you’re voting for him, I assume for the second time.

Phyllis:  Just overall because I don’t like who’s running against him.

Taya Graham:  Is it the policies or the person you don’t like?

Phyllis:  Policies and the person.

Taya Graham:  So as you can see, we take being on the ground and speaking directly to the voters very seriously. So we’re going to be giving you live updates from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You’ll see them on YouTube, you’ll see them on Facebook, even on X. And make sure to keep on checking with The Real News website for constant updates. I’m really looking forward to covering this election for you and giving you voter data as soon as I get it.

This is Taya Graham and Stephen Janis reporting for The Real News Network.

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.

Dakarai Larriett was driving a friend home at 3:00 in the morning when he saw the flash of a Michigan State Trooper’s siren. Although Larriett was stone-cold sober, he soon discovered this would not be enough to protect him. After accusing him of a minor traffic violation, Officer George Kanyuh began to speculate over Larriett’s sobriety. A lawsuit brought by Larriett alleges that, after subjecting Larriett to a series of sobriety field tests, Kanyuh spent over two minutes unsuccessfully looking for drugs in his patrol car to use as planted evidence against Larriett. Once this failed, Kanyuh and his partner, Matthew Okaiye, took Larriett into custody and forced him to endure even more humiliating ordeals at the police station—including requiring him to defecate in front of them. It’s only thanks to body camera footage that the truth of this incident was revealed, but there are countless cases of similar behavior by police across the country which has never come to light. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of Police Accountability Report review the case and its implications, speaking directly with Dakarai Larriett about his ordeal.

Written by: Stephen Janis
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose: holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible.

And today we’ll achieve that goal by showing you this video of a bogus DUI stop that led to the false arrest of a man who is still suffering from the consequences of it. A harrowing encounter with Michigan State troopers that led to questionable charges, a humiliating search, and allegations of an officer attempting to plant drugs.

But it also calls into question the whole idea of how DUIs are investigated, all of which we will break down for you as we unpack yet another problematic use of police powers.

And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com or reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter @tayasbaltimore, and we might be able to investigate for you. And please like, share, and comment on our videos. It helps us get the word out and it can even help our guests.

And of course, you know I read your comments and appreciate them. You see those little hearts I give out down there. And I’ve even started doing a comment of the week to show you all how much I really appreciate your thoughts and to show off what a great community we have.

And of course, we have to thank our corporate sponsor — Oh wait, that’s right, we don’t run ads or take corporate dollars. But you can donate below, and we have a Patreon, Accountability Report, so if you feel inspired to donate, please do, because we don’t run ads or take those corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way.

Now, there is no crime more potentially destructive or dangerous than driving while drunk. Here at the Police Accountability Report, we support efforts by law enforcement to prevent it. However, we have also noticed a troubling trend, as we’ve reported, on questionable DUI arrests across the country. Sometimes it seems that police are overly eager to charge someone driving while drunk, overreach that can have devastating consequences for the people subject to it.

And no DUI stop embodies this problem more than the video I’m showing you right now. It depicts the highly suspect arrest of a Michigan man who’s being put through a grueling field sobriety test. Despite passing every facet of it, he still ended up in handcuffs.

But that was only the beginning of his ordeal. That’s because even after his detainment, police weren’t done subjecting him to the cruelty and violations of our criminal justice system, the details of which we will share with you shortly. But first, the arrest itself.

This story starts in Benton Harbor, Michigan in April of 2024. There, Dakarai Larriett was driving a friend home at 3:00 AM when he was pulled over by a Michigan State trooper for, ostensibly, not coming to a stop for a flashing red light, an accusation Dakarai firmly denies. However, from the beginning, the officer began accusing him of being drunk. Take a look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  Hey, how you doing?

Dakarai Larriett:  Good.

Officer Kanyuh:  Good. You got a license on you?

Dakarai Larriett:  Yep, it’s in my bag.

Officer Kanyuh:  In the back?

Dakarai Larriett:  In my bag.

Officer Kanyuh:  Oh, go for it. Yeah, the reason I’m stopping you, there’s two red lights there. Make sure you come to a complete stop.

Thank you.

Where you coming from?

Dakarai Larriett:  St. Joe’s.

Officer Kanyuh:  St. Joe? Where are you trying to get?

Dakarai Larriett:  I’m dropping him off right here.

Officer Kanyuh:  Oh, OK. This address here? With the fence?

OK. Do you have any paperwork for the vehicle?

Dakarai Larriett:  I’m sorry?

Officer Kanyuh:  Any paperwork for the vehicle like registration, insurance?

Dakarai Larriett:  I do.

Officer Kanyuh:  Can I see that please?

Dakarai Larriett:  Sure.

Officer Kanyuh:  Does alcohol impact your ability to drive today?

Dakarai Larriett:  [Inaudible]

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. When was your last drink? Has it been at least two hours?

Dakarai Larriett:  Yes.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. All right. Two hours you said? What was it specifically? Smelling fruity and a little bit of something else on you.

Dakarai Larriett:  There was no alcohol in me.

Officer Kanyuh:  I can smell it on your breath. Something fruity like what were you drinking?

Dakarai Larriett:  There was no alcohol in here.

Officer Kanyuh:  No? But it’s been at least two hours.

Dakarai Larriett:  There’s no alcohol on me.

Officer Kanyuh:  All righty. Just hop out for me. I’m going to verify, OK.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now Dakarai, again, politely denied the accusations. As you can see, he’s calm and collected in his answers. The officer did not accuse him of driving recklessly or swerving. Instead, he simply ordered Dakarai to get out of the car as he continued to question him. Let’s watch.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  You do the open carry for protection at all or no?

Dakarai Larriett:  I don’t.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. You should, it’s kind of crazy out here. Right back this way for me.

Why are you changing your story on that? I said two hours, and then I said I smell it on your breath, and now you’re denying it at all. That’s suspicious to me.

Dakarai Larriett:  I am not commenting any further. I have not had any alcohol.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  And so, it appears that based on a “fruity” smell and Dakarai invoking his right not to answer questions, the officer begins what can only be called the most potentially treacherous aspect of American DUI enforcement: the field sobriety test.

Now I want to make something clear before we watch: field sobriety tests are not as scientific as they’re portrayed. The six studies cited by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to justify the use of these tests were not peer reviewed, and reveal a harrowing number of false positives anywhere between 20-40% of the time. Nevertheless, it has become a key tool of law enforcement even though it is important to note that you can refuse to take it.

Still, unfortunately, Dakarai is put through a grueling battery of examinations starting with the horizontal gaze test.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  And then arms down at your side like a pencil dive. Yep, just remain like that and then don’t move until I tell you move. OK? Do you understand those instructions?

Dakarai Larriett:  Yes.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. Is there any reason why you couldn’t stand there like that?

Dakarai Larriett:  No.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. Weird question I got to ask you. I’m going to check your eyes. What I want you to do is just follow the tip of my finger with only your eyes. Do not move your head, OK? Do you understand?

Is there any reason you couldn’t do that?

Dakarai Larriett:  No.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. Are you wearing contacts right now?

Dakarai Larriett:  I am.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. Same thing, just keep following with your eyes and only your eyes. You got to rub your eyes or something?

Dakarai Larriett:  No.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. You’re just not tracking it.

How long you had your contacts in?

Dakarai Larriett:  Um… An hour or so.

Officer Kanyuh:  Hour or so? So they’re not dry or anything?

Dakarai Larriett:  They’re fine.

Officer Kanyuh:  They’re fine? OK.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Next, the officer asked Dakarai to do the so-called walk and turn test, an assessment, by the way, that can generate false positives 30% of the time and, truthfully, isn’t easy. Take a look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  Good.

See this line here?

Yeah, we can use this line.

See this crack? Go ahead and stand on the crack with your left foot on it, and then your right foot in front of it, heel to toe. See how mine are heel to toe? Go ahead and do so.

When I tell you to do so, you’re going to take nine steps heel to toe, when you get to your ninth step, I want you to turn, taking a series of small steps, come nine heel-to-toe steps back up that line, all the way to nine. It’s important you’re keeping your arms down at your side, you’re looking down at your toe, and you’re counting out loud. When you begin the test, don’t stop until you’ve completed it.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now, even though he performs the test meticulously, the officer persists in putting him through even more stressful examinations. At this point it seems crystal clear Dakarai has no problem with doing exactly what the officer demands, but he still makes him continue.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  Do you understand those instructions?

Dakarai Larriett:  Yes.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. Is there any reason why you couldn’t do that?

Dakarai Larriett:  I don’t think so.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK, I’ll stand back here, and whenever you’re ready, you may begin.

Dakarai Larriett:  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Officer Kanyuh:  Good.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  But now, the officer ups the ante. That’s because even though Dakarai passes the so-called Standard Field Sobriety test endorsed by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, the officer turns to a battery of non-standard tests that are even less scientific, raising even more questions about the process. That includes asking him to recite the alphabet. Let’s listen.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  So you know your alphabet?

Dakarai Larriett:  I do.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK, I’m not having you say it backwards, that’s not a real thing. Can you say your alphabet starting at A as in Adam, stop at R as in Robert, A to R. Do you have that ability? OK, go ahead and do so.

Dakarai Larriett:  A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R.

Officer Kanyuh:  Good.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Then, venturing further into non-scientific territory, he asked Dakarai to count backwards.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  Starting at the number 99. Can you count backwards from 99 to 81?

Dakarai Larriett:  99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 91, 90…

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  But Officer Kanyuh is not done, not hardly. Because even though Dakarai passed each test flawlessly, the troop returns to another questionable exam: the one-leg stand test, which, once again, has been accused of being non-scientific and inaccurate 30% of the time.

Officer Kanyuh:  I want you to stand just like this again, the same drama we’ve always been doing. Good. Remain like that and then don’t move ’till I tell you to move, OK? Do you understand these instructions? OK. Is there any reason why you couldn’t do this? No? OK. Whenever you’re ready, you may begin.

Dakarai Larriett:  One thousand one, one thousand two —

Officer Kanyuh:  Remember to look down at that toe.

Dakarai Larriett:  One thousand three, one thousand four, one thousand five, one thousand six, one thousand seven, one thousand eight, one thousand nine, one thousand 10, one thousand 11, one thousand 12, one thousand 13, one thousand 14, one thousand 15, one thousand 16, one thousand 17, one thousand 18, one thousand 19, one thousand 20, one thousand 21, one thousand 22, one thousand 23, one thousand 24 —

Officer Kanyuh:  And you can stop.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now as each of these tests unfold one after another, I want you to think about how Dakarai is feeling. First, he’s flawlessly following orders. One can only imagine how gut-wrenching it is taking these vague, imprecise, if not scientifically questionable, tests with your life hanging in the balance.

And even though he is clearly under duress, he is respectful and steady, and he is obviously not drunk and not high. And yet the endurance test continues with another scientifically sketchy request that requires him to decide when 30 seconds has elapsed. Just watch.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  Go ahead and just take one step forward. Good. Hit same heels and toes touching just like this. Arms down at the side. When I tell you to do so, I want you to tilt your head back, close your eyes, and when you believe 30 seconds has passed, bring your head forward and say stop. OK? Does that…

Dakarai Larriett:  Closing my eyes?

Officer Kanyuh:  Yep, closing your eyes. When you believe 30 seconds has passed, look forward, say stop. You understand the instructions?

Dakarai Larriett:  I think so.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. Is there any reason why you couldn’t do that?

Dakarai Larriett:  No.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. Whenever you’re ready, begin.

How much time was that?

Dakarai Larriett:  About 30 seconds.

Officer Kanyuh:  And then how’d you get there?

Dakarai Larriett:  I’m sorry?

Officer Kanyuh:  Did you count one, two, three? You didn’t do one Mississippi or anything like that?

Dakarai Larriett:  No.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. So just one, two, three. OK, cool.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  And there’s more — Yes, there’s more. The officer, not satisfied, veers into another non-standard test known as the finger to nose test, which, again, is nonstandard and is not an accepted test from the National Highway Safety Administration. Still, the officer persists. Just look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  You’re going to keep your hands down to your side, and I’m going to call out an arm, so if I say left, you’re going to take your left arm… This is the tip of your finger. This is the tip of your finger and this is the pad of your finger. OK? This is the difference. I want you to take the tip of your finger, the tip and touch the tip of your nose.

Go ahead and tilt your head back and close your eyes. Left. Right. Left. Right. Right. Left. Good. You follow me.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  And finally, the officer asks Dakarai to incriminate himself, requiring that he assess his own drunkenness even though it appears he has passed every single test thrown at him. Just listen.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  On a scale of zero to five, as far as five being unsafe to operate a motor vehicles, the most drunk and high you’ve ever been, and then zero being sober, where are you at right now?

Dakarai Larriett:  I don’t know. Is that relevant? I really don’t want to talk about —

Officer Kanyuh:  It is relevant. But if you don’t want to answer it, I don’t care.

Dakarai Larriett:  I have not had any alcohol.

Officer Kanyuh:  Not had any alcohol.

Dakarai Larriett:  I have not.

Officer Kanyuh:  OK. Now how about marijuana? Did you have had that?

Dakarai Larriett:  Excuse me?

Officer Kanyuh:  Marijuana?

Dakarai Larriett:  I’m sorry, I didn’t understand. What did you say?

Officer Kanyuh:  I said how about marijuana?

Dakarai Larriett:  No.

Officer Kanyuh:  No marijuana? No.

Dakarai Larriett:  OK. You want to hang out right here for me?

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now, apparently the officer has already reached his conclusion about Dakarai’s condition. You can listen here as he discusses it with another trooper who just arrived on the scene. It’s also a rare glimpse into how officers interpret a field sobriety test. Even if, for all intents and purposes, you passed, the point is it seems that no one passes.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  Booze and marijuana. His eyelids fluttered worse than that guy’s.

Officer Okaiye:  He’s got neck pulsation too.

Officer Kanyuh:  He had numerous clues on the walk and turn like crazy

Officer Okaiye:  I didn’t catch the standard, but you said walk and turn one leg stand and all that?

Officer Kanyuh:  One leg stand was the wobbles, one out of four, Romberg was 23 seconds, fly with flutter, sways. Finger to nose, terrible.

Officer Okaiye:  What’s all that? Romberg?

Officer Kanyuh:  99 to 81, he stopped at 89. So even his mental, short-term memory. He’s going to refuse and then search warrant, but…

Officer Okaiye:  He’s showing?

Officer Kanyuh:  In the driving.

Officer Okaiye:  What do you think? You think is just number [inaudible]?

Officer Kanyuh:  I think he’s got a medication he’s not telling…

Officer Okaiye:  He’s got medication and I’m guessing it’s a medication for… He may be… I think he’s got a medication for that. And with that would be consuming substances like THC, marijuana, alcohol, whatever. You know what that does.

Officer Kanyuh:  Yeah.

Officer Okaiye:  Explaining what you’re seeing.

Officer Kanyuh:  His driving behavior, I saw lack of smooth pursuit, but he wasn’t very good at following my finger.

Officer Okaiye:  Lack of smooth, and divided attention, abilities affected. Whenever you speak with him, he’s looking away and moving his head, so I think it’s a combination of THC for sure. I didn’t really evaluate him, but you can definitely see impairment from the THC. And then I think in his medications, describing medications affecting it, too. He [inaudible] performing [inaudible].

Officer Kanyuh:  I’m going to take him.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  But let me play some audio for you here that brought to Dakarai a lot of concern. Apparently at roughly 3:25, officer Kanyuh can be seen on body cam rifling through the trunk of his squad car for about two minutes, and then the video goes dark. During those moments. Officer Okaiye seems to say, “Drugs?” And Officer Kanyuh responds, “I don’t think I have any, I had a stash in here somewhere, but I don’t know where it’s at.”

But you take a listen and judge for yourself.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  [Rustling] I don’t think I have any.

Officer Okaiye:  [Inaudible] in the box.

Officer Kanyuh:  Yeah, I had a stash in here somewhere. I don’t even know where it’s at. [Inaudible] Don’t know why he thought [crosstalk], but yeah, I’m assuming weed and alcohol.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now, I am unfamiliar with any part of a field sobriety test where an officer needs to search for a stash in his own patrol car, but perhaps Michigan State troopers have a unique investigative technique.

And I do understand, as I said before, that drunk driving is incredibly destructive, but it’s equally pernicious to accuse someone of it who’s ostensibly not guilty and perhaps even worse is to fabricate a crime to make the innocent guilty. Remember, our system is designed to protect the innocent, and yet those safeguards fail as you watch what the officer does next when he says, “I’m going to take him.”

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Kanyuh:  Is it Dakarai? Am I saying that wrong?

Dakarai Larriett:  It’s Dakarai.

Officer Kanyuh:  Darkarai, I told you the reason for the stop was there’s two red lights. OK? I know they’re flashing, but that’s still, you have to treat it like a stop sign at nighttime. At midnight the lights turn from red to flashing. Flashing red still means stop.

I walk up to the car and I can smell alcohol, whether it’s you or your passenger, that’s why I asked the question, have you been drinking? To which you responded it was two hours ago, and then you denied drinking alcohol.

Dakarai Larriett:  Actually what you stated was, was it at least two hours? Something like that. You kind of inferred something, but no, I’ve not been drinking.

Officer Kanyuh:  Well, I didn’t mean to give you a leading question.

Dakarai Larriett:  No, but to be clear, I have not been drinking.

Officer Kanyuh:  You haven’t had any alcohol?

Dakarai Larriett:  I did stop. Correct. And I did stop at each of those lights.

Officer Kanyuh:  I do have it on camera.

Dakarai Larriett:  OK.

Officer Kanyuh:  So it is recorded.

Dakarai Larriett:  All right.

Officer Kanyuh:  Along with all my sobriety evaluations, which have led me to determine you are under the influence and driving. So now I have to bring you in for a blood draw, and then you have to sit a detox window. I can’t let you operate safely, because I don’t believe that you can.

Dakarai Larriett:  Please explain to me what test I failed.

Officer Kanyuh:  Well, they’re not pass or fail, OK? But I’m noticing several signs of divided attention, not being able to focus on the instructions as I’ve given them.

Dakarai Larriett:  Well, I’m very tired.

Officer Kanyuh:  And then fine motor skills being impaired, such as not being able to touch the heel to toe, the rigid body movements, you have sway, and on and on and on. I’ll type up a whole, probably be an eight-page report on this.

And then here’s the deal, if you’re right and there’s nothing in your body, everything gets thrown out.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  He said, if I’m wrong. Well, that’s an awfully big if. And you will soon learn what happened when Dakarai was tested when we speak to him. And what we showed was just the beginning of the way that Dakarai’s rights and body were violated by these troopers, and he will share what happened to him in jail.

But first, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been looking into the case and going through the documents to report back to us. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis:  Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:  So, Stephen, what were the results of the blood test? Was the officer wrong?

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, it turns out the officer was absolutely wrong. The blood test showed no sign of any alcohol or anything else. So really it was a completely negative and, actually, inaccurate assessment of Dakarai’s state at that time. And so really it shows how flawed these systems are for evaluating people. And so yeah, absolutely nothing, zero, negative, although it took five months to find out.

Taya Graham:  Can you discuss some of the questions surrounding the field sobriety tests and what concerns it raises in these types of cases?

Stephen Janis:  Well, I think one of the concerns it raises is pretty simple. You have something masquerading as science that isn’t as scientific as it seems.

If you look at the studies, they were controlled environments that aren’t similar to what happens when you’re out in the field, and they’re also highly inaccurate, like showing inaccuracy rates of sometimes up to 35%. So I think it’s very, very, very critical to look at these with a cautious eye and not be so willing to embrace an officer’s interpretation of some very subjective tests and say, well that person is drunk.

Taya Graham:  Stephen, you also researched a strange statement the officer made, which is that he had over 800 hours of field sobriety training.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Okaiye:  Well, like I said, we’re trained in standardized field sobriety evaluations. We’ve had over 800 hours that, and let’s say he’s wrong, let’s say I’m wrong, let’s say that you are completely fine. In our professional opinion, through our training experience, we don’t believe you can operate their motor vehicle safely. So it’s our job as we swore to take an oath to make sure that you get home and everybody else gets home safe. We’re not going to chance it.

What we’re going to have to do is we’ll allow you to park your vehicle, let your friend park your vehicle, whatever, we’re not trying to cost you the money, but we do have to take you to hospital, make sure you’re OK, because the substance we believe you’re taking with your medication, and then get the blood draw done. After blood draw is done, you’ll be detoxed and be free to go. There’s no added charges, nothing like that.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  We researched the updated Michigan field sobriety test. Does that number sound right to you?

Stephen Janis:  Taya, it’s really interesting. What’s required right now is 24 hours of training for officers, including field training and some classwork, so 800 hours seems highly excessive. The guy really is doing a lot of time in the classroom. I don’t know if that really measures up, or if we can say that’s actually accurate. But right now the standard is much, much lower, and so I think questions remain about this entire arrest.

Taya Graham:  So do you have any insight into why these field tests occur at all? I, Wouldn’t it be easier just to do a breath or urine or blood test and just let the science speak for itself?

Stephen Janis:  Well, I think that’s the big, big question. I know officers need tools to evaluate people, and they need tools to come up with probable cause. But we’ve watched so many of these where there’s so many questions, and people really seem to pass them on every ostensible measure, and yet they still end up being arrested. So I think there needs to be a full and thorough evaluation of this process to make sure it’s really generating the results that are helpful in the sense that you’re arresting drunk drivers, but not innocent people, Taya.

Taya Graham:  And now to learn what happened after he was detained, the humiliation he endured at the hands of police, and the consequences for him since, I’m joined by Dakarai Larriett.

Dakarai, thank you so much for joining me.

Dakarai Larriett:  Thank you so much for having me.

Taya Graham:  So tell me how this begins. Where were you headed before you were pulled over?

Dakarai Larriett:  Thanks for asking. So I was just dropping a friend off at his home.

Taya Graham:  When you were pulled over, how did the officer approach you? Did he describe why you were pulled over?

Dakarai Larriett:  So when he pulled me over, he mentioned that he believed I ran some blinking red lights a couple of miles away.

Taya Graham:  So the officer put you through a sobriety test. Can you describe what that was like for you?

Dakarai Larriett:  Well, it’s funny, I used to be a ballet dancer, and studied at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and the way he was describing all of the steps, I thought to myself, is this a dance routine?

It started out initially as an inspection of my eyes and my ability to follow his finger, I believe. And from there it became standing in one place, counting, I guess determining my perception of time and space, and a very complex heel-toe routine. I was asked, do I know the alphabet? And from there I had to do A through R. I did a number countdown.

And that was just with Officer Kanyuh. Officer Okaiye also inspected me and asked a number of different questions about my ability to drive.

Taya Graham:  I’ve tested myself and my friends stone-cold sober with sobriety tests and found them difficult. What was going through your mind during this extensive test?

Dakarai Larriett:  So, I was wearing pajamas. It was 3:00 AM. I planned to drop my buddy off and then head right back to the house and go to sleep. So I was not dressed for the weather. We have to remember this was Michigan on April 10. It’s still winter weather, and I was shivering. I was in this dark alley. It was scary. I thought I was about to be murdered, frankly.

So imagine having to do those tests, and you’re thinking this is your last moment on this planet. I was thinking of my family. I had been in Cleveland, Ohio, earlier that day for the solar eclipse, and spent some time with my sister, and it just really hit me that that might’ve been my last time seeing her or any of my family members. And I thought about my dog…

Taya Graham:  I’m so sorry.

Dakarai Larriett:  Sorry.

Taya Graham:  I know it’s traumatizing.

Dakarai Larriett:  My dog was in daycare because I was in Cleveland for the weekend for the eclipse. and I was just thinking, what if my dog was at home by himself all this time and something happened to him? He’s a nearly thirteen-year-old dog, he’s a senior dog. I’m sorry.

Taya Graham:  Trooper Kanyuh said you were wobbling excessively, that you fluttered and swayed during the one leg stand, and that your walk and turn were terrible, and that there were numerous clues that you were intoxicated. In truth, it’s a blessing to have the body camera, because it shows that you held your leg in the exact position he wanted for 26 seconds, on one foot, with not a single error.

When you listen to the body camera, does it shock you to hear what the officer was saying and how he mischaracterized what happened?

Dakarai Larriett:  I guess the other interesting thing for me, and I guess surprise, if you will, was what was happening to my friend in the passenger seat. So, that is not in the video that has gone public, and I have not shared that body cam video because it is obviously altered. All the videos are altered.

In fact, I made my freedom of Information Act request two, three days after this incident. It took them five months to give me video, and there are missing chunks in the video. The audio between the officers even when they’re standing next to each other is inconsistent, so it sounds like it was dubbed. And there are sections that are completely missing audio. You can tell they were obsessed with the car, nice car.

It was just humiliation. And my survival mechanism was, Dakarai, you’re not going to win this battle in a dark alley at 3:00 AM with two cops. You will not. Be quiet, comply. You can win the war because you are going to have all the evidence on your side. You’re sober, you don’t use drugs. All the evidence is going to support your side of the story.

And that’s why I was so heartbroken when I heard the word “drugs” uttered by Okaiye because then I thought, well you can’t even win when you’re doing the right thing. If they had just found the stash, I would still be in jail and my life would be ruined.

Taya Graham:  So if I understand correctly, you were pressured into a blood draw at the hospital. It was the best thing, considering that you had no drugs in your system, but still you were pressured into it.

Dakarai Larriett:  Yes, I was absolutely pressured to do the blood draw.

And how did I arrive at the decision to do it? Well, I was told that I would get six points on my license and a suspension if I did not comply. But I thought it was so odd that they wouldn’t just give me a breathalyzer, like something objective besides a dance routine.

Taya Graham:  The way the officers treated you, I thought, was very demeaning. And I hate to bring this up, but you were accused of swallowing drugs and you were made to go to the bathroom in front of Trooper Kanyuh. This officer appeared very polite on the early body camera, but forcing you to do this is violating.

Dakarai Larriett:  Going into the jail, it’s a typical booking process as one was seen on TV — Because I’ve never been through this process before, ever, never been stopped like this. But name, all my identifying factors, et cetera, and fingerprints. All that is collected.

And then they put me in this machine that looks like something from the TSA. And they are scanning me, I presume for any type of contraband. And there is a novice that is running the machine, and very unclear on how to operate it. And they identify what they called an anomaly. And from there on throughout the night I am being sent through this machine, I presume x-rays, again, and again, and again. So I’m not even really lodged, if you will, in the jail. I go to the cell, I come back, I go to the cell, I come back.

Finally, they brought on a technician that seemed like she actually knew what she was doing. She looks at it and she goes, oh, those are gas bubbles. In the midst of all of this going on, Kanyuh goes, that looks like a bag of drugs! Confess now or you’re going to face a trafficking charge, too! At some point I’m going back and forth, back and forth to the cell, and I asked if I could use the restroom.

Kanyuh comes behind me and says that’s where I need to go. It’s just this open toilet that anyone in the room can see. And he yells, don’t flush! It was so dehumanizing.

Taya Graham:  It seems to me the officer is very performative in his behavior of being a good guy and a professional on camera, but in the jail he really does change.

Dakarai Larriett:  A couple of follow-ups on that.

So, when he was playing the good guy, good cop, and Okaiye obviously tried to do it as well, I just want to go back to something you said. They offered to park my car for me. And I was discussing this with the passenger this morning, and we both just like light bulb moment realized that would’ve been the opportunity to plant.

Taya Graham:  So something that concerns me is that for about two minutes the officer’s really been searching through his patrol car, and then he says to another officer that you seem confused, and then he says he’s trying to find his stash. What do you think this means?

Dakarai Larriett:  It’s 100% drugs. And it’s all written there in very plain, easy-to-understand language, not even coded. And you really have to think about not only do we have that, which is mind-boggling, but the context of it all.

So the context is he spent two minutes digging through his cop car, the backseat, then he moved to the trunk. Whatever he was looking for, he wanted it badly. Okaiye comes around to the back of the car probably trying to figure out what’s going on with this guy. Because think about it, I’ve been standing in the cold waiting after the sobriety test while he’s fumbling around in the car.

So Okaiye comes around to see what’s going on. He says “drugs”. Kanyuh responds, “I don’t think I have any, I knew I had a stash in here.” So he connects drugs to stash.

Then there’s a little bit of mumbling, but listen to it intently. They then basically make a comment to each other that I’m going to refuse anyway, meaning I would refuse an opportunity for them to get in my car, to search my car, to park my car, and that’s when they ultimately decide, we’ll just charge him on weed and alcohol.

Taya Graham:  Did their dash camera show that you allegedly ran through this flashing red light? You calmly told them you committed no moving violations. Can you tell me what the dash camera actually showed?

Dakarai Larriett:  I believe the light they’re referring to was completely green, so that one was thrown out. And then the light that they alleged that I did not stop at, the one that actually was red, I pulled to, I paused, I put my signal on and I turned.

Taya Graham:  I read that it took over five months for you to receive your negative drug and alcohol results. Is that correct?

Dakarai Larriett:  At the hospital, I immediately tested negative for alcohol. And because the hospital was connected to my own healthcare plan, I managed to get that report in real time and pulled it for myself when I got home that afternoon. And then, of course, they confirmed the result to me when I asked at the jail.

Now in terms of getting the drug test results and Michigan State Police’s version of the alcohol test results, that did not happen until the very end of September. But if you look at the timeline in the request for testing, they knew by middle of April that everything was negative, and it seems like they continued to test, and test, and test. I don’t know if that’s a standard procedure or they were just incredulous that I was negative.

Taya Graham:  Can you tell me what you went through during that time, that five months waiting to be proven fully innocent? It must have been incredibly stressful.

Dakarai Larriett:  My first responsibility was to confirm that there was not a criminal matter at all against me. And the case actually was thrown out within a week, but they refused to give me a receipt or confirmation or anything like that until I received that formal test. But I still haven’t received anything that says that the case is 100% closed. I have not.

So two-and-a-half months I did not have a plastic driver’s license card, couldn’t rent a car. I traveled extensively. And I would contact the sergeant, who I believed to be the bosses of the two troopers, almost weekly. Like, hey, what’s going on? Did you guys get the results? This is really inconveniencing my life. And I would get answers that were very opaque, like, we’re still working on your test, which really confused me and worried me that there was some tampering happening.

Taya Graham:  What do you want as the result of sharing your experience? What do you hope that outcome will be?

Dakarai Larriett:  I made a commitment that when I was mistreated I would use my resources, my privilege, to help those behind me. And I could have easily just walked away and took my driver’s license and been fine. But I decided I have got to expose this, I’ve got to get these troopers off the streets, and I’ve already reached out to some major, major law firms and encouraged them to look into what’s going on in Southwest Michigan.

I am already protected. I’m not under any criminal investigation, but when I was in that jail, I knew that there were innocent people in there.

Taya Graham:  If you could speak directly to the troopers who arrested and harassed you, what would you want to say to them? What would you want to tell them if you knew they were listening to you right now?

Dakarai Larriett:  I would want them to know that I’m a person. I’m a human being. People care about me. Think about that. Think about what you’re supposed to be doing in your job. You’re supposed to be taking care of people, protecting, not inventing crimes.

Taya Graham:  Now, I want to reiterate what I said at the beginning of the show: drunk driving is a dangerous and destructive crime. And I, for one, understand why police departments and the public emphasize efforts to thwart it. Drunk driving deaths account for roughly one third of all traffic fatalities every year. Roughly 11,000 died in 2023 due to people driving while intoxicated.

But also, I think that what we witnessed in the video of Dakarai’s arrest shows the pitfalls of abandoning common sense and sound science as we try to prevent it — Or more precisely what happens when a zeal to address a problem with cops and cuffs overwhelms common sense and the nuance that comes with it.

This is certainly not the only false DUI arrest we have covered. There were the bogus charges against a Dallas firefighter, Thomas C., who was forced to retire from his lifelong job as a first responder when officers used another specious field sobriety test to accuse him of driving under the influence because he freely admitted to using his doctor-prescribed Adderall. It took him two years to get his test results, which, although they were negative or too late to save his job.

Or we shared the story of Harris Elias of Colorado, a professional pilot who was pulled over, and again, thanks to a biased interpretation of a field sobriety test, ended up with false DUI charges, charges that took months to clear, that threatened his ability to do his job, and later resulted in a major civil rights lawsuit.

All of these share some common problems: Cops are overly eager to bring DUI charges, and because of that, ignoring the evidence that is contrary to their opinions. Add to that a very subjective and flawed field sobriety test, a diagnostic process that seems easily susceptible to the concept of confirmation bias, where the officer administering the test already believes the subject is intoxicated, and thus interprets the results to confirm what he already believes no matter how the person performs.

And yes, there are imperatives that often lead to the incarceration of the innocent. Well-intentioned organizations like MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, run DUI ticket competitions that frequently encourage officers to hand out DUIs in order to receive grants, awards, public acclaim, and promotions. Even the most wholesome goals can be warped when law enforcement is incentivized by quotas and financial rewards.

But I believe something else lies deeper at the very root of these bogus arrests we’ve covered, something more profound than just an officer making a bad decision, or not maintaining an open mind about how to enforce the law. I believe that flawed field sobriety tests are just like the other unjust forms of governance that were originally designed to solve a problem, but in the end seem only to perpetuate them. So what do I mean?

Well, Stephen and I have spent a great deal of time reporting across the country on a variety of issues, and that includes our hometown of Baltimore, where we spent five years documenting the use of tax breaks to spur development.

As you may or may not know, Baltimore is a city beset by poverty and housing segregation that has struggled to stem population loss. It’s often deemed one of the most violent cities in America, and it has some of the highest concentrations of poverty, with thousands of abandoned homes — And, to top it all off, the highest property tax rate in the state, almost double the surrounding counties.

Put simply, much of Baltimore is part of America’s great inequality machine, incapable of producing enough affordable housing or reasonably priced healthcare for all of us while increasing the amount of wealth concentrated among the top 1%. A symbol, in many ways, for how our current system consistently fails to address the needs of the many. And to my point about our flawed system for catching drunk drivers, Baltimore’s response has been equally flawed in addressing the root problem that afflicts our community.

As we outlined in our documentary Tax Broke, one of the city’s primary solutions to population loss has been to award huge tax breaks to these developers. These carve-outs have allowed the wealthiest suburban builders to avoid paying the high rate that the city’s working class is regularly subjected to.

And this is no pittance. Some estimate the city has given away billions in future revenues in order to build luxury developments that, ironically, do not include affordable housing. Instead, future tax revenue that should help pay for critical services and investment in the city’s future has been handed over to the already wealthy.

Now of course, you’re probably asking at this point, Taya, what are you talking about? How are tax breaks for development related to unfounded DUI arrests? What on earth are the commonalities between a bad development strategy and an overeager DUI cop? Well, hear me out.

Here’s where it all ties together, and I will even give it a title: America is the Land of the Perverse Incentive. In other words, our country and its great neoliberal project have abandoned the idea that the government can do good and productive things. Instead, the elites have exchanged that idea for the false narrative that only incentives laden with cash can prompt real productive behavior.

In this land of perverse incentives, medical companies are incentivized to bill people for diseases that they do not have. As stated in this report by The Wall Street Journal that found billions of dollars spent on patients who did not have the underlying disease that the medical insurers submitted to the government.

In the land of perverse incentives, private equity firms take over stable companies and load them up with debt so they can pay themselves a dividend. Then, they fire staff and neglect investing in the firm itself, selling a carcass to Wall Street for the vultures.

In the land of perverse incentives, people make more money trading money than they do building things like affordable housing. In fact, Wall Street creates huge funds to purchase single-family homes across the country and then they jack up rents, so middle-class families are stuck without options.

And of course, in the land of perverse incentives, cops who make more DUI arrests are given awards, and departments that make more drunk driving stops are given more money, and thus we have the stories we reported before.

And finally, in the land of perverse incentives, one of the poorest cities in the country has doled out billions in tax breaks to wealthy developers who don’t need it. In fact, it’s so absurd that luxury condos on top of the Four Seasons hotel in Baltimore received millions in tax breaks for environmental mediation, even though the records we uncovered showed none was done, and that the condos in question were literally hundreds of feet above the ground where the non-existent pollution was actually supposed to be.

All of this is why we end up with sketchy DUI arrests based on shaky science, or a poor city that can’t build affordable housing but can fund wealthy developers to build luxury apartments. Why a city rocked with poverty is neglected, while a system that monetizes the sick so wealthy Wall Street investors can get rich overbilling them and pushing them into bankruptcy is called, ironically, health care.

It’s this thread that connects all the dots of the realities that often seem to contradict themselves. Why would the wealthiest country in the world not be able to deliver affordable medical care to all who need it? And why would one of the poorest cities in the country not be able to build affordable housing if it is, at the same time, capable of giving away a billion dollars of tax revenue to the ultra rich?

All of these questions are worth asking, because the outcomes are just so difficult to comprehend. Being sick should not be a prerequisite to bankruptcy. Being poor should not mean you pay higher taxes than someone who is unfathomably wealthy. Being sober, by having difficulty balancing on one leg, which was decidedly not the case with our guest, should not lead to an arrest charge and a shattered life.

These apparent destructive inadequacies of governance affect all of us. This inability to use the resources of the people to serve the people ensures that we all suffer. This type of incentivized mayhem that finds form in bad policing should make us all question the priority of those who hold and wield the power. It’s incumbent upon us to hold them accountable and remind them that they serve us, not the other way around.

I would like to thank my guest, Dakarai, for coming forward, courageously sharing his experience, and shining a light on this abuse of power. Thank you so much for speaking with us.

And, of course, I have to thank Intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research, and editing on this piece. Thank you, Stephen.

Stephen Janis:  Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:  And I want to thank mods of the show, Noli Dee and Lacey R. for their support. Thank you.

And a very special thanks to our Accountability Reports Patreons, we appreciate you, and I look forward to thanking each and every one of you personally in our next livestream, especially Patreon Associate Producers, John E.R., David K., Louis P., and our super friends, Shane B., Pineapple Girl, Chris R., Matter of Rights, and Angela True.

And I want you to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews or reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter @tayasbaltimore, and we might be able to investigate for you. And please like, share, and comment on our videos, it can actually help our guests, and you know I read your comments and I really appreciate them.

And of course, once again, we have to thank our corporate sponsor — Wait, that’s right, we don’t have a corporate sponsor. We don’t take corporate dollars, we don’t run ads, but we do have a Patreon, Accountability Reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. You know you never see an ad on this channel, and we’re never going to be corporately sponsored, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated.

My name is Taya Graham, and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please, be safe out there.

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.

As the 2024 presidential election enters its final month, a clear result has yet to materialize. Both parties are campaigning for undecided votes, and making some possibly unconventional choices along the way. Taya Graham reports from Baltimore and the suburbs of Lancaster, PA for The Real News, where conservatives and progressives alike are making a play for key swing voters.

Videography / Post-Production: Stephen Janis

Transcript

Taya Graham:  This is Taya Graham for The Real News Network in Baltimore City, Maryland. I’m standing in a parking lot in Baltimore where just last week the so-called Blacks for Trump bus appeared, hoping to change hearts and minds in a very blue state. It’s one of many efforts to sway the precious handful of undecided voters in an election that many say is too close to call.

So we went on the ground from Baltimore to Pennsylvania to document two radically different approaches to picking up votes in otherwise hostile territory.

As the election looms over a bitterly divided partisan landscape, parties on both sides are pushing to make gains in otherwise unfriendly territory. Last week, Black Republicans visited deep blue Baltimore city on a so-called More Money with Trump bus tour. While attendance was low, confidence was not.

Diante Johnson:  Baltimore is not an area that’s going conservative. The media has asked, why are we here? We can take Baltimore and with people like Kim Klacik, we will take Baltimore [crowd cheers].

Taya Graham:  Kimberly Klacik, candidate for the state’s second congressional district in Maryland, said her party was reaching out to Black voters. Her argument? Democrats take them for granted.

What exactly are we seeing here? I’m not with her, the Black voters for Trump. What is this bus?

Kim Klacik:  Yeah, so President Trump and of course VCF, they’re all in town today, just visiting areas like here, Morgan State University, just letting these students know that there is an option. You don’t have to vote for the leaning left Kamala, you don’t have to vote for this administration again. You can vote for change, which would be President Trump in this situation.

Speaker 1:  Challenge them on the, he’s a racist. What does that mean? Tell me, what do you mean? He’s a misogynist. What does that have to do about good policies, effective policies that work for our country?

Taya Graham:  Others said conservative ideas appeal to Black voters, even though they vote disproportionately Democrat.

Speaker 2:  We stopped here in front of a grocery store in a targeted community because we know that inflation is high. We know that people are struggling to put food on the table for their families.

Taya Graham:  The stakes are unusually high in Maryland. There, a former popular Republican governor, Larry Hogan, is running for a Senate seat that has been in Democratic hands for decades. His opponent, former Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, has been touting Hogan’s ties to Trump, but polls show the race is tight.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, a different approach. At a community center, Lancaster Stands Up is organizing in the critical swing state that most agree could decide the presidential election. The nonpartisan group focuses on issues supporting candidates that back their policies. That means affordable housing, a living wage, and reproductive freedom.

Lindsay:  So we’re a nonpartisan organization. So our goal is really to just support candidates both locally and on the national level that represent our values. So our members vote on local candidates, and then once we endorse them, we like to offer support through things like canvassing, phone banking, hosting meet and greets, things like that.

David Miller-Glick:  We definitely do skew more towards Democrat than Republican. We tend to have a lot of problems with Republicans on labor rights and how they don’t really support workers.

Speaker 3:  So we are running IE phones for Harris and Wallace because originally, we weren’t going to do anything when Biden was going to be this presidential candidate. But now that it’s Harris, we feel like she’s someone that we’ll be able to organize with and potentially work with in DC.

Taya Graham:  Today, they were preparing people for door knocking, hoping that one-on-one encounters can change minds.

But just down the road in Lititz, a divided town shows changing minds won’t be easy.

Speaker 4:  It’s a very polarizing time right now.

Taya Graham:  Passions were so high that one resident we spoke to says he avoids talking about politics altogether.

Speaker 4:  If you want to stay friendly with people, you don’t talk about politics. That’s the bottom line. Nobody’s getting convinced, and that includes my family. I don’t agree with my kids.

Taya Graham:  Nevertheless, the people who did want to talk on the record about their choices were adamant.

May I ask who you’re voting for?

Speaker 5:  Kamala Harris, and I just don’t like his politics and do not like what he would like to see, which is the United States to become a dictatorship.

Taya Graham:  Phyllis, can you tell me if you’ve decided that you’re going to vote?

Phyllis:  Yes, I have decided. Trump.

Taya Graham:  Can you share with me what policies have inspired you to, if there’s anything in particular that really stands out to you as why you’re voting for him, I assume for the second time?

Phyllis:  Just overall, because I don’t like who’s running against him.

Taya Graham:  Is it the policies or the person you don’t like?

Phyllis:  Policies and the person.

Taya Graham:  This is Taya Graham and Stephen Janis for The Real News Network, election coverage 2024.

Tuesday night’s VP debate took place in the context of multiple overlapping crises: Iranian missiles raining down on Tel Aviv, intensifying the threat of a regional war; a catastrophic hurricane ripping through Appalachia; a massive explosion at a biolab in the Atlanta metro area; a rising tide of neo-fascist anti-immigrant sentiment fueled by the Trump campaign and rightwing media. The Real News staff and friends of the outlet recap Tuesday night’s debate and discuss what it revealed about the political crisis Americans are facing.

Studio: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  Welcome, everyone, to The Real News Network podcast. It is 11:39 PM on Tuesday, Oct. 1. My name is Maximilian Alvarez, I’m the editor-in-chief here, as y’all may know.

And I am sitting here at The Real News studio after watching the first and only vice presidential debate before the general elections in November, next month.

And I’m sitting here with some of my Real News colleagues and friends, and we thought it would be prudent for us to stay up a little late, give our impressions and analysis of what we just watched. And yeah, we’ve got a lot of other work to get to, a lot of other stories to cover, but, of course, we know that a lot of our audience was watching this debate as well and want to know what we think about it.

Why don’t we go around the table and introduce ourselves and give our general impressions of the vice presidential debate? How do you feel it compared to the presidential debate that we all watched here at The Real News studio last month and responded to as well? Big takeaways, things that you were expecting but didn’t see. And then, yeah, we can maybe dig into a few more specific points in the second turn around the table.

Taya Graham:  Hi, my name is Taya Graham. I’m the host of the Police Accountability Report with Stephen Janis. I am the criminal justice reporter here in Baltimore City, Maryland.

And something that I took away from the debate is how assiduously they avoided the topic of race. Now, something I have to say as a Black woman is that I’ve been disappointed that at no point I have been able to celebrate the fact that we have the first Black woman running for president who actually has a chance to accomplish that incredible office. At no point have I been able to savor that.

In acknowledging the fact that we have a Black woman who also has Asian heritage approaching this office, I couldn’t help but note how much Vance and Walz avoided broaching that topic — Especially when it came to the demonization of immigrants in Springfield, which they just barely were able to touch on.

They couldn’t even mention the fact that one of the oldest blood libels possible of saying that immigrants were eating dogs and cats, that they were poisoning our community, bringing in STDs, bringing in AIDS, none of these things were broached. Instead, a very civil discourse was held.

And I do think for the majority of the American public, this, perhaps, was appropriate, but I do have to say, on some level, I was disappointed that the discourse stayed as civil as it did because there were many points where Walz could have dug in his heels much deeper. And I would just like to highlight a few of them.

In relation to women’s rights, Kamala Harris, who might be our first female president, in relation to abortion rights, the idea that it should be left state to state. Just in California, Ms. Nusslock, a woman who wanted to carry her twins to term, who went to St. Joseph’s Hospital because, at 15 weeks pregnant, she was going to lose those children, was given a terrible option: To spend $40,000 in an ambulance to take her to another hospital to get the care she needed or drive five hours on a ride in which she was told by those same doctors at St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital she would die on that ride to try to save herself at that next hospital.

Leaving abortion rights state to state does not protect women. The idea that we need a woman in office and a person who supports women’s rights is so strong. It is so important. It cannot be underemphasized.

And so my takeaway is actually how important race and gender is to this race and the fact that, I’m sorry to say it, but both white men on stage assiduously ignored it. I understand that is important for the majority of the American audience, but to ignore it is to ignore the necessities of the majority of Americans.

Stephen Janis:  My name is Stephen Janis. I’m the co-host of Police Accountability Report with Taya. And what was really interesting to me tonight was we had observed J.D. Vance when we covered the Republican National Convention, and I had always thought that the positioning of Vance was to make fascism more appealing to the American public. He was the guy who was going to wash it down and make it a little less, let’s say, offensive.

And I honestly think that J.D. Vance achieved that, and for the first time I saw him as that stalwart for the fascist movement that is MAGA for Project 2025.

He watered it… I don’t know how you all reacted when he said that Trump saved Obamacare. That was just an amazing twist of… And on many other issues, he soft-pedaled it. But I still think the fever is there, he was just very, very good at being presentable in a way that made fascism seem less scary.

And that’s what I always thought he was going to be. That’s why I thought they put him in that position, because MAGA has this angry, horrible edge, and he softens it. And he did achieve that tonight.

I’m not saying he won the debate. I thought it was pretty equal. And, as Taya said, it was civil, so there weren’t any really true gotcha moments except for the one about Vice President Mike Pence not being here tonight because he refused to overturn the election.

But in general, I thought that they have their guy now, they have the Antichrist ready to step forward when Trump… Because Trump could easily die in office or whatever, but he seems very fit for the role.

Ryan Harvey:  Hey, everybody. This is Ryan Harvey. I’m not a Real News staff, but I am friend and family, and I’m here in Baltimore so I popped in for this debate.

Look, I think one of my main takeaways is neither of these people is going to be the president. That’s an important thing to remember. It did feel like we were at the adult table versus the presidential debates. There was a lot more substance. Both, I think, were fairly sharp in presenting whatever their opinions or fake opinions or whatever it may be.

I think one of my big takeaways, I know that Vance, he’s the jobs guy. He’s the jobs and the economy guy who’s supposed to relate to regular people. Kamala Harris has a real weakness there, and it showed in the polls. Walz, I think, did a good job of cutting through to that.

If you just watched this debate and didn’t watch the others, you would get a sense that there is a crisis — And there is a crisis. We have a political crisis. We have a bit of an economic crisis in this country. I think that was a very important thing.

And there’s a bunch of things we’ll talk about, but one thing I think that’s interesting is even when they were debating and sometimes even agreeing on certain bold, very different economic policies involving, for instance, industrial policy, the federal government intervening in capitalism to make sure that people are being taken care of, even when Vance, his solutions, many of them are terrible and extremely racist and xenophobic, both of them are representing something that we’ve been feeling, which is there has been a break with neoliberalism and the right — And dare I say, the left — But the Democrats, but also the left are searching for actual policies that will help us get away from that.

And that was interesting. Some of it, of course, was just stuff that was couched in rhetoric, but underneath it was actually just neoliberalism.

But there was still some stuff in there that I think is worth identifying, that we really are at that crisis moment where this is not working even for Americans anymore. I think that’s a big, interesting point.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that’s all beautifully and powerfully put. And just two main thoughts for me in response to what y’all said and things that stood out to me as I was watching. This is the most civil debate that I can recall watching during a presidential campaign in quite some time.

And I imagine once we turned off the mainstream news channels whose coverage we were watching and we were seeing what the pundits were responding and what they were highlighting from the debate, but that civility factor definitely seemed to really stand out to people and is something that I think a lot of people genuinely crave.

The incivility and the hostility and the division and the yelling and bravado of the last debate, there’s an appeal there, but it’s also very emotionally exhausting for people. And we’re already living in very exhausting times.

That civility signaled a victory in a number of senses, and a loss in others. And I think the elephant in the room is just that the longer the debate went and the more aware I became of how much Vance and Walz were striving to cultivate that sense of civility and to make these gestures of civility towards one another and to really build into their message that they are bipartisan and get things done and they want to get people back to that, the more cognizant I became of how much they were both vying for that pedestal, who’s the most civil person, the more unsettled I became thinking about all the uncivil, inhumane, violent realities that are going on simultaneously that we’re covering here at The Real News Network on Police Accountability Report, on Working People.

Just at the Port of Baltimore today with the Longshore workers on strike. And then as I’m driving home, I see the news from other staff that Iran is responding with missiles into Israel. The elephant in the room, obviously, is that the triumph of civility in this debate is also eerily contrasted with a lot of really horrifying realities that we need to confront.

Stephen Janis:  I wanted to ask you a question.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Please.

Stephen Janis:  Because I think what you said was really smart. But doesn’t that, in a sense, give you the feeling why Trump is appealing to people? Because that civility is so at odds with the violent reality that this type of civil established government, trust in institutions, they talked about experts, does that at all give you the sense of why a working-class guy sitting at home with his beer would say, fuck this. I want Donald Trump because these two people are sitting up here while I can’t pay my rent?

Because that’s what you invoke here, and I think it’s interesting. I was just wondering what you thought about that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, I think it’s a really incredible question. And I would say I definitely think so. And I’ve lived it. When you asked that question, my mind immediately went to a story I’ve told on The Real News before of sitting on the couch of my childhood home in California 12 years ago, in a house that we would soon lose in the wake of the recession, after I’d just gotten home from a 13-hour warehouse shift, watching cable news with my parents and hearing them talk about, in the most civil terms, how the economy was coming back.

How it was so clear that the terms of the national discourse were being curated to keep families like mine and realities like ours out of view so as not to corrupt this falsely maintained civility at the expense of silencing the evidence to the contrary.

And I think that so many working people in this country feel deep inside of them this primal scream because they have so few outlets to let that out, or they feel like it would be so unheard by the people in power.

But I think we’re all feeling that cosmic scream to some extent, and Trump gives people a megaphone to scream into. He does provide that cathartic relief for these emotions that build up in all of us and that fester.

And the more that the people in power don’t hear them, I think, the more that that pain can turn into anger, and that anger can turn into vengeance and so many other things if gone unaddressed.

So I do think that it contributes a lot to the appeal of Trump, that powers that fabricated need to maintain this aura of civility at the expense of acknowledging the reality in front of all of us, which… Anyway, but we can talk more about that later.

But the last point on that is just that I think that, in that regard, this was a big victory for Vance-Trump ticket because, by coming out looking civil at all, and by coming out really seeming like an equally reasonable choice for a well-meaning person who just has a difference of opinion, that was what Vance accomplished for people who may be still undecided but will probably want to vote for Trump, but mainly their big thing is they just don’t want to feel bad or embarrassed or shamed about it.

That sheen of civility that we saw in the manicured spectacle of this debate and why I think it was such a victory for Vance, and thus for Trump, was that it provided that sheen of respectability and bipartisanship that can allow anyone who believes in what Trump and his movement are all about but doesn’t want to deal with the social consequences and pressures of that. It gave them something to point to.

Ryan Harvey:  Well, something that we were talking about before we started recording is that this debate, and really this entire election cycle — And I’m 40, so I’m the same age as J.D. Vance, which is wild to think about. I don’t know what it’s like in every presidential cycle, but this presidential cycle feels like it’s solely about a few swing states and about a small percentage of voters in a few swing states. All of the talking points in the messaging are pointed in that direction.

And I think to your point, and I think I agree with it, I think Vance came out as the civil face of the Trump ticket and clearly had an agenda. And maybe that’s also just what he does well in general, to try to come out as looking normal and sensible.

But also, one of the Harris campaign’s biggest flaws, according to the polls, has been a failure to connect with people on the bread and butter jobs, economy issues. Every poll has shown that she is trailing Trump when it comes to the economy. People don’t trust her on the economy.

I think if those folks were tuning into this, I would assume they would feel a little more secure hearing from somebody like Walz who not only has a much more relatable story and a much more relatable way of speaking about these things, I think he’s more able to articulate some of the economic policies.

But he also is from a state that, apparently, I didn’t know this until tonight, seems to be number one in all of the key talking points that they bring up, whether it’s healthcare, a bunch of stuff around the economy. And so it could be that Vance did come out, that the Trump campaign is going to benefit from this debate in the way you just described, but it could also even out because I think the Harris campaign could also make some traction with some of those folks. Yeah, that’s all I was going to add there.

Taya Graham:  Well, I think you made a great point, both of you, in the way that Vance did a great job in creating a veneer to protect against the violence that has been coming from former President Trump’s mouth.

Remember just the other day, he was essentially evoking a version of the purge but for law enforcement, maybe for a day, maybe for an hour, in order to give people notice in our community. As if our law enforcement officers need any other, let’s say, constraints removed from their current actions, considering we have roughly 1,000 people a year killed at the hands of police — And only 1,000 that we know of because the police volunteer this information, so of course, we don’t know about the deaths that police choose not to report to the Uniform Crime Report of the FBI.

But in the relation of protecting and pushing back that violence that has been coming strongly from Trump, that’s one thing that Margot and Nora brought up. Did Joe Biden win? And J.D. Vance’s response was, well, there was censorship on Facebook.

And his response was a series of dodges protecting him from addressing what actually happened on Jan. 6, the death of the police officers, the violence that occurred, the destruction within the building, the fear that was created.

Instead of addressing that head-on, he pivoted towards some idea of conservatives being censored on social media platforms, which, of course, are corporate platforms with terms of service that can choose who they want to keep on and who they don’t have to. This isn’t some sort of genuine town square, these are corporations that can do as they choose.

He is pretending to look forward while not acknowledging that the former Vice President Pence, Trump suggested that he should be hanged for his treason. And when asked, would you do the same? Would you do what Trump asked? What Pence denied him, would you do? Instead, he chose to talk about Facebook.

So when it comes to dealing with the violence, Vance is doing his job. He’s covering for it, he’s giving us platitudes, he’s wearing his pink tie, and he’s doing his best to make Trump’s statements appear as actual policy.

Stephen Janis:  One thing that we talked about in the last debate podcast we did was whether or not the policies and the ability to discuss policies was getting through to voters.

And there was an interesting debate about tariffs and where they actually agreed, although they didn’t agree on experts, and you’re a person who knows a lot about this subject matter. And I was wondering if you thought that part of the debate would resonate with people, if they understand what’s going on, if it’s a topic that should be more front and center in this presidential election? Just curious about what you think about that.

Ryan Harvey:  Yeah, definitely. I honestly thought that that was going to be talked about a lot more, trade policy and tariffs and all of this. This is a very big deal.

Look, Trump put huge tariffs on China during his presidency that ended up really hitting the agricultural sector and farmers. China slapped retaliatory tariffs. Very strategic. They put tariffs on bourbon. They seemed to target tariffs, soybeans. They targeted tariffs on red states. And after all was said and done, folks in those states, farmers, still supported Trump because he gave them federal money. He put money in their pockets.

Tariffs are not a crazy idea. This is a really shameful thing that the Democrats have fallen into. When I came of age, I was politicized by the 1999 Seattle protests, one of the demands of the labor movement was tariffs. We want to have the right to use tariffs. Free trade takes away your right to use tariffs.

It doesn’t mean that tariffs are the answer; tariffs are a defensive measure. But neoliberalism is so deeply ingrained in our politics that tariffs have become this bad word, like, oh, that’s a barbaric thing to do. It’s ancient or whatever. No, it was what we did before neoliberalism became the dominant ideology and the dominant economic paradigm.

The Biden administration has kept all of Trump’s tariffs on China, and increased them, actually. But what they’ve done that’s different from Trump, Trump put tariffs on, and then he made all these weird false promises. I don’t say weird because it’s a Harris campaign talking point, I just said that organically.

I’m talking about Foxconn in Wisconsin where he was like, this is going to be the eighth wonder of the world. There’s going to be 16,000 jobs. And it was just some shady businessmen he made some weird agreement with. None of that stuff happened. The jobs didn’t materialize. The place is empty.

What the Biden administration did, and this is… Before Oct. 7, I was pleasantly surprised that the Biden administration was a lot more progressive than I thought they were going to be on election day.

Things like the Inflation Reduction Act, not a perfect policy, obviously. Full of problems, lot of places to fight on that, but we have industrial policy for the first time in a very long time in this country. We have to recognize that that is a gateway to much better policy. And there’s been other industrial policies as well.

Those are offensive. Those are proactive policies. I thought Vance was going to come on the attack more about those things, and I think there were missed opportunities. I do worry that framing tariffs as this extra tax on people is missing the fact that there’s a lot of… Tariffs are immediate, that immediate relief.

When Trump threatened John Deere with 200% tariffs if they shipped jobs to Mexico, I was like, damn. Democrats should be saying that, progressives should be. That’s our stuff. Punish corporations for seeking lower wages to exploit people.

I want Mexican workers to have good jobs too. That’s not why John Deere is going to Mexico. We know that. We should be supporting independent unions in Mexico to fight for their rights and their wages at work, but also we should be penalizing corporations for seeking exploitation.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and there’s so much more that I want us to dig into, but we don’t have time to really get into all the nuts and bolts here. And again, we just wanted this to be a reaction podcast, give some of our impressions, our analyses. Of course, Real News remains a 501(c)(3). We are not here to tell anybody how to vote, we are here to just try to provide the perspective and context that we have as people who cover this stuff day in, day out.

And in that vein, I wanted to ask if we could go back around the table one more time and just underline… I know that we had a bunch of bullet points, highlights, takeaways, dynamics that we saw in this debate that maybe we didn’t see in the last, or there are ways that we think that this could or could not have consequences for the next month before we actually head to election day. But I wanted to have us go around one more time and pull out one more quick takeaway that you wanted to put on the record, and then we’ll close it out.

Taya Graham:  Well, I attended the Republican National Convention with my colleague, Stephen Janis, and I can say this: I spoke to delegates. I spoke to a delegate from Georgia, Ricardo Bravo, who is a Latino gentleman. Both of his parents are immigrants. He worked at a historic Black university. I spoke to Terry from Tennessee. I spoke to people who were Republican delegates from Hawaii and American Samoa. I spoke to Republican delegates from every possible walk of life.

And one thing I have to say is that they were not sure of the policies. There was no certainty around the policies. And that is what I saw again tonight. I actually saw Walz outline policies: $125,000 for housing, $50,000 for small business owners, tax credits here for children, et cetera. I saw numbers and policies. That is not what I was given from Vance.

But one thing that I saw again and again is that there was a lack of certainty, and that lack of certainty becomes misinformation. And one thing we do know for sure is that misinformation is literally deadly. Right now, it is literally deadly. Misinformation can lead to lives cost, can lead to deaths, can lead to bomb threats at hospitals, at schools. We know how important it is to get the right information out there.

What I saw was Vance in his pink tie doing a wonderful job of giving a pink glow and some sort of logic to some of the unusual statements that former President Trump made. And I saw Walz coming with numbers. And although I do think he could have been clearer and I do think he could have been stronger, the one thing he did offer us was some certainty, was some specificity. That is something Vance didn’t offer us.

And unfortunately, that is my concern from this night. Unless you are a high information consumer, this debate isn’t going to move you. The people I spoke to at the RNC, many of them didn’t know the policies of the administration that they wanted to vote for, but they did know they felt confident in their leader.

They did know they had faith in him. They did know that they believed him on a deep, emotional, visceral level they had faith in former President Trump. And that kind of faith is unshakable. And faith is something I think we can all honestly say cannot be reasoned with. Faith is rooted deeply. Logic cannot broach it. My deep concern is that this debate won’t move the needle at all.

Stephen Janis:  I think one of the things that we haven’t discussed tonight that was very interesting to me were the questions about Israel, Iran, Lebanon, how quickly both the Democrat and Republican nominee punted or didn’t give us, really, any plan whatsoever about how to approach this problem nor really mention Gaza in any way, shape, or form in a substantive way.

I think Walz said something about the humanitarian crisis, but not general concern about what’s going on in Gaza and Israel’s continuing war there that is atrocious.

And so I think all of us should be concerned about that because it really looks like we’re on the verge of that conflict spreading for a variety of reasons. And I think it’s something that I think the moderators should have nailed them to the wall a bit more because that policy going in is going to be extremely important to all of us, to the world, to the people of Gaza. And there is no policy at this point I could glean from either candidate. They really bounced it around quickly. And I think it’s something that needs to be followed up on.

Ryan Harvey:  Well, two closing thoughts. One, just a nitpick thing, that the statistics about fentanyl, just to bring it up, it’s just such a funny statistic that the Trump campaign has created, that record numbers of fentanyl coming in under the Biden administration.

Those numbers are based on seizures of fentanyl. Those numbers and the people who analyze this don’t know what the actual situation is, but what we do know is more fentanyl’s being seized under the Biden administration than was seized under the Trump administration. That could mean that less was being seized or that more is coming in.

But also, when Trump was president, there were record numbers of fentanyl coming in because fentanyl was a new drug. There’s a lot less heroin and there’s a lot more fentanyl. In four years, there’ll be some other freak drug and fentanyl will be down and that’ll be up.

But what we do know is fentanyl overdose deaths skyrocketed from the moment Trump took office, never dipped his entire time in office, and started to trail off immediately when Biden took office, and in 2023 dropped for the first time in 10 years.

For me, I’ve lost a lot of friends from heroin. I lost my childhood best friend probably from fentanyl a few years ago, so that is something that hits me pretty personally. It’s a made up statistic. I wish that Walz had come out a little more prepared for that.

But in general, I’ve been here in The Real News before talking about my work and the Uncommitted Campaign. I’m amongst those who are very, very angry at the Biden administration for its handling and its blatant support for Israel’s aggression. And we’re seeing just tonight where that’s leading us now, the next phase of it. And yeah, it’s shocking that that wasn’t more talked about.

The immediacy of it is unthinkable, but also the 20-year span of what’s going to happen in the region and in the world, how that’s going to impact policy and people and geopolitics is crazy to me.

POLITICO reported tonight that six Israeli and American intelligence and military people, on anonymity, told them that the US was pushing Israel to invade Lebanon, said that they were going to be against it for PR but that they were actually pushing it. It’s just so crazy to me. And that this caused conflict in the Pentagon and at the State Department.

I can imagine that military thinkers are like, what are you doing? This is so bad for the US geopolitical project. I don’t understand it. But to me, and again, I’m 40. I already mentioned that, but there’s a lot of people younger than me who vote who are so angry who do not want to vote for Kamala Harris. And that is such a big issue for them to think about. Michigan, that’s a huge thing. I don’t understand what their plan is for that. But for me, that was the elephant in the room that was sitting there.

Stephen Janis:  And Walz didn’t address it at all. But do you think people are actually going to allow Trump to become president over their anger still?

Ryan Harvey:  To be honest, I think there are a lot of people who that’s not even the question that they’re thinking about. The question they’re thinking about is there have to be political consequences for this. And the political consequences are going to be that I can’t vote for somebody who did this.

Stephen Janis:  They’re going to vote for Trump?

Ryan Harvey:  No, they won’t vote for Trump. I think they won’t vote. But as we all know, when people don’t vote, it tends to help the Republican Party and not the Democratic Party.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and to just throw one more thing into the sauce there to bring in the labor component as well, as I mentioned, I was just coming from the ILA picket line at the Port of Baltimore this morning, which in and of itself is a really remarkable thing and a really critical component in this election right now. And this is the first time in nearly 50 years that these ILA workers at ports from Maine to Texas, around 45,000 of them, are on strike.

And to be clear, the ILA is not the ILWU, the more radical, international longshore workers and warehouse workers union on the West Coast, whom we’ve interviewed a number of times at The Real News Network.

But the very fact that the ILA is on strike right now is a really remarkable thing and is giving people, in some ways, a window into what it would have looked like if the railroad workers had gone on strike two years ago. And it’s really bringing up those memories.

And it is, in fact, a talking point in the political media right now. It is a very intense calculation being made in the Biden-Harris White House right now about what to do, because ramming through a contract two years ago and preemptively breaking the railroad workers strike and effectively siding with the rail carriers just two months before the catastrophic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, was not a good look.

And so right now, Biden, at least this week, has expressed his refusal to get involved in this dispute, expressing support for collective bargaining. But that’s not going to last all the way through November. And people are going to be feeling this more if this goes beyond a week, I think.

And so I think that that is also another component to really bring in here not just in terms of what is the strike going to mean for the election, which is how a lot of news channels that are talking about it at all are talking about it, but I wanted to also bring in here the fact that Stephen, you asked the question, would people still allow their anger to lead them to vote for Trump? I think that the answer is still yes for a lot of working-class folks, for a number of reasons. I hope and pray that all the talking and writing and interviewing that I and others have been doing in this world since 2016 has taught us about the Trump era is that —

Stephen Janis:  Well, Max, let me ask you a question really quickly. Does, from your perspective, interviewing all these working-class people, does Walz help at all in terms of being a working class-dude or at least playing one on TV? Does that help with this Trump contingent of working-class voters?

Maximillian Alvarez:  Again, depends. Some, yes. In the key swing states, probably not, to be honest. And that’s —

Stephen Janis:  No, that’s honest. Yeah.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yeah. Yeah. And that’s I guess the point I was circuitously trying to get to by bringing in the ILA strike. Like the Teamsters, the ILA has endorsed Harris, but they represent a ton of conservative members, just like the Teamsters do. The Teamsters infamously have refused to endorse either candidate, which is really, in this climate, effectively an endorsement of Trump. It’s a very symbolic non-endorsement.

There are a shit ton of working-class people who are going to vote for Trump still, even union members, including a whole lot of nonunion members who, if they are going to vote at all, they are still going to vote for Trump. Because for a lot of people, it still hasn’t gotten… Maybe it’s gotten a little bit better, but it hasn’t gotten nearly good enough or it’s gotten worse in some areas of their lives while other parts of their lives have gotten a little less bad.

I think that is also the messy human reality that we cover but that I think people in the labor reporting world and the pro-labor world, people who support worker struggles can misread the past four years. We have seen historic surges in unionization activity, in strikes, and industrial actions, historic support for unions, so on and so forth.

But what have we also seen? We’ve seen the wealth of the super rich increase by trillions. And we have seen a greater exacerbation of global inequality than anything we’ve ever seen before. We have seen working people still being squeezed and still feeling like no one’s really taking their concerns seriously.

And the railroad strike is a perfect example of that. It was never just about sick days, it was never just about give us a little more money. It’s about these rich fuckers on Wall Street and in these executive boardrooms are ruining everything, and it’s endangering us, you, our communities.

It’s like we’re still talking on that surface level about the labor scene and the attitudes and situations of working people in this country, but we’re not actually being honest with ourselves about what has happened.

Yeah, we’ve had, as I said, surges in union activity. A lot of those union drives are stalling. A lot of them don’t have a first contract. A lot of the people who we were cheering on two years ago have been fired and moved on.

It’s not as if it all just kept going like, as we said for years here at The Real News, what happens next depends on what we all do. And a lot of people haven’t kept up with it, or workers have faced a lot of backlash, or people are dealing with other economic pressures. They have to get a second job because of this inflation.

And so I guess that’s more of a plea to people out there watching and listening is that, yeah, there are going to still be a lot of people who vote for Trump. This race is really fucking close. Trump could very well still win. We all acknowledge that. Just learn from history.

Please don’t forget what seemed so shocking in 2016 but seems like it’s been so easily forgotten just a few years later, that it ain’t over until it’s over. And a lot of these dynamics can change in a quick amount of time. And we don’t have to spend two years talking about the white working class and trying to figure out how could working-class people possibly support Trump? Listen to them. Jesus Christ, we’ve been talking about this for eight years now. I hope we’ve learned something from it.

Ryan Harvey:  No, and honestly, sorry, I know we’re closing up, but to the question you asked, and as maybe a closing thought, that is something that did shine through in this debate, which was good in terms of from the Democrat side. Project 2025 is not going to win you this election. Calling Donald Trump a threat to democracy is not going to win this election. There are people in my family who voted for Trump and weren’t going to vote for Trump after Jan. 6 and are voting for Trump and who are saying, I wish there were better options.

If you’re not talking about the money in people’s pockets and the cost of groceries, not just talking about it, but putting forward a solution to that problem, people will vote for… They know who Trump is. They’re not stupid. There’s people who are like, this guy is a freaking bigot, and I’m going to vote for him because I’m worried about my family. I’m worried about where I’m going to be at in a year. That’s real. That’s a reality that’s out there.

And I feel like tonight, at least, we saw that focused on a little more. We saw less talk about this more, I don’t know, the rhetorical idea of Trump and his values. But that’s not the issue. That’s not why people are voting for Trump because they agree with everything he says, they’re voting for him because they think maybe he’ll do something that’ll help me.

Taya Graham:  I understand why so many people see Trump as a disruptor. However, it does seem somewhat unusual to see someone who is a multimillionaire, if not a billionaire, who came from money, is of money, still has money, draws money to him, as someone who’s going to be a savior and somehow disrupt a system that made him incredibly wealthy beyond all of our dreams.

But what one has to acknowledge is a fundamental difference between the Republican Party now and the Democrat Party right at this moment. The Democrats now, at least, can be shamed into doing the right thing when there is a voter like you who’s part of the non-commit vote, who I would assume is anti-Zionist, who I would assume wants an end to the war on Gaza, who I would assume has a lot of other strong beliefs that the Democratic Party, there are members, social justice Democrats, social justice warriors out there who are actually currently in Congress are aligned with, they just need a little bit more support.

But one thing we do know for certain, those who support Trump, the dark money that supports him, the Koch brothers, the over 200 members beyond the Heritage Foundation that helped create Project 2025 — And for those out there don’t think Project 2025 is a reality, if you don’t believe that, wait two years with a Trump presidency, and I assure you, you will see it come to fruition.

For those folks out there who hope that they can at least have any influence over the government that is up next, the Democrats can be pushed, can be nudged, can be shamed, but a Trump-Vance presidency will be controlled by tech money. The same folks who want our National Weather Association to shut down so some tech bros can open up an app and make all that money, who want you to have a subscription before you can find out or watch three ads before you can find out if a hurricane’s going to hit your town, those are the same folks who are not going to listen to you and are only going to listen to moneyed interests. It’s simply do you want the folks who will listen to money or do you want the folks who will have at least a chance of listening to you?

Maximillian Alvarez:  All right. I think on that, we’re going to have to wrap it up. There’s so many other things to say, so many other points to discuss, but we gotta get some rest. And we got a lot more important coverage on this election coming your way. Stay tuned for a great on-the-ground report that Stephen and Taya actually did focusing on canvassing efforts and different grassroots and mobilizing efforts from Trump supporters and Harris supporters here in Baltimore and across the state line over in Pennsylvania. Stay tuned for that.

Let us know what you thought of this conversation. Please send in your questions, comments, suggestions, and for folks you’d like us to have on and topics you’d like us to discuss. But for now, please go to therealnews.com/donate and support our work so we can keep bringing you more important coverage and conversations just like this. But for now, everyone go get some sleep. This is Maximilian Alvarez signing off from The Real News Network studio in Baltimore.

Like many cop watchers, Carolina Ft. Worth has an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of her local city. So when she noticed Fort Worth police seemed to be targeting the vehicles of bar workers late at night, she set out to investigate. According to Carolina, many of the tow companies in the city are operated by retired police officers, raising questions about the possibility of a racket being run from within the police department. As she was filming police towing cars in the downtown area, an officer familiar to Carolina confronted her and began to arrest her. The ensuing police-initiated altercation left Carolina bleeding and unconscious on the ground with a dislocated shoulder and elbow. Carolina Ft. Worth joins Police Accountability Report to discuss her harrowing ordeal, and how police across the country are engaged in similar kinds of suspicious behavior driven by municipal and even potentially illegal private economic incentives.

Written by: Stephen Janis
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

Taya Graham:  Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As we always make clear, this show has a single purpose: holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible.

And today we’ll achieve that goal by showing you this video of an officer throwing a well-known cop watcher to the ground and causing severe physical injuries for simply filming them. An example of police reacting violently for being watched, raising questions about just how dangerous it can be to hold police accountable.

But before we get started, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com or reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter @tayasbaltimore and we might be able to investigate for you.

And please like, share, and comment on our videos. It can help get the word out and it can even help our guests. And of course, you know I read your comments and appreciate them, you see those little hearts I give out down there. And I’ve even started doing a comment of the week to show you how much I appreciate your thoughts and to show off what a great community we have.

And we do have a Patreon called Accountability Report, so if you feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way.

Now, as we have documented rigorously on this show, filming cops is not easy or without risk. For one thing, they have the power to retaliate with an arrest, but also they have the threat of using violence to subdue those who dare to turn the camera in their direction. And that’s exactly what happened in the video I’m showing you now.

It depicts a Texas cop watcher, Carolina in Fort Worth, as she tries to film police for what she believed were unwarranted parking tickets. But how police responded and the severe consequences for her is what we address today in detail.

Now, just a note. This story has received a lot of attention within the cop watcher community, but today we are going to break it down with new footage and an interview with the victim of the arrest herself, Carolina in Fort Worth. And believe me, she has a lot to say. But first, let’s review what happened.

The story starts in June of this year in Fort Worth, Texas. There, Carolina was filming police in a parking lot. She believed cops were running a bit of a scam, writing unwarranted tickets, and in the process, unjustly saddling hardworking bartenders and waitstaff from a nearby entertainment district with excessive fines and towing of their cars.

Bear in mind, this was 3:30 in the morning when she initially started filming. Let’s watch.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Carolina in Fort Worth:  They’re saying, “Okay, we’re going to tow this, we’re going to tow that. Let’s see, what are we going to do?” I bet it’s a cop car that’s broken. That’s hilarious if it is. Predator tow truck drivers, they’re the worst. They’re towing a bunch of cars off. They’re trying to build the entertainment district up, right? This is a great way to do it. This is great for community relations, haha. It’s a great idea for community relations to start towing people’s cars. I think that’s a wonderful idea.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now, at this point, it is undeniable that Carolina in Fort Worth is doing nothing wrong. She isn’t interfering with police, simply filming them, and for good reason. As you can see, police were having cars towed from the parking lot right in the heart of one of Fort Worth’s most vibrant gathering spots.

But soon things get tense, when police decide they don’t want their towing dragnet scrutinized. Take a look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Carolina in Fort Worth:  That’s great for community policing. They’re trying to build up the entertainment center, but now you’re going to tow everybody’s shit.

That’s a private parking lot. How the hell are you going to tow off a private parking lot? Are you allowed to tow off a private parking lot? Are you allowed to tow off a private parking lot? Oh, you’re going to ignore me. Okay. Do you see any towing will be strictly enforced signs? I don’t see any.

So there’s no signs that say towing will be enforced. What does this say? This is validated parking. It says, “Please register upon parking. Validated parking. Please register upon parking. Business is [inaudible], validated parking for Folk Street Warehouses. Ways to validate: You can scan the QR code or text pay. Failure to pay or extend time may result in boots.”

Okay, so how do they know if they paid or not? How do you know if they paid or not, ladies? Hey, ladies. Hey, ladies. Hey, ladies. Hey, Krueger.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Now, shortly after she begins questioning the ticket-writing officers, another cop shows up on the scene, a member of the Fort Worth Police Department that she was more than familiar with. And it doesn’t take him long to confront her. Take a listen.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Krueger:  [Inaudible] sounds [inaudible].

Carolina in Fort Worth:  No, I’m not going to the floor. There’s no investigation. There’s no nothing.

Officer Krueger:  You can go to the other side of the street or you’re going to get arrested. I’m not warning you again.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  What are you talking about?

Officer Krueger:  Go to the other side of the street right now.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  Why? Wait, tell me why first.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  She asked a simple question that we hear quite often on this show, but is rarely answered: why? Why do you, Officer Krueger, believe you have the right to arrest me? What law empowers you to put me in handcuffs?

Krueger doesn’t answer. but not being able to articulate a reason also doesn’t stop him from deploying the powers of the state in a highly questionable manner.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Krueger:  You’re under arrest. Turn around please.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, okay.

Officer Krueger:  Stop resisting. Stop resisting.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Stop resisting. Seriously, how many times on this show have we heard that phrase, cops who say “stop resisting” when the victim clearly isn’t. However, this time, we have several other camera angles to, in fact, check on Officer Krueger’s camera performance.

First, let’s watch the officer’s body worn camera and you be the judge if she was resisting.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Krueger:  Hey Carolina, we’re busy. Go to the other side of the street.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  There’s nothing to report. There’s no investigation, there’s no nothing.

Officer Krueger:  You can go to the other side of the street or you’re going to get arrested. I’m not warning you again.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  What are you talking about?

Officer Krueger:  Go to the other side of the street right now.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  Why? Wait, tell me why first.

Police Officer:  We’re doing an —

Officer Krueger:  You’re under arrest, turn around, put your hands behind your back —

Carolina in Fort Worth:  No, no, no, no, no.

Officer Krueger:  Stop resisting.

Police Officer:  She’s bleeding [handcuffs clanking].

Officer Krueger:  [inaudible].

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Okay. How exactly can you resist if you are lying on the ground bleeding? I mean, seriously. Resistance cannot occur when you are unconscious. That is simply an indisputable fact. You can’t resist if you’re lying on the ground in a pool of your own blood.

But just to be sure, let’s watch the footage from an entirely different angle, courtesy of the CCTV video released by the Fort Worth Police Department.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Officer Krueger:  Hey Carolina, we’re busy. Go to the other side of the street. You can go —

Carolina in Fort Worth:  You did this before, there’s no investigation, there’s no nothing.

Officer Krueger:  You can go to the other side of the street or you’re going to get arrested. I’m not warning you again.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  What are you talking about?

Officer Krueger:  Go to the other side of the street right now.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  Why? Wait, tell me why first.

Police Officer:  We’re doing an —

Officer Krueger:  You’re under arrest. Turn around, put your hands behind your back.

Police Officer:  Okay.

Officer Krueger:  Stop resisting.

Police Officer:  She’s bleeding [handcuffs clanking].

Officer Krueger:  [Inaudible] an ambulance.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Again, it’s hard to understand why the officer chose to be so aggressive. Yes, she was following the officers with a camera, which can be annoying, but that comes with the territory of having a badge and a gun. And yes, Carolina in Fort Worth is a stickler for accountability, as you will learn later. But why he decided that a cell phone camera justifies near deadly force is simply hard to understand.

Let’s just listen to his reaction after Carolina in Fort Worth is literally snoring. Snoring because she was literally knocked out.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Police Officer:  She’s bleeding.

Officer Krueger:  [inaudible], I need a supervisor and an ambulance.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Being knocked unconscious was just one of several severe injuries Carolina in Fort Worth endured. She also suffered a dislocated elbow and shoulder, along with bruising and abrasions on her face, which I am showing you on the screen right now. She also suffered damage to her orbital ridge and needed stitches to repair the damage around her eyes and lips.

But of course, none of the aforementioned injuries include the trauma of being taken to the ground for nothing.

Now, the incident actually attracted local media attention and was widely decried as excessive. But when she and fellow cop watcher Manuel Mata confronted Officer Kruger just a few days later, he was not receptive to their complaints.

Take a look.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Carolina in Fort Worth:  When’s the last time you falsified a police report?

Officer Krueger:  I have never falsified a police report.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  You know what jaywalking is? You know, jaywalking occurs between two lights. There wasn’t two lights in here.

Officer Krueger:  Are you referring to jaywalking as a concept or jaywalking as a statue?

Carolina in Fort Worth:  As a statute.

Manuel Mata:  You’re stupid. There’s only one [Carolina laughs]. This was in the concept.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  Oh, no, no. Jaywalking is not a real thing.

Manuel Mata:  Remember, I told y’all to give me the ticket. What’d you say? You’re going to jail for jaywalking. And then how do I end up with [inaudible]? Because y’all plain lie, right? It’s all on your cameras. And didn’t you just say it’s not a third degree felony to turn it off or mute it, right? Yeah, that’s how I like my servants, closed mouth.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  But there’s so much more going on behind the scenes than the questionable arrest you just watched, and that includes some intriguing background on the officer and his contentious relations with Carolina Rodriguez. And for more on that, we will be talking to her later.

But first, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been looking into and examining the evidence. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us.

Stephen Janis:  Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:  So Stephen, what did the Fort Worth police charge her with?

Stephen Janis:  Well, Taya, it’s really amazing. It’s resistance, interfering, evading arrest, and false report, all from what you see on video. It’s kind of hard to believe that they would use these charges, but it seems to me that it’s actually kind of purposeful because they’re trying to make her look as bad as possible because a video makes them look bad.

So those are the charges. They’re kind of shocking. We reached out to the police department. They said, we don’t have media credentials, we need to present them before they will answer our questions about whether they’re going forward with these charges.

Taya Graham:  Okay, wow. Interfering, but resisting and evading arrest? That really does seem like a stretch. You reached out to prosecutors about the case. What are they saying?

Stephen Janis:  Well, first of all, Taya, the prosecutors have not gotten back to us. But secondly, you’re right. It does seem really weird to charge you with things like that when she’s actually unconscious on the ground. I don’t see how you evade an arrest when you’re lying on the ground snoring. I don’t see how you resist an arrest when you’re incapacitated.

So really, I think these charges are very questionable, and hopefully prosecutors will back off on this, but we haven’t heard yet. When we do, we’ll say something in the chat.

Taya Graham:  Now, this officer has had problems before. Can you talk about that and the concerns that it raises?

Stephen Janis:  Well, as Carolina in Fort Worth herself will tell us in the interview later, he has been noted for being very aggressive with the community.

Now, we reached out to the Fort Worth Police Department and asked them specifically what they’re going to do about this officer, and they have not gotten back to us.

But I think it raises concerns to see how quickly he turned to force. He could have talked to her, he could have engaged her, but he didn’t. I think that’s problematic, and I think that might be emblematic of some of the problems he has as a police officer, Taya.

Taya Graham:  Now to get her take on what happened and how her relationship with Fort Worth police presages much of what happens, and what she thinks about cop watching and why she will continue to fight for transparency and accountability, I’m joined by Carolina in Fort Worth, our cop Watcher.

Carolina, thank you for joining me.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  You’re welcome. I’m glad to be here. Glad you asked me.

Taya Graham:  So please help us understand what we see in this video. First, we see you approach officers, asking them questions about their car impounding practices. You’re a cop watcher. What were you investigating that night?

Carolina in Fort Worth:  It was about 3:00 in the morning after the bars are already closed and most of the teenagers and everybody are gone. And I just noticed a bunch of activity going on at the end of the street.

So I walked down there to see what was going on. And I’m really into community policing, just like the chief says he’s into community policing. But I noticed that there’s a row of cars that were parked in a private parking area, but you had to pay for the parking spot. And so I was trying to figure out what was going on, but nobody would really tell me. And you have to really look at the clues to kind of guess because they won’t tell you what’s going on.

So I was trying to just put guesses together. So I heard this one lady say, well, I paid $31 to park here and you’re not taking my car. And I saw a man walk up, a cop walk up to her and go, no, no, no, no, we’re not taking yours. You’re leaving in yours, right? So I assumed that they were going to take that whole row of cars, because there was a tow truck there already.

Now the tow truck driver, I have a good rapport with the tow truck drivers, but this one I’ve had bad karma with before. And so I said, so I asked him what’s going on? And he didn’t tell me. He totally walked by me like I wasn’t there. He totally ignored me. Didn’t even say, I can’t tell you, or, you know I can’t tell you, or anything like that. He just totally ignored me and he walked right on by me to go to his tow truck.

So I just assumed that they were going to tow that whole row of cars. And I thought, well, that’s not very good community policing because why don’t they just put a note on the car and say, hey, we’re going to tow you next time you’re here. It was a private parking area. It was 3:30 in the morning. Those people that were in those cars were probably too drunk to drive and drove home with somebody else, or were maybe working at a restaurant somewhere and still hadn’t finished their job yet.

So I think it’s pretty dirty that they’re pulling these cars out without any kind of type of warning. It’s not community policing. Who’s the crime hurting that they’re parked like that in a private parking area?

Taya Graham:  So the officers didn’t seem interested in responding to your questions, but it suddenly became violent. Can you help me understand what happened?

Carolina in Fort Worth:  I’m still asking myself that to this very day because what happened was is after the tow truck driver walked by me and ignored me, I noticed two female cops walking by me. And I’ve talked to those two ladies before, but they were just strolling. They didn’t look like they were busy doing anything. They were just strolling, really just strolling along like you’d see two ladies at the mall doing, just strolling.

So I started to ask them what was going on and they ignored me. They totally ignored me. So I tried to get their attention and I said, fire, fire, fire, fire, and they still ignored me and they kept on walking. So I thought, okay, I let them walk up to where they were, and I said, well, I’m going to go find out what’s going on. So I started to walk up towards them.

And then I saw Krueger jump out of the vehicle. Well, first I talked to the girls. I was like, girls, do they have to pay? How do you know they haven’t paid that you’re towing them off like that? And they were starting to answer me and then Krueger jumped out of the car and said, hey Carolina, I need you to go across the street. I’m not going to tell you again. He said it to me one time.

I said, but there’s nothing going on. What do you mean I have to go across the street? I was questioning his unlawful order to go across the street. I figured it was an unlawful order because I didn’t see anything going on. The girls were strolling. I saw two officers in the street, they were talking to each other like on a break. I didn’t see anything going on at all.

And so he walked toward me and he said, I’m going to arrest you if you don’t go across the street. I said, okay, okay, okay, but just tell me first what’s going on? And that’s when he attacked me.

I didn’t know where it came from. I have no idea what I did to cause him to do that. I asked him, just tell me what’s going on first. What’s wrong with asking? He only asked me one time to move. And I just wanted to know what was going on because that’s what I’m trying to portray to the people.

But he never said anything. He just grabbed my wrist and then threw me down on the ground. And that’s the last thing I remember from there.

Taya Graham:  So for all of us who were watching the livestream, it was horrifying and quite obvious you’d been knocked unconscious. What were your injuries, and were you medically treated?

Carolina in Fort Worth:  Well, like I said, I don’t remember anything that happened after I hit the ground. Nothing. I don’t remember the ride to the… If I rode in an ambulance or if I rode in somebody’s car. I don’t know if they carried me. I have no idea. But I woke up in a hospital bed with my arm, my good arm, chained to the side of the bed. I was like, what the heck is going on here?

In the meantime, I’m going in and out of consciousness. So I passed back out again after I saw my arm was attached. And then I felt them shaking me, and they woke me up, and they said they were giving me something in my IV. I didn’t even know I had an IV. And they were starting to just put my arm back into the socket because my arm had been out of the socket the whole time, didn’t even know it.

I just couldn’t believe it. And then I couldn’t see because both my eyes were swelled shut. So I didn’t know why my eyes were swelled shut, and I just didn’t know what was going on. There was no mirror there. All I know is that I was chained to the bed. Nobody was answering any questions for me. And there was a female cop sitting at the foot of my bed.

And that’s the only thing I remember from there, because I went back later and found out that I only was there from four to nine, not enough time to treat my injuries and monitor me at all.

The doctors there at the emergency room told me that this whole eye socket right here is broken. It’s still broken, and if I touch it, I can feel little pieces of bone moving. I can feel the little pieces of bone moving. I still have the black eye on this side and on this side.

And my lip was split open, and so they weren’t going to do anything about it. And I asked him to sew me up. Can you please sew me up, doctor? And he goes, are you sure you want me to sew you up? He goes, I think we need to wait for one of the orthopedic people to come. I’m like, no, just sew me up. So he sewed me up.

So it looks like I have collagen on this side because it’s a big old bump right there. So I have to have that fixed. But the bad thing is I can touch my bone right here and I can feel it moving. Every once in a while my eye will go blurry. And then I have ringing in my ears constantly now, constantly. So I’m going to have to get all that taken care of.

Taya Graham:  So after you were briefly given medical, you were taken to jail, right?

Carolina in Fort Worth:  Okay. This is amazing. So when I went to the first… Here in Fort Worth, you go to the city jail first and then they transfer you to the county jail, and you have to go in a tunnel underneath like a rat, underneath the street.

So recently we’ve had overcrowding at the jail, and so they’ve been holding the people at the city jail for longer than they can handle. So usually you’re only at the city jail for about 12 hours while they just check you in. But they’ve been holding people there for three days.

So when I got to the city jail, they all knew who I was. They already knew who I was. And they said, well, she’s in really bad shape. We don’t want to take her because we don’t have any medical stuff over here. We don’t have any way to give her meds. We don’t have any way if she goes into a seizure, we don’t have anything for her. So we don’t want her. And they made me stay there.

And I remember crawling on the floor from the front door to where I got checked in over to the cell, my regular cell that we always go to over there. So I crawled on the floor over there and they just let me do it. And she goes, I don’t know what to tell you, but we’re having to make you stay here three days. But next thing I know, I passed out on the floor. They put me in a wheelchair and they wheeled me into the tunnel.

And they were going to use one of my old mugshots, but one of the jailers said, no, you need to take a picture of her now. You don’t need to use one of her old mug shots. I remember that. I told him, I said, yeah, you can use my old mugshot. That’s fine. I didn’t realize that that would be an important piece of evidence, that mug shot. That mug shot was really important. And I’m glad that that woman, whoever it was, insisted that I take that mug shot picture.

Taya Graham:  So what exactly were you charged with, and how were you treated? And how long were you kept incarcerated?

Carolina in Fort Worth:  My first charge is interference with public duties. Okay, we have a clause that says, “Speech can be used as a defense to interference.” It really has to be physical. I really have to come in between whatever they’re doing or working on. I didn’t see myself do that.

If I walked into their crime scene, it’s because they didn’t have it marked. But I didn’t see a body with a cover on it. I didn’t see anybody taking notes. I didn’t see anybody measuring anything. I didn’t see anybody taking pictures of anything. I saw tow trucks towing off a vehicle. So I don’t know how I interfered with that just by asking what’s going on.

My next charge was false reporting. False reporting, because when the girls were ignoring me, I said, fire, fire. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you want someone to take your attention, you say fire. But it was not in a crowded theater and they totally ignored me and didn’t take the report. So I got charged for that.

Then I got charged for resisting, which I suppose I was resisting after I was knocked out because that’s when he started saying, quit resisting.

All right. And then also evading. So that means running away, running away from them. So I don’t know how I can interfere and run away at the same time. That doesn’t make any sense. And also if you look at his body cam footage, my arm’s behind my back, I put my arm behind my back to be arrested. I didn’t resist whatsoever.

Supposedly he grabbed both my arms and threw me on the ground. That’s what happened. So I don’t know what I did to be handled that way. I have no idea what I did. I didn’t know that asking a question would cause you to be thrown on the ground and knocked unconscious.

Taya Graham:  Did you have to pay bail? And are there any conditions around your release?

Carolina in Fort Worth:  Well, there was no real conditions except for I had Harvey and Manuel and a lot of other people, they helped me get out of jail. They helped get that 10% to get me out, and I have to report there every week. And I’m surprised that they’re still pressing forward with these charges. I’m really surprised, because I don’t know how they can justify any one of them, any one of them at all.

But I have to report there every week to the bonds people, and that’s about it. So it was $4,000, they had to get 10% of that. So each bond was $1,000 dollars.

Taya Graham:  Now, the officer who slammed you onto the ground, his name is Officer Kruger, and he has a bit of a history with cop watchers. Can you share with me a little background about him?

For example, I believe he pulled a gun on Manuel Mata, who’s been, of course, a guest on PAR before.

Carolina in Fort Worth:  Well, see, I knew Officer Kruger before this happened, only because he was the same officer that arrested Manuel Mata at gunpoint for walking across that very street that he told me to walk across. Manuel and I do a lot of cop watching down there, and what we do is we go on separate sides of the street and we walk together simultaneously down the street and we keep an eye on each other to see, to watch each other.

I had turned around just briefly to get my equipment ready to go, and when I turned around, he was gone. He totally disappeared. I was like, what in the world? I’m looking for him across where he was supposed to be, didn’t see him. Then all of a sudden I get a phone call. It’s Manuel Mata, said he’s in jail, that they had arrested him when I had my back turned.

So he was arrested at gunpoint for jaywalking. Well, you can’t bring somebody to jail for jaywalking because the punishment is not jail time. You can only take somebody to jail if the punishment is jail time.

So they added a charge onto his little arrest there and they added evading. So he walked across the street, was held at gunpoint, made to lay down on the ground, but he was evading too. That didn’t make any sense. That’s why that charge got dismissed for him.

Come to find out when Manuel Mata got arrested that this man had been fired from the Irving Police Department for hurting two women on two different occasions, pulling one out of a car, and that was one of them, within 28 seconds of arrival. And the other one was jumping a woman who had turned to go back to her house, and he jumped her.

Both of them were hurt. I don’t know if they’ve had any lawsuits or anything like that, but he sued the city of Irving because he was fired, and he got his job back. But it had stipulations, and the stipulations were psychiatric help, meetings with the psychiatric thing, drug testing, all sorts of little stipulations he had to do for a whole year if he came back. And I guess he didn’t want to do the stipulations because he was hired at the Fort Worth Police Department right after that.

Taya Graham:  Now you’ve recently won a lawsuit against another Texas police department. What can you tell me about that suit?

Carolina in Fort Worth:  So I was just sitting on the bench filming them, and a man came out from behind from where he was supposed to be watching stuff go through the X-ray machine, and he took a camera and he put it like two inches away from my face and started daring me to hit him.

My lawyer took that and we won a small lawsuit. The man was already retired and everything, but it was very small, pretty insignificant, But at least it sent a message saying that they can’t do that to us anymore. They just can’t do that to us just because we’re filming something.

I was sitting on the bench. I wasn’t instigating. I wasn’t interfering. I was sitting on a bench just filming that new equipment that we had. That was it.

So they feel like… I think they talk among each other that we’re instigators, that we’re bad guys, that we just try to make trouble. We’re just trying to get views and all that sort of thing. But most of us are really trying to find, we’re doing investigative journalism work, and they don’t seem to understand that. They don’t watch our videos either. They just judge us by hearsay.

Taya Graham:  Now, something that really amazed me is that you went out cop watching and livestreaming practically the day after you were released. Why are you so dedicated to cop watching, and why are you willing to risk jail and even injury to do this work?

Carolina in Fort Worth:  I went right out the next day because the reason why we do this is to make sure that people don’t get hurt. We were watching their rights. We’re making sure that they don’t get violated. We actually have saved a lot of people with our cameras, and I was not going to let them think that they had taken me down or put me out. I want them to know that I’m going to be doing this until my very last breath. I don’t care.

And I mean, of course I was sore. I had my arm in a sling and I have the ringing in my ears, but I’m still going to do it. I’m still going to make as much time as possible to do it because we’re out there protecting the citizens is what we’re doing, and trying to teach them their rights and bring awareness to the rest of the country or the rest of the world that it’s not fair what they do to us. It’s not fair.

I was lucky. I had a camera. How many times have they done this to people that don’t have cameras? How many times have they hurt people that actually die? Three people a day are killed by police every day, and we don’t want one of them to be here in Fort Worth, and that’s why we’re out with our cameras every single day.

Taya Graham:  You told me you like to protect the underdog. What inspires you to cop watch?

Carolina in Fort Worth:  I guess because what happens is that these cops are allowed to lie to the people. And I hate that we’re brought up as little kids to trust the police, listen to what they say because they’re the heroes, they’re out there protecting you and making sure that nobody gets hurt. But in the meantime, what we’re finding out is that they break the rules to get people, they break the rules to get people.

In other words, would they stop a vehicle and take everybody’s driver’s license or everybody’s ID to check them, all for warrants, to see if they can catch anybody that has a warrant out maybe instead of just taking the driver’s. And I feel like if we have to play by the rules, they should play by the rules, and I don’t think they should be able to lie to us.

Taya Graham:  Okay. Now, the treatment of Carolina in Fort Worth prompts quite a few reactions from me. None of them, I would add, are particularly charitable to the institution of law enforcement.

For one thing, I still can’t really reconcile the officer’s behavior with Carolina’s simple act of filming. If there’s any example of the excessive use of law enforcement in our country against transparency, this one really takes the cake.

But there is something else going on here that I think is perhaps revealing about how policing in general has become misguided, to say the least. It’s an idea that actually sheds light on the imperative that informs what the officers were actually doing that evening that’s been overlooked, if not ignored, but deserves further examination.

So let me put this simply. The officers in question weren’t investigating a murder, tracking down a burglar, or otherwise pursuing the laudable goal of public safety. They weren’t helping a cat out of a tree or helping a distraught family search for a missing loved one. No, that’s not what was happening.

Instead, they were writing parking tickets, at 3:30 in the morning, no less. That’s right. The officers who were uncomfortable under the gaze of the cop watchers’ cell phone were exacting fees and fines from the hardworking people, who I assume really can’t afford it. They were even towing the vehicles of the entertainment district workers who were more than likely finishing a night-long shift in a bar or a restaurant.

Now, I want you to think about that, what it means and why it matters. We spend billions in this country on law enforcement. We train and equip cops to work for roughly 18,000 police departments spanning small towns to big cities across the country. And the idea, at least in theory, is that this investment will somehow translate into better public safety.

But how? And I ask this question seriously. How does writing parking tickets achieve that goal? How does towing cars in the middle of the night advance the off-sighted imperative to protect and serve?

Well, clearly it doesn’t, and that’s sort of the point, right? Time and time again on this show, we encounter examples of overreach by the law enforcement-industrial complex that seems more designed to simply punish than to protect. A clear lack of consideration for the people that ultimately pay for it. Something that I think speaks to the broader issues about why the uniquely American process of enforcing the law seems predicated on a philosophy that’s far removed from the idea of a collective common good.

What do I mean? Well consider this article in The Washington Post. It recounts how a group of former police officers participated in a mind-boggling crime that sounds like it’s lifted straight from a Hollywood script. Not just troubling, but profoundly disturbing.

The officers included two former members of the LA County Sheriff’s Department, which we’ve covered often on the show for some pretty questionable arrests.

Now, these officers were working at the behest of a Chinese national who wanted to extract money from his former business partner. The person who hired what were described as mercenaries was not named in the indictment. She allegedly had a dispute with the man whose home was raided, and she wanted to collect the money she felt was her due.

The officers showed up with expired badges and forced their way into the victim’s home. The cops then proceeded to pressure him to sign paperwork to turn over roughly $37 million. They tore his shirt, threw him against the wall, and threatened to deport him. All of this while his two youngest sons cowered in fear, unsure of what would happen next.

At one point, an officer said he was, in fact, not law enforcement, suggesting that the man was facing an immediate threat to his life. All of this prompted him to sign over a $37 million stock under the threat of a bunch of cops who actually weren’t even cops.

But I think the broader point of this story about bizarre police behavior goes beyond a faux raid and a bit of boneheaded extortion, a tale of policing for profits that isn’t just isolated to a group of former cops turned bill collectors.

No, I think this is, in fact, a symbol or what drives bad policing and our historic economic inequality and the reason that Carolina was confronting a bevy of police in a nondescript parking lot at 3:00 AM in the morning.

All of this really is not about morality or crime or law and order. It is, though, about a particular type of cruelty that underlies the fragile system of democracy in which we all hope to flourish.

It is, put simply, a regime of enforcement, not tethered to any idea of bolstering or building a community, but rather exacerbating the inequality that greases the wheels of penalties for the people who aren’t part of the fabulously wealthy. You can’t maintain the historic concentration of wealth without some type of system that extracts and enforces the inequitable reality that we all share.

I think we can see this imperative at work in the story I just recounted and the near deadly encounter with Carolina not just the aggressive behavior alone, but the deeper systemic failures that drive police to do things that really make no sense.

Let’s face it, parking tickets are supposed to encourage the most productive use of space, not impose usury fines on unwitting people. They aren’t supposed to be deployed like a weapon to burden the working class with fines and tow truck fees and costs that can drown a person who’s barely getting by.

Meanwhile, the fact that a bunch of retired cops thought they could turn into a crew of paramilitary bill collectors shows the same inherent disregard for the rights of the people that often put law enforcement at odds with the people they purport to serve.

But what really strikes me about both stories is that each, in its own way, tells a story about us, about how we are not respected, and how we often suffer in silence while the government uses the police we fund to make our lives miserable.

Now, this is not to suggest that a parking ticket is the end of the world or that a $300 tow will necessarily destroy a person’s life. And this is not to say that an errant mob squad that illegally raided a man’s home got away with it. In fact, the only reason we know about it is because they’re actually being prosecuted.

But what this does tell us is that government power must be kept in check, and by extension, the government’s ability to employ, deploy, and empower people with guns and badges.

Now, I know I make this point often, but the work to hold police accountable is vital, not just because cops are inherently bad or they’re always doing something wrong. I would say just the opposite. They behave better when we watch them, just like anyone else would.

But what’s really important is to understand the fluidity of power, or rather, who it really serves, how it concentrates at the top and flows down until it envelops the working people of this country in a deluge of fines, fees, and petty arrests. How it leads to a country where a just released report noted that America spends more on healthcare than any other wealthy country, and yet we have the worst outcomes in terms of life expectancy and wellness to other comparable nations.

That’s why we have to comprehend the true nature of the punishment regime that makes all of these incongruous realities possible, how it accumulates power in institutions that are supposed to serve and then swallows whole the communal benefits and turns into overpolicing and an invasive attempt to shape our lives in ways that are often punitive and destructive.

The broader point is that inequitable power is not reluctant or discreet. It doesn’t watch over us to be constructive or helpful. Ultimately, it is intended to prescribe a reality where we don’t matter, our rights don’t matter, and our pursuits of happiness don’t matter. Where cop watchers are just a nuisance, the working class is ripe for exploitation, and every single one of us is diminished by a system predicated on denying our humanity.

That’s why we need cop watchers, activists, journalists, YouTubers, and perhaps even a show that reports on all of them. That’s why we need to be vigilant, demanding, and skeptical, and that’s why we need the community that you are all a part of, the people that refuse to be ignored or forgotten.

I want to thank Carolina in Fort Worth for speaking with us, sharing her experience, and being willing to get back on the streets and filming police. Thank you, Carolina. And of course, I have to thank Intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research, and editing on this piece. Thank you, Stephen.

Stephen Janis:  Taya, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Taya Graham:  And I have to thank mods of the show, Noli D and Lacey R for their support. Thank you. And a very special thanks to our accountability report Patreons. We appreciate you, and I look forward to thanking each and every single one of you personally in our next livestream, especially Patreon Associate producers, John E.R., David K., Louie P., and Lucille Garcia and super friends Shane B., Kenneth K., Pineapple Girl, Matter of Rights, and Chris R.

And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate. Reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram or @eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter and Facebook.

And please like and comment. You know I read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below for Accountability Reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. Anything you can spare is truly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham, and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.

Cats and dogs. Truth and lies. Substance and spectacle. The second presidential debate of the 2024 election, and the first between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, took place on Sept. 10. In stark contrast to the first debate, which put the final nail in the coffin of the Biden candidacy, Trump was clearly on the defensive in this round. Yet with the candidates neck-and-neck in the polls, it seems unlikely that this debate will meaningfully swing voter opinion in favor of Harris. Maximillian Alvarez, Marc Steiner, Stephen Janis, and Alina Nehlich respond.

Studio / Post-Production: David Hebden

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  Welcome, everyone, to The Real News Network podcast. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News.

Stephen Janis:  My name is Stephen Janis. I’m an investigative reporter at The Real News.

Alina Nehlich:  My name’s Alina Nehlich, and I am an editor here at The Real News and co-host of the Work Stoppage podcast.

Marc Steiner:  I’m Marc Steiner, host of The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And it is so great to have you all with us.

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

All right, well here we are. It is Wednesday, Sept. 11. Last night, former President Donald J. Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris met in person for the first time in Philadelphia, where they squared off in their first and possibly only debate in the 2024 election season.

Early polls taken over the past 24 hours suggest that the majority of viewers felt that Harris delivered the winning performance. And given the openly vented frustrations from the Trump campaign surrogates and the jubilant spin from Harris surrogates, that is certainly the narrative that has begun to crystallize after the debate.

Harris’s campaign said today that she was open to a second debate in October, but Trump said he was “less inclined to do another debate.” So this may very well have been the one and only time the country will get to see the two candidates that they’ll be voting on in less than two months debate on stage.

There were so many storylines going into this high-stakes debate, and there are lots of storylines coming out of it. And our whole Baltimore-based team was here at The Real News studio last night watching the debates live. We’ve been furiously discussing as a team how we’re going to be moving forward from the debate with more on-the-ground reporting on the election between now and November.

But before we all rush back into the field with our cameras and microphones, we wanted to get some of our team together here on The Real News podcast to break down the debate itself. And I’m so excited to have my colleagues Marc Steiner, Stephen Janis, and Alina Nehlich on to tackle this beast.

So I got tons of thoughts. I know you guys do too. Let’s dive right in. All right, so I want to go around the table here, and we’re going to put our pundit hats on. Not something that we normally do —

Stephen Janis:  No, we don’t.

Maximillian Alvarez:  …Here at The Real News. Of course, we’re focused on-the-ground reporting. And just as a constant disclaimer, I want to remind everyone The Real News Network is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit news outlet. We are not here to tell you how to vote. We’re not here to electioneer, but we are here to give you the information and perspective you need to act. So that is the frame in which we are going to be having this discussion.

I want to go around the table and start by having us give our pundit reflections on the debate itself and the expectations that we had going into the debate. What were we going into this debate looking for, and what were some of the key takeaways that stood out to us? Stephen, let’s start with you.

Stephen Janis:  Well, I think everyone went into this debate wondering if Kamala Harris could perform in a national forum like that against Trump and distinguish herself to the point where she could actually move the needle a bit. I do think that was what people were looking for, and I do think she delivered on that. Clearly, by all accounts, by the snap polls, by the punditry that we listened to, she won that debate decidedly on that.

But I think what’s going to be the interesting question going forward, will that actually matter? And if it doesn’t matter, what does it say about the dynamics of this election? Because, in some ways, when you watched it, it was like watching two different realities never intersect. She was making points, and Trump was making points, but neither really seemed to be situated in a reality that was cohesive or coherent.

So I think it’ll be interesting, very interesting to watch to see if this really changes any people’s minds. That’s what my question would be.

Alina Nehlich:  Yeah, I think that that’s pretty correct, Stephen, with at least what most people were expecting. I know that some of us, or I should say that some people maybe more on the left, were watching to see what the expectations were going to be surrounding the responses from the more liberal side of the electorate and just see the way in which things were going.

And also to what extent Kamala was going to keep moving right. Because what we did see was lots of war hawk talk and anti-immigrant sentiment. And so I guess we were kind of expecting that, but we definitely got plenty of it. Not only from Trump, which we definitely expected, but we also got plenty of that from Kamala.

Marc Steiner:  Well, I think that she came in strategically equipped. She was talking to the undecided. She was talking to the middle of the road. She was there to make Trump look like a fool and lace it with a little bit of policy.

But really, I think strategically, having lived through a lot of politics and run a bunch of campaigns as well, when you’re prepping somebody for a debate, you focus on what the weak point of the opposition is, and you go after it. And that’s what they did. She was there to make him look stupid and not prepared and unpresidential. That’s what she did.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and to take a step back even further. Going into the debate. This was something that we discussed a lot here at The Real News Network. Stephen, you and Taya Graham were at the RNC in July.

Stephen Janis:  Yes, we were.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And we were talking about just how much the political scene has changed since you guys were in Milwaukee less than two months ago.

And let’s think about what you guys were going into. We had a plan. We had a plan for your coverage going into the RNC, and then two days before it started, someone tries to assassinate Donald Trump. It was a really intense moment for all of us. I can really only imagine what it was like for you and Taya to be in there at that moment when the fervor, post-assassination attempt fervor was so intense, and it had, as you described in one of your pieces, a religious kind of tone to everything.

So you had that. And out of that moment where Trump survived, his supporters were effusive with praise, and it really felt like, compared to the decaying Joe Biden, that this race was over. There was an act of God tipping the scale for Donald Trump. It was in that haze that I think he made the pick of J.D. Vance for his vice presidential running mate. And I think he regrets that a lot.

So since then, again, Biden dropped out, Kamala took over the ticket. Her momentum has been surging. She picked Tim Walz as her vice presidential candidate. The DNC was in August. Democrats had somehow, in the span of a month, managed to retake the momentum that felt so unshakably in the control of Trump and the Republicans.

Stephen Janis:  I think one of the things that, watching the convention up close, is that Trump, his drama, his dramatic hold on our attention depended a lot upon Joe Biden and Joe Biden’s inability to offer anything appealing or any sort of visual contrast or even ideological contrast, because Biden was not a very good communicator at this point or ever really was.

And when you’re at the convention, there was this dystopian vision of American life. It was a constant drumbeat of things like inflation and crime, without any policy whatsoever.

And I think the Trump campaign had based its entire strategy on the aesthetics of Trump somehow being stronger, invoking fear, and then having this very… I mean, let’s say, I don’t want to use the word feeble, but that’s kind of what… Feeble old man, and what happened to them.

Of course, as you point out, when he showed up with the bandage on his ear, there was an ecstasy in that room that was very unsettling in some ways. Because it wasn’t really attached to any political reality, it was more a rhetorical statement.

But then when Kamala comes in, suddenly that contrast in the aesthetics and all that dynamic shifted in a second. And suddenly, as we could see last night in playing this out last night, Trump looked old, mean, bitter, and somehow disconnected from reality. So that’s a really good point, Max.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and I just wanted to, again, remind folks about how much has actually shifted since the last debate.

Stephen Janis:  Oh my God.

Maximillian Alvarez:  There’s a constant knee-jerk assumption that we all make, and that people we know make, which is that the debates don’t matter. People who support Trump are going to keep supporting Trump, people who support Biden are going to keep supporting Biden. Then the debate at the beginning of this summer happens, and the result is Biden drops out of the race.

The result was seeing an open revolt with the party elite. The donor class, the media class rebelling against Biden staying on the ticket. That’s a significant thing to happen in a presidential race, but it’s already… It’s old news at this point.

And that is the other part that I wanted to mention going into the debate. What I was looking for and what I was thinking about was, what I was really fascinated by is that over the past two months, it feels like Donald Trump has become victim of the very things, the very qualities of the internet age that have catapulted him to his success and his star power up until now. The very things that have allowed Donald Trump to thrive as a political force in the internet age have been biting him back over the past two months.

And the two examples I would give is one, Trump has always thrived on the fact that the internet age has conditioned us all to have the long-term memory of goldfish. And he weaponizes the insatiable pace of the 24-hour news cycle to constantly just generate new headlines with the crazy stuff he says, the crazy things he’s doing in office, the crazy accusations that he’s making.

And since 2016, the media and the political class have never really figured out how to deal with that, how to counter that. But Trump is a creature of the internet in that way, and he knows how to swim in those waters, and it’s helped him so much over the past eight years in the Trump era.

And yet, he forgot that lesson when the assassination attempt happened. He thought that that vibe that you were feeling in the RNC, Stephen, was going to carry him all the way through November. And something as consequential and historic as an attempted assassination on a former president, current presidential candidate, that shit got memory holed in a month, less than that. People forgot. People stopped caring, and Trump doesn’t know what to do with that.

So he’s a victim of the thing that made him a success. In the same way that Trump is an internet troll, as we all know how great and adept he is at the art of trolling, he picked J.D. Vance as his vice presidential ticket. And then the internet just had a field day with that. They’ve been trolling him left and right and ridiculing Trump, Vance. Democrats had pounced on the “these guys are weird” messaging, and stoking the internet meme machine that has been attacking Trump and the Republicans.

I don’t think Trump knows what to do with that quite yet because he spent the whole of August complaining about how Biden should have to get back on the ticket because he was an easy opponent.

And so going into this debate, I was like, how is Trump going to attack? Because I think he’s got a lot of pent up rage and aggression, of course. But he’s also shown a lot of vulnerabilities in the past two months. So that was also what I was going into.

And the last thing I’ll say, because I’ve been talking a lot, is we knew that this debate, for all the reasons we’ll talk about in a few minutes, was going to be a carnival-esque display of capitalist politics crafted in the capitalist spectacle of horrors that…

Again, we all know what’s wrong about this system, what’s wrong about the election, the way we talk about elections and all that kind of stuff. So we knew it was going to be a carnival-esque display, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t going to be a consequential one. Just like the last debate, this debate could have had, and may still have real, ramifications for the shape of this election and the fate of the country that hangs in the balance.

And so I want to pick up on that and ask if we could focus in a little more on the debate itself and our impressions of how Trump and Harris handled themselves with all of that leading up into the debate itself.

Alina Nehlich:  Well, speaking a little bit to what Stephen was mentioning with the RNC and Trump being a strongman in contrast to Biden’s more feeble, or however you want to phrase it, position in the election. I think that what we saw in the debate was Kamala trying to take that strong person narrative and use it against Trump in that same way. I believe at one point, she even called him weak on things. There’s always this, “I’m tougher than you.”

And it’s really interesting how the Democrats have gone in that direction compared to… Maybe I’m still a little young in that I’ve only seen, what, five elections in my lifetime, but I don’t always think of the Democrats as the, “I’m the strong person,” compared to the Republicans. And the fact that that is now Kamala’s take was surprising to me.

But also looking at the way that, as you were saying, Max, about the very short attention span of people, they do want to just have an image in their head. I think that even part of the purpose of this debate was to put Kamala up there on stage and remind people that this is the candidate, in a certain sense.

Sure, I bet some people have seen press conferences, maybe some people have seen clips of her rallies. But I don’t know if they really had a true mental image of her as the potential president and her being up there on stage with the camera and her looking nice in the suit and all that. It really did actually give that kind of presidential look. And I think that that was another major purpose of the debate itself, along with the interesting change in the way that the rhetoric is going from the Democrats.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And just a quick note on the Democratic posturing outflanking Republicans by being more Republican than they are. It’s been a back and forth thing, but it was really in the early ’90s when the new Democrats with Clinton… After getting their asses whooped by Reagan and Bush, Democrats were really soul-searching. And the answer they came up for was let’s out-right the right and be tough on crime, and let’s take the gun out of their hands because they’re always calling us weak, and yada, yada, yada.

And so for my lifetime, it’s been a back and forth between trying to position themselves as the more compassionate side, the more progressive side. While at the same time, as Alina was saying, I’ve witnessed, at first as a conservative who grew up in the first 20 years of my life, and now as the lefty nut job you see before you, I’ve seen the ways that Democrats have jockeyed for position to establish themselves as the more, the stronger, no BS, tough on crime. The party that could simultaneously say, we are the compassionate party that wants to have the most lethal fighting force on the face of the planet, kind of thing.

And so it was really arresting to me to watch on the debate stage, all of that political maneuvering, all of the policy decisions, all of the messaging campaigns that have had real harsh, real world impacts for working people culminate in the thing that Democrats wanted to get out of that, which was taking out of a Republican candidate’s hand the ability to say, well, you guys are soft on the border. You guys are soft on Gaza. And Kamala could say, no, we’re not. I love Israel more than you. We’re stronger on the border than you. My running mate and I are gun owners.

And then that’s it. Is that what it was all leading to, just like that rhetorical, nope, you can’t get us there, so we win, kind of thing?

Marc Steiner:  I think what you said is true. I think it’s also more complex than that. I think that because, being someone who’s a deep believer in dialectics [laughs], there’s an intertwining of things here. And so first of all, take into account that we’re living in an America at this moment where a Black woman, a Black Asian woman, is running neck and neck, if not a little bit in front, to be president of the United States in a country with a deep racist past.

We might live on politics and the intricacies of that. Most people don’t. People look at this very symbolically. They look at it as, look where we’ve come. Look what’s happened.

Think about our country historically. We had a civil war. We had Reconstruction that destroyed everything they fought for in the Civil War and began the lynching of Black people and disenfranchising Black folks in the South. And after Reconstruction, we had the Civil Rights Movement and all the pushback from the right and a large part of the white world against everything we fought for in civil rights. And I say we, because that was me.

And now you’re seeing this complexity up there. When Kamala Harris was up there, she was — And I’m not talking politics at the moment. I’m just talking about what people take in. Here was this woman standing solid, strong, taking on this big white fat buffoon, and she wiped the floor with him. And so yes, that has something to do with the complexity of how you appeal to people in America. Why did Teddy Roosevelt win? Because he came off as a badass, I’m a bull moose. We’re not going to take anything from anybody. That’s why he won. That’s not all of America. That’s part of America.

Stephen Janis:  Obviously Harris was much more competent than Trump as a debater.

Marc Steiner:  Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:  Okay. And so it’s been a mystery to me the past four years, because as leftists, or people who lean left, we’ve seen a lot of progressive legislation, we’ve seen a lot of progressive ideas actually become reality under the Biden administration, but it hasn’t affected the electorate at all. And that’s what I’m wondering about the debate. Obviously Harris was more competent, did a better job. But will it change people’s minds in the sense that they seem inured to any sort of policy?

The Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act. All these things have been implemented in a much less neoliberal way and more — Well, some of them are market-based. But some of them, like the Infrastructure Act or the Inflation Reduction Act, are much more traditional, leftist, progressive, let’s say.

But it doesn’t really… And Marc, I don’t know, or Max, or anyone can weigh in on this, it doesn’t seem to connect with people. Everyone thinks everything is miserable, and Biden’s done a horrible job in the economy. And yet, what we would want as progressives to see happen happened, and even we don’t like it. So it just makes me wonder whether the debate matters, in that sense.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, I think it’s a great question. It does speak to the spectacle of the debate itself. And I think this partially answers the question. But it’s something we talked about after the RNC and the DNC. These are spectacles manufactured for the camera. They are politics made symbol at its highest point. It’s politics made for the camera.

And the same is true for the debate stage. Marc, you mentioned the image, the symbolism, and the impact that that has on people. Let’s not forget that television, the first televised debate swung that presidential election away from Nixon towards Kennedy. Nixon looked sweaty.

I watched it. I did watch it. [Steiner and Alvarez laugh].

Stephen Janis:  So you can testify.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Nixon was not ready to be on TV and glow and shine through the way that Kennedy did, and that had a major impact. And so I mention that just to mention that in terms of stage managing the spectacle and the symbolic value that people project onto that and that’s projected back at us, is almost its own thing.

Stephen Janis:  Max —

Maximillian Alvarez:  Divorced from policy.

Stephen Janis:  Just one thing. [Inaudible]. Marc, I’m sorry, but Marc, you can answer this. Oh, I’m sorry. Oh my God. But just quickly, I want to throw this question out. Nixon got in trouble for being a little sweaty, and yet Trump was insane. Why does that —

Marc Steiner:  Different era.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Oh yeah, our country’s gone…

Stephen Janis:  Sorry, I just wanted to ask that question. I apologize.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Oh, no. We got decades of insanity that have compounded from that moment on [laughs]. But yeah, but Trump still, again, he’s able to… He’s a product of that same lineage that itself has gone through decades of evolution with the transition to 24-hour news cycle, cable TV, reality TV, streaming, the internet. So I think you can connect a through line to Donald Trump today to Nixon 60 years ago.

But I think that the media environment, our expectations, the ways that politicians have played to the debate and to the television, and the ways that has shaped the very politics that our two-party system bases itself around. There’s a whole… Don’t worry. We can have a whole long discussion about that, but at another time.

I guess the point I was just trying to make, though, is that in terms of the symbolism and the spectacle of these debates, they almost operate on their own terms, divorced from policy and the political reality that we all live in. There is some semblance of a connection, but it’s almost like a production that we have to analyze on its own terms.

And I wanted us to just hover there for a second because, on the terms of the debate that we all watched, I think, to extract some of the key points that we’ve offered here, Kamala Harris went in prepared. Like Marc said, she had a key objective there, which it seemed apparent to us that she achieved.

My two cents in watching that is that where she was most effective as a debater was baiting Trump and distracting him. I don’t think she nailed a knockout punch against Trump because you just don’t do that against Donald Trump. He’s going to keep going no matter what. He’s going to keep talking even if he sounds like an idiot. That’s his strength. He will just keep going and move past it.

But what she managed to do with all of these traps that she laid, calling him weak, like Alina said, mentioning his crowd sizes, mentioning people in his own party who have called him out as a failure, mentioning world leaders around the country who think he’s a disgrace. She knew each time she mentioned those, that the next time Trump got to speak, he was not going to address whatever he was asked to address. He was going to go back to the insult, or the thing that he took as an insult. And he did, every single time.

And so what that did was it distracted Trump from being more of an attack dog against Harris and the Biden-Harris record. And so in that way, she was a success on the debate stage, but again, it was more of evading the kill blows from Trump and knocking him off kilter, making him look like more of a buffoon.

But in terms of articulating a positive vision for the country, in terms of really hammering home what Harris and the Democrats are going to do to address the things that Trump was speaking most directly to, like people’s pain in today’s economy and the inflation squeeze that all of us have been feeling, things like that, this narrative of national decline. I don’t know, personally, how well she parried that, with the exceptions being when she talked about abortion. And I mean, that was honestly the main one.

Her message on the economy was still, I mean, she mentioned the small business thing like 800 times. But I don’t know, what do you guys think?

Alina Nehlich:  I guess when it comes to — And I’m sorry if I’m jumping ahead of other people here.

Marc Steiner:  You’re not. Go ahead.

Alina Nehlich:  I was just thinking about the spectacle nature that you’re talking about and how it was a question of how can Trump be so divorced from reality? Not to give Kamala way too much credit, but she’s at least a little bit more grounded than Trump.

You think, you look at what is happening on the internet today, it’s just loads of memes. Whether it’s the silly, the ridiculous pet eating story, or the one where Trump’s like, Kamala’s letting trans people get gender-affirming care in prison, which is fine and good if it was real. And that’s why some of the memes are out there being like, wow, so trans people are now trying to go to prison to get these things that were promised to them by Donald Trump.

I mean, I think some of those memes are a little distasteful for a couple of reasons. But I do think that the fact that the memes are going around, that is emblematic of what this whole thing is really about.

Marc Steiner:  I think most people in America, most people period around on the planet, are not into the intricacies of policy. They’re just not into the intricacies of policy at all. That’s not their lives. They know what they believe, what they think is right and wrong.

And you had Kamala Harris there talking about… She didn’t go into detail. You talked about opportunity economy. She talked about reproductive freedom in America. She talked about making housing more affordable, things people can relate to. She didn’t have to point out, this is how I’m going to do it. I’m going to give X number of people houses. But what she did was articulate a vision that appealed to people’s gut. She was talking last night to the undecided voter in America, to those in the margins, to those who will make a difference in who wins this election.

My take on this, what happened last night, it was a very savvy, strategic move on the part of the Democrats and Kamala Harris, the way they handled the debate. And she came off tough as nails. And we’re in a world now where a tough Black woman — I know she’s Black and Asian, but a tough Black woman in America was anathema to this country. It’s not the same anymore in terms of the visceral reaction people have because America’s changed. It is changing, not changed. It’s changing. And so the old white way is not the only way in America that people look at. And I think that she played into all that.

If there was a real left alternative in America, it’d be different there. There isn’t. Most of the left alternative is either inside the Democratic Party, inside the burgeoning labor union movement. They’re not in any coalesced group. We don’t have an NDP like Canada has. So I think people saw in her somebody who is fighting for them and not for the corporate interests, viscerally speaking.

Stephen Janis:  To your point, Marc, the left has been very harsh on Biden. And a lot of the programs that have been passed were not cohesive because we don’t really seem to fixate on execution and competence. And that’s the thing. She was much better, obviously a masterful debater compared to Trump. But I just wonder if, three or four days down the road now and the polls are still the same, what do we conclude from that? Where are we? Is it because the left isn’t embracing this candidacy, or is it something else?

Marc Steiner:  We’re a divided nation. We are a deeply divided nation. Since the Civil Rights Movement, to the anti-war movement, to the organizing that happened in the ’60s, politically, and with unions, there was this right-wing surge, and they are a powerful force.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, I want to round us out by talking about that. How much do we think this debate is going to matter in the election?

Stephen Janis:  Good question.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And let’s also throw our pundit hats off for a second and put our reporter hats back on. Given the work that we do every week: Police Accountability Report, Work Stoppage, Working People, The Marc Steiner Show, I want us to round out by also talking about what and who was not being represented on that debate stage or in this election, and how should our audience and regular people out there navigate it?

So that’s where we’re going. But by way of getting there, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say, let’s at least go around the table and talk about our best, favorite crazy moments from the debate last night [Steiner laughs], because there were many, and I’m sure listeners don’t want to hear us be all serious all the time.

So what were some of the most ridiculous standout moments for you guys? I guess we took the most ridiculous one, so no one can use that. But Trump just farting out of his mouth this right wing conspiracy theory bullshit about undocumented migrants eating people’s pets. It’s just nuts. It really spoke to what you said, Stephen, about how, for one moment, we got to see these two alternate versions of reality sharing the same space. But they’re barely even talking to each other. They’re barely, if at all, on a shared terrain of reality.

Stephen Janis:  Let me just go first because someone takes my — And I’ll make it very quick. I just thought the handshake moment was fascinating because Kamala comes out and just forcefully puts out her hand.

Marc Steiner:  Walks to him.

Stephen Janis:  And walks to him. And we talked about spectacle, symbols. I thought that was highly symbolic more than anything else, because she just demanded that… Because that was always a tradition, that candidates would shake their hands. Look, we all have different views and left, right, whatever, but we do want to see people be civil. We all want some civility. And the fact that she went out and made that statement and gesture showed that, I think, she was not to be trifled with. So that was my moment.

Alina Nehlich:  Okay. So I already mentioned those two, so I’m not going to talk about the two that I brought up before. But I think that one of the moments that really stuck out for me was when Trump said, “I’m speaking to Kamala,” because that was just wild to see. Especially with the basically near pro-genocide rhetoric that was going on on the debate stage for Trump to call out that moment, which was based in a rally where Kamala was trying to stop anti-genocide protesters from voicing their demands and saying, “I’m speaking.” And then to see Trump do that, I don’t know. I thought that that was very funny to me, in an ironic but also horrible way.

Marc Steiner:  There were so many jabs and barbs that she threw at him that he just didn’t know how to respond to. I mean, when she said, “81 million people threw you out of office.”

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, she said, “81 million people fired Donald Trump.”

Marc Steiner:  Fired! Fired!

Maximillian Alvarez:  I’m sorry, fired. She very specifically used that word.

Stephen Janis:  That was brilliant.

Marc Steiner:  He came out, “You’re fired,” from his TV show, and 81 million people. That’s right. Right, exactly. I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right, Max.

Stephen Janis:  That was brilliant.

Marc Steiner:  I think what happened in this race at the moment because of the debate is that it gave the Harris-Walz ticket a boost, and it pushed them ahead. I think, viscerally, people liked watching what happened. Americans like seeing somebody’s ass get kicked. They do. It is part of nature; boxing, wrestling, rugby, football. And I think that this is really going to give them a boost. And I think that he’s nervous and frightened to death at the moment.

Stephen Janis:  It’s got to be particularly humiliating for him because you had MMA fighters and wrestling and Hulk Hogan at his… I was there.

Marc Steiner:  Right.

Stephen Janis:  It was like a World Wrestling match more than a convention.

Marc Steiner:  He plays a tough guy, but he’s a punk. [Laughs] I’m sorry. That’s not a partisan Republican/Democrat thing. I’ll stop here, Max. But when you grow up like I did, and like you did, you can tell a phony on the street when they act like they’re a tough guy. You know exactly [laughs]… I’m sorry, I’ll stop.

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, no, no [Alvarez and Steiner laugh]. I think because, again, if we’re talking about how people are seeing this, that matters. And especially it matters for someone like Trump who has based his entire political career on being that strong person, and having that unshakable strength and virility.

And the only thing I would add to that is just that I think what Democrats and folks in the liberal center, for whatever that means in today’s political arrangement — In most other countries, our political center would be the far right of other countries. As you said, we don’t really have an institutional left to speak of, yada, yada yada.

But I do think one of the things that the Harris campaign has shown is that Democrats have been learning from the first time we saw Trump ascend in 2016. They have learned a few things.

Let’s be honest. None of us thought that Harris was going to make Walz her pick because it seemed like the right pick, it seemed like the obvious pick if they wanted to win and garner people’s votes. But just by everything we knew about the Democratic establishment, the past was telling us it was not going to be Walz. And then it was.

And then even them doubling down on the “these guys are weirdos,” messaging, it was like, holy shit, I’m not used to the Democrats being good on offense.

But at the same time, I think what the debate showed, hopefully, is that one of the things, one of the perennial psychoses of the Trump era is that everyone has been longing for that never going to come moment where Trump is cornered and admits defeat and admits he was wrong. He’s never going to fucking do that — Pardon my French — Ever.

The guy I always think of is the general in Mars Attacks when the Martian is shrinking him with a ray right before the Martian squashes him with its boot. And the guy is just shooting at the Martian the whole time yelling at him. That’s Trump. He’s not going to stop yelling and shooting ever.

And so stop trying to corner him into a moment where you’re going to get this admission of guilt or anything. He’s not going to give it to you. So the best that you can do is just expose him and make him look weak and use his personality against him so that the perception of him changes even if he never does.

Stephen Janis:  Max, as we were taking an Uber to here to watch the debate, there was a man who had been a Democrat, and he was Muslim, and he said he was voting for Trump. And we were asking him about this, how he could reconcile Trump’s comments and things he said, and he got back to your point about Trump is strong. He will subdue dictators. Even though, as we point out every problematic aspect of Trump’s foreign policy and how bad he would be for the Palestinian people, he still stuck to his guns that Trump, he was going to vote for Trump. It’s strange.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Strange is absolutely the word.

Stephen Janis:  I can’t rationalize it.

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, because so much of it is irrational. Again, that’s the burning core of Trump’s politics is there is an irrationality at the heart of it that doesn’t need to be bogged down by rational justifications.

Stephen Janis:  Not at all.

Maximillian Alvarez:  It’s just vibes and anger and frustration and all these ugly feelings given a direction to go in. That’s what you need. And that’s, again, why we got to stop trying to over-intellectualize the Trump movement, because if we don’t understand the role that irrationality plays in keeping that movement going and in keeping people believing in it, then we’re never going to understand Trump and his appeal.

The last thing I would say on the weirdness, the strangeness of the debate that kept hitting me was every single time Trump would go on a bonkers rant that he would end with, they are destroying this country. It’s going to be bedlam, everything, just the most batshit thing he could say, followed quickly by a, thank you, Mr. President, from the moderators and moving on to the next thing.

Just that dissonance, because it just shows that this is… I know in 2016 from the moment Donald Trump descended that golden escalator — Well, in 2015 — We’ve been reciting the mantra, “This is not normal.” It fucking isn’t, but it’s become our normal. But when I see stuff like that, it’s just these little hints that like, man, this is a ridiculous and dangerous and frightening political reality that is being treated with the gloves of political normalcy.

Stephen Janis:  The moderators this time were a little bit better than the previous.

Maximillian Alvarez:  They were. They absolutely were.

Stephen Janis:  But you’re right. You’re right. It’s become normalized, and we cover it like that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Right.

Alina Nehlich:  Well, and I was going to say, if we could get to the reporting part that you had mentioned a little bit ago before we wrap up here. I did want to mention, you mentioned the wildness and the contradictions. I think that looking at Kamala mentioning the existential crisis of climate change and then being absolutely against a fracking ban. We produced more oil and all of these things that are horrible for the environment, but then somehow still claiming to be so pro-environmental is, I think, one of the things that stands out in regards to that aspect of the debate to me. Specifically as someone who is younger and cares really a lot about the planet being burned to death.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yep. Well, let’s end on that because in a way, this is fitting [crosstalk]. Because again, we don’t do punditry all the time here. We wanted to give our reflections on the debate. But our bread and butter, what we’ve been doing before this, what we’re going to be doing after this, as you guys listening know, is we’re going to get out there and report. We want to tell your stories.

We want to see how this stuff is impacting you and your communities. We want to talk to the folks who are fighting back against this right-wing demagoguery, against this bipartisan consensus on doubling down on anti-immigrant sentiment, pro-genocide support for Israel’s war on Gaza. We want to go to the front lines of struggle where these things are not just talking points, but they are people’s lives and lived realities.

And so that, in a way, is what we’re going to be covering throughout the rest of this election season and beyond. So it’s like this podcast is the breather between.

But I do want to maybe just end on that point, like Alina was saying is, what from our reporting past and future do we really want to emphasize for folks that was not being addressed on the debate stage or that is not going to be impacted by this current election, or what either of these two candidates are saying? I guess just any thoughts we wanted to share on stories we really want folks to focus on or reflections that we want to leave people with before we ourselves head back out into the field to do our reporting.

Marc Steiner:  If Harris wins, we have a lot of work to do. Different kind of work. And that is to talk more about the union organizing going on, people rising up from the bottom and fighting. It means taking on the right wing in this country and what they can do to America. It means fighting for justice, Israel, Gaza. There are things we have to really put out there that have to push the envelope and push the discussion.

Stephen Janis:  I hope that we can emphasize, I see very little mention of what I think drives all of these problems, is economic inequality and rising economic inequality, and that we are going to continue to bring that context to our reporting.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yes. Absolutely. And like Alina said, the absurdity of how neither of the parties is really taking the climate crisis seriously as we are quite literally in the final years to do something to seriously change the outcome for our children and our children’s children. And we’re not doing it.

And so to see what is going to be the defining political and existential question of the rest of our lives and our children’s lives be batted around in such a blase, meaningless moment on a debate stage. When I look back, if I make it to 70 and I’m looking back at that, I have a feeling —

Marc Steiner:  [Crosstalk] What are you talking about?

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, I’m just saying I probably won’t make it to that. But if I do, looking back at moments like that and looking at the world that our parents’ generations left us with, I don’t think I’ll be able to really ever make peace with that.

But yeah, obviously we talked about this after the DNC. The cognitive and emotional dissonance between the joyful, jubilant nature of what was going on inside the convention and the reality that we’re reporting on every week of a genocide happening in our name with bombs made in this country, with our tax dollars.

We are showing people the human cost of that. We published two documentaries on it, one from the West Bank, one from Gaza this week. That is all happening while this is all happening. What we’ve seen from both parties is they are not going to change course on that.

So what we know is what we’ve been reporting on over the past year, that it’s going to depend on the people of the world to make that kind of change, to make power bend to their will. And that is where we’re going to be, at the places where working people here in the U.S. and around the world are building power and making power bend to their will.

And so with that, let’s wrap up this post debate podcast. I’m so, so grateful to my colleagues, Stephen Janis, Marc Steiner, Alina Nehlich for this incredible conversation. Please let us know what you thought, share your reflections on the debate and storylines that you want to see us cover moving forward between now and November and beyond.

And please, one more time before you leave, we need your support to keep bringing you more important coverage and conversations just like this. So head on over to therealnews.com/donate and support our work today. We really appreciate it. For The Real News Network, this is Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

Darcy Layton was pleasantly surprised with a free sweater and fruit from her local convenience store—but what she didn’t know was that a more sinister surprise was awaiting her outdoors. Without explanation, local police confronted Layton and ordered her to show ID. Police body camera footage reveals the officer got physical when Layton was slow to give her full name, and arrested her under questionable pretenses. Suddenly facing charges, Latyon was hit with another shock from police: if she did not accept a guilty plea, she would be involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitalization. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of the Police Accountability Report investigate the case and examine how it reveals the role of police in enforcing social boundaries by criminalizing mental illness and homelessness.

Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Adam Coley

Transcript

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

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose. Holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible.

And today, we will achieve that goal by showing you this video of a cop making an inexplicable arrest of a woman who was simply standing on a public sidewalk. A questionable use of power to detain and cage a person who had not committed a crime. But it’s an arrest which reveals the destructive consequences of over-policing and why cops need to be watched at all times. But first, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you.

You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct and please share and like and comment. It really helps us and it can even help our guests and you know I read your comments and appreciate them. And please consider joining our channel and if you click that blue fundraising button over here, you can make a huge difference to help keep us going. If you donate $75 or more or become a $10 a month supporter, you’ll receive an exclusive Real News T-shirt as a special thank you so please consider helping us. You never see ads here and you know we don’t take corporate dollars.

All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way. Now, as we reported on the show repeatedly over and over again, police power is often used in situations that do not justify it, but in fact call for entirely different solutions. There are incidents where people simply need the help of another human being, not a gun, a badge or a set of handcuffs and no use of police power is more indicative of our penchant for applying it to the wrong situations than the video I’m showing you now.

It depicts an encounter between Darcy Layton and an Ogden, Utah police officer that ended with horrible consequences for her and questions about how the department treats people in need at their most vulnerable moments. The story starts in Ogden, Utah in April 2023. There, Darcy Layton is experiencing what she’ll tell us later was a moment of personal crisis. Not violent, as you will see, or even alarming. She’s just dealing with the consequences of her tenuous housing situation and she’s struggling with the stress of it. She happened at the same time to be standing on a street outside of a 7-Eleven, which is a fact that will be important later. That’s when an Ogden police officer drove to confront her for reasons that remain unknown. Take a listen.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Hey, excuse me. Hey.

Darcy Layton:

Hi.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Hi. What’s your name?

Darcy Layton:

I’m sorry, I was kind of praying to God for a minute.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Okay, no, that’s fine. It’s just the people at 7-Eleven don’t want you here so can I get your name?

Darcy Layton:

Oh, they didn’t tell me that [inaudible 00:03:01] been in there.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Okay, well what’s your name? What’s your name? Hey, stop. Stop.

Taya Graham:

Now, you will notice as the officer exits the vehicle, Darcy was clearly standing on a public sidewalk, not on the property of a 7-Eleven. And as is her right, since the officer had not expressed reasonable, articulate suspicion that she had committed a crime, she had declined to identify herself and simply exercise her right and walk away, but the officer decided to pursue. Take a look.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Hey, what’s your name ma’am? Ma’am, what’s your name?

Darcy Layton:

I’m okay. I just would go for a walk, I’m okay.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

What’s your name?

Darcy Layton:

I didn’t shop with [inaudible 00:03:51].

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Okay, what’s your name?

Darcy Layton:

I’m going to go. I’m fine. I haven’t done anything wrong.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

You’re not leaving.

Darcy Layton:

I’m fine.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

You’re trespassing. They want you out of here.

Darcy Layton:

I am walking off the, wait, wait. I’m not trespassing. I’m on public road.

Taya Graham:

First of all, the officer has not established that she has committed a crime. Yes, as you heard, he accused her of trespassing. But given that she seems far removed from the actual property of the 7-Eleven, that is at best, a questionable allegation. Still, without any evidence of intent of a crime, he continues to try to detain her – watch.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Come back to my car.

Darcy Layton:

I was on a public road.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Come back to my car.

Darcy Layton:

Public road, public road.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Come, stop.

Darcy Layton:

Let me go.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Stop.

Darcy Layton:

What the you fuck [inaudible 00:04:30].

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Stop.

Darcy Layton:

Fuck, fucking God. Oh my God.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Stop.

Taya Graham:

Okay, so for some reason that I cannot conceivably justify legally he puts his hands on her and I will note at the time this occurred, she was not threatening anyone and she was in the process of leaving the area, as I will repeat, is her right. Therefore, the question at this point is why did the officer put his hands on her? What exactly is the crime? Take a look for yourself and decide if this use of force is justified.

Darcy Layton:

[inaudible 00:05:03].

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Stop.

Darcy Layton:

Fucking stop, fucking God. Oh my God.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

If you don’t stop.

Darcy Layton:

Fucking hell.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Get the fuck off [inaudible 00:05:17].

Darcy Layton:

Rick, you got a PP.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Hey, don’t feel my leg.

Darcy Layton:

Rick you got a PP. God, damn you.

Taya Graham:

Before I weigh in on the legality of this arrest or what the law entitles the officer to do, at this point I want you to take a look at something that we see quite often when watching police body cameras, but rarely discuss, the way the officer initiates pain compliance. Now you can see how the officer bends her arm up into her arm socket. This is an extremely painful maneuver that can have lasting physical effects. Just recall our last show when Eddie Holguin was still suffering from the ongoing nerve pain of a previous arrest when the police arrested him again and caused pain in the same arm. Still, despite the risks, along with the obvious fact, Darcy is hardly a physically formidable detainee, the officer continues to press her arm up and into her shoulder, see for yourself.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Stop.

Darcy Layton:

Fucking hell.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Get the fuck off [inaudible 00:05:17].

Darcy Layton:

Rick, you got a PP.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Hey, don’t feel my leg.

Darcy Layton:

Rick you got a PP. God, damn you. [inaudible 00:06:44] Fucking bullshit [inaudible 00:06:44]. God damn.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Okay, give me your other arm. Give me your other arm.

Taya Graham:

Now, I really want you to think about what you’re seeing here. A woman pressed into the ground on the wet sidewalk, her arm dangerously pushed up into her back and is facing this physical duress for doing what exactly? What was the crime here? What was the threat to the public safety? A couple of 7-Eleven employees didn’t like her. Is that how we justify the use of force? Let’s just listen and see if the officer shares the particulars of the crime upon which he bases his use of force.

Darcy Layton:

Fuck.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

You’re being ridiculous.

Darcy Layton:

Don’t you dare, mother fucker. Fuck, your mother.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Sit up.

Darcy Layton:

It’s okay, fucking your mother.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Sit up.

Darcy Layton:

If you’re okay with fucking your mother. Fuck you, bullshit, [inaudible 00:07:36].

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Please stand up.

Darcy Layton:

Fuck Eddie. God damn it. Fucking, what is your problem?

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Come on.

Darcy Layton:

What did I do?

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Put your shoes on.

Darcy Layton:

What did I do?

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Let’s go.

Darcy Layton:

What did I do, please? What did I fucking do? You, God damn it.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

What did I do? What crime had I committed? A fairly simple question and yet the officer does not answer it. Now, instead, he ridicules Darcy and continues to implement pain compliance, a situation that only gets worse as he forces her into the patrol car all the while maintaining his silence about her alleged crime.

Darcy Layton:

Please, what did I fucking do? You God damn it.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Stop. Stop. Do you have anything on you shouldn’t have? What’s your name? Huh? What’s your name? I’m going to add another charge.

Darcy Layton:

I’m sorry please be nice.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Get in.

Darcy Layton:

Fucking bullshit.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Get in.

Darcy Layton:

Please be nice. Who are you?

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Police, get in.

Darcy Layton:

Please, who are you?

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Get in.

Darcy Layton:

Who are you?

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Get in. Get in please. Can you put your feet in the car please?

Taya Graham:

I’m going to add another charge. Well, that’s interesting. For what exactly? Because you can’t have a secondary offense without an underlying crime to justify it, right, officer? So what exactly is the first offense that justifies the second? Because as far as I can tell you never really made clear what the initial reason for the arrest is. And let me say this as well, this particular arrest up until this point embodies many of the problems people endure when they push back on the state of law enforcement in this country.

This is why people don’t trust the police because so far the officer has been less than forthcoming about his justification for this violent arrest, and yet he has been more than articulate about his disdain for Darcy, which incidentally, is not a crime. In other words, you can’t arrest people that you don’t like. But still the officer persists and continues to refuse to answer questions. Just watch.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Get in, please. Can you put your feet in the car please? It’s soaking [inaudible 00:09:57].

Darcy Layton:

I’m very hot.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

What’s your name?

Darcy Layton:

I’m sorry.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

What’s your name?

Darcy Layton:

Ah.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Huh? What is your name? What’s your name?

Darcy Layton:

I don’t know.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Huh?

Darcy Layton:

I’m sorry.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

What’s your name?

Darcy Layton:

I just kind of daydreaming for a minute.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Okay. What’s your name?

Darcy Layton:

I don’t know. I don’t remember. [inaudible 00:10:23]

Taya Graham:

But now perhaps the officer realizes that he has made an arrest for no good reason so he starts to make an accusation on body camera, the one that seems problematic, if not impossible. Take a look.

Darcy Layton:

I’m sorry I fucking [inaudible 00:10:39] myself I didn’t mean to you.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Lean your up a little bit.

Darcy Layton:

Am I dead?

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Why did you scratch me? Did you bite me?

Darcy Layton:

They drowning me in the fucking hole.

Taya Graham:

Did you bite me, seriously? This is what we like to call body worn camera performance. You know, I don’t have reasonable articulable suspicion or probable cause to make an arrest, but what I do have is the ability to perform my own version of stop resisting on body worn camera to justify any actions that might not meet the actual legal threshold for putting someone in handcuffs. Now, I’m not going to review the entire video, but here are a few excerpts and you tell me when and where she had the opportunity or inclination to bite the officer. Let’s watch.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Stop.

Darcy Layton:

What the fuck.

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Stop.

Darcy Layton:

Fucking, fuck. What the hell?

Ogden, Utah Police Officer:

Stop.

Darcy Layton:

Fucking dick.

Taya Graham:

So I, for one, didn’t see it and if you did, please leave a comment sharing where you did if you do indeed think she tried to harm the officer. But for the record, the bite may have been literally impossible because as Darcy shared with me later, she didn’t have her dentures in. But in the meantime, there is much to reveal about what led up to the arrest and the way police in Ogden, Utah have been aggressively targeting members of the community that we will unpack for you when we speak to Darcy and her boyfriend, Eddie Clegg, details, which only make the circumstances surrounding this example of over-policing even more questionable. But first, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been reaching out to the police and examining the evidence. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.

Stephen Janis:

Tay, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:

So Stephen, how are police justifying the arrest? What crime did Darcy commit?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I looked at the charging documents. We obtained them from the police department. Pretty simple. They charged her with some very questionable crimes that don’t seem to match the body-worn camera, namely trespassing and then interfering. But of course interfering would be a secondary offense to trespassing. And if you look at the video, you could see that she’s clearly on the sidewalk, I think, although the snow is covering, but not on the property.

But what they did because of those charges is that they had her plead guilty to the trespassing, threatening to charge her with that other bogus charge, which is injuring a police officer, which again, on video clearly contradicts what the officer was saying. So really it’s an example of law enforcement using their powers, to strong-arm someone into giving up their rights.

Taya Graham:

Okay, so wait, you’re saying Ogden, Utah prosecutors actually threatened her with charges of assaulting an officer. What was the plea offer and what eventually happened?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I mean Tay, it’s amazing. What they use is that very, I think questionable charge of trespassing to then intimidate her and saying that she was going to have to plead guilty of something that clearly wasn’t on body-worn camera, which just shows you how ridiculously ill-equipped I would say, our justice system is to defend people who can’t afford a high-priced lawyer. I’m sure if she had an expensive lawyer, that case would’ve been tossed in a second, but instead she ended up spending time in jail having plead guilty to a crime she didn’t commit.

Taya Graham:

Stephen, it seems to me that police are targeting this area’s unhoused population. What does this use of police power say about the underlying imperative of it and how does this jive with some of the theories of police power and its role in capitalism?

Stephen Janis:

Well, Tay, let me go back to what I just said. Let’s do a little thought experience. Imagine if all these unhoused people had expensive lawyers who could fight back and question the police, question the charges, question the legality, put officers on the stand and put the legal system on the stand as well. Let’s imagine what would happen. Do you think they’d be harassing these people? Do you think they’d be arresting them and pulling them in for charges they didn’t commit? Do you think so? I don’t think so. And that just shows you that our justice system is for sale and it goes to the highest bidder and that’s the problem we see here. People don’t have a way to defend themselves. They don’t have access to the same services that rich people do. And so police mess with them. That’s all this is. That’s what it is.

Taya Graham:

And now to talk about their encounters with police prior to the arrest we just watched and how law enforcement continues to harass them, I’m joined by Darcy Layton and her boyfriend, Eddie Clegg. Darcy and Eddie, thank you so much for joining us.

Darcy Layton:

Thank you Taya for having me.

Taya Graham:

So first, what were you at the convenience store before you were grabbed by police?

Darcy Layton:

I had gone for a walk but forgot my ID, my wallet and keys and I had somebody mail it to me, that was mailed to my address and I was just kind of asking if anybody knew where they might’ve moved to because I’d been living there for three years already in my apartment and still receiving mail to this person. Yeah, so I was just taking a break from my house for a minute. I was getting ready to head back home and somebody offered to buy me a drink. I wasn’t panhandling by any means, but it was cold and raining so somebody offered me, they put a jacket on me and offered to buy me a drink and they bought me some bananas and that’s why I was there.

Taya Graham:

An officer approached you but did not seem to explain why you were being stopped or detained or articulate any kind of reasonable suspicion. Did the officer ever explain to you what your crime was?

Darcy Layton:

I wasn’t catching on, I’m hard of hearing in my left ear and he approached me from my left side and at the time I was saying a prayer and I even mentioned that to him and then he said, “Stop.” So I thought he meant stop praying. But I couldn’t see him. I had been offered a ride home by two people in two white cars and thought it was one of them coming back to offer me a ride again. So I didn’t look. I just kept my eyes closed, praying still when he said to stop. At some point after I saw the video, but I didn’t hear it while I was standing there because of the deafness in my left ear, after they finally released the video over a year later to me, that’s when I heard him say that the store didn’t want me there, but I was already off the property.

Taya Graham:

The officer appeared to be strongly twisting your arm behind your back and then put you face down on the wet sidewalk. Was any reason given for using these pain compliance techniques or even for cuffing you?

Darcy Layton:

There was nothing given to me, nothing I heard at all. He basically told me that I wasn’t wanted on the property, they wanted me to leave, so I was walking away from the property. I was already off the property. I started to walk away when he said, “Stop.” And so I continued on my way By then I was on the public road, which is not their property anyway.

Taya Graham:

Did the officers identify themselves or give you any information?

Darcy Layton:

No, they didn’t and would not, I asked them repeatedly afterwards. Even at that point, who are they? Who are you and what’s going on? What did I do? And they would not respond to me and give me an answer whatsoever so I was uncertain of them even being official officers at all. Whatever happened to a rights to remain silent because they never even said anything about that. And so I was just remaining silent and then I felt like I must’ve been so confused because I didn’t realize, know what was going on because they wouldn’t give me any information whatsoever about who they were even when I asked who they were. So I didn’t feel comfortable giving them information about who I was because I’d heard on TV or on the news to make sure that if you don’t trust that they are true officers, to call 911 and go to a store or somewhere where there’s more people and get some real officers on board before contacting or telling them anything. So I didn’t feel I was doing anything wrong here by not giving them my name at first, but I did give them my first name, but it’s not in the video.

Taya Graham:

Darcy, were you injured during the encounter? It looked very painful.

Darcy Layton:

Yeah. Well I also have previous injuries in my lower back, a slipping disc. It is slipping. There’s no fluid in my, between L-4 and L-5. It just, it’s completely gone so it’s bone on bone already. They were putting their knee in my back pushing so hard that I lost control of my bladder with all their weight on top of me and up in my cervical C-spine now and my neck also with more damage as well. It was hurting pretty bad. Yes, that’s why I was swearing so much. Definitely causing me pain.

Taya Graham:

So the part with multiple officers being on top of you wasn’t shown in the body camera video we have because that body cam was not available because of the cost, right?

Darcy Layton:

Because I am on SSI for disabilities that I have and I only get, well right now, back then it was just a little over $900 a month. I had been going to that store at least three times a week every month for three years. But the income level is not high enough to retain that. They want $2,000 for the entire footage. So after asking for over a year and getting the run around of nothing coming back to us, they finally released seven minutes of the video to me just last week or week before. So yeah, I had nothing to go on yet, but they still want $2,000 for the entirety of it. And on SSI you’re not allowed to have anything more than $2,000 at a time on hand so how would I survive?

Taya Graham:

If there were three officers present and one of them was on top of you, I have a feeling, and now this is just speculation that the body camera video probably looked pretty bad to have three officers on top of one woman and perhaps they don’t want the world to see that.

Darcy Layton:

I was face down so it was hard for me to see anything. But when they first pulled me up, I was totally soaked because they had me down in the gutter with a lot of water coming down. Then they were giving me a hard time. They were saying, “Okay, miss no name.” And then they said, “Come on [inaudible 00:19:57]” I mean I’m white, I’m as white as they come and I also read part of his police report and it said he was working overtime and I don’t see crime in the area being necessity for any cop to work overtime in the area. Generally, it’s a pretty calm town.

Taya Graham:

I have seen officers make double their salary with overtime in Baltimore, so I know it’s a precious commodity. What were you charged with and how long were you in jail?

Darcy Layton:

It was like interfering with arresting officer and failure to disclose information and then they were trying to say that I assaulted the officer and I bit the officer and I scratched the officer. However, I was face down with my arm behind my back the whole time. I don’t see how any of that could have possibly happened and I had no teeth. So yeah, my dentures do not fit right. I choke when I try to eat with food so I don’t even wear them at all, but I’m cool with that. It’s fine.

Taya Graham:

Now, something I noted during the body cam video was the officer started pointing at his arm with his smartwatch and suggested that maybe you had bitten him or was that even possible or was it likely he reddened his own arm while cuffing you? I mean you didn’t even have your dentures in, right?

Darcy Layton:

Oh yeah and face down like I was, I thought they were going to drown me right there on the spot in the gutter with so much water coming down and then as much pressure as they applied to me with their knee in my back and I could not hold my bladder whatsoever, like I was getting ran over almost by car. It was stupid. And then I believe, they don’t really have calendars in the jail anyway. They don’t treat you very well here in Ogden in the jail. I believe it was like nine days that I stayed there in the jail before they let me out with no medication. I’m schizophrenic, I got Alzheimer’s or not Alzheimer’s, sorry, what is that called? Parkinson’s like movements and Parkinson’s going on, early stages, but I did not get a single visit from a nurse of any kind.

Also, I did read their written report down at the police station. Just recently, they finally allowed me to see that. He stated that I had said my head hurt, which I never did. They said that they brought a paramedic down there to have me checked out before he brought me to jail. It never happened. There was never a paramedic brought by and the whole time I was there for nine days in jail, zero medications brought to me for my conditions.

Taya Graham:

Darcy, that’s awful you didn’t receive your medications while you were in jail. How are you feeling right now though? I mean how are you processing this? What you describe is really awful.

Darcy Layton:

I have a real hard time being around the officers. Eddie likes to play these videos trying to get them to, he’s just wanting to learn as much as he can about police brutality and them making them do things better and be accountable for their actions and I am stressed out post-traumatic stress disorder and I have to keep getting out the vehicle because he keeps planning so much he doesn’t understand how it causes me stress and I have to go for a walk to get away from it. But I’m having some serious issues. I went and spoke with a therapist just yesterday and it makes me shake. I mean I’m dealing with it, I’m working on it, not letting it bring me down like it was. But yeah, I had some serious, serious issues there and I’m going to get through it though. But yeah, I don’t trust them.

Taya Graham:

So you told us that you’re homeless right now living out of your truck with Eddie. Have the police offered you any help?

Darcy Layton:

In a truck right now that’s just what we do. Most of them have been a hindrance. We’ve run into a couple of real good ones though that are very helpful. We’ve even had them come to a court hearing just to be there for support with us, a couple months back. She was a really nice lady. She did show up because I was having some real uncomfortable feelings about going around police officers and feeling safe at all and triggering my post-traumatic stress disorder coming in and she showed up and she’s very cool.

Eddie Clegg:

She’s an advocate.

Darcy Layton:

An advocate. And she even gathered us up some clothes and stuff and a pill medication holder to help me with my medication because I could lose them sometimes in here and sometimes I forget or I’ll fall asleep before I take my nighttime ones. Not purposely, I just check out though. So yeah, it was good to find at least one out there.

Taya Graham:

How did the police generally treat homeless people in the area? Now you’re living out of a truck and at the time of arrest Darcy, you actually still had an apartment. How do police handle homeless people and do they offer any support services?

Darcy Layton:

At the time of the 7-Eleven incident when I was tackled by the officer or yeah, I was living in an apartment. I had been there for a year and I had just come out on a rainy day with no makeup on and looked like a wet cat already so when I was put into the jail, they were treating me as if I was homeless and the judge even said, or the representative even said, “Well what are we going to do for her address? Where do we send the information?” Because they automatically assumed I was homeless and didn’t even ask me so I don’t know. They have harassed people on Washington Boulevard just because they’re homeless. They stop them and check their bags. One, the other day had just barely gotten released from jail. I don’t know what from, but Eddie got out to record, to make sure he wasn’t bothering him. This guy’s frail and shaky, he’s not doing anything wrong.

Eddie Clegg:

Just got out of jail.

Darcy Layton:

He’s got his backpack and his belongings, whatever he can carry and you can’t carry hardly anything. You need more things with you than you can carry already, but he’s not doing anything wrong. He’s minding his own business and this guy is messing with him. He picked it up and got out of the vehicle, pulled over the side of the road, got out and started to film, record the guy.

Eddie Clegg:

I watched him go through his backpack. The guy’s telling me somebody stole my wallet, I don’t have any ID, but I got my paperwork. I just got out of jail. He didn’t care about the paperwork, he wasn’t trying to find out who he was.

Darcy Layton:

And they give camping tickets to people who are laying out on the parks they don’t let you be at the shelter property during the day.

Eddie Clegg:

And he found a beer bottle in the backpack, so he went to his car and he was going to write him up. I know he was. But he hadn’t seen me yet. Talking to the guy, I got it on video and he was telling me, “Yeah, I tried to tell him that I had ID in here, show my paperwork but he didn’t want to see it.” And then when he seen me recording, he got out of his car, he went back over and says, “Well, I’m not going to charge you with anything, you’re free to go.” And he actually zipped his backpack back up. He zipped it back up and they don’t do that. So he knew he was doing something wrong and I was so happy that he did that. I told him that pretty cool of him to zip your backpack up and let you go and I gave the guy $20 and said, “Things are looking up for you, hang in there.”

Taya Graham:

How do you think the police should have handled this encounter? I mean you were off 7-Eleven property when they approached. I mean how do you think this could have been handled differently?

Darcy Layton:

Well, afterwards when I finally, like a year later, by the time they finally let me see the real video, they should have called for probably paramedics or took me to the hospital because knowing, I took some college courses myself in physiology and psychology and all that. I know, based on watching the video that I needed to go get checked by a doctor mentally because I was a little out there that day because of the schizophrenia, but I still was not doing anything wrong and he is the one who needed to be checked out, not really me.

Eddie Clegg:

So yeah, he had no right, he wasn’t called there. They didn’t tell her to leave. They would’ve told her.

Darcy Layton:

Rogue. He’d gone rogue.

Eddie Clegg:

Yeah, he told her they didn’t want her on property, she started to leave, he should have let it go with that.

Darcy Layton:

Because that’s what he told me. Basically, they don’t want you here, they want you to leave. And so I started to leave as he told me and then he grabbed me for no God damn reason.

Taya Graham:

I think it’s so important for people to understand how people who are on hard times are treated in your area and how an arrest can really alter the course of someone’s life. Thank you. Darcy and Eddie.

Now, as with many of the police encounters we unpack on this show, there is always more to comprehend than just the questionable actions of an overly aggressive cop, motives and imperatives so to speak, that need to be fully understood so that we can get to the root cause of what makes such questionable police behavior possible. Now, one aspect of police power we witnessed in this arrest that is critical to the broader mission of law enforcement is how the officer was able to control space. In other words, as you watch the arrest, you notice the officer has the ability to set arbitrary boundaries and use them to put it mildly to entrap Darcy.

Now when I say entrap, I use that word for a reason because as you witnessed on the video, the officer didn’t care about what was a public sidewalk versus what was private property and he wasn’t the least bit interested in what constituted a public roadway versus what was the private purview of the 7-Eleven, the nuances of space were not of concern, instead, he became the arbiter of it. While this fact may seem trivial, it is not because all of the consequences of policing that we have covered on this show, this arbitrary control of space, is the most essential aspect of what makes excessive law enforcement a threat to our civil liberties. It is the malleable ability to deem a person occupying space to be illegal that gives cops one of the most severe holds over our lives. I mean, think about it. There’s a reason the right to peaceably assemble is part of the First Amendment, not the 10th.

There is an important underlying intention to forcefully stating that the people have the right to redress their government in public space that goes beyond the legal text and into the realm of the truly profound. And what makes it profound is that in effect, those several dozen words preclude just the sort of policing we witnessed in that video. It should at least in theory, make it impossible for an officer to simply determine that anyone standing anywhere could be construed as a criminal simply because they say it is so. Now, imagine for a moment if those words did not exist, imagine for just a second what police could do if the text of the First Amendment had somehow been different. Well, in a sense we live in that reality because as Stephen just told us police had the power to intimidate. Ms. Layton pleaded guilty despite the fact she did not commit a crime.

Cops could literally fashion a crime that does not legally exist just to deny Darcy her right to peaceably assemble. It’s hard to see this type of policing as anything but punishing someone for simply appearing to be homeless. This is a specific expansion of police power that has come under scrutiny by an innovative thinker who is warned the consequences of allowing it to grow unchecked. His name is Mark Neocleous and he is the author of the book called The Fabrication of Social Order, A Critical Theory of Police Power. Now it sounds complicated, but I promise it really isn’t because what the book concludes about police power simply exposes the imperative that drives arrests like we saw today. The book’s thesis is that policing in our modern capitalist society is more about order than it is law enforcement, that police play a critical role in maintaining the order of society based upon profit.

In fact, the primary purpose of police is to in fact fabricate an order that would not otherwise exist to create a world where labor is at the mercy of a capitalist elite, and power is a tool of inequality warriors armed with guns and badges. Neocleous argues that the fabrication of order and the resulting influence of police power start with the types of arbitrary power we have just witnessed. In other words, while Darcy’s arrest might seem trivial and insignificant in the broader story of the battle of America’s flawed law enforcement industrial complex, it’s actually where this entire story starts. That’s because the power has to be at its essence, arbitrary. In other words, it has to be applied solely at the discretion of authority. It can’t be precluded or prescribed by law. It simply cannot be limited or curtailed by a set of amendments outlined in the Constitution.

It has to be random, chaotic, and most of all indiscriminate. And what I mean is that in order for this type of police power that Neocleous envisions to proliferate, it must be random, unknowable and infallible. It must be indiscriminate, contradictory, and most of all unfair. And it must embody all of these seemingly contradictory concepts to adhere to the underlying principle that drives it, to sow chaos in the lives of people who can least afford it, to create and fabricate crises in the lives of working-class people that seemingly strip us of our rights and thus our political power. I mean the biggest fear of the elites that run this country is the working class rising up and opposing the political order that currently profits off a record level of wealth inequality. They really don’t want us to figure out that their catastrophic greed is in fact a problem, not us.

Now having a small handful of people living like kings plundering on natural resources and flying private jets is not what ails us, but it is in fact the result of the underlying chaos caused by intractable poverty that is actually making our beautiful planet uninhabitable. In other words, it’s you, not us, who are the problem. And that’s the point of the policing we watched earlier. It’s overarching control over what should be public space is the most potent facet of bad law enforcement because as the officer manipulated space so too did he manipulate Darcy. As he was able to turn a public sidewalk into an illegal no-go zone. So too was he able to put Darcy in handcuffs, and as he was able to deem the otherwise legally protected actions of Darcy into a crime worthy of the use of force, he was also able to wipe away her civil rights and turn her into a menace to society.

And it is worth noting as Stephen reported from the charging documents and as Darcy related to us, that there was no legal code or law violation recounted in the charging documents. I mean, the officer didn’t even try to cite a law to justify her nine-day incarceration. The only accusation he did make was the unsubstantiated claim that she bit him, an allegation the body worn camera certainly calls into question and as I said, she told me and Eddie that she didn’t even have her dentures in the morning the alleged bite occurred. My point is this is exactly why the growth of police power seems, in essence, to be antithetical to our constitutional rights, why processes like civil asset forfeiture continue to grow unabated as our entire legal system sits by and watches. All of this is the result of police power that has been allowed, or perhaps I should say, encouraged to become as indiscriminate as possible.

It’s just a result of a system expanding its influence through illogic that rather than create a law enforcement system that is rational, predictable, and fair, what we have is a set of protocols that are intended to be exactly the opposite, irrational, unpredictable, and most importantly indifferent to the notion of justice. In this sense, what we have is policing that does not in fact fabricate order, but instead manufactures disorder. What I mean is that police aren’t the gatekeepers of civilized society as some cop-agandists like to argue, but instead, agents of chaos. They literally wreak havoc in our lives like they did with Darcy. And in doing so, only make difficult problems worse for the people who are already suffering. It’s an update on the aforementioned theory of police power and how this power unchecked, moves to our lives. We have to recognize it for what it is and what it is to keep it in check. And when we see it like we did in Darcy’s case, we have to call it out and reveal it as a real threat to civilized society.

We have to let the powers that be known that we see what you are doing and we know what you want to diminish our civil liberties, and we have to be clear that you can’t have them because we are willing to fight to not just keep them but expand them, bad policing or not. We know we deserve better and we will not compromise until we get it.

I want to thank our guests, Darcy and Eddie for reaching out to us. We really do wish you both the best and I hope that by shining a light on your experience, certain officers will be a bit kinder. And of course, I have to thank intrepid reporter, Stephen Janis for his writing, research and editing on this piece. Thank you Stephen.

Stephen Janis:

Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:

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And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram or at Eyes on Police on Twitter. And of course you can always message me directly at Tayasbaltimore on Twitter and Facebook. And please like and comment, you know I read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have the Patreon link pinned in the comments below for accountability reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. We do not run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.

Speaker 9:

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