In the aftermath of a broken ceasefire, Palestinians in Gaza speak out about the trauma, loss, and fear they live with daily. Families recount the horrors of bombings, life in tents, and the silence of a world that watches but does not act. Through raw testimony and haunting imagery, this short film captures the reality of survival under siege—and the enduring dignity of a people who refuse to be erased.

Producers: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographers: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt

Transcript

MAMDOUH AHMED MORTAJA: 

More than 500 days have passed and this unjust world has watched our bodies being burned alive. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

A girl asleep. In a tent, also. An air strike hit, her brain spilled out—she died on her mattress. What did this girl do? What crime did she commit? 

MUKARAM SA’AD MUSTAFA HLIWA: 

Two billion Muslims. Two billion Muslims are watching us. They could do something, but they do nothing. Where is the Arab world? Where is the Islamic world? Where is the Western world? While we are being killed daily. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

Destruction, terror, fear, humiliation. Faith only in God. As for faith in the end of the war—sadly, we’re not hopeful. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

We were in the refugee camp, when we heard gunfire, bombs and the chaos that followed. We didn’t need anyone to tell us, at night, we woke up to gunfire and bombs. There were assassinations, and the whole world turned upside down. My feelings when the ceasefire happened: we were truly pleased, we thought it was over and thought we were going to go back to normal life, like everyone else. Or do we not have the right to live? After that, war returned, worse than before. Now our feelings are different from before. At first, when the ceasefire happened, we were happy and thought we could go back to our lives. But for the war to stop and then return? That’s terrifying and fills us with anxiety. We didn’t expect the war to start again, at all. We couldn’t even believe it when it ended. We were waiting for relief, supplies and aid. We heard the promises on the news, about trucks entering—we didn’t expect the war to return. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

For me? Yes, I expected it. I expected it. Because they are treacherous, they don’t want peace. We had almost finished the first stage, but at the beginning of the second phase, they turned everything around. They don’t want it to succeed. They don’t want it to succeed. It’s not possible for the war to end. It’s not possible. 

MAMDOUH AHMED MORTAJA: 

Rings of fire, flying body parts, surprise attacks, abductions—the stuff of nightmares is happening in this war, and now, the resumption of war has renewed our feelings of intense fear. Everyone’s only demand is an end to this war and this curse, so we can have safety,

and tranquility, so we can rest our heads on our pillows and know that we will wake up the next day without drones, bullets, or artillery strikes. 

Interviewer: 

– This is not normal, it’s really loud. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

– It’s like this 24/7. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

Of course, Gaza is used to wars, but not like this. It’s not a war; it’s genocide: the child, the young, the girl, the wealthy, the poor—everyone. I’ll tell you a story: Yesterday, a ten-year-old girl was sleeping in her bed when an airstrike hit and killed her. What did this girl do? She was only ten years old. A girl sleeping. Also, in a tent. An air strike hits, her brains spill out. She dies on her mattress. What did she do? What crime did she commit? It’s a scary thing. The person sitting in his tent is scared, the person in his house is scared. We feel complete exhaustion, there is no stability, and we are mentally drained. When we sleep, we don’t expect to wake up. With the jets and the strikes, no one expects to wake up. We are living day to day, when we sleep, we don’t think about waking up. Death has become normal. What can we do? 

MUKARAM SA’AD MUSTAFA HLIWA: 

To me, the war hasn’t stopped. We have been living in destruction since October 7, 2023. I was injured on October 11, 2023, and until now, there’s been complete ongoing destruction in the Gaza Strip. Martyrs, orphans—destruction, destruction, destruction, more than you can imagine. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

Unfortunately, we expected the war to end, but it didn’t. They don’t want to end it—they want to end us: completely. We don’t want wars, it’s enough. We’re exhasted. Displacement, displacement, displacement. I lost three homes, and I have lost family as martyrs. We’ve been humiliated as you can see, living in a refugee camp and the situation is miserable. A worn out tent, frankly the situation is not good. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

The children here, when they hear explosions, develop psychological problems. They wet themselves. If a glass falls, they panic—they’re psychologically broken. They’re still children. What do they know? Anything that moves, they think it’s an airstrike or tank fire. They’re living in fear. 

MUKARAM SA’AD MUSTAFA HLIWA:

One of my grandsons has a heart condition, we worry his heart will stop from terror. He screams and cries when he hears a rocket or an airstrike, or the quadcopter fire. The children can’t sleep because of what’s happening here in Gaza. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

The kids wet themselves. That’s one thing. The second? The fear and terror—like this child next to you. They are terrified and have no reassurance. The children roam the streets. There are no schools, no education. The Jews demolished the schools, they demolished kindergartens, the hospitals, the dispensaries, and the infrastructure. Buildings, houses: there is nothing left. The children are broken. The children? Childhood is over here. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

The future? It’s black and bleak. We have no future—our future is with God. What future? We live in tents, and they have followed us even here! The tent is everything—the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, everything. At the same time, the tent is an oven—not a tent. Even here, they won’t let us stay. They won’t leave us alone. The tents, the fear, the airstrikes—everything is crushing us. 

MAMDOUH AHMED MORTAJA: 

More than 500 days have passed, and this unjust world has watched our bodies being burned alive. Today, more than 50,000 human beings killed, burned alive in front of the world, and no one lifts a finger. So it’s normal that we in Gaza feel we face a deaf, blind, unjust world that supports the executioner standing over us, the victims. 

MUKARAM SA’AD MUSTAFA HLIWA: 

After losing my son, after what’s happened to Gaza? No. There is no hope, none at all. Only God stands with us. Hope in any country? There is none. I don’t trust the international community. They haven’t helped us. On the contrary. They sit and discuss as they destroy us. They haven’t found a solution for Gaza. They are destroying us here and in the West Bank. No one has stopped the war. Why? Only God knows. The blame is on them. There is a conspiracy against the people of Gaza. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

Doesn’t the international community see the victims every day? Thirty, forty victims a day, while they watch. No. Only God is our hope. No one else. God will deliver us from this war. He who is capable of anything. As for the international community, the Arab world, the Muslim world? There are 56 Arab and Muslim nations, yet they do nothing. Two billion Muslims. Two billion Muslims are watching us. They could act, but they do nothing. Where is the Arab world? Where is the Islamic world? Where is the Western world? We are being killed daily. They could act, but they are complicit—their hearts side with Israel. In the end, we’re battling the U.S. We are not equals. And the entire world supports Israel. We’re

exhausted. We are seeing horrors, tragedies, and no one stands with us. The International Court of Justice ruled for us, but where’s the action? We’re alone. 

Interviewer 

– Do you think you will survive this war? 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

– No. Zero chance. I told you: I sleep feeling like I won’t wake up. It’s normal. Thanks be to God. If He wills us to be martyrs, it’s better than this torture. Because, I’m telling you, we are not living—we are dead. These tents are graves above the earth. What’s the difference if we’re buried under it? Nothing. We’re being tortured, watching the explosions, the despair—it’s destroying us mentally and physically. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

Honestly, it’s difficult. We’ve faced death repeatedly. May God save us. I don’t expect to survive. I’m not optimistic. Destruction, terror, fear, humiliation. Only faith in God. As for faith in the war ending? Sadly, we’re not hopeful. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

Who can we have faith in? In whom? There’s no one. We’ve lost everything. Everything. Only our breath remains. And we wait, minute by minute, for it to leave us. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

Frankly, we are beyond exhausted. We lost our children, homes, livelihoods, work—Gaza has no life left. Life is over. I mean it. I’m 73. I’ve seen many wars, but never like this. This is genocide. 

MUKARAM SA’AD MUSTAFA HLIWA: 

I hope to walk again after my injury. I have a broken hip, I need a replacement. They approved my transfer, but I’m afraid if I leave, I’ll be exiled. They’re saying that those who leave can’t return. But why? I’m leaving for treatment—why exile me? I am from this land. I am Palestinian. I want my country. I want treatment, but I must return. I’m not leaving to emigrate. I don’t want to abandon my country. That’s what I fear.

On October 13, 2023, a group of well-marked journalists transmitting a live feed of an Israeli military outpost from Lebanon came under fire. An Israeli tank shell struck their location, severely injuring AFP photojournalist Christina Assi. In this same attack, Al Jazeera correspondent Carmen Jokhader was severely injured and Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed. Issam Abdallah’s death marked the first of a series of Lebanese journalists killed by Israel. TRNN reports from Lebanon, speaking with journalists who continue to report on Israel’s war crimes even after they have been targeted and injured and their colleagues have been killed.

Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Kamal Kanso
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt
Fixer: Bachir Abou Zeid

Transcript

Narrator: On October 13, 2023, a group of well marked journalists transmitting a live feed of an Israeli military outpost from Lebanon came under fire. An Israeli tank shell struck their location, severely injuring AFP photojournalist Christina Assi. 

Her AFP colleague, Dylan Collins, was also present alongside teams from Reuters and Al Jazeera. 

Christina Assi: 

We didn’t understand at first what happened, it’s when I looked at my legs that I knew that they were gone. I started screaming for Dylan. Because I couldn’t find him because of the smoke and the chaos, you don’t understand anything at first. Suddenly you can’t stand, even though you were just standing just now. And you’re thinking about your team too: “Where are they?” So, Dylan runs up to me, and says: “OK, OK, I want to tie a tourniquet.” I’m just screaming, after seeing my legs. So he’s trying to help me and Ilia from Al Jazeera comes too. He says “now you have the tourniquet, stay near the wall.” He wasn’t able to finish his sentence before they hit us the second time. And it hit the Al Jazeera car directly, and here Elie gets injured too, and Dylan disappears and the car next to us starts burning. And I don’t understand that I’m going to burn. It’s all right next to me. I say to myself: “OK, just move away from the fire.” I couldn’t stand so I started shuffling with my body. My vest was a size too big and it was very heavy, the camera was strangling me, and the helmet. I couldn’t get anything off, I just needed to get away. The last thing I remember, we got to the hospital, they opened the door and asked “What’s your name?” I told them my name, and that’s it, nothing after that. Blank. 

Narrator: In this same attack, Al Jazeera correspondent Carmen Jokhader was severely injured and Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed. Issam Abdallah’s death marked the first of a series of Lebanese journalists killed by Israel. 

Christina Assi: 

Issam was one of the first people to support me after I decided I want to be a photojournalist because in Lebanon it’s mostly men in this domain. Issam was one of the first people to support me in this. He used to love to joke, and he loved life. He loved to go out and to eat. He loved to go out and about on his moped and wander and do stuff. 

Narrator: Nour Kilzi is a Legal Researcher from the Lebanese non-profit Legal Agenda. She has been documenting attacks on civilians and journalists in Lebanon since the start of this latest war. 

Nour Kilzi: 

The Israeli aggression on Lebanon was targeting in a clear way, a huge number of civilians, among them journalists who were doing their jobs documenting the crimes that are taking place. The worst attacks, we can say, was the attack that resulted in the martyrdom of Issam Abdallah, the attack on the Al Mayadeen team where Farah Omar and Rabih Me’mari were martyred and the attack in Aalma El Chaeb on a centre of journalists in Hasbaya.

Mohamed Farhat: 

Sadly, there are martyrs among our colleagues who have fallen as a result of this targeting. It’s clear the Israeli enemy is terrified of the word. It is terrified of the voice of the Lebanese people that is exposing its crimes. This is a new view of its crimes. We were sleeping in the journalists house, as you can see. This is the bedroom that I was in when it was targeted. 

Narrator: Mohamed Farhat, is a senior reporter at the independent Lebanese TV channel Al Jadeed. 

Mohamed Farhat: 

You look up and you don’t see the roof, you see the sky. Around you everything is black, dust and everything is smashed. Outside we found the car smashed, the SNG truck was completely overturned, closing off the road. We understood there was an attack. The first thing we thought to do was to shout out to the guys to check who was alive. We didn’t get response from three people. As I told you, we were staying in 8 buildings. We looked and found that one of the buildings had completely disappeared. We know that three guys were staying in this building, the three that were killed. We looked for them and found them dead. The strength of the explosion meant they were thrown far from the house, so it took a long time to find them. That’s how it happened: Israel hit us while we slept. Frankly. Everyone present in that residential area was a journalist. From local channels, Arab channels and international channels too. 

Christina Assi: 

It wasn’t a mistake. It’s possible for one missile to hit you by mistake, but not two missiles. And bullets: a machine gun opening fire, on top. So… it was an intentional targeting and they didn’t stop there. We have seen this is being repeated with many journalist colleagues, here or in Gaza. Yesterday they killed five in Gaza, they targeted them. And the colleagues who they killed in Hasbaya who were asleep: they were asleep! They weren’t even “on the ground”: they were asleep. There’s something unnatural happening, we can expect anything to happen—the crimes—and no one cares. It’s become that if you wear a press vest that’s it, you’ve become a target. Because you have worn this thing that’s supposed to protect you, it’s become the thing that actually puts you in danger. 

Either they [Israel] say yes it was a mistake, because of the fog of war. Or they accuse the journalist of belonging to a political party. They just bring any old reason to excuse their crimes. They can say what they want, but nothing excuses what’s happening. For them this kind of thing is allowed—so: why not? 

Nour Kilzi: 

The number of journalists that have been killed in Gaza is more than the number of journalists killed in any conflict on the planet in the last 30 years. So of course, it’s not by mistake that they’re killing journalists. There is a targeted killing. Of course the goal is the silencing of journalists, the narrative is shifting, disallowing the transmission of pictures of the

crimes that are happening. Especially because the narrative is shifting and people are becoming more aware of what Israel really is, its crimes and its brutality. 

Narrator: 

Ali Shouaib has been covering news in South Lebanon for 32 years. For many people here, he has become a familiar face. His news channel, Al Manar, is widely seen as sympathetic to Hezbollah. 

Ali Shouaib: 

The cameraman with me was sleeping in a different room with journalists from Al Mayadeen. I was sleeping in a room next door. The rocket hit the room they were sleeping in directly. All three of them were killed. The whole compound was damaged. A large number of journalists were injured. The Cairo channel was also present with the cameramen, they also suffered serious injuries. MTV was present, Al Jadeed was present, Al Jazeera was present. Many different journalists were present. 

Narrator: 

Working at Al Manar, makes Ali Shouaib even more of a target, and not only for the Israeli military. 

Ali Shouaib: 

I have covered every war that south Lebanon witnessed. Every single war. Direct threats have been constant via the spokesperson of the Israeli Army and also there were multiple statements quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz. It got to the point that they were saying “the eyes and tongue of Al Manar,” and they mean by that, Hezbollah. As you can see, I don’t own anything other than a camera, a phone and a mic. These are the weapons that I use. I am a citizen, a civilian and even if I was speaking in the name of the resistance, no one can say that I own any weapons apart from the weapon of the word. The weapon of principle. 

Nour Kilzi: 

There were direct threats from the spokesperson of the Israeli Occupation Army towards media and political personalities, close to or affiliated with Hezbollah. In an attempt to create a narrative in people’s minds that these people, because of their political beliefs or because they have opinions or positions that intersect with Hezbollah, that they are legitimate targets. This is completely contradicted by international law. Civilians—and journalists—do not lose the protection afforded them by international law because they have a political opinion or even if they support one side of the warring parties. 

Ali Shouaib:

Israel is afraid of the truth. It’s afraid of reality. It’s true it’s a channel that opposes [Israel], we speak in the name of the nation. We are an occupied nation, it’s our right to defend ourselves with the word, against what we are being subjected to. 

Narrator: 

Fatima Ftouni, is a journalist working for Al Mayadeen, a Lebanese based pan-Arab news channel. 

Fatima Ftouni: 

I feel I have a responsibility towards my family and my people to document the aggression and crimes of Israel because wherever you step in the South there are crimes and the effects of the aggression. You can hear the sounds of explosions that the Israeli occupation is doing, that you can hear. We hear the sounds of the attacks, without any reaction—this is the natural reaction—we finish. As long as there’s no response to the Israelis, and as long as they are not held to account for these crimes, as long as the international community keeps looking away, it will not only continue its crimes, it will go further and further, in its intentional, purposeful, clear and open criminality. We’re talking about clear aggression—even medical crews, even nurses, even paramedics haven’t escaped these crimes. They killed everything. It’s got to the stage that they are bombing hospitals… Is there something worse that this? 

Mohamed Farhat: 

I’ve become convinced that Israel will never be held to account. For anything. From the first days of conflict between the various Arab countries and Israel, until today. Shireen Abu Akleh—does anyone doubt that Israel killed her? Israel has not been held to account. What’s happened in Gaza, what’s happened in Lebanon. The Israelis announced that it was them that targeted us in Hasbaya. They announced it! OK, so where is the accountability? Today: Israel is always above the law, and it always has excuses. Israel is protected internationally, and the powers that protect Israel are stronger than the law, stronger than the courts, stronger than everything. 

With regards to me, if—God forbid—there was a return to war, of course, I will go and cover. I won’t back down. I won’t stop. 

Christina Assi: 

Before I knew all this I didn’t really want to live, I wanted to die. The pain was enormous, more than you can imagine. And the morphine wasn’t helping. Yeh, I didn’t want to, I didn’t want—I didn’t want to stay living like this—with all the injuries. The moment I discovered that we lost Issam, this changed everything. It gave me a push: He took the whole hit. If it wasn’t for him, both of us would be dead. The difference of a millimetre or centimetre would have killed us both. So I have to go back and speak and say what happened. Although there’s no point, we’ve been talking since a year now for Issam, for Elie, for all of us.

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.

On Jan. 19, 2025, a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect—and, for an all-too-brief moment, the slaughter in Gaza halted. TRNN was on the ground in Gaza speaking with displaced Palestinians about their reactions to the ceasefire, the incalculable losses and horrors they had experienced during the previous 15 months, and their hopes for the future once they returned to the ruins of their homes. “I haven’t seen my family for 430 days,” journalist Mustafa Zarzour says. “I’ve been literally waiting for the moment to see my family—since the beginning of the war.”

Since the filming of this report, Israel broke the ceasefire agreement and re-launched its assault on Gaza, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stating that Israel had “resumed combat in full force.” Netanyahu further stated Israel’s intent this week to conquer and control the Gaza Strip, adding that Gaza’s remaining Palestinian population “will be moved.” According to the UN, 90% of Gaza’s remaining population have been forced from their homes, and no aid has been allowed into the Gaza Strip since March 2, 2025—the longest period of aid blockage since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt

Transcript

Khalil Khater:

Honestly, I felt happy but not so much. You feel like your heart is split. I mean, it’s true people are returning to their homes, but I don’t have a home. And still, it’s bittersweet. I lost my brother and his children. It felt like he died again when they announced the ceasefire.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

A huge joy that can’t be described—I was overjoyed. The first thing I thought was: I will find my son and bury him. I want to go to Gaza City, find my house and bury my son and look for reminders of him—pictures, or some mementos of him. Anything really, that has his scent. God is greater. God is greater. God is greater. There is no God but Allah.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

Frankly, there are mixed feelings. Between joy and the fact that we have forgotten the meaning of joy. Because we’ve spent 470 days witnessing bloodshed, air strikes, explosions, displacement. But today, something has returned to us—something like joy. Despite all the blood and all the loss—we have all lost—I lost my brother. This joy is because despite all that happened we are still steadfast.

Mohammed Rayan – Head of Admissions, Shuhada Al Aqsa Hospital:

Frankly, our pain is vast and our wounds are big, there’s not really a lot of room for joy, honestly. What we will do is visit the graves of our martyrs and pay our respects to them. Our feelings swing between happiness and despair, pain and loss, hope, and the immense suffering that our people will continue to endure in the coming days. The loss—because there is no home in the Gaza Strip that has not suffered loss.

Khalil Khater:

I love your uncle and your cousins, sweetheart. OK, I’ll stop crying—for you. We’ll go to Gaza, God willing, and see your grandpa. You can play with your cousins, because you miss them a lot, right?

Chantings:

God is greater. God is greater.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

I lost my brother, my son, and my brother’s children. I lost two brothers who were taken prisoner. My family had already lost 18 martyrs. My mother, the embrace of my loving mother. My siblings in the North, I’ve missed them so much.

Khalil Khater:

What did the war take? First it took my health. I’m really exhausted. It took the most important people from me. It took them. That’s what it took from me. I lost my work—I was a kindergarten teacher. I lost my home, where I used to feel safe, where I raised my children. Life in a tent is really, really hard. And I lost my brother, of course I can’t get him back, only memories remain. God rest his soul. God rest his soul. Praise be to God in every circumstance.

Rayef Mustafa Al Adadla:

I shall search for my second martyred son, who hasn’t been buried. Then we will return to our homes and fill them. We will rebuild them to say: we rebuild our nation, no matter what the occupation destroys.

Khalil Khater:

I don’t want to return to our old neighborhood because that’s it—we were kicked out of our home. There’s no place for us there. Our neighborhood was near the border, there are a lot of houses that were destroyed, and the building we were in was bombed many times. The tower block next to us was also bombed repeatedly.

Rayef Mustafa Al Adadla:

My house is destroyed, but I will return to it. Despite all the circumstances, I will set up a tent on its ruins or beside it. I will stay on my land, beside my house. We won’t go far. We won’t abandon Gaza, and we won’t emigrate, because we are steadfast—like the mountains. We will stay beside it in the same area, God willing.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

Our house was struck six times. It’s just rubble now, but we will organize this rubble and build again, God willing. What will I find? I’ll find rubble. Blood mixed with rubble. I’ll find ashes. I’ll find… body parts. I won’t find any people, but I’ll return, rebuild it, and live there. We will thank God and continue with our lives. We will move forward, get married, have children—all of us will do this, God willing.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

My house was destroyed early in the war, on day four. I think I’ll find it bulldozed. I hope I will find some photos of my son. Some of his belongings, to remind us of him. All will be well, God willing. We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.

Khalil Khater:

We’ve been waiting for a ceasefire for a long time. I didn’t sleep all night. I waited until 08:30 to hear them announce a ceasefire.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

One and a half years. From the beginning of the war, I kept saying: “Tomorrow it will be over, tomorrow it will be over.” Hopefully—thank God—today, it’s over. God willing.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

I haven’t seen my family for 430 days. I’ve been literally waiting for the moment to see my family—since the beginning of the war. From day one, I’ve been praying for it to end. We go, we come back again. We’ve been waiting to return for 470 days. Today, the feelings… I literally don’t know how to describe them. Beyond description. Peace means the oppressor and occupier leave all of Palestine—not just Gaza, and not just a ceasefire. Because this is a war of extermination. A war of extermination—where they committed every kind of war crime. It’s not two states. There is only one Palestine. They are the brutal occupier. So our peace is when the occupation leaves.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

Peace and safety mean no massacres, no bodies, no mass extermination. No martyrs, no jets, no drones, no tanks.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

God rest his soul—my older brother, who was my father’s successor, died. I want to see his kids. His kids are now my responsibility. So the first thing I want to do is see my brother’s children.

Khalil Khater:

When I truly believe that the war is over, I will go and throw myself into my mother’s arms. I don’t know… I’m sure that Gaza City will have changed. All its landmarks will have changed.

World-renowned political cartoonist Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of the new McCarthyist assault on free expression and higher education. While employed as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Booth became a target of Zionist and pro-Israel critics, and his work became a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing in March. Facing charges that certain cartoons contained anti-Semitic tropes, J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as “reprehensible.”

In a statement about his firing, Booth writes: “The reality – and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn – is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with the largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans/black/immigrant, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research – speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.”

In this special edition of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc sits down with Booth in the TRNN studio in Baltimore to discuss the events that led to his firing, the purpose and effects of political art, and how to respond to the repressive crackdown on art and dissent as genocide is unfolding and fascism is rising.

Producer: Rosette Sewali

Studio Production / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

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

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us.

A wave of authoritarian oppression has gripped colleges and universities. Life on campus looks in some ways similar but in other ways very intensely different than it did when I was a young man in the 1960s. International students like Mahmoud, Khalil are being abducted on the street and disappeared by ICE agents in broad daylight, and hundreds of student visas have been abruptly revoked. Faculty and graduate students are being fired, expelled, and doxxed online. From Columbia University to Harvard, Northwestern to Cornell, the Trump administration is holding billions of dollars of federal grants and contracts hostage in order to bend universities to Trump’s will and to squash our constitutional protected rights to free speech and free assembly.

Now, while the administration has justified these unprecedented attacks as necessary to root out so-called woke scours like diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and trans athletes playing college sports, the primary justification they’ve cited is combating antisemitism on campuses, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism, opposition to Israel, its political ideolog, Zionism, and Israel’s US-backed obliteration of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Now, our guest today is Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of this top-down political battle to reshape higher education in our country. Booth is a world-renowned political cartoonist based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in venues like Harvard’s Magazine, The Nation, The Village Voice, The Atlantic. Until recently, he was a lecturer at the Annenberg School [for] Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. And just days after the Trump administration announced it was freezing $175 million in federal funds depend, Booth was fired.

Booth’s work has become a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing, facing charges that certain cartoons he made contained antisemitic tropes. J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as reprehensible.

In a statement about his firing posted on his Patreon page on March 20, Booth wrote this: “The reality and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans, Black, immigrants, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research, speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.

Today we’re going straight to the heart of the matter, and we’re speaking with Mr. Fish himself right here in The Real News Studio. Welcome. Good to have you with us.

Dwayne Booth:

Great to be here.

Marc Steiner:

So I gotta ask you this question first. Just get it out of the way. So where did the fish come from?

Dwayne Booth:

Oh my gosh. Well, that’s a long tale. I attempted to name my mother, had gotten my stepfather a new bird for Father’s Day. And this was right after I dropped out of college and was living in the back of my parents’ house and fulfilling the dream of every parent to have their son return. I’m not getting a job, I’m going to draw cartoons, and my real name is Dwayne Booth, and I wasn’t going to start. I started to draw cartoons just as a side, and I couldn’t sign it “Booth” because George Booth was the main cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, and I couldn’t just write “Dwayne” because it was too Cher or Madonna, I wasn’t going to go for just this straight first name.

So I attempted to name this new bird that came into the house. My mother asked for names and I said, Mr. Fish is the best name for a pet bird, and she rejected it. So I said, I’ll use it. And I signed all my cartoons “Mr. Fish”, and I immediately got published. And one of the editors, in fact, who published me immediately had pretended to follow me for 30 years. Mr. Fish, I can’t believe Mr. Fish finally sent us. Oh, it was locked in. I had to be Mr. Fish.

Marc Steiner:

I love it. I love it. So the work you’ve been doing, first of all, it’s amazing that a person without artistic training creates these incredible, complicated, intricate cartoons. Clearly it’s just innate inside of you.

You have this piece you did, I dunno why this one keeps sticking in my head, but the “Guernica” piece, which takes on the Trump administration and puts their figures in the place of the original work, to talk about that for a minute, how you came to create that, and why you use “Guernica”?

Dwayne Booth:

Well, it’s called “Eternal Damn Nation”. And one of the things that we should be responsible and how we communicate our dismay to other people. Now, what we attempt to do as artists is figure out the quickest path to make your point. So we tend to utilize various iconic images or things from history that will get the viewer to a certain emotional state and then piggyback the modern version on top of it, and also challenge the whole notion that these kinds of injustices have been happening over and over and over again. Because the Picasso piece is about fascism. Guess what? Guess what’s happening now? So you want to use those things to say that this might refer to a historical truism from the past, but it has application now, and it speaks to people, as you said, it resonated. Why did it resonate? Because it seems like a blunt version of truth that we have to contend with.

Marc Steiner:

So when you draw your pieces, before we go to Israel Palestine, I want to talk about Trump for a moment. Trump has been a target of your cartoons from the beginning. And the way he’s portrayed eating feces — Can I say the other word? Eating shit and just having shit all over him, a big fat slob and a beast of a fascist. Talk about your own image of this man, why you portray him this way. What do you think he represents here at this moment?

Dwayne Booth:

Well, it’s interesting because, in many ways, what I try to do with the images, the cartoons that you’re referring to, is, yes, I try to make it as obscene as I possibly can because the reality is also obscene. So I always want to challenge somebody who might look at something like that and say, oh my gosh, I don’t want to look at it. It’s important to look at these things.

The reality is, yes, I create these metaphors, eating shit and being a very lethal buffoon and clown. Those, to me, are the metaphors for something that is actually more dangerous. He’s being enabled by a power structure and being legitimized by these power brokers that surround him to enact real misery in America and the rest of the world, so you don’t want to treat somebody respectfully who is doing that. You want to say, this is shit. This is bullshit. This is an obscenity that we have to not shy away from and face it.

And if it is that ugly, if the metaphor is that ugly, again, challenge me to say that I should be respecting this person in a different way, should be pulling my punches. No, no. We should be going full-throated dissent against this kind of person and this kind of movement because it is an obscenity and we have to do something about it.

Marc Steiner:

The way you portray what’s happening in this country at this moment in many of your cartoons, in many of your works, Trump next door with Hitler, Trump as a figure with his middle finger to the air, all of that, when you do these things. How do you think about transient that into political action?

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s one of the tricks with satire, and I think that satire, I don’t think people know how to read satire anymore. What stands —

Marc Steiner:

It’s a lost art.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s a lost art. People think that Saturday Night Live is satire, and it’s not. It’s comedy, it’s burlesque is what it is.

Marc Steiner:

It’s burlesque.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s burlesque, it’s parody —

Marc Steiner:

It’s burlesque.

Dwayne Booth:

And what it does is it allows people to address politics in a way that ends with laughter and ridicule, which is the physiological reaction. And when you laugh at something, you’re telling your body, in a way, that it’s going to be okay. We can now congregate around our disdain and minimize the monstrosity by turning Trump into a clown or a buffoon. Only then we can say we’ve done our work. Look at how ridiculous he is. Now we can rely on other people, then, to do something about it.

Satire is supposed to, from my understanding through history, is supposed to have some humor in it. A lot of the humor is just speaking the blatant truth about something, and it’s supposed to reveal social injustices and political villainy in such a way that when you’re finished with it, you’re still upset and you do want to do something about it. Again, if we have to start worrying about how we are communicating our disdain about something that is deserving of disdain, Lenny Bruce quote, something that always has moved me and is the reason I do what I do. When he said, “Take away the right to say fuck, and you take away the right to say fuck the government.”

Marc Steiner:

Yes, I saw that in one of your pieces.

Dwayne Booth:

We need that tool. So when I am addressing something that I find upsetting, I lead with my heart because it is a visceral reaction. It’s very, very upsetting. I pour that into the artwork that I’m rendering, and then I share with other people because people are suffering. I know what suffering feels like. So the emotional component is really, really important to me.

And if you notice, looking at the cartooning that I do about Trump, is those are very involved, most often, fine art pieces. They’re not the whimsy of a cartoon because it’s more serious than that. I want to communicate through the craft that I bring to the piece that I’m willing to spend. Some of those things take me days to complete.

Marc Steiner:

I’m sure.

Dwayne Booth:

This is so important to me, and you’re going to see my dedication to, A, giving a shit and wanting to do something about it. If I can keep you in front of that piece of art longer than if it was just a zippy cartoon, it might seep into your understanding, your soul, and your enthusiasm to also join some sort of movement to change things.

Marc Steiner:

What popped in my head when I first started looking into the piece was the use of humor and satire in attacking fascism, attacking the growth of fascism. Maybe think of Charlie Chaplin.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, The Great Dictator

Marc Steiner:

That was so effective. But the buffoonery that he characterized Hitler with is the same with Trump. It is frightening and close.

Dwayne Booth:

It is. And I would say, again, one thing I just want to be clear about is that there can be elements of parody and burlesque in there, because what that does is that that invites the viewer into the conversation. It says that this is not so dangerous that you should cower. This person is a fool — A fool who is capable of great catastrophic actions, but he’s an idiot. He’s an idiot. You’re allowed to be smarter than an idiot, and you’re allowed to lose patience with an idiot.

So the second question. So, OK, if you can inspire somebody to be upset and recognize that they are somewhere in this strategy coming from an authoritarian of I will devour you at some point, and maybe this is where… I don’t know if you want to get into the college experience necessarily right now, but that was one of the things that’s interesting about being a professor for. I taught there for 11 years, and it’s always been in my mind. I love teaching, but I was hired as a professional because I was a professional cartoonist. I’m actually a college dropout, and so I bring the practice of what I do into the classroom.

One of the things that was very interesting is, as the world blows up, colleges and universities are institutions of privilege. There’s no way around it. There’s students, yes, that might be there with a great deal of financial aid or some part of a program that gets them in, but by and large, these are communities of privilege. So it was very interesting to see when the society was falling apart, when there was an obvious threat before it was exactly demonstrated about academic freedom and so forth, the strategy from many colleagues that I spoke to was, all right, if we hold our breaths and maybe get to the midterms, we’ll be okay. If we can hold our breaths and just keep our heads down for four years, maybe things will be better. And my reaction was just, do you realize that that’s a privileged position? There’s people who are really suffering. If that is what your strategy is moving forward, then we are doomed because there’s no reason to be brave and stick your neck out.

Marc Steiner:

A number of the things running through my head as you were just describing this, before we go back to your cartoons, which I want to get right back to, which is I was part of the student movement into the 1960s. We took over places, we fought police, we got arrested and expelled from schools. I was thrown out of University of Maryland after three semesters and got drafted. Don’t have to go into that story now, but that happened. So I’m saying there’ve always been places of radical disruption and anger and fighting for justice.

How do you see that different now? I mean, look, in terms of the work you do and what happened to you at Annenberg, tossing you out.

Dwayne Booth:

Well, that’s a two-part question, and we can get to the second part of that in a second. But when it comes to that question of what has happened to college campuses, essentially, is look around. The commodification of everything has reduced the call for speaking your mind, for free speech. Because if you’re going to be indoctrinated into thinking that the commodification of everything is what’s calling you to a successful life, then colleges and universities become indoctrination centers for job placement, way more than even… When I was in college, it was different. You were there to explore, to figure out who you were, what you wanted to do, literally, with the rest of your life. It wasn’t about like, OK, this is how you play the game and keep your mouth shut if you want to succeed. That is the new paradigm that is now framing the kinds of conversations and the pressures inside the classroom to “succeed”.

But my thing with my classes, I would always tell my class a version of the very first day is, what you’re going to learn in this class is not going to help you get a job [Steiner laughs]. What it’s going to do, if I’m successful, and I hope I will be, is it will allow you the potentiality to keep a white-knuckled grip on your soul. Because the stuff we’re looking at is how did the arts community communicate what the humanitarian approach to life should be? That’s not a moneymaking scenario. In fact, there’s examples all through history where you’re penalized for that kind of thinking.

But what is revealed to students is that this is a glimpse into what makes a meaningful life. It’s not surrendering to bureaucracy and hierarchy. It’s about pushing back against that.

Marc Steiner:

Right. And the most important thing in an institution can do — And I don’t want to dive too deep into this now — But is make you question and make you probe and uncover. If you’re not doing that, then you’re not teaching, and you’re not learning.

Dwayne Booth:

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s where we are now. Just even asking the question has become a huge problem. Even when everything started to happen with Gaza and with Israel, we had some conversations in class, without even getting, I wasn’t even trying to start conversations about which side are you going to be on? This is why you should be on this side and abhor the other side. It wasn’t even questions like that. The conversations we ended up having was the terror on the campus to even broach the subject.

My classes where we spoke very frankly about, I can’t even say the word “Israel”, I can’t say it. And it was also among the faculty. And I don’t know if you’ve spoken to other faculty members at other universities, and this shouldn’t be shocking, but at some point, a year ago, we were told, and we all agreed unanimously, not to use school email. They’re listening. We were going to communicate with WhatsApp or try to have personal conversations off campus because we do not trust the administration not to surrender all of our personal correspondence with these congressional committees attempting to blow up universities.

And they did that with me. There was some communication about Congress wants all of your communication with colleagues and students.

Marc Steiner:

That literally happened.

Dwayne Booth:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

They wanted all your communication?

Dwayne Booth:

Yes. And I wasn’t alone. This is what’s going on on college campuses. So A, it’s a really interesting thing to ask because I don’t own the correspondence I have on the servers at school. I don’t. So it’s not even up to me. I can say no, but they’re still going to do it. So that kind of question, what that does is say, you are under our boot. We want to make sure that you understand that you are under our boot and that you’re going to cooperate.

So what was my answer to that? My answer was, fuck you. Because this is coming after a semester where a couple of times I had to teach remotely because not only there were death threats on me, but being the professor in front of this class, there were death threats on my students. So knowing that and really being angry at the main administration and the interim president Jameson for surrendering to this kind of McCarthyism. Again, that’s an easy equation to make, but it’s accurate. It’s a hundred percent accurate.

Marc Steiner:

I’m really curious. Let’s stay with this for a moment before we leap into some other areas here, that when did you become first aware that they were coming after you? And B, how did they do it? What did they literally do to push you out?

Dwayne Booth:

Me being pushed out, it’s an interesting question to ask because Annenberg actually protected me. Jameson wanted me out when The Washington Free Beacon article came out in February of last year.

Marc Steiner:

The one that accused you of being an antisemite?

Dwayne Booth:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Dwayne Booth:

So again, what do we do with that? We clean house. We don’t look at the truth of the matter. We don’t look at the specifics. We don’t push back, we surrender. That’s the stance of the administration. So he wanted me fired, but the Dean of Annenberg was just like, no. So they protected me. It’s the School for Communication. It has a history of…

Marc Steiner:

It’s a school where you’re trained journalists and other people to tell the truth and tell the stories and dig deep and put it out there.

Dwayne Booth:

And to say no when you need to say no.

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Dwayne Booth:

Right. So that happened. So they protected me. I was there because Annenburg protected me. It didn’t stop the administration, as you said at the beginning of the segment, Jameson then makes a public statement that basically says I’m an antisemite and that I’m reprehensible.

So that went on for all of last year, not so much the beginning of this semester because everybody was very focused on what the election was going to reveal.

So I was given the opportunity to develop a new class for this coming fall. So I took off the semester, was paid to develop this new course for, actually, about the alternative press and the underground comics movement of the ’60s and ’70s.

Marc Steiner:

I remember it well [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Very good. And so that’s considered the golden age for opinion journalism, which is lacking now. So I’m like, this is a great opportunity to, again, expose what our responsibility is as a free and open society. Let’s really talk about it. I even was going to start a newspaper as part of the class that students were going to contribute to. It was going to be a very big to-do.

Trump won. The newspaper was the first thing to be canceled. We don’t want to invite too much attention from this new regime on the campus. Again, it’s this cowardice that has real ramifications, as you were saying. These funds, as soon as there’s money involved, the strategy for moving forward becomes an economic decision and not one that has to do with people and their lives.

So me being let go, I was part of a number of adjuncts and lecturers who were also let go. So it’s not an easy connection to say that I was specifically targeted as somebody who should be fired. But that said, you could feel some relief. And as a matter of fact, being let go and then being, again, the attacks from the right-wing press increased, and all of a sudden we’re like, finally UPenn has gotten rid of the antisemite. And then we’re back in this old ridiculous argument.

And luckily, I’m not alone. I’m not so much in the spotlight because many people are stepping forward and, again, trying to promote the right kind of conversation about this.

Marc Steiner:

One of the things, a bunch of things that went through my head as you were talking, I was thinking about the course you wanted to teach on alternative press. I you ever get to teach that course again, I have tons of files for you to have, to go through.

Dwayne Booth:

[Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was writing the textbook.

Marc Steiner:

Textbook. Oh, were you? OK.

Dwayne Booth:

I’m going to France, actually, and I’m going to interview Robert Crumb. I’m staying over his house. Oh, that’s great.

Marc Steiner:

Oh, that’s great. He must be really old now.

Dwayne Booth:

Yes. I’m really looking forward to it.

Marc Steiner:

[Laughs] I was there at the very [beginning]. I helped found Liberation News Service.

Dwayne Booth:

Oh, see.

Marc Steiner:

And I was at Washington Free Press back in the ’60s.

Dwayne Booth:

See? So you know. I curated an exhibit on the alternative press for the University of Connecticut a couple years ago. Hugely popular. They have an archive that is dizzying. It might be the biggest in the country. And so when I was curating and putting together that exhibit, I would go in and I would be, all day, I wouldn’t even eat, and I would pore through these newspapers and magazines at the time. And I would leave, and I would actually have this real sense of woe because looking at what that kind of journalism was attempting and accomplishing made me feel like we have lost.

Marc Steiner:

Every city and community had an underground paper across the country, and Liberation newspapers were there to service all those papers and bring them together. The power of the media in that era was very different and very strong.

Dwayne Booth:

Well, the work that I do as a cartoonist and somebody who uses visuals to communicate this stuff, that was all through these newspapers, all through this movement. The idea being is the arts community is there — Well, let’s do it this way. The job of journalism, one could say, is that it provides us with the first draft of history, which we’ve heard.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly.

Dwayne Booth:

So the idea as a journalist, what you’re supposed to be asking yourself is what is the real story here? And I’m going to approach it and try to be objective about it, but what is the real story here? The job of an artist in the arts community is to ask the very same question. What is this story really about? What does this feel like? But rather than searching for the objective version of that, it’s about looking for the subjective. This is how I feel about it. And that invites people in to share their own stories. Because really we’re just stories. We’re really just stories.

Marc Steiner:

Storytellers.

Dwayne Booth:

Exactly. So if you can have a form of journalism that not only draws on straight journalism but also can bring in Allen Ginsburg to write a poem that will then explore what does it mean to be a human being? Why are we vulnerable and why do we deserve protection? Until you have that inside of a conversation, why argue in favor of protecting, say, the people of Gaza?

Marc Steiner:

Let’s talk a bit about that. Now, look, this is what got you fired [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Well, I don’t… Well, again.

Marc Steiner:

It’s part of what got you fired.

Dwayne Booth:

It created a lot of heat for me last year, we can say.

Marc Steiner:

It is a very difficult question on many levels, being accused of being an antisemite or a self-hating Jew. If you criticize Israel, whether you use the word genocide or slaughter, whatever word you use has infected the entire country at this moment. Campuses, newspapers, everywhere, magazines. And in itself, it seems to me, also creates antisemitism. It makes it bubble up. Because it’s always there, it’s just below the surface. It doesn’t take much to unleash it. So I think we’re in this very dangerous moment.

Dwayne Booth:

We are. But I would say that, with that broad description, if people only approach the question with that broad of an approach, I think we’re in trouble.

Marc Steiner:

What do you mean by that?

Dwayne Booth:

I think the question of attempting to criticize Israel and then being called an antisemite is conflating politics with religion, nationalism with religion. Because really, again, look at it. Just look at all of the conversations that people have been having. To criticize the state of Israel is criticizing the state of Israel. It has really nothing to do with criticizing Judaism at all. Now, if somebody is Jewish and supporting Israel, OK, they’ve made that connection for themselves. So therefore, you can’t have an argument that says, you’re hurting my Jewishness, my Jewish identity by attacking a nation state, because they’re two different things. And if you’re protecting the virtue of a nation state, that is nationalism.

Marc Steiner:

It is. I don’t want to digress on this too deeply, but I think that when you are part of a minority that has been persecuted — My grandfather fought the czars, people in the streets of Warsaw, in the pogroms. My dad fought the Nazis. When you know that they just hate you because of who you are, which is the excuse they used to create Israel out of Palestine, which makes it a very complex matter. It was FDR who would not let Jews here and said, you have to go. You want to get out of those camps? You’re going there.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. There is that. Yep.

Marc Steiner:

So what I’m saying to all that, I’m saying it’s a very complicated matter.

Dwayne Booth:

And so the argument, though, and I totally agree with you. So what is important for that, the fact that it is a complicated matter, then you need to create space for the conversation to happen, and you have to create the space to be large enough to accommodate all of the emotion, the emotional component that is part of this, because that’s also very, very real. And then the less emotional stuff, like what is the intellectual argument piece of this? So yes, it is all completely knotted up, but the solution is to recognize how complicated it is and then create the space for people then to untangle it.

Because again, that’s why I said about the broad approach. The broad approach is not going to help us. The broad approach is going to actually disenfranchise people from wanting to enter into the conversation. Because you don’t want to say, and as you can see it happening over and over again, anybody who says, I’m against Israel, what Israel is doing, immediately they’re called, they’re shut down by people who don’t want to have that conversation, as being antisemitic. And nobody wants to feel like they could be called an antisemitic, especially if they are not one. Remember, people who are antisemitic, they tend to be proud of the fact that they are antisemitic.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, I know. But there are a lot of antisemites out there, a lot of racists who don’t admit that they’re antisemitic or racist.

Dwayne Booth:

Again, and the question, they don’t admit it. So again, so that’s where you need that kind of conversation to turn the light on in that darkness and give them the opportunity to either defend their antisemitism, have their antisemitism revealed so that they can then self-assess who they are. Because a lot of prejudices people have, they don’t know that they have them, and they have not been challenged.

So much of what we think and feel is reflexive thinking and feeling. You can’t burn that flag. I’m an American, it’s hurting my heart. Let’s look at the issue. What is trying to be communicated by the burning of the flag? It’s not shitting on your grandfather for fighting in the Second World War. But again, if somebody is going to have all that knotted up into this emotional cluster, it’s up to us as sane human beings who are seeking understanding and also empathy with each other to be able to enter in those things assuming, until it’s disproven, that we actually have the potential for empathy and understanding among each other. But you need to create the space and the conversation for that to happen.

Marc Steiner:

What was the specific work that had them attack you as an antisemite at Annenberg? What did they pull out?

Dwayne Booth:

They pulled out some cartoons that I had. It was interesting because they pulled out mostly illustrations that I had done for Chris Hedges. I’ve been Chris Hedges’s illustrator for a very long time.

Marc Steiner:

He used to work out of this building [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Yes, exactly. And so what they did was they pulled out these illustrations completely out of context from the article that I was illustrating, had them as standalone pieces, which again, if you’re doing cartoons or you’re doing any illustrations, what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to be provocative and communicate with a very short form. If it’s something as fiery as this issue, then you need, potentially, more information to know what my intent is as an artist. Those were connected to Chris Hedges’s articles that had them make absolute sense. So those were shown without the context of Chris Hedges’s articles.

They showed a couple cartoons that also were just standalone cartoons that had been published and posted for four months without anything except great adulation from readers, because I also work for Scheer Post, which is Robert Scheer’s publication. And I’ve known Bob for decades. And if you don’t know who Bob is, you should know who Bob is. He was the editor of Ramparts and has a very long history of attempting independent journalism.

Marc Steiner:

I can’t believe he’s still rolling.

Dwayne Booth:

He is. He’s 89.

Marc Steiner:

I know [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

It’s amazing. And so he was running my cartoons. He lost more than half of his family in the Holocaust. He knows what antisemitism looks like. And so these cartoons that were pulled, again, I had nothing but people understanding what I was trying to say. But taken, again, out of context, shown to an audience that is looking for any excuse to call somebody an antisemite, which is the Washington Free Beacon, who has called everybody an antisemite: Obama, Bernie Sanders, just everybody. And framing the parameters of that slander, presenting it to their audience who blew up, again, then started writing me: I want to rape your wife and murder your children. I know where you live. All of those sorts of things all of a sudden come out. So that happened.

And so again, there I am — And I’ve had hate mail. I’ve had death threats before. I’ve never been part of an institution where the strategy for moving forward is being part of a community was… All right. I was told to just not say anything at first. We’ll see if we can weather this. And then when the Jameson statement came out, I wrote to my dean and I said, I have to say something now. I can’t sit back and just let these people frame the argument because it’s not accurate.

Marc Steiner:

Right, right.

Dwayne Booth:

Then I started to talk to the press, and again, started to say, we need to understand that there is intent and context for all of these things, and I cannot allow the truncation of communication to happen to the degree where people are silenced and then people are encouraged to self-censor.

Marc Steiner:

So I’ll ask you a question. I’ve been wrestling with this question I wanted to ask you about one of your cartoons. It’s the cartoon where Netanyahu [inaudible] are drinking blood.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s not Netanyahu. I know which… Is it with the dove?

Marc Steiner:

Yeah.

Dwayne Booth:

OK. Yeah. Netanyahu is not in there.

Marc Steiner:

That’s right, I’m sorry. So the first thing that popped in my head when I saw that picture was the blood libel against the Jews by the Christians that took place. My father told me stories about when he was a kid how Christian kids across from Patterson, the other side of the park, would chase him. You killed, you drank Jesus’s blood, you killed Jesus, the major fights that they had. So talk a bit about that. That’s not the reaction you want us to have.

Dwayne Booth:

No, no, no, no. Absolutely not. It is interesting because I think that’s probably the leading one that people — And now when all this started up, again, they don’t even show it, they just describe it, and they describe it so inaccurately [Steiner laughs] that it just makes me crazy.

Marc Steiner:

You’re not shocked, are you [both laugh]?

Dwayne Booth:

No, no. But in the cartoon, it’s actually, it’s power brokers. These guys look like they’re power brokers from the 1950s. I like to draw that style of… And if you want to look at these guys, they look completely not Jewish. I pulled them from, like I said, they’re basically clip art from the 1950s. So they’re power brokers at a cocktail party. It’s playing off of the New Yorker style of the cocktail party with the upper class.

So they’re upper crust power brokers. Behind them is a hybrid flag that is half the American flag and half the Israeli flag. And they are drinking blood from glasses that says “Gaza”. And there is a peace dove that is walking into the room and somebody says, who invited that lousy antisemite.

As a cartoonist, understand that when it comes to, as I said earlier, trying to figure out how to make the point as quickly as you can and as eye catching as you can. If you look through the history of the genre, drinking blood is what monsters do. They do it all of the time in their criticism of people who are powerful and who are called monsters. I, frankly, when I was drawing it, I [wasn’t] like, well, this might be misinterpreted as blood libel. I didn’t know what blood libel was.

Marc Steiner:

I’m sure you didn’t.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. And again, and it was posted for a long time and nobody’s said anything about it. But then when it was called that, it became a very interesting conversation because it was like, oh, OK. So now I can see how that would flood the interpretation of the cartoon. And again, this is what happens in regular conversation. And particularly if you’re communicating as somebody who uses the visuals as your form of communication, there’s a thousand ways to interpret a visual.

Marc Steiner:

There are.

Dwayne Booth:

There are. And as the artist, you have to understand that you’re going to do the best that you can and hope that the majority of people are going to get what you’re trying to do. Which brings us, again, back to that second question or that point that I was making earlier, which is let’s have the conversation afterwards. If you understand that my intent was playing off of not a Jewish trope but a trope of criticizing power — Which, actually, out of curiosity, I went through the internet and I all of a sudden started to assemble, through time, using people are drinking blood constantly who are evil. So it’s used and so forth.

And so the challenge with something like that was to then try to communicate that that was not my intent. I know a communications, a free speech expert, in fact. She and I had a really interesting conversation about it because she is such a radical, she’s been more radical than I am. She wanted me to know that it was blood libel, and she wanted to hear me say, yes, I knew it was blood libel, but I’m going to use that to force the conversation and reclaim what that blood libel was supposed to be as, A, this ridiculous thing that actually is being applied as a truism in this circumstance.

But all of a sudden it became this academic conversation and I was just like, whoa, I don’t need it to be that, because you don’t want to upset everybody and confuse what your communication is, obviously. So I said, it wasn’t that. She goes, you sure [Steiner laughs]? Are you sure you weren’t trying to do that? I’m like, no, I wasn’t trying to do that. So that’s what that one was.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m glad we talked about this because I think that… I’m not going to dwell on this cartoon, but when I first showed this to some of my friends —

Dwayne Booth:

You’re not alone [crosstalk]. I get it. I totally get it.

Marc Steiner:

As I was preparing for our conversation, that was their first reaction as well.

Dwayne Booth:

Right. Right.

Marc Steiner:

Because your cartoons, they’re really powerful, and they get under an issue, and it glares in front of your eyes like a bright light. And they’re very to hard look at sometimes, whether it’s Trump eating shit, literally [both laugh], and the other images you give us. It’s like you can’t allow us to look away. You want us to ingest them.

Dwayne Booth:

I want you to ingest them and then have an honest reaction. And then, again, it doesn’t have to be in a conversation with me, have a conversation with somebody else. Because that cartoon that you were talking about, it started a bunch of debates.

Marc Steiner:

The Trump one?

Dwayne Booth:

No, no, no.

Marc Steiner:

Oh, the blood libel.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah — Don’t call it the blood libel one. See what I mean, man [both laugh]? So it started, what I would say is necessary debate to really get to the bottom of issues. Again, that’s really what we should be doing. We should be encouraging more and more difficult conversations. Because we’re not, and look at where we are. People are uncomfortable to even go into the streets. You don’t have to shout. You don’t have to carry a sign. People are being conditioned to be uncomfortable with making a statement in the name of humanity, even though humanity is suffering in real time in front of us. Look at Gaza. For me, there’s no way to frame the argument that can justify that. There’s just no way. There’s too many bodies, there’s too many dead people. There’s too much evidence that the human suffering that is happening over there right now in front of the world needs not to be happening.

Marc Steiner:

It needs not to be happening. [I’ll] tell [you] what just popped through my head as you were saying that, a couple things. One was the Vietnam War where millions of Vietnamese were slaughtered, North, South, all over. And we didn’t call that a genocide. We called that a slaughter. And then I was thinking as you were speaking about… I speak at synagogues sometimes about why we as Jews have to oppose what Israel’s doing to Gaza.

Dwayne Booth:

And I’ve gone to synagogues and seen those talks. That’s also what I’m [crosstalk] —

Marc Steiner:

They’re very difficult talks to have people just…

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

Because it’s an emotional issue as much as it’s a —

Dwayne Booth:

Exactly.

Marc Steiner:

— Logical and political issue. And so, when I look at your work, again, it engenders conversation. It makes you think it’s not just his little typical political cartoon. It’s like you sink yourself into your cartoons like an actor sinks himself into a part. That’s what I felt looking at your work.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny because just hearing you say that, it’s true that quite often I forget about my cartoons soon after I do them because I’m already onto the next one. And I’ve done searches for things and found my cartoons that I’ve forgotten. I have no memory of doing them [Steiner laughs]. Some of them I don’t even get, and I literally have to call my older brother and say, what was I trying to say with this? He’s very good at remembering what I was trying to say and can decipher my cartoons for me.

But yeah, it is a form of meditation. If you look at the work that I do, again, if you’re going to stick with a piece of art for hours, you have to be able to sustain your focus on it. So I meditate while I’m doing it and see if it feels true to my emotional reaction to what’s going on, then I post it.

Marc Steiner:

So lemme ask you this question. So think of one of your most recent cartoons, I dunno which one, I’ll let you think of it since I don’t know what your most recent cartoon is, and it’s about Gaza and Israel and this moment. Describe it and what you went through to create it.

Dwayne Booth:

One of the most recent ones that I did was, as the death toll continued to climb, and I think it was right after Trump started to talk about how beautiful he’s going to make Gaza once we take over. The normalizing of that, and even the attempts to make it a sexy strategy, hit me so hard that my approach to that was, OK, well what would that look like? What would the attempt to normalize that amount of human suffering, what would that look like?

Well, it sounds like a travel poster that is going to invite people to the new Gaza. So I decided to do a travel poster riffing off of an old Italian vintage come to Italy poster, just like a Vespa. Let’s get a Vespa in there and a sexy couple. Now, I don’t want to render something that has Gaza completely Trumpified already. We’ve seen what that looks like. Let’s, OK, satire. But let’s talk about, let’s visualize what that would look like right now moving towards that. So I have this young couple on a Vespa coming down a giant mountain of skulls, heading to the beach. And out in the beach there’s some Israeli warships. And it’s rendered, at a glance, to be very gleeful, but then you start to notice the details of it and the attempt to normalize, again, an ocean of skulls, [and] nobody’s recognizing the fact that these are a slaughtered population. So that’s what I thought.

And so, again, sometimes what you want to do is you want to say, alright, this is an ugly truth that’s being promoted as something that is beautiful, I’m going to show you what that looks like as something that’s been beautified. And the reaction, of course, is just like, oh my God, this hits harder than if I showed the gore, in the same way that if you go back to Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”, right? He published that anonymously. And he also, it’s very interesting because it’s about what do we do with the poor, bedraggled Irish people? We make them refuse for the needs of the British. We will cook the children, kill some of the grownups, make belts, make wallets, all of these things to feed the gentry of the British.

What’s very interesting about that is he sustained the irony of that all the way through. You don’t have the sense, he did not turn it into parody or burlesque or wild craziness. He presented it as a solution to the problem. Now, if you look at that, it actually makes business sense. It would actually solve the problem — Minus all the horror of killing babies and killing a bunch of people. It makes good business sense.

Now, if you look at that and you see that as a parallel to what is justified by big business and corporations now, it happens every single day. It’s been completely normalized. Look what’s going on with the environment. Look at the Rust Belt across this country. All of that stuff is rendered in service of profit and economics the same way that “Modest Proposal” was, and people have been conditioned to see it as normal and ignore the human suffering.

Marc Steiner:

I’m curious. The first one is, where’s that latest cartoon published?

Dwayne Booth:

I actually gave it to Hedges for one of his columns, and then I posted it and people wanted prints. I’ve sold prints of it. And it was also in the paper that comes out of Washington that Ralph Nader does… Gosh, what’s it called? The Capitol…

Marc Steiner:

I should know this

Dwayne Booth:

Myself. I should know this too, because I’ve been doing cartoons for them for a few years now.

Marc Steiner:

Capitol Hill Citizen.

Dwayne Booth:

That’s it. See, I missed the word “hill”. Thank God.

Marc Steiner:

Capitol Hill Citizen.

Dwayne Booth:

Which is a great newspaper. And it gives me the opportunity to see my stuff on physical paper again, which looks gorgeous to me. I’d rather —

Marc Steiner:

Now that you’ve described the cartoon, I saw it this morning as I was getting ready for this conversation. I didn’t know whether it was the latest one you’ve done.

Now that you were facing what we face here, both in Gaza and with Trump and these neofascists in charge of the country, your brain must be full of how you portray this. I just want you to talk a bit about, both creatively and substantively, how you approach this moment when we are literally facing down a neofascist power taking over our country and about to destroy our democracy. People think that’s hyperbole, you’re being crazy. But we’re not.

Dwayne Booth:

No, it’s happening.

Marc Steiner:

And if you, as I was, a civil rights worker in the South, you saw what it was like to live under tyranny, under an authoritarian dictatorship if you were not white. I can feel the entire country tumbling in at this moment. So tell me how you think about that and how you approach it with your work.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s an interesting time because, in many ways, my work is quadrupled. Partly because it’s just what I’ve always done, but the other part is I don’t see this profession stepping up to the challenge at all. I don’t see any single-panel cartoonists who are hitting the Israel Gaza issue nearly as hard as I am.

Marc Steiner:

No, they’re not.

Dwayne Booth:

No. And I see a lot also, of the attacks on Trump. And again, it always strikes me as, how would the Democratic Party render a cartoon? That’s what I see out there. And it’s too soft. It is just way too soft. So as I increase my output, I feel the light getting brighter and brighter on me, which makes me feel more and more unsafe inside this society because yes, they’re targeting people who are not citizens, but what’s next? We all know the poem.

But at the same time, I feel like it’s a responsibility that I have, and I’m sure that you probably have this same sense of responsibility. Speaking up, talking out loud, even though it’s on my nervous system, it is grinding me down in a way that is new.

But that said, my numbers of people who are coming to me are increasing. I’m actually starting a substack so I can have my own conversations with people and so forth, because we have got to increase this megaphone. We just have to.

In fact, one thing that was interesting is just this last October I was invited to speak at a cartooning conference in Montreal. And the whole reason to have me up there and to talk about it was was from the perspective of the people, the organizers, I was the only American cartoonist who was cartooning about Gaza.

Marc Steiner:

Really?

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. And I’d had conversations, remember, that there’s some cartoonists who are doing some things that, again, are just a little bit too polite. Because if we’re looking at this thing and we do think that this is a genocide, you can’t pull your punches. And so, in fact, when this stuff had happened with me initially with the Washington Free Beacon, I reached out.

There’s another colleague I have who’s a cartoonist, whose name is Andy Singer, and he and I have been in communication over the years, and he’s somewhat fearless on this issue. He and I were talking, and we came up with this idea, let’s publish a book that has cartoonists who, over the last many decades, have had a problem criticizing Israel for fear of being called anti-Semitic.

We sent it out to our colleagues and other international cartoonists and so forth. We found two, Matt Wuerker and Ted Rall, who were willing to participate in this project. I had a number of conversations with others who just contacted me privately and said, I can’t do it because I’ll lose my job. I can’t do it because I’ll be targeted and I’m too afraid. I can’t get close to this subject, my editor won’t let me do it, so I can’t do it. International cartoonists, different idea, a whole different approach, sending me stuff. I can tell my story. I’ve been jailed. I’ve been beaten up for this kind of work. And so it became a very interesting thing.

Again, the United States is, by and large, it’s an extremely privileged society. And yet, when it comes to issues like this, it demonstrates the most cowardice because we’ve been made to be way too sensitive about our own discomfort to advance the cause of humanity and justice, love, all of those things because we’ve seen that there is a penalty for doing that, and we do not want to give up certain creature comforts. We don’t want to be called something that we are not, and we need to be uncomfortable. In many ways we have to break soft rules. We have to chain ourself to fences and then make it an inconvenience to be pulled from those fences.

Marc Steiner:

This has been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate you being here today and for all the work that you do. And I think that we’re at this moment where the reason that many of us who are part of Jewish Voices for Peace and other organizations is to say those voices are critical in saying this is wrong and has to end now. And I appreciate the power of the work you do. It’s just amazing. And we encourage everybody, we’ll be linking to your work so people can see it and consume it. And I hope we have a conversation together in the future.

Dwayne Booth:

Thanks. I agree. Thanks a lot, Marc.

Marc Steiner:

Good to have you sliding through Baltimore.

Dwayne Booth:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Dwayne Booth, also known as Mr. Fish, for joining us today here for this powerful and honest conversation. We will link to his work when we post this episode. You want to check that out.

And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for working on her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

So please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has openly vowed to pour $100 million into campaigns to defeat progressive representatives like Cori Bush who have spoken out against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. As Chris McGreal writes in The Guardian, “after it played a leading role in unseating New York congressman Jamaal Bowman, another progressive Democrat who criticised the scale of Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza… AIPAC pumped $8.5m into the race in Missouri’s first congressional district to support [Wesley] Bell through its campaign funding arm, the United Democracy Project (UDP), after Bush angered some pro-Israel groups as one of the first members of Congress to call for a ceasefire after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.” After Bush was unseated in August, she vowed to keep fighting for justice, and she put AIPAC on notice: “AIPAC,” she told supporters, “I’m coming to tear your kingdom down.”

At the 2025 National Membership Meeting of Jewish Voice for Peace in Baltimore, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez sits down with the former Congresswoman and key member of “The Squad” to discuss her re-election loss, the undue influence of organizations like AIPAC on our democracy, and Bush’s plan for fighting back.

Studio Production: Kayla Rivara, Rosette Sewali
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  We’re here at the Jewish Voice for Peace National Membership Meeting held in downtown Baltimore, and I am honored to be sitting here with Congresswoman Cori Bush, who just gave an incredible speech at the closing plenary.

Congresswoman, thank you so much for joining me. I know we only have a limited time here, and I wanted to ask, first and foremost, for our viewers out there who saw your re-election campaign be thwarted by $8.5 million from AIPAC, amidst other things, what would you say to folks out there who just see the results of that election and think, oh, well, she lost fair and square. What’s really going on underneath that?

Cori Bush:  Well, thank you for the question. First of all, there was no fair, there was no square. There was deceit, manipulation, lies, misinformation, racism, bigotry, hatred, vitriol, and it was all OK. There was nothing that was off limits as long as AIPAC got the result that they wanted. They didn’t care about how it ripped apart our community, how all of the years of organizing, so much of it was disrupted, and some of those bonds that people created, it completely shattered. They didn’t care about that. They don’t care about that.

They don’t care that I’m the same person that some of those folks marched with out on the streets of Ferguson during the uprising in 2014 and 2015. They don’t care that I am the one who protested the ending of the eviction moratorium in 2021 as a freshman out on the steps of the US Capitol to make sure that 11 million people weren’t about to be evicted from their homes when the government could have done something about it. They didn’t care about that. They wanted to discredit me because in discrediting someone that the people trust, then it pulls power not only from that person that they trust, but it pulls power from the people. So [the] over $8 million that they put in, plus those that they were working with, it roughly ended up being around $15 million, between $15 to $20 million, which is the numbers that we’ve seen.

And I just want to make this point. To use racism against me, to distort my face on mailers to make me look like an animal, to use lies about my family or me. The thing is this: if you’re doing the right thing and you’re doing it for the right reason, why can’t you just use truth? I have no problem with people running against each other. We’re able to do that. That’s how I won my race. I ran against someone I thought was ineffective. I felt like I could do more. I spoke about what I would do and how I felt I could do it. I spoke about my past and who I wanted to be as a member of Congress. The people believed it because the people saw me as that person, and I won.

Around $1.4 million. It took me that much money to unseat a 20-year incumbent whose father was in the seat for 32 years. So 52 years worth of a machine. I spent around $1.4 million to unseat. I won that race with over 4,700 votes. AIPAC and the groups that they were working with, they spent around $15 million. The person only won by less than 7,000 votes. So it took basically $15 million, 15 times the amount of money to unseat me that it took me to unseat someone who had a 52-year family legacy. So that was the depth of the deceit that they had to use.

And I’ll say this, never once did they say anything about Israel or Palestine. Never once did they use that in ads. Now, in front of people, they would call me antisemitic. People would say, well, what did she do? Oh, well, [inaudible]. I don’t have anything to show you. But what they would use in the ads was, oh, she’s mean to Joe Biden. She wants kids to drink contaminated water from lead pipes. Those were the things that they used against me.

And because it flooded the media, our local media so heavily because of the amount of money, because you will see four or five ads from my opponent and then only one ad from me, the people started to believe and they were wondering, well, why does he have so much money? Well, why does it…?

So that’s what it looked like, and that’s how they were able to deceive the community to make them think, oh, well, then maybe something is going on that we don’t understand. And then they also made people feel like, well, I’m confused, so maybe I’ll just stay home.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I want to ask another follow-up question on that because, of course, you and other members of the Squad are representative of a grassroots hope coming from a lot of the folks that we talk to and interview on a weekly basis. This is a hope over the past 10 years that there was still a possibility of making progressive change through electoral politics.

What would you say to folks right now who are feeling despondent, and after seeing AIPAC still, amidst all of that, unseat you, unseat Jamaal Bowman, the richest man in the world buying his way into our government right now, what would you say to folks who feel like we don’t have enough to take on their money?

Cori Bush:  Well, that’s what they want us to believe. They want us to fall into this place of feeling overwhelmed, believing the chaos. They want us to stop fighting. They want us to think that… Well, they want us to live in this place of fatigue. That’s why they keep ramming this train our way. But we can’t allow that to happen because what they understand is it’s actually the people who have the power. That’s why they have to do so much and push so hard and spend so much money because they understand that it’s really us who has the power. We just have to acknowledge it and understand it and figure out how to properly use our power to fight against this.

And so, yes, I was unseated, Jamaal Bowman was unseated, and I know that we know that they’re coming for more in 2026 and beyond. But the thing is, the movement is never one person or never a few people. Yes, we were working for more progressive change, and that’s an issue right now. But the other part of that is we need our actual elected officials who claim to be progressive, to actually be that. We need that, or stop saying that you are, because then you’re making people feel this way because they’re looking like, oh, these are our people, but what’s going on? Why aren’t they pushing? Why aren’t they fighting for this change?

So we need people to be your authentic self in this moment because the people are falling away from the Democratic Party because they feel the hypocrisy. People are saying, I don’t understand why you’re not fighting hard enough. You said this man is a fascist, he’s a racist, he’s a white supremacist, he’s authoritarian, he’s a dictator. He’s all of these things, but you’re not meeting the moment. You’re not meeting the threat with the proper opposition to it.

But when they also see that some of these same folks who are supposed to be our “leaders” take money from groups like AIPAC who are primarily funded by Republicans or who also endorse insurrectionist members of Congress, or people who supported insurrectionists, at least we feel, then the people are like, well, why should I believe and trust in you?

Also, if you are cool with allowing a genocide to happen on our watch in our lifetime with our tax dollars, if you are OK with that, then what is your red line? Because, apparently, death and destruction of thousands of people, it’s not.

So who are you? Is this the party of human rights and civil rights? Is this the party of equality and equity and peace? Is this that party? It is absolutely not if there is no no real opposition to what we’re seeing right now.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And just a final question. When you lost your reelection and you gave this rousing speech that you brought back into your speech today, you told AIPAC, “I’m coming to tear down your kingdom.” I wanted to ask, in closing here with the last minute I’ve got you, what does that mean? What does that look like? And for folks out there watching who want to see that, who want this undue money and influence out of our politics, what is it going to take to tear down that kingdom?

Cori Bush:  So one thing I won’t do is give all the secrets away. So I can’t give all of the… But what I will say is part of it is this, part of it is being here with the people. So Jewish Voice for Peace has 100% been a supporter of mine. And this didn’t just start after Oct. 7. We’ve been working with folks with JVP for years. This is not anything new, and we’ll continue to do that work.

But the fact that they continue to organize, other groups are organizing and calling out the name AIPAC. There are experts working on why there is this loophole that allows for AIPAC to do some of the lobbying they do. There is a lot happening behind the scenes, and I’m going to continue to do that work.

But the stuff that is more forward-facing, I’m going to continue to organize. I’m going to continue to make sure that people know. The PAC United Democracy Project is… We need people to understand the connection between them and AIPAC. So that’s where the money is going to flow from. It’s going to flow from UDP. We need people to know DMFI and know some of these other names, but we also need people to know that, in your local community, there are PACs being formed that are basically a smaller AIPAC, and their whole purpose is to try to be ambiguous, and so you won’t know that this is who they are. It is just like, oh, it’s this group that has all of this money that’s coming against this elected official that’s speaking out against the genocide. But they have all of this money, and so maybe they’re good. We want people to know. So educating people around the country as well.

I’m not going to stop fighting because AIPAC came for me. The thing is this: AIPAC didn’t make me, so AIPAC can’t break me. AIPAC didn’t position me, so they can deposition me. The thing is, I got there because the people put me there, but I was there for a purpose and a mission. So that’s the other part. So I knew while I was there in Congress that I was on a timer. I knew that I was only there for a purpose, for a mission. I knew that there was this urgency on the inside of me.

One thing that I would say to people all the time is I felt this weeping. Only inside of me, I always felt like crying. It never stopped, 24 hours a day. And it’s the thing that kept me moving fast. Like, OK, I got to do this. I got to do that. People in Congress will say, she’s championed all of these different areas. Why is she doing so much? That was why. I didn’t know that I would only be there four years, but I needed to get the work done, and I needed to be true to what I said, who I said I would be.

But also, I needed to be what I needed. That’s what I had to be what I needed when I was unhoused, when I was hungry, when I was abused, and all of the things. I needed that. I needed what my grandmother needed when she taught me that you never look a white woman in her face because of what she went through, the experience in Mississippi growing up, and my ancestors before her through chattel slavery. I needed to be what they needed. And I’ll never stop doing that because the thing is, it’s not about me, it’s who God created me to be. And that’s just everything for me, and so I’m not afraid.

A notorious federal prison in Dublin, CA, was closed in 2024 after years of complaints of rampant and systematic sexual abuse, medical neglect, and human rights violations. Now, the Trump administration is pushing to reopen the facility as an ICE detention center, but an interfaith coalition of community members and human rights advocates are fighting to keep the facility closed.

Edited by: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

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

Speaker 1:

The Dublin City Council and Representative DeSaulnier, as well as Representative Zoe Loughran, we would like everyone to join them in opposing the opening of FCI Dublin as an ICE detention center.

Speaker 2:

On April 16th, faith leaders and activists gathered outside of a federal correctional institute, Dublin, a site of horrific abuse, neglect, and state-sanctioned violence, calling for the facility’s permanent closure and to reject a plan to use it as an immigration detention center. That’s from a statement released by Interfaith Movement and Human Integrity and the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. The statement further details that countless people incarcerated at FCI Dublin survived being sexually abused by the Bureau of Prison staff and faced inhumane conditions, retaliation and medical neglect, and that now ICE appears to be moving forward with converting FCI Dublin from a BOP facility to an ICE facility, despite congressional opposition, its abusive history and dangerously dilapidated infrastructure.

Speaker 3:

Led an amazing campaign to organize to shut that prison down. We want to honor their dreams that this harm not be continued and perpetuated on other people and other communities. So this is why we’re preventing, here to prevent ICE from reopening Dublin as a detention facility.

Speaker 2:

Immigrants incarcerated at Dublin who are not citizens were specifically targeted by BOP staff who threatened to turn them over to immigration and customs enforcement, or made false promises that in exchange for sex, they could help them stay in the United States. In 2023, the Real News spoke with organizer Erin Neff of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners about the lawsuit filed on behalf of incarcerated women who were experiencing abuse at the prison.

Erin Neff:

In the case of Dublin, just to give it an historical context, 30 years ago there was a horrific incident of abuse upon many people, and there was a big case and a big settlement, and it is heartbreaking to see that 30 years later, the same thing is happening. And what it exposes is a culture of turning a blind eye to this abuse. There’s cooperation, there’s cover-up. It’s very difficult to report, let alone confidentially report. So in recent times, what you’re seeing are people being abused who are undocumented. So first of all, they’re being targeted because the staff knows that they are people who are going to be deported. So there’s an exposure there. They are threatened that if they say anything, they’ll be deported. So these people are people who’ve been here maybe their entire lives, all of their families here, they’re being retaliated against by putting in isolation. They are getting strip searched. It goes on and on. They’re being deprived of medical care, of mental health care.

Speaker 2:

At the recent vigil, outside the gates of FCI Dublin, Reverend Victoria Rue read a statement by Anna, a survivor of FCI Dublin.

Rev. Victoria Rue:

Like so many other immigrant women, I was sexually abused by an officer at FCI Dublin. After I was finally free from the hell of FCI Dublin, I was taken to another hell, an ICE detention center. The conditions at the detention center were terrible. I saw so much suffering. After months and months, I finally won my freedom. I am finally home with my children and trying to heal from the U.S. Government, from what the U.S. Government did to me. When I saw on the news that they wanted to reopen FCI Dublin for immigration detention, my heart fell. That prison is toxic and full of the pain of so many people. I pray that it is demolished, given back to the birds that live on the land there.

Speaker 2:

There was also testimony from Ulises Pena-Lopez, who is currently incarcerated in ICE detention. According to the Santa Clara rapid response team, early on February 21st, as Ulises was getting ready to leave his home, ICE agents showed up and forcibly arrested him, disregarding his rights and his health. Despite Ulises invoking his right to remain silent, to speak with a lawyer and to not exit his vehicle with without seeing a warrant, ICE officers responded with violence, smashing his car window with a baton and dragging him out of his vehicle. Without receiving proper medical care, Ulises was released into ICE custody and is currently being held at the Golden State Annex Detention Center in McFarland, California.

Ulises Pena-Lopez:

It fills me with strength, encouragement, joy, knowing that we are not alone. That you are standing in front of us, that you are our voice and I know and I feel that you’ll never leave us. God bless all of you. Physically, I feel like half of my body is numb, my foot, my right hand. I’m losing vision in my right eye and my face without mobility. Psychologically, I feel like I’m having pauses. They detected my medical and psychological condition as serious and they’re giving me treatment. I can’t sleep. When I call someone or whatever I need, I’m scared. I tremble. I start to sweat. My heart races because of everything they did to me; because of the way we’re not supposed to possess medication in here. If you want two painkillers, you have to submit a request. If you have to put in the request, it usually takes two or three days to be approved.

Speaker 2:

This comes from the statement of Ulises’s campaign and his supporters. They are calling and sending emails to Congress members Ro Khanna and Alex Padilla to demand ICE to release Ulises from the Golden State Annex ICE Detention Center in McFarland and provide access to medical care, treatment and medications.

Ulises Pena-Lopez:

I want to tell you that despite what ICE did to me, when they beat me in front of my wife, in front of my daughter, and they took me to an alley, they continued to beat me. They performed CPR on me to revive me. After they called the ambulance, they still had the audacity to send the ambulance bills to my wife, not once but twice, saying that she is responsible and has to pay for these bills for what they did to me.

Speaker 2:

The list of demands issued by the organizations Interfaith Movement and Human Integrity and California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice includes: honor and uplift survivors of FCI Dublin; demolish and permanently close the FCI Dublin; reject all forms of ICE detention in Dublin and the ongoing terror and criminalization of immigrant communities; return and transform the land to meet community needs and reaffirm that places of worship and religious observance should remain sensitive locations free from the reach of immigration enforcement.

Speaker 7:

Just to close, we know that if Dublin is reopened as an ICE detention center, if people are once again caged in those empty buildings across the street, abuse and neglect will continue. As Dublin survivors have said so many times, the horrors that happened at Dublin are not unique. Abuse is baked into our prison system. Everywhere there are cages, there is violence. In BOP, in ICE in the Santa Rita jail across the street. What is unique about FCI Dublin is that survivors of this violence came together and they organized and they spoke out and they made themselves heard. Dublin survivors shut for years to shut that prison down and they won and it must stay closed forever.

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

Pre/Post-Production: Jaisal Noor

Transcript

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

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.

Ecuador’s president and Trump ally Daniel Noboa has declared victory in the recent election, claiming 56% of the vote in Sunday’s presidential election, according to the country’s National Electoral Council. But analysts say Noboa’s campaign was riddled with illegalities, and that he waged a dirty fake news war against challenger Luisa González the likes of which the country has never seen—and González has challenged the legitimacy of the final vote tally. Reporting from the streets of Quito, journalist Michael Fox breaks down the political tumult in Ecuador and the implications of Noboa’s victory for Ecuadorians, for Latin America, and the new international right.

Videography / Production / Narration: Michael Fox

Transcript

Michael Fox, narrator: Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has been reelected. He’s 37 years old. The son of a banana tycoon. And a Trump ally. He was one of only three Latin American presidents to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, alongside Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele—all international figureheads of the “new right”.

Noboa’s campaign focused on one thing: Security. See, gangs and narco-groups have sent violence spiraling out of control in recent years. 

Decio Machado, political analyst: If things continue this way this year, Ecuador won’t be the second most violent country in Latin America, it will be the first.

Michael Fox, narrator: Noboa has promised to take it to the gangs. He’s building high-security prisons, like El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, and like Bukele has done to execute his war on the gangs and extrajudicial imprisonment of 2% of his country’s population, the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Daniel Noboa has also decreed states of emergency to claim exceptional powers, suspending constitutional rights in the name of the war on drugs. 

He’s even invited the United States to help. 

Daniel Noboa, Ecuador’s President [speech]: We are going to end delinquency. We are going to end criminality. We are going to do away with these miserable politicians that have kept us behind.

Michael Fox, narrator: Iron fist. Tough on crime. This is Noboa’s bread and butter. And his people love it.

According to the National Electoral Council, Noboa won Sunday’s election with 56% of the vote. His supporters danced in the streets.

Noboa supporter: I’m so happy. We’ve won again.

Michael Fox, narrator: But analysts say Noboa’s campaign was riddled with illegalities, and that he waged a dirty fake news war against challenger Luisa González the likes of which the country has never seen.

And on election night… González refused to recognize the results.

Luisa González, presidential candidate [speech]: I denounce, before the people, before the media and the world that Ecuador is living under a dictatorship. This is the biggest fraud in the history of Ecuador!

Michael Fox, narrator: Luisa González is a former national assembly member, a lawyer, and the leader of the Citizen’s Revolution. That’s the leftist political party created by former president Rafael Correa in the mid 2000s. He oversaw a tremendous increase in spending for education, healthcare, and social programs. They helped to lift almost two million people out of poverty.

Luisa ran on this legacy, with a campaign focused on both battling crime, and also tackling unemployment and poverty. Almost 30 percent of Ecuadorians live under the poverty line. González called for unity and promised to reinvest in Ecuador. Social programs. Education.

Her supporters were excited for a return to the good days of the past.

Marlene Yacchirema, Luisa González supporter: There was a lot of security. We lived in peace for 10 years, which we had not experienced for many years. And today, it’s gotten so much worse.

Michael Fox, narrator: Polls showed her leading ahead of the vote. Even the exit polls showed a virtual tie. That is, in part why, when the results started to roll in showing a more than 10-point lead for Noboa, Luisa González’s team believed there must be something wrong.

In a historic agreement, González was endorsed by the country’s most powerful Indigenous political party. In the first round of voting in February, Pachakutik had come in third with 5% of the vote . Nevertheless, on Sunday night, González received roughly the same number of votes she had in the first round.

Luisa González is now calling for a recount. It is still unclear if the electoral council will permit it and how everything will unfold. But beyond the fraud allegations, this entire election was rife with abuse, violations, and a dirty campaign carried out by president Daniel Noboa.

Decio Machado, political analyst: We have witnessed the shadiest electoral campaign since the return of democracy in Ecuador, from the year 1979 onward. And I say shady because it’s been the campaign with the dirtiest war, with the worst fake news campaign, with the most lies, and violations of the constitution.

Lee Brown, political analyst & election observer: I came here about five days before the election, and even in those few days before the vote itself took place, it was very obvious that the election wasn’t taking place in what you and I would call free and fair conditions. So most extraordinarily, the day before the election, there was a state of emergency. And this was called in, in particular, in all the areas where Luisa’s vote was strongest in the first round, but also in the capital city. Obviously that creates a climate of fear. People couldn’t move freely. So this is the sort of context the election was taking place even before that. That was on the day before the election.

I saw in my own eyes and, you know, people were telling me clear, clear abuses of power that were taking place. One clear example is the failure for there to be a separation between the government itself and the election campaign. One of those examples is just the state spending literally hundreds of millions of pounds in grants other things in the run up to the election, effectively buying votes. So that’s caused a lot of concern for people.

Michael Fox, narrator: Above all else, this high-stakes election was defined by a rabid fake news campaign against candidate Luisa González, which clearly influenced voters.

Alejandra Costa, doctor & Noboa supporter: I don’t want socialism from other countries to be implemented here in Ecuador. I want to continue to live in freedom. And I want my nephews to have this future as well. We want a free country.

Decio Machado, political analyst: There’s been a huge fake news campaign. It’s targeted Luisa supporters and has tried to insinuate links of candidate Luisa González with drug gangs, with links to drug trafficking, with the Tren de Aragua, with Mexican cartels. There’s been a whole strategy of poisoning the Ecuadorian electorate with information through social media, WhatsApp groups, etc., and it’s been very powerful on the part of the ruling party’s candidacy and on the part of Daniel Noboa’s candidacy. It’s all clearly part of the dirtiest campaign we’ve ever seen in Ecuador.

Michael Fox, narrator: Noboa’s fake news campaign wasn’t just negative against Luisa González, it was also positive in favor of himself.

Lee Brown, political analyst & election observer: The most incredible fake news that I’ve seen is that the government is resolving the question of security, because with your own eyes you can see that with all the data points, you cannot see them.

Michael Fox, narrator: This is an interesting reality. Despite Noboa’s discourse, his state of exceptions, and his increasing the military and police on the streets… the violence, homicides, and theft in the country have actually gotten worse. 

Decio Machado, political analyst: Between January, February, and March, according to the official figures, the levels of violence have risen 70% compared with the numbers from the same period last year.

Lee Brown, political analyst & election observer: The propaganda campaign means people are really, really getting this unified message that only they can resolve this issue of security, and, on the flip side, that if you bring back the progressive movement Luisa González and representatives of the citizens Revolution, that if you were to do that then the drug the narco traffickers would take over the country.

Michael Fox, narrator: These types of lies and fake news campaigns we have seen before. From Donald Trump. From Bolsonaro, in Brazil. From Bukele, in El Salvador. They are a dirty, but highly effective tactic of the far right across the region. Their push to spread false narratives and weaponize misinformation across media platforms has been key to securing sufficient popular support and consolidating power.

Analysts expect Daniel Noboa to double down in his new term. A willing ally of Donald Trump and the United States, Noboa even traveled to the US two weeks before the election for a photo-op at Mar-A-Lago with the US president. Noboa has invited the United States to help fight his war on drugs.

Francesca Emanuele, Center for Economic and Policy Research: He is trying to get to that position of being part of the Latin American far right. And actually his policies are from the far right. He has militarized the whole country in the name of fighting crime. He is committing human rights abuses, forced disappearances with impunity, and he’s offering the US to have military bases.

So he’s definitely working to be the far right of the Americas and the far right of the world. And that’s really scary. That’s really scary for the population here in Ecuador. And I think that in the next four years, the situation is going to be worse.

Michael Fox, narrator: But there will be resistance. Social explosions are common in Ecuador when people’s rights are being trampled, or their communities disrespected, or their native lands threatened. 

Nation-wide protests shut down the country in 2019 and again in 2022 against neoliberal government reforms and the rising cost of gas and basic products.

If Luisa González and the Indigenous movement continue united, it is only a matter of time, before a new wave of protests ignites. As we have seen time and time again, in Ecuador, if rights are not respected and won at the ballot box, they will be fought for and reclaimed on the streets.

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.

Mansa Musa, host of Rattling the Bars, spent 48 years in prison before his release in 2019. At the invitation of the UMD College Park Young Democratic Socialists of America, Mansa delivered a lecture on his life behind bars and the political struggles of prisoners.

Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

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

Mansa Musa:

I hope that at the end of this conversation that we have, that y’all will be more enlightened about what direction y’all want to go in in terms of changing social conditions as they exist now. As she said, my government name is Charles Hopkins. I go by the name of Mansa Musa. Prior to getting out in December the 5th, 2019, I did 48 years in prison. Prior to going to prison, I was a heroin addict, a petty criminal, and that’s what got me in prison.

I went in early, I went in ’72, and during the seventies was a tumultuous time in this country. You had Kent State, you had Attica, you had Puerto Rican nationalists taking over the hospital in Bronx, you had the rise of the Black Panther Party in terms of becoming one of the most formidable fighting formations in this country. So you had a lot going on in society, but more important, the number one thing you had going on in society during that time that cost every sector in society was the war in Vietnam. Everywhere you looked, you had protests about the war in Vietnam. And you’re talking about every day somewhere in this country, 75,000, 10,000, 15,000.

People was coming out protesting the war in Vietnam and the establishment’s response was to suppress the movement, to suppress the war in Vietnam. Anybody who was anti-war, their attitude was suppressive. And what got people in an uproar about it was when the media started showing them bringing back United States citizens bodies, and the coffins they was bringing back, they was bringing them back in numbers. So society started looking and said, “Well, this is not a good thing because a lot of people dying.”

And in my neighborhood, I lived in projects in Southeast, my brother in ’68, back then they had, the way they had the draft was, it was like the lottery. Literally that’s what it was. They had balls that rolled up and your number came up, A1, A1. In my neighborhood in the projects in Southeast, my brother graduated in ’68, and in 68, the whole entire, everybody that graduated from high school, the men, was gone to Vietnam. So this shaped the attitude of the country. But more importantly, a lot of people that were coming back from the war in Vietnam was radicalized. And because they experienced a lot of segregation, a lot of classes in the military, a lot of them came back and joined the Black Panther Party.

During that period, the Black Panther Party was, according to Hoover, the number one threat in the country. So the response to them being the number one threat in the country was to eradicate them. Assassination. They killed Fred Hampton, assassinated Fred Hampton, little Bobby Hutton, they assassinated him. And they locked up a lot of Panthers. That’s how I became a Panther because they locked up a Panther named Eddie Conway, Marshal Eddie Conway. And they set him up and locked him up. And I got some information over there, y’all can pick it up when y’all leave.

When he came, so when you got the encouragement of Panthers coming into the prison system, prisoners are becoming politicized. Petty criminals like myself are becoming politicized because now we’re looking at the conditions that we’re living under and we’re looking at them from a political perspective, like why the medical was bad, why the food is garbage, why are we in overcrowded cells? Why is this cell designed for a dog? You got two people in it.

So these things started like resonating with people, but the Panthers started educating people about understanding, raising their consciousness about this is why these things are going on and this is what your response would be. So that got me into a space where I started reading more, because that was one of the things that we did. We did a lot of reading. You had to read one hour a day and exercise. But more importantly, you organized the population around changing their attitude about the conditions. Because up until that point, everything in prison was a kind of predatory.

Then when you had the Attica Rebellion, that created a chain reaction through the country, with the most celebrity political prisoner in prison that got politicized in prison was George Jackson. George Jackson was a prisoner in San Quentin. He spent most of his time in what now they call solitary confinement. They call it the Adjustment Center. Back then in San Quentin. Him and three or two other political prisoners was locked up in [inaudible 00:05:06] killing a correctional officer. After the San Quentin police had killed… [inaudible 00:05:14] police had killed some prisoners in the courtyard who were wrecking. And it was a dispute between white prisoners and Black prisoners. The only prisoners that got killed was Black prisoners. So that created a chain reaction in the prison system.

Fast forward, so this became my incursion into the political apparatus in prison. While in prison, and some of the things I did in prison, my whole thinking back then when I was in prison was I didn’t want to die in prison. I had life and I didn’t want to die in prison. So I would probably go down in the World Book of Guinness for the most failed attempted escapes ever. And if I would sit back here and go back over some of the things I did, it would be kind of comical. But in my mind, I did not want to die. I could have died, I could walk, literally come out on the other side of the fence and fall out and be dead, as long as I didn’t die in prison. It was just a thing about being [inaudible 00:06:19].

And in 2001, a case came out in the Maryland system called Merle Unger, Unger v. State. They said anyone locked up between 1970 and 1980 was entitled to a new trial. So I was entitled to a new trial because of the way they was giving the jury instructions. So at that time, everybody was getting ready to come out. Eddie Conway was on his way out. So everybody’s coming out. Now we’re able, we did a lot of organizing in prison. We had organized political education classes, we had organized forums where we had a thing where they say, “Just say your own words.” We brought political leaders in, radicals in to talk about, had books that they had a political discussion in a forum much like this. And it changed the whole prison population thinking about the way they thought about themselves and the way they thought about themselves in relation to society. So all of us coming out now.

And when I got out, I got out December the 5th of 2019. I got out, I had, they gave me $50 and let me out in Baltimore City. I’m from Washington D.C. They let me out in Baltimore City and I’m standing there with $50. I don’t know nothing. I don’t know how to use a cellphone, I don’t know how to get on the bus, I don’t know how to get from one corner to… I know the area because the area is the prison where the prison was at, where I lived at all my life. So I know the street name. I know this is Green Mount, I know this is Madison, I know the street, I know these streets, but I never seen, that’s like me knowing somewhere I read something about something in Paris. I know the name of the street, but put me there and I wouldn’t know what to do.

So this is the situation I found myself in and I didn’t know what, my family knew I was coming out, but I didn’t know whether they knew this particular time. And so I got $50. I see somebody coming with a cellphone and I’m like, “Look, I got, can I use?” He said, “No, I’m going to get on the bus.” So it was an elderly woman coming off. I said, “Look, miss, I was locked up 48 years. I got $50. You can get 25 of them. I just need you to call this number and tell my people.” And I heard somebody calling from the side, was my family.

Now I’m out. While I’m out, I’m out December the 5th of 2019. It was a major event that came right in that period, COVID. So now I’m like, I’m out in society, but really I’m back in prison because the whole country was locked down. So for most people it was a discomfort. For me, I was like, “Oh, this is all right. I can walk.” You know, I’m like basically walking, like I’m walking in, I’m coming back in. I’m not, you know, there’s not a whole lot going on, so you know. And I’m working out and people dealing with each other from afar. You see the same people, everybody like, “I see you, you have a group.” And we started having like a distant social relationship like, “Hey, how y’all doing? How you doing?” And keep it moving right?

After I got out and when COVID peaked out, I was doing some organizing in Gilmor projects in Baltimore, and backstory on that, we had took a house in Gilmor Projects, which is exactly what it is, Gilmor and their projects. Real notorious. So we took a house, we found out it was city property, we took it, renovated it and made it community property, and we started doing stuff for the kids. Because Eddie, Eddie Conway’s attitude, he’s like, “Kids don’t have no light in their face. It’s real dark.” So we started doing Easter egg hunts, showing movies on the wall, you know, doing all kinds of activities, gardening to get the kids to be kids.

And we took it and when we took it, we say, “We taking this house.” We put the city on and we had a press conference, “Yeah, we took this house, we doing this for the community. Y’all got a problem with that, y’all come down here and tell the community that they can’t have this house.” So the city pretty much like, “Ah, whatever, we ain’t going down there and messing with them people.” So we did, we gave out coats. So this is our organizing.

See, our organizing method was you meet people with their needs, you meet people’s needs. So it’s not only about giving out food and giving clothing, it’s about having a political education environment where you can teach people how to, you know, you got the analogy of Jesus saying like teach people how to fish. Right? Okay, I already know how to fish, now tell me how to survive. Tell me how to store, tell me how to build, tell me how to build out. So this is the things that we was doing and we would put ourselves in a position, we would network with legal organizations. The people had issues with their rent and we know it was a slum lord environment. And we would educate people about this is how you get your rights recognized.

So Eddie, and I’m going to talk about Eddie often, right? Because that was my mentor. Ultimately, he got lung cancer and passed away December, February the 13th a couple of years ago. He passed away the day before my birthday. My birthday was February the 14th. And I was like, when his wife called me and said, “Eddie is getting ready, you know, transition. They in Vegas, can you come out here?” And I’m like, I can’t come out there. But the only thing I’m saying is like, man, whatever you do, don’t die on my birthday. I’m like, because I ain’t going to be able to take it. I ain’t going to have no birthday no more. It’s already sad for me to have to deal with it the day before, but I just didn’t want that memory of him.

But long story short, this individual was responsible for changing the mindset of a lot of prisoners and getting us to think outside the box more or less, right? Our political education, this was one of the things that the Black Panther Party emphasized. So you see, we call it Panther porn. This is Panther porn for us. Panther porn for us is when you see the guns and you know the Berettas and the mugging, that’s Panther porn. What we identified with is the free breakfast program where we fed our kids. We tried to promote the hospital, we tried to promote where we was taking and giving sickle cell anemia tests to our people because we knew they wasn’t doing that. You know, we used to give them free breakfast program. We was getting our food, we had clothes, we was transporting prisoners, families to prisons in California. All out of the way prisons. We was holding political education classes in community and networking with people around their needs and making sure they understood exactly what was going on with them.

One of the questions I seen that was on the question is the difference between abolition as it relates to prison and the police. And we know we had this call for divest, and I’m going be perfectly honest with you. I don’t want to live in a society that there ain’t no law and order. That’s just not me. I don’t want to live in a society where we don’t feel safe. So it’s not an issue of whether or not police should be in the community. It’s an issue of what’s their relationship? They got on their car serve and protect. Okay, if you’re responsible for serving and protecting me, then my interest should be first and foremost and I shouldn’t be targeted. I shouldn’t be like back in the sixties, everybody that had long hair that was white, they was hippies and you was treated a certain way because in their mind you was anti-sociable or anti-establishment. That’s what made you a hippie. It didn’t make you a hippie because you didn’t… Your identity was based on, I don’t really have a lot of interest in the establishment.

But they looked at it as a threat. People had afros, they looked at it as a threat. So when we look at it’s not about abolishing the police, it’s about the police respecting the community and the community having more control over. So if you represent me in my community, then you need to be in my community, understand what’s going on in my community and serving my community according to serve and protect.

Abolition on the other hand is we’re about completely abolishing the prison system. What would that look like? And we was having this conversation, what do that look like? You going to open the doors up and let everybody out? I’ve been in prison 48 years. There’s some people that I’ve been around in prison, if I see him on the street the day after tomorrow, I might go call the police on them because I know that’s how their thinking is. But at the same token, if a civil society, we have an obligation to help people. And that’s what we should be doing.

You know, people have been traumatized and trauma becoming vogue now. You know everybody like oh, trauma experience. So trauma becoming vogue, but people have been traumatized and have not been treated for their trauma. So they dial down on it and that become the norm. So we need to be in a society where we’re healing people. And that’s what I would say when it comes to the abolition. Yeah, we should abolish prison as they exist now, they’re cruel, they’re inhumane. We’ve got the guards in Rikers Island talking about protesting and walkout, wildcat strike because they saying that the elimination of solitary confinement is a threat to them. How is it a threat to you that you put me in a cell for three years on end, bringing my mail to me and say that if you eliminate this right here, me as a worker, it’s going to be threatened by that non-existence. How’s that? That don’t even make sense.

But this is the attitude that you have when it comes to the prison industrial complex. The prison industrial complex is very profitable. The prison industrial complex became like an industry in and of itself. Every aspect of it has been privatized. The telephone’s been privatized, the medical’s been privatized, the clothing been privatized. So you’ve got a private entity saying, “I’ll make all the clothes for the prisons.” You got another private entity saying, “I’ll take, I want the telephone contract for all the prisons.” You got another company saying, “I want to be responsible for making the beds, the metal and all that.”

Which leads me to Maryland Correction Enterprise. Maryland Correction Enterprise is one of the entities that does this. There’s a private corporation that has preferential bidding rights on anything that’s being done in Maryland. I’m not going to say these chairs, but I’m going to say any of them tags that’s on your car, that’s Maryland Enterprise. I press tags. So I know that to be a fact. A lot of the desks in your classroom come from Maryland Correction Enterprise.

So what they’re giving us, they gave us 90 cent a day and you get a bonus. Now, you get the bonus based on how much you produce. So everybody like, so now you’re trying to get… Okay, I’m trying to get like $90 a month. I’m just starting. So somebody that’s been there for a while might be getting $2 a day and some. We pressing tags like till your elbows was on fire because you’re trying to make as much money as you possibly can. You’re trying to produce as many tags as you possibly can to make money.

Well, they’re getting billions, they’re getting millions of dollars from the labor. So I just recently did an interview with a state senator about that because he had put a bill in and I was asking him about it. And then I asked him, I said, “Okay, prisoners going to want to work.” The incentive for prisoners to work is in the Maryland prison system, you get five days off your sentence when you come through the door. Then if you get a job, then some jobs give you 10 days off, so that’s 10 days less that you do in a month. Everybody trying to get in them kind of jobs where you getting less days. So it’s not a matter I don’t want to work and it’s not a matter I like the work that I’m doing. I’m just, the incentive for me to work is really the reduction in my time in prison.

So I asked the state senator, I said, “Listen,” I said, “Would it be better if, okay, everybody going to want to work, wouldn’t it be better if you pass and try to get a bill passed that say that everybody get minimum wage, that they’d be able to pay their social security, they’d be able to pay taxes and they’d be able to acquire some money. Wouldn’t that be the better approach? Because prisoners going to work.” So I realized when I was having this conversation with them. In Kansas, that’s exactly what they’re doing in Kansas prison. They got guys that’s in Kansas prison saved up to $75,000. They got long-term, they’re not going anywhere, but they’ve been able to have an impact on their family and have a sense of responsibility.

So another question that came up was, that I was thinking about is what would be y’all response? What would I say to y’all in terms of what I think that y’all should be looking at? And I’m not here to lecture you, but this is for when we look at colleges and as they relate to the struggle, the majority of people that resisted in the seventies, sixties, they came out of school, they came out of college. You had Angela Davis, you had Huey Newton, Bobby Seales, they came out, they was in college, the Kent State, this was a college., they got rid of Angela Davis because she was teaching on campus, because of her politics.

So college has always been a place where you have a propensity to like being organized or start questioning things and start developing ideas about looking at what’s going on in society today in the country and around the world. We’re in a time right now where, I don’t know how many of y’all read George Orwell 1984, but we’re in like a George Orwellian type of society. And free speech, yeah, it’s only if you talk about a subject matter that is not contrary to capitalism. And then you got the right to free speech, but then you don’t have the right to be heard. So then you got who got control of the media.

So right now getting our voice out or taking a position and you take a position, oh you being anti, so therefore I’m going to take your grant or I’m going to take your scholarship. I only got like one more semester to graduate. Hey so what? And I’m going to blackball you or better still, I’m going to snowball you and put you in an environment where you ain’t going to be able to get a job at McDonald’s. Why? Because I’m trying to control your thinking and make sure that you don’t be organizing in a manner that’s going to be against anything that we’re doing.

We’re getting a lot of information coming out and a lot of people is like hysterical. “Oh my god, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” No, this is what you do, you organize. We don’t have the luxury of saying what somebody else is doing going to dictate me not doing nothing. We should be in the mindset that regardless of what you’re doing, I have a right. This is what they say to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I have a right if I want to be transgender, I have a right. I have a right to that. Your morality is not going to determine what I do with myself.

We were just getting ready to do a thing on transgender prisoners. They didn’t have their biology changed. Your biology changed. According to law. You went to court and got an operation. They took you out of a female prison and put you in a male prison because they say that biology aside, you was born a male, not what you are now. And rounded them up and took them to a male prison. Who does this? Who had the right to tell you that you come from another country to come here for a better life? Oh by the way, everybody in Congress, ancestors came here for a better life. So I know they should have no issue with that because they wouldn’t be where they are right now if the Statue of Liberty would say hell no. So we passed that.

But everybody, I ain’t talking about the people that they brought here, the people that was here before them, the indigenous people who said, “Hey, everybody get the hell out. Because this is our…” No. What you want to say that you create this false narrative that people of color from another country is creating all the crime in this country, therefore we’re going to round you all up. Kind of sound like something they did with the Japanese when they put them in internment camps, right? When they say like, these are people that was fighting for this country. These are United States citizens that were fighting in this country. They rounded them up, put them in internment camps because you’re Japanese and we fighting Japan. So your loyalty can’t be with us. Your loyalty got to be with them, or we just don’t care one way or the other.

It sounds like kind of like that. But the point I’m making is we don’t have the luxury to sit back and allow the hysteria that’s going on in this country around some fools to make us say, I’m not going to do nothing, or get into a position where I’m just, I don’t know what to do, I’m giving up. No. Resistance is possible. It starts with education, it starts with political education. It starts with understanding the history. Lenin said that imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. We’ve seen imperialism, we’ve seen that imperialism taking shape. So a lot of this is based on the capitalist drive for greed. It’s about greed. A lot of this.

When you talk about taking a country and say, “Oh, we’re going to take the Gaza and turn it into Disneyland.” And what you going to do with the people? “Hey we already bombed them into oblivion so they’d be glad to work, they’d be glad to put on Donald Duck suits and Mickey Mouse hats and get some money.” That’s your reality. Their reality is, “I just want to live a human life.” That’s my reality. My reality, I just want to live human. I don’t have no problem with nobody. I just want to be human and treated like a human.

But when you say something like that, “Oh, you anti.” You ain’t got the right to say nothing like that. And if you say it on campus and you try to get them to take a position on campus, their masters who they invest with, corporate America going to tell them, say no. And Congress going to say, “Oh any money we gave you, we’re taking it back.” So the money, monetary is more important than people’s lives. That’s our reality.

So as we move forward, my message to y’all is don’t settle for mediocrity, don’t settle for nothing less. Whatever you’re thinking that you think should be done, do it. If you think that, but more importantly in doing it, make sure that it’s having impact. When you’re dealing with, like I said, we took that place. We knew that neighborhood, the drug dealers in the neighborhood, this is what they used to say to us when we come through there and say, “Hey, it ain’t a good time to be down here today.” And they give us a warning like, “Y’all can’t come down here today.”

And we was good with that because they knew that it was their children that we was creating a safe environment about. They couldn’t get out of the grips of their insanity and we weren’t trying to get them out of it. Our focus was on the community and people. And we feel that if we educate the people enough, if we educate the mothers, the girlfriends, the wives enough to say like, “Y’all deserve to be safe.” The people that’s not making y’all safe is your boyfriend, your father and them. Y’all need to talk to them and tell them that y’all are making our lives unsafe. All we’re doing is educating you that you have a right.

All we’re doing is coming down there and telling you that we’re doing something with your children. We’re taking your children out of the neighborhood on trips that they’ve never been before. We’re making them feel like they have some value. We’re making them feel like, “Yeah you can get a hug today and there won’t be nothing unusual about it.” This is what we was doing and it had an impact. What they wind up doing with that neighborhood is they did with all of Baltimore, that’s a major, they started tearing down places, boarding up places. So you might be on the block or you might be in the projects and you might live in this house. The next four houses is boarded up, another house, the next two houses boarded up. How can you have a sense of community with all that blight?

Then the trash bins that’s for the area become public trash, and then people just ride by, see a trash bin, throw trash in the area. How can you live in that kind of blight? So when somebody come and say, “I’m going to give you a voucher to move somewhere that you ain’t going to be able to afford in a year,” you’re going to take it on the strength that like you ain’t factored in, I ain’t going to be able to afford it. You say, “I just want to get out of here.” And when they get you out of there, next thing you know they come in and demolish it and they got condominiums and townhouses and it’s affordable housing for somebody that’s making 90, 100,000 dollars a year. But it’s definitely ain’t affordable housing for somebody that’s making less than minimum wage. So that’s my point. And I’m opening the floor for any comments or questions.

Student:

I was going to ask what can everyday citizens, meaning not politicians do to help prisoners?

Mansa Musa:

Okay, and that’s a good question because one of the things that we had, we had a lot of people from the community come into the institution. But what you can do is educate yourself on some of the issues that’s affecting them. Like right now in Maryland they got what they call the Second Chance Act and they trying to get this bill passed to say that after you did 20 years then you can petition the court for a reduction in sentence. It’s not guaranteed you’re going to get it, but it opens the door for a person to have hope, because after you… when you get first locked up, they give you a designated amount of time to file a petition for modification. After that, it’s over with,. The only thing available to you then is parole. If you don’t make parole then you in there forever and ever and ever.

So this is a bill that’s being sponsored by people whose family members are locked up and been locked up for a long time. And it’s a good bill because what it do, it create hope. And when you have hope in an environment, it changes the way people think. So when you have a hopeless environment, and case in point the then Governor Glenn Denning came in front of the Jessup Correction Institution in Jessup because a guy was out on work release, had killed his girlfriend and he had life. So he sent all the lifers back, took them all out of camp and put them all back in prison and then stood out in front of the institution to say, “From now on life mean life, let me tell you that ain’t nobody, any of you got a life sentence, you going to die in prison.”

When he left that prison, the violence went up like that. I mean stabbings, murders and everything because there was no hope. Because now people saying, “I’m going to be here for the rest of my life so I got to dominate this environment.” When the Unger case came out, bills was passed about juvenile life, they got bills passed. They’re saying if you have drug problem you can get drug treatment and the [inaudible 00:33:05] and people started going. It was whole. So to your question, monitor some of these things and look at some of the websites of the institutions, see what kind of programs they offer. They might need some volunteers to come in help with teaching classes. They might need some volunteers to come in to help with some of the activities they doing that’s helping support prisoners. Thank you.

Student:

First of all, thank you for coming out and really appreciate it. It’s great to hear you speak. I had a question, you kind of briefly alluded to it already, but how would you compare the political conditions, especially like during Black Power in the sixties and seventies and eighties, and like the repression that everyone faced, like especially from COINTELPRO and FBI and the police to today, and like what students and people on the street are facing right now?

Mansa Musa:

I think that back then the difference was technology, the internet, where we get our information from and the AI, that’s becoming vastly like the thing now. I think the difference is like back then, and Huey Newton made this analysis, what he called intercommunalism. He talked about that at some point in time technology will become so advanced that we ain’t going to have no more borders, and which we don’t when it comes to information, right?

So the difference is that the fascists are more advanced and pluralism is more insidious. Back then, because you had a lot of repression around class, so Black people was being subjected. So you had the war in Vietnam, we had so much going on that it was easy for people to come and find a commonality. Said, “Hey, we live in this squalor here in Little Puerto Rico and New York. We live in this squalor down here in Brooklyn and so and so. We’re living in…” What’s our common thread? Our common thread is that we’re being treated inhuman. So it was easy to come together around organizing around social conditions.

Now because of so much misinformation and so much control, that it’s hard to really get a read on what is real and what’s not real. You had the president say that when they gave everybody an ultimatum to give their report by the end, like a report card or something at the end of the week and they didn’t do it. He said, so when they put the mic in front of his mouth he said, “Oh, the reason why they didn’t do it is because the people that didn’t submit it don’t work there anyway.” So somebody getting a check in their name, in other words fraud was the reason why you got a 100 workers and only 10 people work there so the other 90 don’t exist anyway, so where that money going? That money going to somebody else’s pocket.

But that was the narrative he painted. But when he painted the narrative, the media is so dim with it that they like, it’s almost like you asking them a question and it’s like, no you’re dumb, no you’re dumb, no you’re dumb, no you’re dumb. And I got a Pulitzer and I’m going back and forth a whole stop. I’m not even going to ask you no more questions. So that’s what we’ve been relegated to. So that’s the difference, but in terms of our response, I’m going to give you an example. When they killed, when them little kids got killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, the children said they going to do something about it. They asked their parents, they went on social media, they started finding everybody had the same attitude. Next thing you know they had 40,000 kids that say they going to Washington.

So now I’m telling my mother, “I’m going to Washington, whether you going with me or not.” So the parents say, “Oh we’re going to chaperone you.” That’s how quick they organize. So that’s the difference. Our ability to organize is a lot fast, it’s a lot quicker now. So we can organize a lot quicker if we come to a consensus on what we’re trying to get done. And our response can be a response of like hysteria. We got to be focused. You know, we got to really sit back and say, they’re going to do what they’re doing. You know? They’re going to do what they’re doing. So if I’m doing around workers, I got every federal worker, I’m getting with every federal worker, I’m organized. I’m not going to sit back and say, “Oh well look…” No. Organized.

You know you got a right, organize, get together, organize, bump Congress, bump, bump, filing lawsuits, bump them doing whatever they’re doing. They the problem. Get organized and say, “Okay we’re going to organize, we’re going to mobilize. We got midterms coming up, we getting in your ass. In the next presidential election, you don’t have to worry about the count, we ain’t going to give one vote. That’s going to be your vote.” That’s what you do, organize. Well don’t, we get caught up in this thing like with Trump, I don’t have no problem with him. He is what he is. My problem is making sure that I tell people and organize people and help people get some type of sense of security.

So we should be food building co-ops, food co-ops. Because $99 for a dozen eggs? No, we should be building a food co-op. We should be doing things where we really looking to each other to start a network. And on campus, we should be looking at how are we going to take and organize ourselves into a block where once we decide an issue then all we’re going to be forced to deal with that issue and try to make a difference.

See some fights is not a fight worth taking because all it’s going to do is cause a loss. So you got to be strategic in your fight. We put a 10-point platform program together for the reason of identifying the social conditions that existed in society as it related for oppressed people. We chose to police the police because that was the number one issue that was affecting people. But our main thing was feeding our children, medical, housing, and education. Those were the main things we did. So we took over education institutions. That was our main thing. Our main thing wasn’t walking around with shotguns and guns. Those was things that we did to protect the community, but our main focus was programs that directly related to serving people’s needs.

Student:

Thank you. Thank you.

Mansa Musa:

You’re welcome.

Student:

Hi, I do have a question. First of all, I want to say great job, amazing conversation and the topics are so important. So I guess my question to you is how do… you mentioned this, like how do college students on campus build morale and boost momentum? Because I know it can kind of be a little iffy and hard to do so, especially if you have that backside fear of like this could cost me my entire like college education and the future I was wishing to build for myself?

Mansa Musa:

Right, and see and that’s not something that shouldn’t be taken into account. I invested in this, you know, and I invested in for a reason. I spent money. This money, my parents put in. They ain’t going to be sitting back like, “What? You did what? All that money going down the drain? Nah, that ain’t happening.” But the reality is this here, you mobilize around educating yourself, raising your consciousness and understanding historical conditions like Kent State, what college students did back then. Vietnam War and groups like this, young Democrats, socialists of America come to create political education classes, bring in speakers much like myself.

We pass around literature of books, videos, and look at those things and develop a space for y’all coming together to talk and discuss, how that’s going to come a direction. And look at issues off the campus. Look at issues like if it’s around in this area right here, how many homeless people exist? How much property do the campus, do the school own? All right, I ain’t telling you, I ain’t going to say like don’t mess with them over in the Middle East because that’s wrong. No, I’m going to say, “Oh, damn, you know what, y’all got all this land and property and within this radius you got like homeless people sleeping on the ground. We asking that you take some of this property and turn it into homeless shelter, and in the name of Ms. Snyder or give it a name of somebody. We asking, now now we’re moving in the area, we’re asking that you take this money and feed some people.

Now in this area, now we’re talking about that. We’re taking that you dig in this area and you help people that can’t, don’t have medical insurance but need certain things that you can get done, like dental. We’re asking that you take this money and putting it… This is things that free dental health. So you can take and say, “We providing free medical assistance at this level. We tested people for sickle cell, we tested people for HIV.”

When Huey and them decided to do the Black Panther Party, they looked at Malcolm and they picked up where Malcolm left off at. That’s how they got in the space that they got. They just took the social conditions said that these are areas you need to focus on, because you got what they call objective and subjective conditions. Objective conditions is what you see every day. The subjective conditions is what we do, how we organize, how we develop ourselves, what we’re doing. Because that’s going to determine how effective we going to be when we go out. So if we can’t come to no consensus on direction then we ain’t going to be effective when we go out. Because somebody going to be saying do this and somebody going to be saying do that, but that ain’t going to be the problem. Problem going to be I don’t like what you doing. So now you my enemy.

Student:

Thank you.

Student:

So I think one of the questions was actually about Maryland Correctional Enterprise. So we could talk about that. Yeah. In response to student concerns about Maryland Correctional Enterprises, President Pines said students concerns is that inmates are underpaid. That’s out of our control and we have to abide by state law. But the other side of the story is that the inmates actually want the employment because it gives them skills. How do we combat this messaging?

Mansa Musa:

All right, so the basic thing, and somebody asked earlier, what can you do? It’s legislation because the argument is why can’t you give them minimum wage? So when we tried to unionize back in the seventies and it’s a celebrity case, North Carolina versus somebody, we tried to unionize, they said no. And the reason why they said no because then you talking about the whole prison in the United States of America, [inaudible 00:44:30] you got 2.9 million people there in prison or better. So you’re saying we in the union, we got the largest union in the country.

So the issue is legislation and advocating for them prisoners to get minimum wage, a livable wage, no matter how much time you got. That allowed for MCE, we’re not opposed to them making money, we’re opposed to them profiting off of us and we’re not getting the benefit of it. So the issue is if I left out of prison and I had my quarter paid into social security, I had my quarters three times over. Now I’m forced to work. I got to work at least three more years or more before I get my quarter. Because when I left the street, I ain’t worked like maybe three years on it all.

But if a person got their quarter while they in, they get minimum wage or they allowed to save money, they can make a contribution to their family. A lot of guys got locked up, they got children, they could do something for their children. They got their mother, their families travel long distances to see them. They could pay for that transportation. The phone calls, they could pay for the phone calls. So they’d be able to take a burden off their family.

It don’t cost MCE nothing. They got preferential treatment and contract for all state institutions. Any institution that’s in state under the state of Maryland, they can do them. Whatever they make, clothes, the chemicals, signs, signs you see up and down there. They do all that. Tags, all the furniture. All the furniture you see in the state cabinet, all that. They do all that. So yeah, they could do that. That’s the alternative is for the legislator to pass a bill that says that prisoners can get minimum wage from any industry, any prison industry. If you hired in the prison industry, then you should be given minimum wage. And they got meat cutting, they do the meats, they do the furniture, they do the laundry for like different hospitals, and they do them tags. Them tags, I’m telling you, that was like… I really realized how people felt on the plantation doing them tags. That was like some… Yeah. That was labor.

Student:

This isn’t on the responses but this is like one of the questions that we’ve thought about. In your previous podcast episode, you interviewed the state senator and he mentioned the 13th Amendment and the connection between prison labor and slavery. So what do you think are some of the connections between the prison abolition movement and like the historical movement for the abolition of slavery?

Mansa Musa:

Right now, you know the 13th Amendment says that slavery is illegal except for involuntary servitude if you’re duly convicted of a crime. So if you’re duly convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave. And the difference between that and the abolition movement back in the historical was the justification. The justification for it now is you’ve been convicted of a crime. Back then, I just kidnapped and brought you here and made you work. So the disconnect was this is a human, you taking people and turning them into chattel slaves. Versus, oh the reason why I can work you from sun up to sundown, you committed a crime. But the reality is you put that in there so that you could have free labor.

All that is a Jim Crow law, Black code. It’s the same. It’s the same in and of itself. It’s not no different. You work me in the system. In some states they don’t even pay you at all. South Carolina, they don’t even pay you. But they work you. In Louisiana, they still walk, they got police, they got the guards on horses with shotguns and they out there in the fields. In some places in North Carolina and Alabama, Alabama they work you in some of the most inhumane conditions like freezers, women and men, put you to work you in a meat plant in the freezer and don’t give you the proper gear to be warm enough to do the work.

And then if you complain, because they use coercion, say “Okay, you don’t want to work? We’ll take the job from you, transfer you to a prison where now you’re going to have to fight your way out. You going to literally have to go in there, get a knife and defend yourself. So this is your choice. Go ahead, work in this inhumane conditions or say no and go somewhere and be sent back to a maximum security prison where you have to fight your way out.” So now it’s no different. Only difference is it’s been legislated, it’s been legalized under the 13th Amendment.

And abolition, in response to abolition, so we’ve been trying to change the 13th Amendment. We had an attempt in California where they put a bill out to try to get it reversed, and the state went against it. The state was opposed to it. Because why would I want to stop having free labor? The firefighters in California, they do the same work that the firefighters right beside them, they do the same work, the same identical work. They fighting fire, their lives are in danger. They’re getting like 90 cent a day, maybe $90 a month. They don’t have no 401k, they don’t have no retirement plan, and they’re being treated like everybody else, go out there and fight the fire.

So yeah, in terms of abolition, the abolition movement is to try to change the narrative and get the 13th Amendment taken off, out of state constitutions because a lot of states, they adopted it. They adopted it in their own state constitution, a version of the 13th Amendment that says that except if you’ve been duly convicted for a crime, you can be treated as a slave. If you’ve been convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave. That’s basically the bottom line of it. Thank you.

Student:

So like, I saw two questions kind of talking about state repression and like attempts to divide solidarity movements. So how do you kind of feel like state repression has changed over the decades and how can we kind of respond to those situations?

Mansa Musa:

The thing with state repression now is it’s a little bit more insidious. It’s not as overt like it was back in the sixties when they crossed the Edmund Bridge and they beat them, put dogs on them, or like they just took a move in Philadelphia, they burned the house down, burned the whole block down. There’s one house right here we got a problem with, oh hey, you had no business living in that neighborhood. We burned the whole neighborhood down, dropped a bomb on it. Or like they went to in California and they shot the headquarters of the Black Panther Party up. Or they ran down and killed Fred Hampton, drugged him and then came in there and shot him. His wife was in the bed with him. They put like 90 holes in him and not one on her. So you already knew you had the diagram where he sleep at, you knew he was drugged because the agent provocateur spiked his milk. So he was drugged, he was knocked out. And you came in there and killed him and said, “Oh, he fired out the window.”

So the difference is now because of the media and the propaganda, you have a different slant on things, and the fear of corporate America in terms of perpetuating this fear. So you change the narrative. You can’t say certain things. You can’t. If you say certain things about certain people or certain countries, you’re going to be Blackballed, labeled. And the pressure going to come in the form of okay, you don’t care. Okay, I’m going to attack your family. I’m going to find somewhere in the scenario where I can get you to back up. If that don’t work, then I’m going to round your ass up and send you to Guantanamo Bay. I can make up something. We got the illegal combatants. You got people that’s been in Guantanamo Bay since the Gulf War and has not been sent nowhere, had not been, no due process, no where are my accusers. Oh you’ve been labeled illegal combatant, state sponsored terrorism.

So they got so many different things they can say to make it where as though it seems to be an issue of you resisting and your right to protest and demonstration. It becomes you’re a threat to society or you’re a threat to the government. And this is how we’re saying it. We’re saying that, oh you was on the internet with somebody that’s been branded a terrorist. And that become enough to get them to say, “All right, lock them up.”

So now the difference is when they had COINTELPRO, COINTELPRO they was doing all these things and setting people up and killing them. But we knew what was going on and we made people aware of it. Now all this misinformation, it’s hard to get a read on what’s going on. So the response got to be, again, we got to organize ourselves, develop our own information source and all the misinformation, be prepared to identify it and put it in perspective. This is misinformation. And start educating people on understanding that be mindful where you’re getting your information from. We’re addicted to social media. We’re addicted to being like, how many likes I get today? Hey, they don’t like me. Oh my God, I’m having a fit. No, I don’t care if you don’t like me because if they lock you up and send you to another country, you ain’t want to be liked by nobody. I don’t know.

In terms of supporting countries and movements that’s fighting for their liberation in the Congo, in the hemisphere, South America, then yeah, we support a person’s right to self-determination. For us, our position right now should be to educate ourselves, politically educate ourselves to understanding social, economic, political conditions and the relationship they have between us and people. Because people going to resist. People going to be hungry, they’re going to go to stores and take whatever the hell they want to take because they don’t have nothing to eat. That’s just the reality. They ain’t got nothing to do with, I have a propensity to steal. No, I don’t have the ability to pay to feed my children.

Versus somebody that had ability. Food is high. And then medical, they talking about the Medicaid and all that. So if they take that and poor people rely on that, how you going to get the medical treatment that you need? How you going to get the medicine that you need? So these are the areas that, this is when you’re talking about organizing people, you got to look at what they’re doing, what the repression is, how they trying to repress people and organize around the counter to that. What’s the counter to this? What’s the counter to the medical? Do y’all have medical students here? What are their attitudes towards providing services for people?

What’s the problem with mental health? Do y’all have mental health people here that’s in that field? Social workers in that field? Then your responsibility is come and get them to say, “Listen, we need you to go in the community to organize, to help us organize this. Show us how to organize this for the community to get them to be more proactive.” Okay, what’s your purpose of your education? The purpose of my education, I want to get a degree and make some money. Okay, and what? The federal government? What’s your chances of getting a job in the federal government?

They find people that’s on probation, person that got 20 years in one job, get a better job and they put them on probation. They say, “Oh you fired because you’re on probation.” No, I just took a better job. But the arbitrariness of this thinking is that I’m putting fear and I’m turning people into snitches because I’m making you, in order to keep what you got, you got to tell on somebody as opposed to us saying, take the institution of higher learning and look at the different departments and see how you can go into new departments and get them to become more proactive in doing some things in the community.

And that’s the whole thing about the higher learning. Look at these other disciplines and start asking yourself, how can I get them to start doing some things in the community to help raise people’s consciousness? How can we come together to do a plan, a program around how we can invest in the community? How can we get a plan to start dealing with getting trauma to be recognized as a national mental health and get the government to do what they supposed to do in terms of providing services for people that’s been traumatized. And stop, oh, oh yeah, you traumatized but you shouldn’t have did what you did. But you’re saying that trauma, I’m in trauma, that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. Yeah, but we don’t recognize that because you did it. All we recognize as a problem, we’re not recognizing as it relate to you. Double talk.

Student:

I had a question about the role of electoralism, because one part of the Black Panther Party’s historical activism that’s somewhat forgotten is elections and campaigns like Bobby Seale ran for mayor of Oakland. A lot of the modern American left is starting to be more wary of the use of elections because we’ve seen people who maybe are supposed to represent our values get elected, and then do things against what their constituents want, things like that. But I was wondering if you had any thoughts about if there’s still a role for elections to, you know, be agitational and grow the organization, or you know, how we can make sure that we’re still, you know, being agitational against the establishment.

Mansa Musa:

And you know, Tip O’Neill said, “All politics are local.” And Tip O’Neill was the speaker of the House, the Democrat party back in caveman days. But my position, and to reflect on what you said about Bobby Seale, when the party took that position of running Bobby Seale for mayor, we knew that he wasn’t going to get elected. But the objective was, this was the ability to mobilize people around, educating them around what this government, what the city government is supposed to do, what your government is supposed to do. So now we are on the campaign trail saying, “No, the budget is the people’s budget. The money is the people’s money. The budget got to be like this. If I’m elected, I’m going to do this,” and make him respond to it.

But then at the same token we looked at, when we started doing that, I was telling [inaudible 01:01:59], we started looking at local elections. Our institution of elected. Ericka Huggins, who was a member of the Black Panther Party, she ran for the position to be the director of the Juvenile Services. And when she got in that position, she changed the whole narrative of how they treated the kids. So that was one way we got in there and changed policy.

What we recognize though, that in terms of electoral system, there’s no such thing as two parties. It’s one party, the capitalist party. That’s it, that’s all. They knew that this is reality, this is the reality we confronted with. If you know Biden ain’t going to be able to cut the mustard for two years, just hypothetical, you know he ain’t going to cut the mustard for two years. Why you didn’t in two years at the end there say, “Listen, the Democrat Party that’s responsible for putting all the money up, let’s start getting a candidate now. We’re going to have open primaries, whoever come out there.”

No, you put Kamala Harris, the top cop in this position and expected, one, they’re going to put a woman in there. Hillary Clinton was more qualified and more fascist than all of them put together. And they ain’t put her in there more qualified. She’s secretary of state, senator, her husband, Obama, Biden, Trump, Bush one, two, and three. More qualified than all of them. They definitely wasn’t putting her in there. And then they’re going to turn around and put Kamala Harris in there. That wasn’t happening.

So what you did, so it ain’t made no difference. Trump, they got somebody come on. I don’t know if it’s AI generated or not where he’s saying that he stole the election. That yeah, Elon Musk knew how to work the computers, so that’s why I won Pennsylvania. All right. What we did on that? Ain’t nobody in their right mind think they won’t let this woman get in there. And this is a two-party system and then y’all at the 11th hour, y’all got to… So now you’re putting the pressure on everybody donate, donate. And her position was, “Look what you want to do? What you want to do? So I’m going to do something but my thing is, I’m telling y’all don’t, I’m here. This your alternate. Vote for me, don’t vote for him.”

Why? “Because y’all going to… Look at him.” Yeah. It wasn’t like what I’m offering y’all, what am I offering y’all? How am I changing? Food was still high, gas was high. People’s everyday needs. And he, look, he did a whole bunch of crazy fire too but he played, he ran on that. Oh, he ran on that record. Oh look, y’all can’t put gas in y’all cars? Y’all can’t put food on your table? Oh man, y’all ain’t safe? Yeah, we wasn’t safe when you was in there, we didn’t have food on our table when you was in there. But you saying, “Look. Oh yeah, but look. Forget what I did. Look what they’re doing to y’all now.” Yeah. Come on.

So in turn, in response to I look at the electoral politics like this here, certain municipalities that you can make impact policy, that you can organize people and put people in there that’s going to be responsible to that. Yeah. But when you look at Congress and they beholding to corporations, they beholding to them. You ain’t going to find a Ron Dellums. You ain’t going to find a Clayton Powell. You ain’t going to find these people like this here, Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer. You ain’t going to find these people that’s like, I’m here, I’m here as a representative of the people.

Ron Dellums and he was a member of this right here. Ron Dellums was the first one that had congressional hearings about what they were doing to the Black Panther Party. This was when he was in the office and Hoover was in power. And so everybody was scared of Hoover, but Ron Dellums wasn’t scared of him. So when you look at the electoral politics, we got to take the position of Malcolm too. Malcolm said that we’re going to register as independents, we’re going to put our agenda together. You sign onto our agenda. If you don’t represent what you say you’re going to represent, then we’re going to be calling you. The same way we got you in, the same way we’re going to get you out. And make them sign on to that.

All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I got some stuff over here on Eddie Conway. I got my card over there. We can take a picture of the QR code, Rattling The Bars, real news. Appreciate this, appreciate this opportunity. My call to action for y’all is, you know, just go out, sit back, get together, start brainstorming, look at some of these institutions. How can I get… That’s where you go at, go to these bodies of work, psychology, go to these bodies of work. What are you doing? What’s your position on trauma? Oh, this is my position on trauma. All right, will you be willing to do a trauma workshop in a Black community, in a neighborhood where they traumatized? Would you be willing to help set that up?

Then go out there and find a community where they’re traumatized. Get somebody to say, “Look, hey, we want to come down here and educate y’all on trauma, but more importantly, we want to get the other part of this institution that we have that’s doing wellness to get them to create a wellness program for y’all to do it and make the institution pay for it.” Yeah, you ain’t got to tell them don’t invest in somebody. Say, “Look, invest in this.”

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

Videography / Production: Jaisal Noor

Transcript

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

Jaisal Noor:

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

Roua:

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

Jaisal Noor:

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

Miriam:

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

Jaisal Noor:

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

Miriam:

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

Jaisal Noor:

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

Eugene Puryear:

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

Jaisal Noor:

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

Roua:

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

Jaisal Noor:

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

On March 31, also known as Cesar Chavez Day, unions and workers from across California converged on Delano, home of the historic Delano Grape Strike that began the struggle of the United Farm Workers. The Real News reports from the ground, speaking with union and community leaders who say workers are coming together across sectors to oppose Trump’s attacks on immigrants and the federal workforce.

Production: Mel Buer
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Additional Footage: Bucky Gonzalez
Additional Sound: Tom Pieczkolon

Transcript

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

Mel Buer:

On March 31st, 2025, thousands of workers from all over the state of California met in Delano, California to celebrate the life and legacy of Cesar Chavez, and stand in solidarity with immigrant workers across the United States. One in every three workers in the state of California are immigrants. And raids by ICE and border patrol agencies on immigrant communities have intensified in the months following Donald Trump’s inauguration in mid-January. In California, all across the state, immigrant workers have been detained and deported. Some of the most harrowing experiences have been in Kern County, in California’s Central Valley, where ICE raids have terrorized the immigrant community and left workers uncertain about their future in the country. In a show of solidarity, union workers from all over the state traveled to Delano to remind the country and each other that these attacks on immigrant workers won’t go unchallenged.

David Huerta:

Today’s also, not only a recognition of that, but also really standing united against the attacks against working people and the most particularly, immigrant workers, right? And so I think we stand today in the sense of saying that we stand shoulder to shoulder with one another, all workers for every worker. Doesn’t matter your status, doesn’t matter what language you speak, doesn’t matter. We have to stand united as working people at this moment in time, as we see this president continuous attacks against working people, and most particularly, against the immigrant community.

Mel Buer:

The Real News joined a caravan from Los Angeles to Delano, organized by the Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West. Dozens of workers from all over Los Angeles met early in the morning, shared breakfast together, and then made the two and a half hour journey to Delano to march. When asked about the importance of organized labor coming together in support of each other, SEIU President David Huerta had this to say.

David Huerta:

This is the moment in time that as every fight, working people have to stand united. Whether you’re a farm worker, a janitor, a hotel worker, a state worker, a nurse, all of us have to stand together because really with this administration, their attack right now is against federal employees. But that attack against federal employees is just a precursor to what he’s trying to do to the rest of the labor movement, and that’s dismantling. And we cannot allow that to happen because the labor movement is the last line of defense for working people in this country.

Mel Buer:

After arriving in Delano, workers gathered for opening speeches in Memorial Park before beginning the three-mile march to Forty Acres, owned by the United Farm Workers. Members of CWA, the Teamsters, UAW, SEIU, UNITE HERE, and other unions were represented in a massive show of solidarity with immigrant workers in California and the U.S.

Speaker 3:

So I think when we think about what Trump is doing on immigration, it’s an attack on the working class. And not just immigrant workers, the entire working class. When one group of workers is so afraid of getting deported that they’re not willing to talk about wage theft or unsafe working conditions, obviously, that’s bad for them, but that’s also bad for every other worker in that industry. So we’re looking at construction, agriculture, home care, kitchens, janitors, right? If you’re an American worker in those jobs, when undocumented workers who are essential to those industries are in those same battles, they’re afraid to speak out, that’s bad for everyone. So I think it’s literally true that an attack on any worker pushes wages and working conditions down for every worker. And so it’s so important that labor defend immigrant workers. If for no other reason then, we cannot have a labor movement in this country if the immigrant working class, which is such a large and literally essential portion of that working class, is afraid for their very life.

Mel Buer:

For members of the Chavez family, the continuation of their father’s legacy and activism as founder and leader of the United Farm Workers in modern day movements has been a high point of the Cesar Chavez Day in California and beyond.

Paul Chavez:

It’s heartwarming to see that his legacy continues to inspire whole new generations of workers and activists. My dad had commented that it would’ve been a terrible waste of a lot of hard work and sacrifice if his work ended with his life. And the fact that we’re here with people from all walks of life that have come from the many places, and a lot of times from places far away, would put a smile on the face because I think he would say that his work continues even after his passing.

Speaker 5:

And this is a great opportunity for us to do that as a community, as people, especially, people who know the struggles of the people who actually have this country moving forward, those immigrants that at times are abused or do not have the recognition that they should as people that they are. May this moment for all of us be an empowering moment so that we might remember our commitment as Christians to uphold the dignity of those who are voiceless. May we be an inspiration to others to do the same in every aspect of their lives.

Mel Buer:

Reporting from California for The Real News Network, I’m Mel Buer.

Maryland’s Second Look Act has passed the State House, and now awaits a vote in the Senate. The bill would allow prisoners to request judicial review of their sentences after serving 20 years of prison time. Advocates say Maryland’s prison system is in desperate need of reform; parole is nearly impossible for longterm inmates, and clear racial disparities in arrest and incarceration are immediately evident—72% of Maryland’s prisoners are Black, despite a state population that is only 30% Black. Meanwhile, opponents of the Second Look Act charge that the bill would endanger state residents and harm the victims of violent crimes. Rattling the Bars digs deeper, speaking with activists, legislators, and formerly incarcerated people on the real stakes and consequences of the Second Look Act.

Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

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

Jheanelle K. Wilkins (Maryland State Delegate, District 20):

Colleagues, I rise in support of this legislation, the Maryland Second Look Act, but it may not be for the exact reason that you would think. For me, this legislation is about justice. Was justice served in this sentence? We know that in Maryland, Black residents are 30% of the population, but 72% of our prisons. Our own Maryland data tells us that Black and Latino residents are sentenced to longer sentences than any other group or any other community. I’m not proud of that. Was justice served? For us to have a piece of legislation before us that allows us the opportunity to take another look at those sentences for people who were 18 to 25 years old when convicted, for us to have the opportunity to ask the question, if justice was served in that sentence, why would we not take that opportunity colleagues? If you believe in fairness, if you believe in making sure that our justice system works for all, then colleagues, you will proudly vote yes for this bill.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. According to press releases published by the Maryland Second Look Coalition and the ACLU, “The Maryland House of Delegates passed The Second Look Act on March the 17th, recognizing the urgent need for reform in a state with some of the nation’s most pronounced citizen disparities.” The Second Look Act, House Bill 853, passed a final vote in the House. The vote was 89 yeas and 49 nays. Now, the bill will move over to the Senate, where it has until April 7 to pass. Delegate Linda Foley, representing the 15th District, who voted yes on the bill, sent a statement to The Real News Network providing some critical context. “The Maryland Second Look Act follows many other states, including California, Oklahoma, Colorado and New York, to allow a judicial review of sentences. The Second Look Act allows the individual who was convicted between the ages of 18 and 25 years old to request a review of their sentence by the court after serving 20 years in prison.”

Delegate Foley goes on to cover the details of what this bill achieves. She states, “It’s important to note the critical safety measures in the Maryland Second Look Act. The bill does not guarantee release of any individual. It allows an individual who was convicted between the ages of 18 and 25 years old to request a review of their sentence by the court only after serving 20 years in prison. A judge must evaluate individuals based on strict criteria, including the nature of their original crime, threat to the public, conduct while incarcerated, statements from the witnesses, et cetera. The court may only reduce a sentence if it finds an individual is not a danger to the public and that a reduction of their sentence is in the interest of justice.”

Recently, I spoke with two members of the Maryland Second Look Coalition, William Mitchell, a formerly incarcerated community activist, and Alexandra Bailey, a two-time survivor of sexual violence, about the organizing they are doing around the bill, and why it’s important to support The Second Look Act.

William Mitchell:

The Second Look Coalition is a group of people who come from all different backgrounds, some being returning citizens, some being people in the political realm, some being professors, and we all support what we call The Second Look Act. The Second Look Act is essentially, when an inmate has served 20 years day for day, the judge would have the authority to possibly review that inmate’s sentence, to see if the sentence is still warranted after the person has done tons of things to change their life.

Alexandra Bailey:

The Second Look is a mechanism that is being considered all across the country, and the reason it’s being considered all across the country is because America, for a long time, has led the world in incarceration, and part of the reason that we’ve led the world in incarceration is because we have a hammer and we think everything is a nail. We’ve addressed everything from poverty, trauma, veterans’ PTSD, domestic violence survivors’ responses, young children who are led astray by giving them lengthy prison terms, and we know that this doesn’t keep us safer. This has been statistically proven. If you’re a survivor of violent crime as I am, I think the one thing that all of us would agree on is that we want no more victims. We want a safer society. We want people to be okay so that everyone can be and stay okay.

The first criminal offense that I ever lived through happened when I was a minor. It was a sexual offense, and the person who perpetrated that against me is serving a life without the possibility of parole sentence. I was plagued with the pain of this for many years, for a lot of my childhood and early adulthood, and as I came to my faith and came to forgiveness, what I wanted was to understand why this had happened. I reached out to the person who harmed me, and what I learned is that he had also been harmed. He also had been sexually victimized as a young person, really had nowhere to turn in order to gain support, and lived out the natural consequences of pain, PTSD, lack of health and support, mental health support, and I ended up caught in that cycle of violence.

What I say is, we need to get way upstream on the cycle of violence. Everyone, from those who are remorseful inside to those who are advocates for survivors, as I am, we have the same goal, and the only way that we’re actually going to address that is by taking our resources away from a public safety concept that we know doesn’t work, which is mass incarceration, and transferring it where it should have been, when the person who harmed me suffered his victimization. If that help had been there, if he had been able to go to a crisis center, receive the mental health support that he need, have the education and access that would have allowed him to divert his life and recover from his own trauma, I more than likely would not have been traumatized.

As a survivor, I’m here promoting Second Look because actually, if you take a look around at who our peer recovery specialists are, who our violence interrupters are, our credible messengers, the people who are out getting in the way of other people’s victimization, it is our returning citizens who have kept the peace not just in prison, but are now keeping the peace outside, and based on my own faith, I believe that people who are remorseful deserve a chance at forgiveness. We all deserve a second chance. Also, from a practical standpoint, if my goal is that nobody suffers from what I suffered from, then the people who are best suited to help me, unfortunately in many instances, are currently behind bars.

Mansa Musa:

Brian Stevenson says, we’re not our worst mistake. All right, William, let’s unpack the Second Look, because earlier, we talked about how this allows for a person, the bill that’s being proposed, and you can go over the bill that’s being proposed, after a person has served 20 years, they’re allowed to petition the court for a modification, or to review their sentence, and take certain factors into account. Why can’t they do it anytime? I know under Maryland’s system, don’t you have the right to modification sentence? Don’t you have a right to a three-judge panel? Explain that for the benefit of our audience that doesn’t know the criminal justice system, and understand that.

William Mitchell:

Our Maryland rules, specifically it’s Maryland rule 4-345, subsection E, what it does is, it allows for a judge to have the authority to review a sentence, but that reviewing power is only from five years from the imposition of the sentence. Meaning, if you have a lengthy sentence, no judge is really going to consider, within five years, if you have a lengthy sentence for maybe a serious crime, if you’ve changed your life. Most people’s thoughts on it are, if you’ve committed a heinous crime or something that’s bad in public view, you need to sit for a long time, which may be true. Some people transition, grow and mature at different stages and different ages. My crime, I was 23, so I really wasn’t developed. I had a very immature mindset, though an adult technically, by legal standards, I was still very immature. The law right now, as it sits, say you get 50 years for an attempted murder. You’re 20 years old, it occurred when you were on drugs, maybe you were gang affiliated, family structure was broken.

And then what happens is, you sit in prison, and right now, as the law stands, you could go into prison, take every program, become a peer specialist, work to transform everybody that comes through that door, and unless you are collaterally attacking the legality of your sentence, there is no legal means for somebody to have a judge look at their case for compassionate reasons, or to see if the very system, because the Maryland Department of Correction, their job is to correct criminalistic behavior, but right now you have a department that is supposed to be correcting it, and if they do, there is no legal avenue for you to bring it to the judicial branch and say, “Hey, DOC has done her job. This behavior has been corrected. Now, what’s the next step?”

The system was set up many years ago to punish, to correct behavior, and then in that correction or rehabilitation, to allow the person to assimilate back into the community as a productive member. That has been taken away over the years because one law is added on top of another law, which moots out the point of the first law, and before you know it, you can’t get out. For me, I had a 70-year sentence. That means I would have to serve half of the sentence, 35 years, before I could go for parole. Meaning, I committed a crime, intoxicated at 23, coming out of a broken background, and I would have had to have been 53 to show the parole board the first opportunity to say, “Hey, I’m worth a second chance.” Most people age out of criminalistic behavior, number one, and number two, if you commit in your 20s, by the time you’re 30 something, you don’t even think like that.

I always bring this point to anybody’s mind, whether an opponent or an advocate, nobody can say that they are the same person they were 20 years ago. I would like to meet somebody if they can stay the same from 20 years ago, because just life in general will mature you or change you. Right now, there’s just no way to bring it before the judge or a judicial body, to get any relief. Even if you change your life, right now, you’re pretty much stuck in prison until, if you have parole, you might get the opportunity to possibly get relief.

Mansa Musa:

Alexandra, talk about what you look for in this particular narrative, because as William just outlined, we do a lot of time, we don’t have the opportunity to get relief. We do good works while we’re incarcerated, and we have no way of having that good work brought to the attention of someone that can make a decision. Talk about that.

Alexandra Bailey:

Well, Second Look is just that, it’s just a look. It is not a guarantee of relief. It is not a get out of jail free card. It is literally a mechanism whereby, after two decades of incarceration, where the criminological curve shows us that most people have aged out of crime, that you can petition a judge to show your rehabilitation, and the survivor of your offense or their representatives get to be part of that process. Some of the most miraculous moments that I’ve ever seen are those moments of forgiveness. There’s this false story that goes around, that what prosecutors are doing is giving permanent relief to victims. I’m going to give them, in William’s case, 50 years before anybody can even say hi, and that’s going to heal you. That’s going to make you feel better.

Mansa Musa:

That’s what you mean by permanent relief?

Alexandra Bailey:

That’s what they would say. It’s permanent relief. We are making sure that this person stays safe permanently. Now, there are some people who do not rehabilitate, but in my experience, they’re very much in the minority. The people who do rehabilitate, like I said, they’re the ones raising other people in the prison, getting them out of criminal behavior, and all we’re asking is that the courts be able to take a look. When the survivor steps into that room, and I’ve witnessed this, and actually receive the accountability, the apology, the help that they need from the system, that is where the healing comes in. It’s rarely through punishment. You know that this is true because I watch survivors who have not moved on a single day from the day that this happened to them, and if you’re reliving that trauma day by day, what that tells me is that you haven’t received the mental health counseling, support, grief support that you needed. Why don’t we focus on that and rehabilitation, as opposed to permanent punishment?

To what William was saying, the criminological curve tells us that people age out of crime. Crimes are more often than not committed by young people who very frequently are misguided, and that is certainly true for Maryland, with a particular emphasis on the Black and Brown community. There was actually a national study that was done of survivors, which I was actually interviewed for, 60% of us who have survived specifically violent crimes are for more rehabilitation and second chances than we are for permanent punishment. Permanent punishment doesn’t get us to what it is that we need, which is a safer society, a more healed society, a society that when things are going wrong for folks, there is a place for them to turn. Our lack of empathy and kindness is not serving us.

Mansa Musa:

Also, I had the opportunity to talk to Kareem Hasan. Me and Kareem Hasan were locked up together in the Maryland penitentiary. He’s talking about some of the things that he’s doing now that he has gotten a second chance. I’m outside of 954 Forrest Maryland Penitentiary. I’m here with Kareem Hasan, who’s a social activist now, both us served time in the Maryland Penitentiary. When did you go into the Maryland pen?

Kareem Hasan:

1976, at 17 years old.

Mansa Musa:

All right, so you went in at 17, I went in at 19. When you went in the pen, talk about what the pen environment was like when you went in there.

Kareem Hasan:

Well, when I went in the penitentiary, like you asked me, the first day I went in there, I walked down the steps and it was just confusion. I was like, “Where am I at now?” People were running everywhere, all you hear is voices and everything. It was like you were in the jungle.

Mansa Musa:

Now, what type of programs did they have to offer when you went in there?

Kareem Hasan:

Well, when I went in there, they had a couple of programs, but I wasn’t too interested in the programs because I was still young and wild, running wild. I wasn’t even thinking about educating myself. All I was thinking about was protecting myself, because of all the stories I heard about the penitentiary.

Mansa Musa:

Right. All right. Now, how much time did you do?

Kareem Hasan:

I did 37 years.

Mansa Musa:

Okay, you did 37. I did 48 years. When I went in the penitentiary, they had no programs, like you say, and everything we were concerned with was protecting ourselves. When did you get out?

Kareem Hasan:

I got out in 2013, on the first wave of the Unger issue.

Mansa Musa:

The Unger issue is the case of Merle Unger versus the state of Maryland, that dealt with the way the jury instruction was given at that time, it was unconstitutional. I got out under Unger. When Unger first came out, what did that do for you in terms of your psyche?

Kareem Hasan:

Oh man, that really pumped me up.

Mansa Musa:

Why?

Kareem Hasan:

Because I saw daylight.

Mansa Musa:

And before that?

Kareem Hasan:

Before then, man, I was gone. I was crazy. I wasn’t even looking to get out, because I had a life sentence.

Mansa Musa:

Right. Didn’t you have parole?

Kareem Hasan:

Yes, I went up for parole three times.

Mansa Musa:

And what happened?

Kareem Hasan:

First time, they gave me a four-year re-hear, and then the second time, they gave me a two-year re-hear with the recommendation for pre-release and work release.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Kareem Hasan:

Then they come out with life means life.

Mansa Musa:

Glendening was the Governor for the state of Maryland at that time.

Kareem Hasan:

Yeah, he just snatched everything from me, snatched all hope and everything from me.

Mansa Musa:

Hope, that’s where I want to be at, right there. When Unger came out, Unger created Hope.

Kareem Hasan:

Unger created hope for a lot of guys, because when it first came out, I think it was Stevenson.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Kareem Hasan:

I had it in my first public conviction in 1981.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Kareem Hasan:

But they said it was a harmless error.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Kareem Hasan:

And then, Adams came out, and then, everybody kept going to the library, and everybody was running back and forth. Everybody was standing in those books, because they saw that daylight, they seen that hope.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Kareem Hasan:

And then, when Merle was fortunate enough to carry it all the way up the ladder to the courts, the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, they made it retroactive.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Kareem Hasan:

All that time we were locked up, it wasn’t a harmless error. They knew it, but they just kept us locked up.

Mansa Musa:

And you know what? On the hope thing, you’re supporting the Maryland Second Chance Act. You’ve been going down to Annapolis, supporting the Maryland Second Chance Act. Why are you supporting the Maryland Second Chance Act?

Kareem Hasan:

Look at me. I’m a second chance, and everything I do, I always refer back to myself. I’m looking at these young kids out here in the street, and when I talk to them, they relate to me. I need more brothers out here to help with these kids out here, because y’all see how Baltimore City is now. These young kids are off the chain, and they need somebody that’s going to give them some guidance, but they’re going to listen to a certain type of individuals.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Kareem Hasan:

They’re not going to listen to somebody that went to school, somebody that’s a politician or something like that. They’re looking for somebody that’s been through what they’ve been through and understands where they at, because that’s all they talk about.

Mansa Musa:

When you went into Maryland Penitentiary back in the 70s, you said ’77?

Kareem Hasan:

’76.

Mansa Musa:

You had no hope?

Kareem Hasan:

Oh, no. I had a fresh life sentence.

Mansa Musa:

Right. When Unger came out, then we had legislation passed to take the parole out the hands of the governor, that created hope. Then we had the Juvenile Life Bill, that created hope. Your case, had you not went out on Unger, you’d have went out on Juvenile Life, because they were saying that juveniles didn’t have the form, the [inaudible 00:22:12] to do the crime. Well, let’s talk about the Maryland Second Chance Act. Based on what we’ve been seeing and the support we’re getting, what do you think the chances of it passing this year?

Kareem Hasan:

I think the chances are good, especially the examples that we set. We let them know that certain type of individuals, you can let out. Now, there’s some people in there I wouldn’t let out, but the ones we’re talking about will help society, will be more positive for the society, especially for Baltimore City, and we need that.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Kareem Hasan:

The Second Chance Act is something that I support 100%.

Mansa Musa:

What are some of the things you’re now doing in the community?

Kareem Hasan:

Well, I have an organization called CRY, Creating Responsible Youth.

Mansa Musa:

What is that?

Kareem Hasan:

It’s a youth counseling and life skills training program, where we get kids, we come to an 11-week counseling course. After they graduate from the counseling course, we send them to life-scale training courses such as HVAC, CDLs, diesel training, and things of that nature. The program is pretty good, and I’m trying to get up off the ground more, but I need some finances.

Mansa Musa:

How long have you had this idea, and how long has it in existence thus far?

Kareem Hasan:

Well, when I first got the idea, I was in the Maryland House of Corrections, because we had a youth organization called Project Choice.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Kareem Hasan:

I had a young guy come in, and the counselor told me, he said, “Hi son, can you talk to him?” He can’t relate to any of us.” I took the kid on a one-on-one, and the kid said, “He’s trying to tell me about my life, but he’s from the county. He never lived like me. My mother and father are on drugs. I’ve got to support my brother and sister. I’m the one that’s got to go out there and bring them something to eat, because my mother and father take all that money and spend it on drugs.”

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Kareem Hasan:

The kid said, “He doesn’t understand my lifestyle, so how is he going to tell me about my lifestyle?” And then he looked at me and said, “Now see, where you come from, I can understand you. We can talk.”

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Kareem Hasan:

“Because I know you understand where I’m coming from.”

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Kareem Hasan:

“Because you’ve been there.”

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Kareem Hasan:

He got to talking about his mother and father, and he started crying. When he started crying, I was telling him about when my father passed, when I was on lockup, and I was in my cell crying.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Kareem Hasan:

And then, later on that night, I was in bed, and it just hit me. I said, “Cry, create a responsible youth.” That’s how I came up with that name, and just like those boys in the penitentiary, they’re crying out, just like in the Maryland state penal system, the ones that’s positive and they change their life, they’re crying out for help, and we’re here to help. We’re here to create responsible youth.

Mansa Musa:

Last, you will hear from Bobby Pittman, who was in the Maryland Prison system and is now out, a community organizer and leading a bully intervention program. This is what he’s doing with his second chance, in the interest of justice.

Robert Pittman:

Bobby Pittman, I’m from Baltimore. I’m a Baltimorian, and I actually went to prison when I was 17 years old. I was sentenced to a life plus 15 year, consecutive 15 year sentence at 17 years old, for felony murder.

Mansa Musa:

How much time you serve?

Robert Pittman:

I served 24 years on that.

Mansa Musa:

Okay, come on.

Robert Pittman:

The crazy thing, it’s been a year and a few days, it’s probably been 370 days I’ve been free.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. Come on. Welcome home.

Robert Pittman:

Thank you. Since I’ve been out here, it’s been amazing. The things that I learned while I was inside of prison, actually, it carried over, with me out here. Within the last year, I helped 50 people get jobs with a connection with the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development. Shout-out to Nigel jobs on deck Jackson.

Mansa Musa:

Okay, Mr. Jackson.

Robert Pittman:

We’ve got individuals, like a couple of mothers, single mothers into schooling.

Mansa Musa:

Okay.

Robert Pittman:

With full scholarships. Got 10 people into schools, people that never believed that they’d have an opportunity to get their education. We got about 10 people in school. And then, I did all that through my peer recovery knowledge, my lived experience, and understanding where these individuals come from, and assessing these individuals, seeing some things that they might need or whatever.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Robert Pittman:

You know that you can get that. You can do that.

Mansa Musa:

What made you stop, once you got to a point where you said you needed to change, what made you get to a point where you started looking and thinking that you can get out? What inspired you about that?

Robert Pittman:

This is crazy. I actually fell off. I was on lockup one time, and I heard all this screaming and yelling. I’m like, “What is this screaming and yelling for?” It was 2012.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Robert Pittman:

They’re like “The law passed.”

I’m like, “What law?”

They said, “The Unger, the Unger’s passed.” People on lockup are screaming and all this stuff. I can hear, on the compound, individuals screaming and celebrating, and things like this. The crazy thing, they were screaming and yelling about a chance.

Mansa Musa:

Come on, yeah.

Robert Pittman:

You know what I mean? It wasn’t even a guarantee.

Mansa Musa:

I got a chance.

Robert Pittman:

All they know is, I’ve got a chance, because I’ve done exhausted all of my daggone remedies.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Robert Pittman:

But I’ve got a chance right now.

Mansa Musa:

Come on.

Robert Pittman:

To have my case looked at again.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Robert Pittman:

That’s when it started.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Robert Pittman:

That’s when it started. The Ungers went out, it wound up being 200 and something.

Mansa Musa:

People started seeing people going home.

Robert Pittman:

People I’ve been looking up to, now they’ve taken my mentor. My mentor is gone. I was happy for them, but now, it made me like I had to step up more, because I had to prepare for my chance. I see it now, Maryland. They said that they had a meaningful opportunity for release through the parole system.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Robert Pittman:

But there wasn’t one person that got paroled since 1995.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Robert Pittman:

It was a fight. It took about six years, but it gave us hope. We’re just waiting.

Mansa Musa:

Oh, yeah.

Robert Pittman:

We’re sitting there like, “Man.” Six years later, 2018, that’s when it was an agreement with the ACLU and Maryland courts that we’re going to restructure the parole system.

Mansa Musa:

Right, for juvenile lifers.

Robert Pittman:

For juvenile lifers, and on that, they created a whole new set of criteria that an individual on parole, or going up for parole had to meet. If they meet these things, the parole commission has the opportunity to release them. I started going through that. I went through it, went through the whole process in 2018, went up for parole and all that, was denied at my first parole hearing, of course. I saw people going home.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, through the system.

Robert Pittman:

I’m sitting there like, “Oh man, I saw somebody go home from parole. This is real.” The first couple I saw, I’m like, “Oh, this is real, now. I see how real this is.”

Mansa Musa:

Right. Talk about what you’re doing now.

Robert Pittman:

Now, I do peer recovery work. I’ve got a nonprofit, Bully Intervention Teams. What we do with Bully Intervention Teams, it’s not your average bully intervention. We look at all forms of injustice as bullying.

Mansa Musa:

Right, you’re talking about bullies.

Robert Pittman:

Yeah, all forms of injustice is bullying. One of the things that I see, I was seeing bullying when I went down to Annapolis this week. They’re bullying individuals through misinformation. This organization will try to make sure these individuals that receive this misinformation will receive proper information, because they’re being bullied through ignorance. It just was horrible. What we do on the weekend, Saturdays, individuals that were incarcerated, a lot of people look at them, “They’re doing good,” but they don’t know the stress of that, because you know what you’re representing. You’ve got to be a certain type of way, because you’re trying to be an example for these individuals. You’re trying to pioneer for these individuals that come out.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, you don’t hae the luxury make a mistake.

Robert Pittman:

We have our session, our peer-run session, where we can just relieve ourselves, because it’s a lot of pressure.

Mansa Musa:

Oh no, that’s there. You’ve got a wellness space.

Robert Pittman:

We need it.

Mansa Musa:

You’ve got to have it, because like you say, our reality is this here. We don’t have the luxury of making a mistake, and everything that we’ve been afforded, and every opportunity that we have, we don’t look at it as an opportunity for us. We look at it as an opportunity to show society that we’re different. Therefore, the person that I’m talking about, who I’m representing on their behalf, I’m saying that I’m different, but this person I’m asking you to give the same consideration that y’all gave me is also different.

We want to be in a position where we can have a voice on altering how people are serving time. One, we want to be able to say, if you give more programs, if you give more hope, you’ll meet your purpose of people changing and coming back out in society. But more importantly, we want to be able to tell the person, like you said, rest assured that you’ve got advocates out there.

The ACLU of Maryland and advocates urged the Senate to pass The Second Look Act, House Bill 853. For those that are interested, the hearing for The Second Look Act, House Bill 853, in front of the Senate Judiciary Proceeding Committee will be held Tuesday, March the 25th, 2025, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, in the East Miller Building, room two. For more information, visit Maryrlandsecondlook.com, or ACLUMaryland.org.

There you have it, the real news and Rattling the Bars. We ask that you comment on this episode. Tell us, do you think a person deserves a second chance, and if giving a person a second chance is, in fact, in the interest of justice.

Photo of Linda Foley in committee by Maryland GovPics (CC 2.0). Link to license​.

March Madness is back. In a special episode of Edge of Sports, Dave Zirin takes a retrospective look at past interviews with Washington Post journalist Danny Funt on sports gambling, and with professor Diane Williams on the NCAA’s checkered past regarding women’s basketball.

Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Taylor Hebden, David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: David Hebden
Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino
Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen

Transcript

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

Dave Zirin:

Welcome to Edge of Sports only on the Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin. In this special March Madness edition, we are proudly airing two interviews that could not be more timely as college basketball and the road to the final four take center stage. The first is on the explosion of app-based sports gambling in the United States and the second on the hidden history of NCAA women’s basketball. So let’s start with gambling. You may not realize this, but more people bet on the NCAA basketball tournament than even the Super Bowl. We’re talking $3.1 billion and that’s just the legal betting. The Final four may not be the Super Bowl in terms of ratings, but it is the profiteering Super Bowl for FanDuel, DraftKings and all of those gambling apps that have not only colonized the commercial time during games but are also integrated into the sports commentary itself.

Who is Charles Barkley betting on in the tournament he’s supposed to cover? He’s about to tell you. What they don’t tell you is that these wildly popular apps have led to a crisis of gambling addiction, particularly a youth gambling addiction. Thousands of young people are calling hotlines for addicts feeling like they have lost control of their impulses and their bank accounts. They’re learning a hard lesson from which the young used to be insulated. The lesson that the reason those casinos look so nice is because the house always wins. This proliferation of addicts has become a mental health crisis so deep that Congress is even taking a look to see if more regulation is needed, but rest assured that oversight will be resisted. The facts are that this addiction economy has become the financial lifeblood of sports, and we need a deep dive to understand what this is all about, whether we are sports fans or not, and there is no better person to guide us into the underbelly of this world. Then reporter Danny Funt. This is Danny Funt’s beat sports gambling. He covers it for the Washington Post and he has a book coming out that breaks it all down. So he knows this world and this interview could not be more relevant. I started by asking him how big legal betting is for the economy of sports and where the trend lines are pointing to. Let’s go to it now, Danny Funt.

Danny Funt:

Yeah, I’d say it’s transforming every aspect of the business of sports, the fan experience, certainly the laws that affect sports and those aspects. Yeah, it’s a game changer. 38 states and DC have legalized sports betting several more expected to in the near future and from teams to commissioners to certainly the ncaa. Everyone is trying to cash in on that legalization, making some suspect choices in the process. And yeah, I mean they’re sort of facing the consequences as we’ve seen in some pretty shocking headlines recently, but it’s only going to continue. I still think we’re in the early innings of this sports betting experiment in the us.

Dave Zirin:

So you’re saying that the recent headlines, you’re talking about some of the betting scandals involving athletes as well as some of the statements of coaches and players who talk about being heckled or even being threatened because of fans not making their gambling quotas. Is that what you’re referring to?

Danny Funt:

Yeah, exactly. It was kind of funny. March Madness is one of the biggest betting periods of the year, certainly a time when the sports books want to get positive coverage and attract as many new customers as they can, and yet there was just an onslaught of grim news from the sho Otani betting scandal, an NBA bench player who got caught up it looks like with some basically a version of point shaving involving his prop bets to the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers saying he gets menacing voicemails from people when the Cavs cost betters money, the list goes on. It was a rough month for betting advocates.

Dave Zirin:

Yes. So is a reckoning inevitable if these stories keep continuing of players finding themselves with spare time, their phones disposable income and wanting to make bets? I mean, it’s such a perfect stew for more scandal and what would a reckoning look like and is it just too much money for the leagues to even want to have a reckoning for the effects of gambling?

Danny Funt:

That’s such a pressing question. I don’t know exactly. I think I’m skeptical that leagues would actually, that have recently legalized betting would go so far as to outlaw it. I think they might reign in the sorts of things you can bet on. One of the things that leads to all sorts of suspicious betting is that obviously you can bet on much, much more than just who’s going to win nowadays. You can bet on basically every facet of the game down to how a certain play is going to play out. So I think things like that could face stiffer regulations, the ways you can bet on college sports already are being reigned in. But yeah, I think the leagues have placed their bet, lawmakers have placed their bet and they’re kind of having to live with it, and I don’t know what level of addiction or what level of corruption would have to go down for them really to pull back in a meaningful way, but they’re being tested recently.

Dave Zirin:

You mentioned addiction, gambling addiction. What are we seeing on that front in the United States especially? Obviously since the legalization,

Danny Funt:

Pre legalization, the number that was floated was that roughly 1% of the population is susceptible to gambling addiction post legalization. Now that basically every smartphone is a casino, those rates could be as high as 4% I’m told, which is really a staggering number. You think about it like in a full NFL stadium, maybe 3000 people could be suffering from gambling addiction. It’s kind of incomprehensible. I think beyond that, it’s important to recognize there’s a clinically diagnosed gambling addiction that needs a medical intervention, but then there’s all sorts of problem behavior. Just like with drinking alcoholism is one thing, but people might drink more than they ought to along that spectrum, and the same thing is proven true with gambling, and it’s so important to note with that, that it’s not just can I gamble or can I not gamble? It’s the ways you can gamble and some of the most profitable types of betting, some of the most popular types of betting are some of the most addictive, and that’s certainly driving addiction rates across the country.

Dave Zirin:

I’m speaking just anecdotally, but my son who’s in high school has come home and told me about kids placing bets with other kids because they got their parents FanDuel accounts and my son said, dad, we’re creating a new generation of bookies out of our high schools. Is that just my son’s massive public school experience or are we seeing indicators about youth gambling addictions?

Danny Funt:

No, I don’t think that’s one-off. How old’s your son, by the way? I’m curious.

Dave Zirin:

Actually, he’s 15. He turns 16 tomorrow.

Danny Funt:

Yeah, that’s a classic time of life to start playing around with this. No, I think sort of an irony of legalization is it’s shown a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs, Hey, bookmaking is a winning business. Maybe I should get involved in that. I was just talking, I live near Colorado State University. I was just talking with a student there who said the legal betting age is 21 by 19, as soon as he got to college, he was betting through offshore sports books that are unregulated and through some campus bookies who just like your son’s classmates got inspired by all the betting around them and said, Hey, this is an easy way to make a buck. No, I think the argument for legalization was we’ve got this robust black market, let’s bring it into the sunlight just as the same way that happened with cannabis and regulate it, tax it, implement some consumer protections.

In reality, yes, some of that has happened, but it’s also caused the black market to surge for a number of reasons with adults and certainly with young people. Young people, I don’t know exactly what age definitely are more susceptible to compulsive bedding, which is obviously dicey because they probably have a lot less disposable income, but it’s a reason why advertising that targets college students. You can understand why they’re attractive new customers, but that’s some of the most controversial types of marketing and some of the partnerships that Sportsbook struck up in recent years literally with universities in some of those cases got shut down pretty quickly just because that seemed like a line too far. Even for gambling advocates.

Dave Zirin:

Do the legal gambling concerns, the fanduels, et cetera, do they give a damn about these issues of addiction? You see they do the 1-800-GAMBLER at the end of their ads, or is this just window dressing the equivalent of a cigarette company saying, oh, by the way, you can get lung cancer?

Danny Funt:

Yeah, so true. I mean, I think whether they give or damn or not meaningful change can’t come from sportsbook self-policing. Just a week ago I talked to a guy who was one of the top officials at one of those kind of second tier sports books, and he was saying the incentives just aren’t there to crack down internally on problem gambling. Those are literally your best customers. Those are your whales who you’re showering with promotions and egging on with these kind of concierge services to keep those people betting. So their rationale as well, they’re our best customers. If we boot them, they’re just going to go to our competitors. We’re going to lose market share. They’re going to find a way to keep betting. So it’s not really in our best interest to do anything meaningful about that, which is why this person and a number of people across the industry are saying regulators need to impose much, much stiffer fines when sports books are caught recruiting or egging on problem betters, and there’s also ways beyond that, just really simple fixes short of banning gambling that would make a difference.

Like one of the tenants of responsible betting is don’t chase your losses. Chasing your losses is like pre-game. I bet on the Denver nuggets to win, they’re down at the first quarter, I place another bet they’re losing at halftime even more. I place a third bet. You can kind of trick yourself into thinking, well, the odds have gotten better, so if they make a miraculous comeback, I’ll make a fortune. Obviously, more often than not, that doesn’t play out classic way to bet over your head. So if a tenant of responsible betting is don’t chase your losses, perhaps sports books could just not take those bets past the point. If I keep depositing money in my account during a game and upping my bets, they could just cut you off and say, you need a cool down period. Things like that seem to me like a lot more practical incremental changes that definitely would make a difference.

Dave Zirin:

Let’s talk about the European experience with legalized sportsbook betting its effect on soccer. Does that have anything to teach us about how bad this could get or where this could go?

Danny Funt:

Yeah, I think absolutely the UK betting market is about a decade ahead of the US as far as legalizing online betting. If you just walk around London, the betting shops are all over town. It’s kind of those people over there are kind of numbed to that culture, but as far as seeing where they are as foreshadowing where the US could be, there’s definitely been kind of an awakening that, not that they’re going to ban petting anytime soon, but the public health consequences that come with it. I wrote it down anticipating that question. There was a study last year that found that what they called gambling related harms cost the UK 2.3 billion annually. So that’s a case where sure, they maybe get tax revenue. Sure, it might create jobs, but the harms are clearly outweighing the gains, at least according to this study. And you’ve got similar studies in the US showing that the economic price of the economic activity goes down in states that have vibrant legal betting markets, even if they’re bringing in a certain amount of gambling tax revenue. Again, the scales are imbalanced Beyond that gambling addiction. There is just a fact of life and it’s ubiquitous if you go to a soccer match just like it’s becoming at all sorts of American sports. So yeah, a lot of warning signs of where the US market could be headed.

Dave Zirin:

Now, I haven’t been surprised to see the explosion of sports gambling. I haven’t been surprised to see the rise in addiction rates. I’ll tell you what has surprised me is seeing how this has been embraced by members of the sports media. What are the implications of seeing so many established grade A trusted members of the sports media embracing this, giving odds during games and becoming spokespeople for sports betting? That has surprised me. What are the implications of that in your mind?

Danny Funt:

I think it’s definitely normalized sports betting and made it seem acceptable to the mainstream. You could argue in a lot of different things whether media is just a reflection like a mirror of society or whether it’s influencing society. I think there’s no doubt that there’s certainly been an influence in making sports betting just ubiquitous and intertwined with the fan experience. One of the first articles I wrote on this topic was for the Columbia Journalism Review. Looking at that question, what caught my interest actually was the ethical question of whether sports reporters should be betting on games. It seemed like a ripe opportunity for gambling’s version of insider trading, and I think some of that is definitely taking place, but just as far as media companies embracing gambling, there’s a lot of factors that made this the perfect time for sports betting to explode in the us.

Definitely one of them is how so many sports outlets are imperiled and facing brutal financial times. I know you looked at Sports Illustrated recently in one of your recent episodes, they tried to latch onto this bandwagon licensing their name to a sports book in Colorado here and a few other states that clearly didn’t write the ship, but yeah, from the biggest personalities in sports to the biggest names in sports, E-S-P-N-I think is a huge example. Recently licensing their name to a sportsbook, and now you go on ESPN’s website, you turn on a game, you’re indicted with appeals to bet on ESPN bet. I actually just spoke with a very knowledgeable bet who worked as an odds maker as well. He was saying similar to you that his 8-year-old son was seeing so many ESPN bet ads. This guy felt obligated to teach his son like the basics of probabilities, why betting is a losing venture for customers. It’s kind of surreal to think that a parent would feel a responsibility to coach their 8-year-old on that as they might responsible drinking or the dangers of smoking, but that’s just the world we live in.

Dave Zirin:

So if you were in charge of the sports world, how would you handle all of this? Is the wine simply out of the bottle and it’s just about managing the crisis? Is it possible to still ban this and get it out of sports? Where are we right now? And if you did have that kind of power, what could be done?

Danny Funt:

As I said earlier, I’m skeptical just practically speaking that any states are going to outlaw sports betting that have legalized it anytime soon. I think definitely when states kind of go online and are a little late to the party like Ohio and Massachusetts in the last year or so in North Carolina in recent months, they’re imposing much strict stricter regulations than some of the early states, just seeing bad examples of things that could easily have been avoided. So risk-free promotions were a reason why millions of people, I think took up sports betting thinking, oh, this is literally free money. I can’t lose. You certainly could lose your money. You could also get hooked on gambling from a false sense of how easy it could be. Those have been kind of stamped out. I think more promotions are basically fraudulent still and deceptive, and those could be police more aggressively.

I think a fairly straightforward fix that if I was this sports betting czar I would see too is in a lot of states, I think the regulatory apparatus just doesn’t cut it. Sometimes the state lottery is in charge of overseeing sports betting. Now obviously the lottery is in the business of raising money for the states. What sort of incentive do they have to crack down on sportsbook operators that are bringing in betting revenue? Even more questionable, I’d say, is when the lottery is in charge of running the sportsbook. In that case, you’ve got someone who’s functioning as an operator and a regulator. It’s no surprise that there are plenty of examples of them not self-policing very effectively. So I think state by state, if you had a truly independent commission that was charged with overseeing sports books, it would be a little bit of a fair fight. So often when customers say, Hey, this is deceptive. Hey, I’ve been screwed over by a sportsbook. The deck is stacked so much in favor of the operators of these companies, those sorts of complaints, even when I think they’ve been wronged, pretty egregiously, just go nowhere. So I think if you had a really aggressive independent regulator state by state, that would make a big difference, and there’s very few examples of that currently.

Dave Zirin:

I want to paint a picture for you and I want you to tell me if I’m being a Cassandra

Or if this is in the land of the possible, a chicken little, if you will, is there a future where sports gambling becomes so hegemonic to the fan experience that people start keeping their kids away, they don’t think it’s necessarily appropriate. The audience for sports thins, the profit margins do not. People start thinking the fix might be in, so they start drifting away, and at the end of the day, gambling, which has been so profitable as a revenue stream actually hollows out sports as we know it. Is that in the land of the possible, like an actual darn near destruction of this incredibly vast athletic industrial complex

Danny Funt:

Man, that really got my wheels turning. I hadn’t thought of that. And yeah, it seems feasible. The leagues are certainly betting against it. You brought up the integrity of the game, like do we think matches are fixed? There was always some of that, but it’s just gone through the roofs post legalization. Even players like Rudy Gobert on the Minnesota Timber Wolves made this money just at a referee recently and got a hundred thousand dollars fine for it. The obvious insinuation is he’s saying the ref is on the take. Maybe he’s looking out for a bet by swallowing his whistle or something. The confidence in the integrity of the games has definitely taken a hit, and yet the leagues aren’t spooked enough by that to really do anything about it. So that’s something that I’m really interested in as far as people saying, let me keep my kids away from sports. I just find American sports are so deeply rooted. I don’t know. I mean, maybe parents don’t take their kids to the race tracks because they don’t want them to start betting on horses. That might be a precedent worth looking at. But as far as football, basketball, golf, baseball, major sports that are the first things we talk about when we meet people, I don’t know. That feels a little out there, but I’ll definitely keep an eye on it.

Dave Zirin:

Hey, horse racing and boxing, were once two of the most popular sports in the United States. So just because something is doesn’t mean it will always be. I can’t let you go without mentioning that you’re doing a book and I was hoping you could tell us something about the book. What about sports gambling? Are you set to explore? What’s your thesis? What are you going for with this book?

Danny Funt:

Thank you for asking. I would say what I’m going for is I want to rewind a bit because I feel like just as a sports fan myself, as someone who follows politics pretty closely, it felt like the Supreme Court opened the door for states to start legalizing, and then seemingly overnight it was just, okay, New Jersey, Delaware. Soon after that, New York, Illinois we’re up to 38 states counting Nevada that have legalized, as I said, more are going to do. So you don’t hear a robust public debate about that. It seems like, okay, this is a moneymaking opportunity for states. We used to be adamantly against it, but now other states are doing it, so we got to get on board. The leagues used to speak about sports betting literally as an evil that was poisonous to sports. Now they’re sports bettings biggest backers, again, seemingly overnight.

So with the book, I definitely want to force us to have a serious conversation about these pros and cons, whether, as we’ve talked about today, the harms outweigh the positives. I also want to pull back the curtain a bit on what goes on inside of sports books. We see ads for FanDuel and draft gigs and Caesars pretty much everywhere. I don’t think a lot of us know exactly how those companies operate, how they think, they think about betters, what their motivations are, and I’m going to definitely get inside of those companies and give a closeup look at how they approach this game and try to anticipate where this is all going. As we’ve talked about, looking at Europe, even just looking at states that are a couple of years ahead of some of the others and the second guessing they’re having about what they’ve signed up for. So it’s a bit retrospective. It’s a bit of making sense of this chaotic world we’re living in and looking forward and seeing, as I said, we’re in the early innings. Is this going to be something that the powers that be are going to wish they hadn’t signed up for?

Dave Zirin:

Wow, that was the truth about the gambling industrial complex. Thank you, Danny. Fun. But now in this special March Madness edition of Edge of Sports, we turned to women’s hoops. Last year, the women’s college basketball Final Four for the first time, drew higher ratings than the men’s, significantly higher. In fact, this was historic, yet much of the way it was explained, centered around the then Iowa Senior Guard, the record breaking Kaitlyn Clark, whose Hawkeye’s team lost in the finals to South Carolina. Others countered this saying that the growth of the game is deeper than one player. A recent New York Times article opined that the NCAA had long set the table for this level of interest to take off, but both of these theories are woefully inadequate. Such a superficial analysis ignores the way that the NCAA suppressed women’s hoops for years. It also overlooks the Hidden history, the very foundation of Women’s College of Basketball that dates back decades to a league called The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, the A IAW, the A IAW is a remarkable story all its own, and was the collegiate hoops home for legends like Lynette Woodard, Nancy Lieberman, and the Queen of the Court, Lucia Harris.

It’s also a history that the NCAA does its best to obfuscate because in this saga, they’re not the good guys. Well, we are about to revive one of my favorite interviews that we’ve done on the show. We are speaking to former roller derby great and current McDaniel College professor Diane Williams, who is the source of knowledge about the history of the A IAW. You want to learn where modern women’s college basketball really comes from. We got you on Edge of sports.

Speaker 3:

So I’ve been a fan of the Iowa Women’s team since I was a grad student there. Got to know a little bit about the coaching stuff, got been watching those teams for the last 10 plus years, and Caitlin Clark is an individual who is incredible, obviously ridiculously talented. I’m thrilled. She went to Iowa. She was an Iowa kid, and she really is an interesting figure in that she’s really taking seriously the idea of being a role model and the idea of being a star. I think in an interesting way, she’s balancing those pretty well and thinking about both her own success, her team’s success, and the broader picture of women’s basketball, of women’s sports, and of just celebrating the potential that is there, and she’s showing us some of that potential in her play and in the way she’s navigating all the different pressures and excitement of this moment.

Dave Zirin:

Yeah, I think she’s really interesting too. I’ve felt like there’ve been times where the media has tried to play her against other players, particularly Angel Reese, Kelsey Plum, who we’re going to talk about a little bit more, and she doesn’t take that bait. I feel like she’s really sort of mature and intentional about being a white superstar, and that’s certainly unique for somebody that age.

Speaker 3:

It’s also such a reminder to me of all those top players on those teams have played together. They know each other, they go way back. And I think sometimes that’s one of those things that when media wants to jump in and divide, we forget that there’s relationships already existing there, and depending on how the players want to relate to each other, Caitlyn Clark seems to be dedicated to the lifting up and supporting across the board, and let’s go. Let’s all get better together. I mean, and relishing the competitiveness and the She’ll trash talk. She’s dedicated to her team. She’s going to defend what she thinks is right, and she always has, and she wants everybody else to too, right? Yeah.

Dave Zirin:

Wow. Now, when she hit that 30 footer to set the NCAA women’s scoring record breaking Kelsey Plums, mark, the announcers were really big on saying that Caitlyn Clark has now scored the most points in college women’s history. Now, that’s not quite correct, is it?

Diane Williams:

No, it is not. So before the NCAA offered women’s intercollegiate sport period, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics, the A IAW, they had for 10 years been hosting Women’s Intercollegiate Sport. It was led by women. It was the entire athletic governance organization was founded by women who were physical educators and who were really dedicated to creating a different kind of sport culture and one that was for women, and it was educationally rooted. It had, the organization was focused on student athletes rights, their wellbeing, sport being a part of their educational experience, something that the NCAA sort of has a different take on a little bit more of a commercial view on that side. And so the scoring record, actually, Kelsey Plums record was from the NCAA years, which started in 82, but there’s 10 years of history before that that were also, there was another important record that Caitlyn Clark broke a few games later.

Dave Zirin:

Yeah, speak about that. Who was the A IAW all time scoring leader?

Diane Williams:

Yeah, so there’s two. The big college scoring leader was Lynette Woodard from Kansas, and she set that record right at the end of the a I W’s time, even leading intercollegiate athletics for women. And actually, if you watched the game when Clark broke that record, Lynette Woodard was there. She was at Carver Hawkey Arena in Iowa City. They interviewed her before the game. They gave her a standing ovation, and both her and Clark have talked about the significance of both of them being there, and the idea that partly Woodard said, Clark is helping to bring attention to this history that has been really ignored. Some would argue buried that there’s so many women in intercollegiate basketball we don’t even know about. We don’t know their stories, we don’t know their glories, and yet this history is just, it was 10 years before the NCAA offered sport, and it was big.

Dave Zirin:

So you used the word buried. Why do you think this history is so buried and because that certainly speaks to an intentionality, to use that word again about the A IAW and honestly, I love sports history. Without your work, I never would’ve known about the A IAW. Why is this history obscured?

Diane Williams:

Well, so I don’t know if I can necessarily say why I don’t know the intentions, but I can tell you a little bit of the story. Right? When the a IW started, the NCAA didn’t have interest in facilitating women’s sports, and the folks, the women who went on to lead the organization said that, great, we’re going to go do it ourselves then. And they created a nationwide governing organization that was, at its peak, it was 970 plus members, colleges and universities across the country hosting 19 different sports, which is more than the NCAA has ever offered for women or men in three different divisions. So in 10 years, they grew from nothing to huge, and were really proving that there was, I mean, a lot of appetite for women’s intercollegiate athletics, which was feeding down to high school and youth, right? There’s this whole revolution happening, and they were leading it when Title IX was finally, so Title IX was passed in 72.

It took a number of years for it to be interpreted, and it wasn’t intended to be applied to sports. It was an educationally focused bill about academic programs funding. But immediately, particularly on the women’s side, they realized, oh, this could help us get some money, and we sorely need money. We have the resources. Were laughably small for what they were trying to build. And so during the seventies, title IX is being interpreted. The Congress is figuring out how do we even apply this to sport? What does it look like to have gender equity in sport? Sports are really different than who gets led into a dentist program or dental training program. And so ultimately, in 79, some standards come out of how we’re going to actually account for gender equity in sport. They’re both clear and kind of convoluted in different ways, but it became clear that it was actually going to be enforced.

Well, that was the idea. And really, I think the NCAA got nervous that while the NCAA as a governing organization and the A IAW, they weren’t subject to Title ix, but all of their member institutions were. And so if they were not in line with the law, it could be a problem. And so the NCAA had been sort of working with the A IWA little bit on parallel tracks in the early part of the seventies. They had verged away from that by the later part of the seventies. And by the time that this all happened, not only was the NCAA and men’s sport organizing against Title IX being applied to athletics against football being included, they were trying to get it exempted. There’s all kinds of things happening. But the NCAA was working actively against Title ix, including athletics, but it decided to switch course and start offering women’s championships without discussion with the A IW, without even recognition that there was already a massive infrastructure in place that was hosting women’s championships and the A IW.

There was some movements to try and work together. Maybe we can come together and find the best of both worlds, right? A highly competitive, financially sustainable model pulling from the NCAA side, but that valued the student athlete experience more and the wellbeing of the student athletes that quickly got dismissed by the ncaa, and instead, they chose to offer competing championships the same weekends as the A IW championships. In some cases, they financially incentivized schools to join their championships. They had the money and resources to say, we can pay for your travel, pay for your food, pay for your lodging. If you come to our championships. The A IW was just starting to generate some cash, just had some media contracts, couldn’t compete. And within a year, the A IW had ended ceased operations. And so the NCAA won in some ways, and there was a pretty big loss of an emphasis on student wellbeing for women’s sport and women having women role models in leadership positions in sport.

Dave Zirin:

Wow. Ruthless by the ncaa. Talk about intentionality.

Diane Williams:

Yeah.

Dave Zirin:

Wow. Before we stay on that, the time in which the A IAW came to be feels very much in the middle of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Were there direct connections between the broader struggle and the emergence of this organization?

Diane Williams:

So ideologically, yes. In that it was a movement to bring women into spaces that they had been told they weren’t allowed to be in.

And in a very public way, the organization itself was trying to navigate bringing together women who wanted to expand women’s sport opportunities across the country from different geographic regions, different political persuasions. Some of those women would’ve been all for identifying as feminist, and plenty of them would’ve been absolutely not to mention if they did, they could get fired if they were rocking the boat too much. They were all sort of navigating these expectations while trying to push forward something that was actually pretty radical, bringing women’s sport into the mainstream in this way. And so there was a lot of negotiating happening, which I think is often the case behind the scenes a little bit more. The A IW was working with some of the education and legal organizations in DC and they were hooked in. They had convinced them that women’s sport was actually a really important part of this whole conversation around women’s liberation and society. Then the Women’s Sport Foundation started around this time. There’s a lot of connecting happening, often a little bit more behind the scenes from the A IW what they were putting out front, but the connections were happening and it was helping when they needed to lobby congress say that they could call in some of those networks to talk about the importance of women’s sport and young girls in as a part of educational equity as a part of women having a more viable and a more vibrant role in society.

Dave Zirin:

So what at Long last do you think is the legacy

Diane Williams:

So many

Dave Zirin:

Of this organization, what is their living legacy today?

Diane Williams:

I see as you and I’ve talked about, I see some of their legacy in the movements around student athletes being active, demanding better conditions that they’re playing in just speaking up in realizing that they should have a say in the organization that is leading intercollegiate athletics. And that is something that is so different than the NCAA’s norm. Some of the shifts that have happened in the interest of student athlete rights has really been a part. Often there’s connection to people who are involved with a IW actually both in the leadership of the NCAA or schools, if they stuck it out, they often were there making change at people like Dr. Christine Grant and Charlotte West and plenty of others. So I mean, I really see the positive legacy is, and student, this is kind of cool because student athletes don’t necessarily know that they’re actually a part of a legacy.

Dave Zirin:

Yeah, I was thinking about

Diane Williams:

Dartmouth,

Dave Zirin:

The men steam forming the union and about how even if it’s not conscious, there is a thread that exists because of what you said, of demanding a voice

Diane Williams:

And

Dave Zirin:

Demanding some sense of ownership and autonomy over your life as a college

Diane Williams:

Athlete. Yeah. One of the former presidents of the A IW that I interviewed Pig Burke at the University of Iowa, said, well, paraphrasing, she told me when they’re college athletes, they’re 18, they’re legally adults. They should have a say in what’s happening out there in sports out there in their sport experience. And so that the union move is so exciting, and I’d like to imagine that a governing organization would consider how the student athletes are experiencing what they’re experiencing on teams and in the championship structure and in the schedules and all these things. And yet the NCAA has proven that they don’t care. They haven’t, there hasn’t been nearly enough attention paid to that and meaningful engagement of student athlete voice in governing that is so different than the model that is so top down that they have set up and was something that was integrated in the A IAW model. Student athletes had representation on the executive board on down to the school level, really different set up. So I hope that is, I see some of the legacy in there. I see the legacy for sure in some of the women coaches who are still coaching who go back to a IW days players who are in coaching sport media positions. There’s an interesting spill out from people who are connected to sport through the A IW and took those values into the jobs that they had even when it was under the ncaa.

Dave Zirin:

This history is actually getting a little bit of life with Lynette Woodard coming to the fore. It seems like this whole history is just ripe for a book. Is that something you’d be interested in pursuing?

Diane Williams:

I’m working on that. I’m working on

Dave Zirin:

That. You are working on a book. I’m about this. Terrific. Will you return to the program when the book is in print so we can go through what you learned?

Diane Williams:

Absolutely.

Dave Zirin:

That’s fantastic. And one last question, please. When you teach about this organization at McDaniel College, what is the reaction? I mean, I assume few if none know about it, but is this something that makes the students’ eyes go wide?

Diane Williams:

I think so. And I will say one of the neatest things about this organization that makes me want to talk about it to everybody, one is that it was visionary. It was a group of people who said, what exists in the norm isn’t good enough and we think we can do better. And then they did. And that to me is exciting because it reminds us that it’s flexible, how we manage sport, how we think about sport, what sport even looks like, who gets to be involved. And two, every single school had people, usually women that were leading the women’s athletic department, that were coaching their teams that are local heroes that that school may or may not even know about. And so when I teach about this at McDaniel, I get to talk about Carol Fritz, who was the women’s athletics director there. We have a beautiful display of women’s sport history like uniforms and field hockey sticks and things that I can point them to. And we can bring this history to a very local level and learn more about someone who’s like her name is on this beautiful display, but we don’t see her around as much anymore. But we can also learn more about the kinds of struggles that she and every other institution had. Somebody there that was doing that work and encountering a whole lot of resistance and deserves their flowers, deserves their thanks and deserves some cheering on from a generation that is now learning about it. Again,

Dave Zirin:

Thanks everybody for tuning in. We are so proud of Edge of Sports and hope to bring you more coverage at the collision point of sports and politics in 2025. Now, I want to let you know how you can support sports journalism without Stephen A. Smith, pat McAfee and ESPN’s Confederacy of Jackasses. Join the Real News Network now and power the independent media you believe in. Become A-T-R-N-N member. Do it today because that means more fearless journalism, more hard hitting investigations and more stories the mainstream media will not touch. Your support isn’t just appreciated. It’s essential. And don’t forget, subscribe to our channel, sign up for our newsletter and hit the bell icon so you never miss a report. Remember, we don’t get YouTube advertising money or accept corporate funds. Our survival depends on you. You keep us going together. We can keep covering the sports and politics stories, others will not for Edge of Sports in the Real News Network. I’m Dave Zin. I want to say thank you to you, the viewers, the listeners. I want to thank Kayla Rivara, Maximillian Alvarez, David Hebden, and the entire TRNN team that keeps us going. Please support this work because in this era, if our media is not independent, if our media is not fearless, then truly we are lost.

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

Pre/Post-production: Jaisal Noor

Transcript

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

Jaisal Noor:

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

Nikki Morse:

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

Zackary Berger:

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

Jaisal Noor:

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

Nikki Morse:

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

Jaisal Noor:

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

Nikki Morse:

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

Jaisal Noor:

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

Son of Nun [singing]:

From the IDF for divest.

Divest.

Divest.

Divest.

Divest and let’s lay apartheid to rest.

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.

The fingerprints of antebellum slavery can be found all over the modern prison system, from who is incarcerated to the methods used behind bars to repress prisoners. Like its antecedent system, mass incarceration also fulfills the function of boosting corporate profits to the tune of $80 billion a year. Bianca Tylek, Executive Director of Worth Rises, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss her organization’s efforts to combat prison profiteering across the country, and expose the corporations plundering incarcerated people and their communities to line the pockets of their shareholders.

Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

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

Mansa Musa:

In the heart of downtown Baltimore lies the Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center, commonly called Diagnostic, which is a place where people convicted of a crime go to be classified to a particular prison based on their security level.

December the 5th, 2019, I was released from Reception Diagnostic Classification Center after serving 48 years. I was given $50, no identification, and no way of knowing how to get home. I’m not from Baltimore, I’m from Washington, D.C, and I heard my family member called me. I realized then that I had a way home. This is the state that most people are released from the Maryland system, and prison in general. No source of income, no identification, and no place to stay. So I had a few items, so I had to go get my stuff from my apartment. So they let everybody else look… Everybody came out the back, but they let them go “pew, pew, pew.” So most of them dudes wasn’t long term, they was familiar with the layout, right? Me, I know… I’m familiar with Green Mountain Madison, right? Me and another dude stand down here on the corner. I’m like, “Man…”, because I ain’t know my people. I ain’t know my people here was going to be, I ain’t know if they had got… Because they wouldn’t let me make no collect calls. Right? So every time, and I had money.

Speaker 2:

You’ve been released, and they…

Mansa Musa:

I had money on the books. I’m serious. They wouldn’t even let you make the call. So I kept on dialing, and it would go to a certain point, then it cut off, but my sister say, “Look, come on. Something going on. Let’s go down there.” This is what this show is about. This show is about giving a voice to the voiceless.

As we venture into the segments and the stories that we’ll be telling, we want people to take away from these stories, the human side of these stories. More than anything else, this is not about politics. This is about humanity. We’re trying to address the concerns of people, their families, their friends, and their loved ones that’s affected by the prison industrial complex, be it labor, be it medical, be it the food, be it being released with all identification and just a minimal amount of money to get home, and you don’t even live in the city that they released you from. Rattling the Bars will be covering a multitude of subject matters and a multitude of issues, and we ask that you stay tuned and tune in.

Welcome to this episode of Rattling the Bars. Recently, I had an opportunity to talk to Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises. Worth Rises is an organization whose mission is to complete abolishment of the prison industrial complex as it now exists, they have a strategy where they identify major corporations that are investing in or exploiting labor out of the prison industrial complex. You’ll be astonished at how many corporations have their tentacles in the prison industrial complex and the amount of money they’re sucking out of it in astronomical numbers, but first, we’ll go to this interview I had with Lonnell Sligh, who was on one of our previous episodes to talk about the impact the prison industrial complex is having on the communities at large.

We’re in East Baltimore at Latrobe Projects talking about how, in the shadow of the Maryland Penitentiary and Diagnostic, the housing projects are affected by the existence of these prisons. Many women walk out of their houses in Latrobe into the Maryland prison system, and why? Because of the devastation of the social conditions that exist in this particular community.

Now, my interview with Lonnell Sligh.

When I first got out, I never thought I’d be out and not be in the van. These vans right here, this is all our modes of transportation, three-piece shackle, and that’s how we’re being transported.

Lonnell Sligh:

What we said about the gloom and doom, one of the first things that I noticed when I got to MRDC was the projects and the kids playing outside of their area. Looking out and seeing the kids, and they looking up at this place. So I’m making a connection of that pipeline, because this all they see.

Mansa Musa:

Then when… That’s what he’s seen. What I seen when I came here, this building wasn’t right here. This was a parking lot. This building wasn’t right here. This was a lot. So the kids had a clean shot to the Maryland Penitentiary. So every kid that lived in these projects right here, this is what they seen. They see barbed wire on the Maryland Penitentiary. Then they seen another big building come up, there’s another prison. Then they seen this is a prison, and outside their front door, what they see when they come out their house is barbed wire and a wall.

Lonnell Sligh:

So it might be ill concealed to us, but for them and their mindset, this was a perfect, “Oh man, we got our clients and our…”, what’d you call it when you check in the hotel? Our patrons, you know what I mean, right here, because they got their industry, they got their pipeline, they got everything that they designed this to be.

Mansa Musa:

As you can see from my conversation with Lonnell Sligh, the prison industrial complex has a devastating impact on everyone. The men and women that’s in prison, the communities that they come from, the infrastructure they build on, the entire system has devastating consequences that should be recognized and addressed.

Some communities that they’re building, it’s the major source of their industry, like in Attica and Rikers, Hagerstown, Maryland, Louisiana, but some communities that they’re building, they’re building it for one reason only. To occupy the psyche of the community. So people walk out of their houses every day, this is all they see, and ultimately they find themselves in these spaces, but now you are going to see who’s behind this, the corporations that’s responsible for this exploitation.

I have the list right here. The Prison Industrial Corporation Database put out by Worth Rises. Super Ammo, Visa Outdoors, Warburg Pincus, 3M, T-Mobile, Tyson Foods, SS Corporation, Advanced Technology Groups, major corporations that are using prison labor to exploit it, profit, and profit alone, with no regard to human life.

Now my conversation with Bianca Tylek.

Yeah, we’re talking to Bianca Tylek from Worth Rises. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Bianca, and how you got in this space.

Bianca Tylek:

Sure. Thank you so much again, Mansa, for having me, and so great to meet you, and I’m glad that you’re home. My name is Bianca Tylek, as you noted. I am based in the New York area, and I’m the executive director and founder of Worth Rises. We are a non-profit criminal justice advocacy organization that works nationally to end the exploitation of people who are incarcerated and their loved ones and dismantle the prison industry.

I came to this where I founded the organization, it’s seven and a half years ago now, and we’ve been doing a tremendous amount of work all over the country towards our mission, and I come to this work through a few different sort of paths. I think most recently, I’m an attorney. Before that, I was on Wall Street, and so I actually worked in the investment banking and corporate sector, and then I think previously, what really makes me passionate about this issue is that I was myself an adjudicated youth and had others in my life who had experienced incarceration and were touched by this system, and all of those sorts of experiences collectively have brought me to this point.

Mansa Musa:

Worth Rises is dedicated to dismantling the prison industrial complex, it’s an abolition group, and as I listened to some of the things that you talked about, I thought about the war in Vietnam when the North first became known for their ferocious fighting where they had what they call a Tet offense, and the Tet offense was like when they had their initial salvo of repelling or resisting the United States and South Vietnam, and I thought when I heard some of the ways you was attacking this industry, that came to mind how systematic your group is in terms of dismantling, as you say, dismantling this group.

Bianca Tylek:

Yeah, I appreciate that so much. So I would say we have a three part strategy that we deploy at the organization, and it is narrative policy and corporate, and so each one of those tentacles is sort of a part of how we approach the industry, and specifically not so much guilting it as much as demanding and forcing it and pressuring it into better getting out or not exploiting our people in the same way, and so just to expand a little bit on each, our narrative work is really designed to help educate the populace, the American people and beyond on the harms that the prison industry is committing.

I think in particular, we know that the prison industry is an $80 billion industry, more than that these days, and a lot of people just simply do not know and are not familiar with it. Folks who have done time, like yourself, are familiar with, for example, the cost of phone calls in prison, but a lot of people walking the streets are not. They don’t know that phone calls are so expensive, they don’t know the cost of commissary, they don’t know that people pay medical co-pays, they don’t know that people are making pennies, if anything, an hour for work, and I think often, when we talk about these things, people are pretty surprised, because all of the modern media has people convinced that you go to prison, you get everything you need, and it’s some kind of luxurious, pushy place to be.

So a lot of our role is to simply… Through our narrative work, what we’re trying to do is get people to understand the reality of prisons and jails, both what the experiences are of people there, the exploitation that happens, and then importantly, at the hands of who, and that’s the industry, and so we do everything from published research to storytelling and beyond to help people really understand what the prison industry is.

So that’s sort of the narrative work, and that really builds the foundation, because we need informed people in order to be able to cultivate their outrage into action, and that leads us to our policy work. Our policy work is really designed to undermine the business model of the industry, and so we work to change legislation and regulations that would sort of hinder the ability of these companies to continue to exploit people in the exact same ways, and so for example, what that means is when it comes to prison telecom, where we know that one in three families with an incarcerated loved one is going into debt over the simple cost of calls and visits, and the large majority of those folks are women who are paying for these calls.

So what we have done in the last about five or so years is we have started a sort of movement to make communication free in prisons and jails. We passed the first piece of legislation in New York City in 2018 to do so, and since then, we’ve been able to pass legislation at the county, state and federal level to make communication entirely free, and today, over 300,000 people who are incarcerated have access to free phone calls, and so that changes the business model and revolutionizes the space entirely.

We also managed to pass game-changing regulations at the FCC to curb the exorbitant charging of phone calls in those places that still do charge for calls, and then finally, in our corporate side of the work, we sort of harness the work we do on the narrative side and the policy side to bring these corporations that are exploiting our communities to account, and really, in some cases, shut them down.

So we have companies that we’ve gone… We’ve had investors divest, we have removed their executives from the boards of cultural institutions like museums. We have blocked mergers and acquisitions. I mean, we’ve done all types of corporate strategies when it comes to those who are exploiting folks who are incarcerated and their loved ones, and we’re bringing some of them to their knees fully to bankruptcy, and so that is the kind of work that we do and really stress that it’s time that this system stopped responding to the profit motives of a few.

Mansa Musa:

Okay, let’s throw in this examination because in California, they was trying to get a proclamation passed about the 13th Amendment, because the genesis of all this has come out of the legalization of slavery under the 13th Amendment. I think that a lot of what we see in concerns of us versus the interest of them comes out of the fact that they can, under… Anyone duly convicted of a crime can be utilized for slave labor, and in California, they voted against this proclamation. How do you see… Is this a correlation between the 13th Amendment prison industrial complex, and if it is and you recognize that, how do y’all look at that? Because this industry is always fluid, it’s continuing to grow, it’s got multiple tentacles, and it’s all designed around profit. So when it comes to profit and capitalism, profit is profit is profit. That’s their philosophy. So however they get it, whoever they get it from, but in this case, they got a cash cow. Talk about that.

Bianca Tylek:

So we actually run a national campaign called End the Exception campaign that is specifically about the 13th Amendment. So we’re very close to this particular part of the fight. So if you visit EndTheException.com, you’ll see that entire campaign, which is, like I said, a campaign to pass a new constitutional amendment that would end the exception in the 13th Amendment.

While we run the national campaign at the federal level, which has over 90 national partners, a lot of states are taking on similar causes, including the state of California, and so California was one of several states in the last five or six years that brought a state constitutional amendment through a ballot initiative. Eight others have won in the last five years. So I do think despite the fact, and I have thoughts about California, despite the fact that California lost, other states like Alabama, Tennessee, Oregon, Vermont have all passed, and so I remained hopeful that it’s something that we can do both at the state level, but also at the federal level.

I think unfortunately, California lost, I think for various reasons, both the moment in time in California. There was also Proposition 36, which was expanding sort of tough on crime policies, and I think Prop 6 got a little bit mixed up into that. The language of Prop 6 was really not particularly helpful, and I think some of the local efforts also needed to coalesce and have those things happen, maybe, and hopefully it would’ve passed. It lost by a relatively small margin, albeit it did lose.

So I think your question, though, about how do these things relate, I mean, I guess what I’d say which degree with you, which is that I think that exploitation in prisons and jails is absolutely rooted in antebellum slavery, right? I think that what the Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment in large part did was certainly, obviously, free a lot of people, but it also transitioned slavery behind walls, where you can’t see it, and then our carceral system, because in the years that followed during reconstruction, the prison population went from being 99% white to being 99% black. Many of the practices of antebellum slavery were shifted into the carceral setting and became normalized in that setting and continue today.

I tell people all the time, when you think of solitary confinement, which, as you know, is often referred to as the hole or the box, those are terms that come from antebellum slavery. When enslaved people disobeyed, their enslavers, they would be put in what was called the hot box or a literal hole.

Mansa Musa:

A hole, exactly.

Bianca Tylek:

And held there in darkness, in solitary without food, separation affairs, things like that, and those are essentially punishments that we’ve just modernized, but don’t actually change the true function of them. They’re meant to break down people into obedience, and the same terminology is used and the same practices are used.

Consider another example. When people who are enslaved again would disobey their enslavers, they would often be separated from their families. Their children would be sold off or their spouse would be sent away. Well, similarly, when people who are incarcerated exhibit what the system would call disobedience, they can be denied visits and phone calls with their families, contact, right? All of these sort of penal sanctions that exist today were the same ones that existed then, just in a newer 2025 version, and so I’d say I think much of… And that’s not to obviously mention the most obvious aspect, which people in prison are forced to work and they’re forced to work often for essentially nothing, and then are expected to be grateful for crumbs when given 15 cents or 30 cents on the hour or something like that, and so I think it would be foolish for anyone to suggest that the system isn’t once that was adapted from antebellum slavery.

Mansa Musa:

As you can see from our conversation with Bianca Tylek, the extent to which the prison industrial complex and corporate America merge is beyond imagination.

She was once involved with the criminal justice system. This in and of itself helped her to focus on what she wanted to do. She worked on Wall Street, and while on Wall Street, she started seeing the impact that corporate America was having on the prison industrial complex, the profit margin. From this, she developed this strategy and this organization on how to attack it. As you can see, she’s very effective, as is her organization, in dismantling the prison industrial complex.

Recently, I had the pleasure and opportunity to speak to some young people at the University of Maryland College Park. The group is the Young Democrat Socialists of America. You’ll see from these clips how engaging these conversations were, and when they say we look to our future, remember, our movement started on the college campuses. The intelligent element of society started organizing. As they started organizing, they got the grassroots communities involved, and this is what we’re beginning to see once again.

Student:

So today we have a speaker event with Mansa Musa, AKA Charles Hopkins. He is a former Black Panther, political prisoner. He’s done a lot of activism after re-entering society. He spent nearly five decades in prison, and that kind of radicalized him in his experience, and you can learn a lot more about him today during this meeting.

Mansa Musa:

We’re about completely abolishing the prison system. What would that look like? We was having this conversation. What did that look like? You’re going to open the doors up and let everybody out? I’ve been in prison for their year. It’s some people that I’ve been around in prison. If I see him on the street today or tomorrow, I might go call the police on it, because I know that’s how their thinking is, but at the same token, in a civil society, we have an obligation to help people, and that’s what we should be doing.

People have been traumatized, and trauma becoming vulgar, everybody like, “Oh, trauma experience.” So trauma becoming vulgar, people have been traumatized and have not been treated for their trauma. So they dial down on it, and that become the norm. So we need to be in a society where we’re healing people, and that’s what I would say when it comes to the abolition. Yeah, we should abolish prisons as they exist now. They’re cruel, they’re.

You got the guards in Rikers Island talking about protesting and walk out, wild cat strike, because they saying that the elimination of solitary confinement is a threat to them. How is it a threat to you that you put me in a cell for three years on end, bringing my meal to me, and say that if you eliminate this right here, me as a worker is going to be threatened by that not existing? How is that? That don’t even make sense, but this is the attitude that you have when it comes to the prison industrial complex.

The prison industrial complex is very profitable. The prison industrial complex, it became like an industry in and of itself. Every aspect of it has been privatized. The telephone’s been privatized, the medical has been privatized, the clothing’s been privatized. So you got a private entity saying, “I’m going to make all the clothes for prisons.” You got another private entity saying, “I want the telephone contract for all the prisons.” You got another company saying, “I want to be responsible for making the bids, the metal,” and all that. Which leads me to Maryland Correction Enterprise.

Maryland Correction Enterprise is one of the entities that does this. There’s a private corporation that has preferential bidding rights on anything that’s being done in Maryland. I’m not going to say these chairs, but I’m going to say any of them tags is on your car, that’s Maryland, it’s Maryland Enterprise. I press tags. So I know that to be a fact. A lot of the desks in your classroom come from Maryland Correction Enterprise. So what they giving us? They gave us 90 cents a day, and you get a bonus. Now, you get the bonus based on how much you produce. So everybody… Now you trying to get, “Okay, I’m trying to get $90 a month. I just started.” So somebody’s been there for a while, might be getting $2 a day and some. We pressing tags till your elbows is on fire, because you’re trying to make as much money as you possibly can, you’re trying to produce as many tags as you possibly can to make money, but they’re getting millions of dollars from the labor.

Student:

In your previous podcast episode, you interviewed the state senator, and he mentioned the 13th amendment and the connection between prison labor and slavery. So what do you think are some of the connections between the prison abolition movement and the historical movement for the abolition of slavery?

Mansa Musa:

Right now, the 13th Amendment says that slavery is illegal except for involuntary servitude if you’re duly convicted of a crime. So if you’re duly convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave, and the difference between that and the abolition movement back in the historical was the justification. The justification for it now is you’ve been convicted of a crime. Back then, I just kidnapped and brought you here and made you work. So the disconnect was, this is a human, you’re taking people and turn them into chattel slaves, versus, “Oh, the reason why I can work you from sunup to sundown, you committed a crime,” but the reality is you put that in there so that you could have free labor. All that is is a Jim Crow law, black code. It’s the same. It’s the same in and of itself. It’s not no different.

You work me in a system… In some states, they don’t even pay you at all. South Carolina, they don’t even pay you, but they work you, and Louisiana, they still walk… They got police, they got the guards on horses with shotguns, and they out there in the fields.

In some places, in North Carolina and Alabama, they work you in some of the most inhumane conditions, like freezers. Women and men. Put you to work in a meat plant in the freezer and don’t give you the proper gear to be warm enough to do the work, and then if you complain, because they use coercion, say, “Okay, you don’t want to work? We’re going to take the job from you, transfer you to a prison, where now you’re going to have to fight your way out.” You are going to literally have to go in there and get a knife and defend yourself. So this is your choice. Go ahead and work in these inhumane conditions, or say no and go somewhere and be sent back to a maximum security prison where you have to fight your way out.

So now it’s no different. Only difference is it’s been legislated, it’s been legalized under the 13th Amendment, and in response to abolition, so we’ve been trying to change the 13th amendment. We had an attempt in California where they put a bill out to try to get it reversed, and the state went against it. The state was opposed to it. Why would I want to stop having free labor? The firefighters in California, they do the same work that the firefighters right beside them… They do the same work, the same identical work. They’re fighting fire, their lives in danger, they getting 90 cents a day, maybe $90 a month. They don’t have no 401k, they don’t have no retirement plan, and they’re being treated like everybody else. “Oh, go out there and fight the fire.”

So yeah, in terms of abolition, the abolition movement is to try to change the narrative and get the 13th Amendment taken off out of the state constitution, because a lot of states, they adopted it. They adopted it in their own state constitution, a version of the 13th Amendment, that says that except if you’ve been duly convicted for a crime, you can be treated as a slave. If you’ve been convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave. That’s basically the bottom line of it. That’s our reality.

So as we move forward, my message to y’all is don’t settle for mediocrity. Don’t settle for nothing less. Whatever you thinking that you think should be done, do it. If you think that, but more importantly, in doing it, make sure it’s having an impact.

There you have it. Rattling the Bars. As you can see from these conversations, the seriousness that corporations have on the prison industrial complex, how they’re exploiting prison labor with impunity. We’ve seen this from the conversation we had with Bianca Tylek, who talked about her involvement with the criminal justice system, but more importantly, how she worked on Wall Street, how she developed this strategy of dismantling the prison industrial complex by going straight to the heart of the matter, corporate America. Her strategy, the organization’s strategy is to dismantle it one corporation at a time.

We’ve also seen it from our conversation with Lonnell Sligh, as we talked about the impact that these corporations have on the community, how most communities live in the shadow of major prisons, like in East Baltimore, the troll projects, where kids come out every day and see these buildings and ask their parents, “What is that?”, and their parents say, “Oh, that’s where you going to go if you keep doing what you’re doing,” or, “That’s where your uncle’s at,” or, “You don’t want to go there.” At any rate, it has no positive value to their psyche, but more importantly, we’ve seen how the youth are taking the stand to change and find this place in the struggle.

The exception clause and exception movement to abolish the 13th Amendment is constant, and on the rise. We have suffered some major setbacks, we’re trying to get legislation passed, but the fact that we have a consensus on, “This has to go,” because this is the reason why we find ourselves in this situation, where corporations have unlimited access to free prison labor with impunity. We ask that you give us your feedback on these episodes. More importantly, we ask that you tell us what you think. Do you think the exception clause should be passed? Do you think they should abolish the 13th Amendment, or do you think that corporations should be able to profit off of free prison labor? Do you think that communities should not be overshadowed by prisons? That our children should have the right to be in an environment that’s holistic? Or do you think that our youth that’s taking a stand against corporate America, fascism and imperialism should be given coverage? That institutions of higher learning should be held accountable for who they invest in? Tell us what you think. We look forward to hearing from you.

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.

The oil boom in Alberta, Canada has brought Big Oil in confrontation with First Nations for decades. This year, a breakthrough struggle occurred as the Woodland Cree First Nation established a blockade to stop construction of new oil wells by Obsidian Energy. Demanding respect for their treaty rights and a more equitable deal, the struggle of the Woodland Cree united Treaty 8 First Nations and local non-Indigenous industry owners against Obsidian. Brandi Morin reports from Treaty 8 territory in this exclusive documentary from The Real News and Ricochet Media.

Pre-Production: Brandi Morin, Geordie Day, Maximillian Alvarez, Ethan Cox
Videographer: Geordie Day
Video Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

Irina Ceric:  WoodLand Cree First Nation Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom is seen taking the injunction and putting it in a nearby fire pit

Brandi Morin:  Throughout the month of May. In a remote region of Northern Alberta, Canada, a standoff took place between a First Nation and an energy company. Sounds typical, right? No, this was more complicated. For starters, an oil and gas company had requested an emergency court hearing to seek the arrest of a Cree chief opposing a drilling project on Indigenous land.

Irina Ceric:  It’s over?

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  It’s over. There was no intent on their part to negotiate.

Brandi Morin:  I’ve covered many confrontations between resource companies and First Nations, but I could tell this one was different as soon as I set foot in Woodland Cree territory,

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  We believe in sharing prosperity. First Nations people are very generous. I think we’re born that way. If we see somebody hungry, we feed them. If we see somebody cold, we help them. That’s just the way we’re brought up.

Brandi Morin:  This pro-industry First Nation and their blockade were supported by many local, non-Indigenous industry owners and workers. They joined the Woodland Cree in asking Obsidian Energy to hire local, mitigate environmental impacts, and share profits with the First Nation. But Obsidian’s confrontational American CEO seemed to think he could bulldoze through local opposition.

Stephen, do you have any time for a brief [crosstalk] interview.

Stephen Loukas:  [Crosstalk] Rangers in six.

Brandi Morin:  After failed attempts to negotiate with the company, the Woodland Cree First Nation erected a blockade in the form of a traditional camp in early May to halt Obsidian Energy’s access to their traditional territory near Peace River. Soon after, Obsidian was granted a civil injunction against them.

It was a conflict that threatened to have far-reaching implications for how resource companies interact with First Nations across Canada. In June, Obsidian reached an agreement with the First Nation to end their blockade.

Although the terms aren’t public, it’s clear Obsidian were forced to walk back from their earlier, more confrontational statements. Could this be the start of a new kind of resource fight, one that pits Indigenous and non-Indigenous locals against corporate investors? This is the story of how one small First Nation partnered with local industry and forced a multinational to listen to them.

Tensions escalated on May 13 when Woodland Cree leadership, including Isaac Laboucan-Avirom, stormed out of a meeting with Obsidian CEO, Stephen Loukas, who jetted in from Calgary. Loukas is American, but the company is based in Calgary. Woodland Cree members suspect he isn’t well-informed on Indigenous rights and the legal duty to consult.

Stephen Loukas:  We’re in the early innings of executing on that plan. I’m very happy with the start that we have to date. We’ve outlined production that was approximately 36,000 BOEs a day.

Brandi Morin:  Some Woodland Cree told me Loukas comes off as arrogant and disinterested in good-faith negotiations. He sure wasn’t interested when I asked for comment

Stephen Loukas:  Rangers in six.

Brandi Morin:  What the heck does that mean?

Speaker 1:  Sports reference.

Brandi Morin:  And my repeated requests for interviews with Obsidian reps have been ignored.

Speaker 2:  I need to transfer your call, but that is the number that I have for the media department… One second. And did you already left a voicemail [crosstalk] —

Brandi Morin:  Yes.

Speaker 2:  — Requesting a call back?

Brandi Morin:  Yes, I have.

This conflict’s been brewing for a while, as far back as two years ago when the Woodland Cree learned the company was planning to drill 200 more wells here. They don’t seem to care that this is unceded territory. First Nations signed treaties with the Canadian government when Canada was established. The treaties stipulated First Nations’ access to traditional territories and rights to maintain their livelihoods. Industries like Obsidian are supposed to consult with First Nation treaty holders about any developments affecting their territories, but that’s not what Obsidian is doing.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Well, this, I believe, is definitely years in the making. This didn’t happen overnight. We acted overnight — Reacted overnight, but this has been definitely an accumulation of many different circumstances.

The campus here is due to an awkward relationship, manipulation, lack of integrity. This company is basically saying, Hey, we don’t gotta work with the locals. But I’m saying, hey, you should work with the locals. Obviously you don’t have to, but you should. It’s the right thing to do. In this Peace area, it hasn’t been as economically hot as other regions in this province.

Brandi Morin:  Obsidian has filed an application that has yet to be heard by the court, an emergency application to specifically have Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom arrested and jailed until the blockade is taken down, and that’s a pretty bold move.

Irina Ceric:  The injunction was not surprising. Research that I participated in the Yellowhead Institute published a couple of years ago makes it very clear that resource extraction companies such as Obsidian have a very strong record of success in obtaining injunctions against First Nations and Indigenous groups, even on traditional territories, even on treaty territories, and this is Treaty 8 territory.

Brandi Morin:  I reached out to Irina Ceric, an expert on injunctions granted against activists and Indigenous groups.

Irina Ceric:  The way that the courts issue injunctions mean that issues such as Indigenous legal orders or the existence of Aboriginal or treaty rights under a treaty or under the Constitution are just not taken into consideration. When these sorts of court orders are obtained by corporations, the corporations can just say, we have this licensed project, regardless of how well that licensing process was carried out, this group of people is impeding our ability to carry out this project and we’re going to be irreparably harmed, meaning that we’re going to lose so much money and time that that cannot be addressed later on. And then the courts tend to take those arguments very seriously, and injunctions of this sort of situation are not unusual at all.

What is really unusual, and you mentioned this yourself, is this attempt by Obsidian to go back to court and attempt to have a second procedure issue, this arrest warrant. And that’s unnecessary on a legal level. Once a court order is issued, there will be an enforcement order within that injunction that says, in this case it’s the RCMP, you can enforce this order; that includes taking people into custody if necessary. So the police have that power. It’s not like the police can’t arrest the chief if they choose to. So what I’m seeing here is an attempt to sidestep the discretion of the police and attempt to have a court issue an unnecessary, and, I think, highly unusual, arrest warrant.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Obviously, that’s outrageous. I think the courts also understand the repercussions that that would have and the precedents that would have, and I don’t think that is a responsible way forward, a respectful way forward. And that’s been the issue all along. I think to move forward, whether it’s with industry, government, even family, you have to have integrity, understanding, respect in response. You know what I mean? There’s principles, and even corporate principles, that have to be met. We’re not just all about the money, but we are, in a way, saying, hey, if you do want to make money, we want to make money for our people as well.

Brandi Morin:  At the heart of this conflict, industry and government circumventing treaty rights, and First Nations have had enough.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  I definitely don’t think there’s a good understanding of traditional rights, treaty rights, land acknowledgement, et cetera. It’s been very intrusive what Obsidian is doing to us, but it’s also showcasing to the world there has to be better ways to get work done, so to speak. I do understand that there is a need for resources to be in the global market. I think it actually might make the world a better place. I think Canada needs to do a better job at getting investors into this country — But working with the First Nations in partnership to get that done. We take responsibility for our destiny. We have our own rights to our own self-determination, and that is definitely different than what others might assume for us.

Janice Makokis:  When our ancestors and the people in Treaty 8 entered into treaty more than a hundred years ago, there was an understanding that the parties were both sovereign entities with unextinguished title to the lands. When they entered into that international treaty agreement, it was two sovereigns. And the Indigenous side of that party understood that they were not giving up anything, including the land and resources of the lands that they would’ve referred to as their territory.

Brandi Morin:  I reached out to Janice Makokis, an Indigenous scholar and member of Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, to understand more about how treaty rights play into this.

Janice Makokis:  And so what happened after that was almost immediately after treaty making happened, the Indian Act was set in play by the federal government, which corral our people onto these small parcels of land referred to now as reserves, but we would be able to have full access to land outside of the reserves for hunting, fishing, trapping, and other things to maintain our livelihood and way of life. And so that territory is inclusive of everything within the treaty territory, so everything within Treaty 8, as the Woodland Cree are under.

So there’s a significant misunderstanding between our people’s understanding of the treaty and the crown, government’s, and industry’s understanding of what that is. And I think that’s where we see these conflicts happening on the land, because we are still exercising our inherent and treaty rights as we understood them when our ancestors made that treaty. And the crown and industry have a completely different understanding, and so that’s why we have these conflicts that exist on the land.

Brandi Morin:  Don’t you think that those different understandings that the government and industry have is pretty convenient for them?

Janice Makokis:  Oh yeah, absolutely. Because it benefits them to continue to oppress and use colonial laws and legal instruments such as injunctions or through the courts to advance their interests in the name of the public good or the good of the company and for economic development reasons, whatever that is, or whatever arguments that they’re making to advance the interest of their company.

Brandi Morin:  But they don’t look at the public interest in regards to the interests of First Nations, whose sovereign territory that is and whose livelihoods are connected to that.

Janice Makokis:  That’s right, exactly. They don’t consider First Nations as a part of the interest when they’re considering the interests, whose rights, lives, and land that they’re impacting when they’re out there doing what they’re doing on the land to make profit from resource extraction taking place.

Brandi Morin:  The Peace oil sands is referred to as the mini Fort McMurray of Alberta. Fort McMurray is the extractive economic engine of Canada, pumping out billions of dollars in annual revenue. The Peace oil sands are also rich in untapped oil reserves. There’s a ton of money to be gleaned out of here, but development goes hand in hand with the destruction of the land.

Frank Whitehead:  And I said, hey, this is the most environmental person you’ll ever see. Because I was born in [inaudible]. I knew where everything is, where the moose licks are, things like that. A lot of times they bury all that when they’re working on oil. They don’t look at what we look at. We look at the whole territory. We look at where you need to put your lease. We have to be doing that, not you guys. A lot of times they don’t let us do that, and they go ahead and do it without consulting us. Consulting us is the very thing that they should be doing. They should not do that, but a lot of times they’ll just do it. Go ahead and do everything.

But my heart cries for Mother Nature a lot of times too, because Mother Nature is the one that gives us this land, that gives us everything that we should respect. We should have no garbage. We should have everything to be cleaned up after. And sometimes if you go, they’re not cleaned up. When they plug a hole and the water comes out with cement. Cement just shoots out, now you have cement all over. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. You have to clean this place. Because to me, sometimes Mother Nature cries so much. They drain so much.

But that’s what I was taught. A lot of times you have to listen to that. You have to listen to the birds, you listen to the animals. You listen to the little creatures. You listen to the little bugs. Because the bugs, if it wasn’t for the bugs, the birds wouldn’t be here.

Brandi Morin:  So Frank, have you been coming and has you and your family been utilizing these specific areas ever since you were [crosstalk].

Frank Whitehead:  Yes. Yes.

Brandi Morin:  And so have you seen big changes?

Frank Whitehead:  Oh, man. Like I said, I’ve been here, and we flew this 10 years ago when my brother Joe was the chief there. We flew it and then we see the changes from the helicopter, how it changed. We used to hunt all the routes to walk, instead of now you can just drive anywhere. But what keeps us from that is they’re putting the gates now. This is our hunting grounds, and you put a gate and you put all this. This is where we live.

But I even see animals going away too, because [they’re] scared of everything that’s happening, and you got your trucks all over the place, and we have to watch it.

Brandi Morin:  Industrial activity is transforming the landscape, but there’s another big problem: earthquakes. The Alberta energy regulator found Obsidian Energy responsible for causing a series of quakes here in 2022 after it injected industrial wastewater deep into the ground.

Reporter 1:  Late November, an earthquake shook houses and had people stop in their tracks.

Speaker 3:  [Clip of man playing piano when earthquake starts] Oh my.

Reporter 1:  It happened in the Peace River region and could be felt more than 600 kilometers away.

Ryan Shultz:  But what makes this different or noteworthy is how big this earthquake was.

Reporter 1:  The 5.6 magnitude earthquake is the largest the province has seen. At first, it was thought to be natural, but a study done by Stanford University is suggesting wastewater disposal from oil production triggered it.

Ryan Shultz:  We are confident that this event was a manmade or induced earthquake is what they’re called.

Reporter 1:  This research shows the first link between such a large earthquake and human activities this far away from a mountain range. Researchers say they’ve seen other quakes caused by fracking, but they believe this one is different: it happened after wastewater was injected into a well to extract oil.

Ryan Shultz:  The injection of CO2 also has the potential to cause earthquakes. So this is something to, essentially, start thinking about, and maybe even start monitoring.

Brandi Morin:  One of the quakes was the largest ever recorded in Alberta’s history: it scored a local magnitude of 5.6 — Yet, Obsidian denies it had anything to do with them and is appealing the AER ruling.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  We did make a request for incremental data that really anchored the AER’s decision as well as the characterization that the seismic activity in the Peace River area was solely attributable to Obsidian’s operations. We didn’t agree with that assertion then, we don’t agree with it now. We are in the process of evaluating that data. We will have more to say in that regard in the future.

Brandi Morin:  The memory of this earthquake is seared into the minds of all here, including Chief Isaac.

Can you talk about the earthquakes?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Oh my goodness. I remember that day I had elders calling me. I just dropped my kids off for school. My daughters were calling me from Peace River. I was taking off to a meeting. I believe I was close to the area, ready to turn around. But definitely unexpected and felt by everybody, not just me and my family, but the farmers nearby, industry. I believe it might’ve been one of the biggest in Alberta to date.

Brandi Morin:  So do you feel it, or…?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  We felt it. It was shaking houses, absolutely. I think there were four or five tremors or something that happened. Like I said, I was on the road and I was definitely scared for my children. Obviously, when you hear about earthquakes, because they’re not normal in our area, we wonder what the repercussions would be. Will it rupture pipes? Will it rupture foundational stuff? Will it hurt old homes? We don’t know. Will it contaminate groundwaters?

Brandi Morin:  Will there be more?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Will there be more? That’s one of the biggest questions as well. Will there be more? Are they man-made? Are they industry made?

Brandi Morin:  Chief Isaac, like most Woodland Cree, grew up hunting, fishing, and trapping. He still gets out on the land as often as he can.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  So then my brother comes looking in for me three or four nights after, tries pulling me out, he gets stuck. Then he had to walk out with my little brother to the end of the road. And that must have been… Yeah, it was definitely a few miles.

Brandi Morin:  So then how’d you guys get out then?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Three or four four-by-fours.

Brandi Morin:  [Laughs] Chains?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  And everything. Yeah.

Brandi Morin:  Just moments after sharing stories of being on the land with me, the chief discovered access to his beloved hunting territory was blocked. Obsidian erected a gate to another industry road not far from the Woodland Cree blockade.

Oh, they have a gate up.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Holy fuck.

Brandi Morin:  Notice… Oh, was that there before?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  No.

Brandi Morin:  This road is closed… Blah, blah, blah. Oh, here’s the security lady. I wonder what she’s going to say to you.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  When was the gate put up?

Security Guard:  Yesterday.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Oh, so they did put it up, hey? I’m the chief. Just wondering what’s going on with this gate. Don’t worry. I’m not going to make a big deal. I just wanted to see if the gate was put up.

Security Guard:  [Inaudible].

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Oh wow.

Security Guard:  I just don’t like being on video.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Yeah, neither do I [laughs]. Man. Well, this is very, very unfortunate. How many people are up this way?

Security Guard:  I have no idea.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Son of a gun. All right. Yep.

Security Guard:  Well, I’m not letting no one unless they work for… [Inaudible].

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Which company? Obsidian?

Security Guard:  [Nods][inaudible].

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Yeah. All right. Is there any other construction going on over there? Just tankers.

Security Guard:  [Shakes head][inaudible].

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Alright, well, I’ll go let them know that they did put up the gate. I thought they were going to wait for us.

Like, holy fuck. The direct attack on treaty from stopping the people who live off of this land from entering their own lands. How it stops us from hunting, gathering, trapping. We were just talking about stories of how we used to just camp forever. And then now we’re being locked out of our traditional territories and places where we found medicine. We were finding medicine over there. They harvested moose over there. We have that and they’ve put a lock on it. Something has to change.

Brandi Morin:  Back at the blockade, Woodland Cree members are set up along the Walrus industry access road, about 40 minutes east of Peace River. It’s a key access road utilized by Obsidian, which is now shut down. The company is losing around $450,000 Canadian dollars a day here.

And the Woodland Cree are not alone. See, I’ve covered a lot of Indigenous defense frontlines. Other than a few non-Native allies that show up sometimes, I’ve never witnessed non-Indigenous industry owners supporting First Nations like they are here. Some have parked their semi-trucks and heavy equipment at the blockade, despite risking being blacklisted by Obsidian.

Dustin Lambert:  My name’s Dustin Lambert. I’m from Peace River, Alberta, area.

Brandi Morin:  And what do you do?

Dustin Lambert:  I work in construction.

Brandi Morin:  Awesome. What do you think about what’s going on here with the camp?

Dustin Lambert:  I think it’s a good thing for the community to stand against the oil companies when they try to take from the communities and not work with the community. People like Obsidian has work, but they want to bring in a large outside contractor. And, as I understand, in Canada, we’re free to work in all areas. However, when you have local contractors, they should have the first opportunity. And when Obsidian goes and tries to bring the larger contractors in that have the potential to take all the work from the companies in the region.

And then with Obsidian trying to go through and not work with the community being like the Woodland Band, or Lubicon, or any of the bands, because we work through them and directly with them. And I’ve worked with these guys on and off pretty much my whole life. Went to school with them and then worked with them.

Brandi Morin:  Meanwhile, Woodland Cree members are well equipped for the long haul if need be.

Frank Whitehead:  Right here.

Brandi Morin:  Blended right in.

Frank Whitehead:  Right here. The snare’s right here.

Brandi Morin:  Wow.

Frank Whitehead:  And that’s how you put it.

And this is where they’re working. And look at what’s happening. They’re taking all our rabbits, everything, animals.

Brandi Morin:  The Woodland Cree have utilized these lands for millennia, but they were forced out of their traditional territories decades ago when oil was discovered here. The band was made to settle on allotted reserve sites about an hour away from here. But they’ve never abandoned their original homelands.

Frank Whitehead:  Well, it’s very important because of our livelihood, our hunting grounds, what’s happening with the fires too, and that’s not helping us. But with the oil companies too now coming in, that’s not helping us no more. It’s just destroying our livelihood right now.

Brandi Morin:  Frank’s been an elected Woodland Cree Nation counselor for over 16 years. He’s seen industry come and go, governments make promises and break them. Foreign companies are even more of a problem, he says.

Frank Whitehead:  I don’t think they know what we do here as First Nations people, especially when somebody else is not from this country. That’s not right because they don’t know. And we try talking to ’em, we tried teaching them, we tried everything. But still, a lot of people won’t understand how we live here. And they need to understand this. We’re from here. We were here, one of the first people that lived in this territory a long time ago. We went up and down these rivers. Every year we canoed down Peace River. So they don’t know what’s going on and they need to know, they need to listen to us too.

But people, you gotta understand that this is our livelihood. This is how we were born. This is how we were raised. This is what we eat. Everything we eat and the herbs and everything that the trees provide for us, the animals. If the animals are going, sometimes when we trap, we don’t… It’s my kids, their livelihood, and it’s gotta continue like this for generations and generations. We cannot stop this. This is how we were born. We have young guys that’s doing that now. This is the young guy that’s trapping, hunting, and he learned.

Brandi Morin:  Woodland Cree Counselor Joe Whitehead Jr. has been helping oversee the camp. Grand chief of the Kee Tas Kee Now Tribal Council and chief of the Woodland Cree, he’s pissed that Obsidian is sidestepping its duty to consult and work with the nation.

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  The trust factor for our First Nation is really low with industry because of Obsidian. Obsidian is to blame for everything that’s happening today, where the cops are staging over there to come in here and trying to remove people that are from the land and believe in the land. And we are teaching kids here today, and we’ll still keep doing that.

And we will be here forever. Obsidian might not be here for a long time, until they take the resources away from our land. We’re just asking for that fair, equal share of the resources that go out of here. No more of this construction and all that. We want to be part of the solution and part of the development. That’s all we’re saying. And I encourage First Nations people to stand up because this is our fight together. It’s just not Woodland Crees, it’s us all across this Turtle Island, all of Canada.

We always say we support each other, but let’s have action, any means necessary in terms of trying to educate Canada in terms of who First Nations people are and who we really are, and that’s from the land. And we have to protect it. Any means necessary.

There was a gate put up over here. In our treaty, it states that all gates shall be open in case of hunger. But what they did was they put up a gate and blocked our chief. And that’s wrong. And I’m mad today because of that. This is going to escalate if the government doesn’t step in.

And if Obsidian doesn’t come to the table, what does that say to other industries? They can start putting up gates where we hunt, trap, fish, and gather? That’s our treaty right. That’s nobody else’s right but our First Nations people.

Grand Chief Arthur Noskey:  We’re still in that role as the liaison team.

Speaker 4:  We’re speaking with you, we speak with the other side, for sure. We’re not picking a side. That’s why we need to be able to keep those lines of communication open. If you’re saying —

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  The people be here, they’re not welcome in our company. We can stay over there, take your photos and whatnot. So speak with the chief when he gets here.

Speaker 4:  Oh no, that’s OK. And like I said, we’re not here to pick sides. We’ve always been upfront with you in regards to that.

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  Well, all First Nations that have a stake in this, it’s just not Woodland Cree, it’s everybody. We live off this land. And I think industry and government need to be educated more in terms of when they come in and try to develop the resources around us. We will idle no more. We will do what we have to do as a nation to protect the rights, the treaty rights of our people that were signed in 1899.

And I believe that industry needs to wake up in terms of what they’re doing. You need to come to the table and not give us lies and lies after lies. You need to be honest.

Police Officer 1:  …Energy regulator’s going to want to inspect because it’s not been operational. So they might be here tomorrow too.

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  We’ll see, we’ll see about that.

Police Officer 1:  The energy regulator?

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  That’s unprecedented because [inaudible].

Brandi Morin:  You guys know if that helicopter that’s been circling, if that’s the industry guys?

Speaker 4:  Yeah.

Brandi Morin:  It is, eh? So they’re just trying to scope things out?

Speaker 4:  They gotta do their checks. Extra police that are going to be in the area just to ensure the safety and security of all involved.

Speaker 1:  So they’re not there to enforce the injunction?

Brandi Morin:  It’s a step up, obvious.

Speaker 4:  Well, we don’t have any information in regards to what’s going to happen in regards to the injunction. We’re [crosstalk] not privy to that information.

Brandi Morin:  — Resources for nothing.

Speaker 4:  We do have extra resources there.

Speaker 5:  But to ensure the safety of all people involved, that’s pretty much the one group. So the only other group was the police officers.

Speaker 4:  Well, we have to be prepared for anything that might happen. So if we didn’t have those police here and something were to happen, then it would be [crosstalk] how are you able to respond?

Speaker 5:  I’m not sure what would happen between them?

Speaker 4:  That’s what we don’t know either, right?

Speaker 5:  Exactly.

Speaker 4:  We never know. We’ve been to lots of these type of events. There’s people who decide that they want to hijack these type of events that people don’t necessarily think the way that everybody here or that you may think. As a result…

Brandi Morin:  Hello!

Police Officer 2:  Hi, how’s it going?

Brandi Morin:  Good, how are you?

Police Officer 2:  Living the dream. [Crosstalk] One day at a time.

Brandi Morin:  You guys are hiding out back here?

Police Officer 2:  You guys are not allowed in here, I’m sorry.

Brandi Morin:  You’re hiding out back here?

Police Officer 2:  No, we’re just here for fun.

Brandi Morin:  Is this C-IRG?

Police Officer 2:  Sorry?

Brandi Morin:  Is this C-IRG? Are you guys C-IRG?

Police Officer 2:  What’s that? Sorry, I don’t know —

Brandi Morin:  Community-Industry Response Group.

Police Officer 2:  No, no, no, no, no.

Brandi Morin:  OK. So obviously —

Police Officer 2:  I’m sorry, I don’t know all the acronyms [laughs].

Brandi Morin:  OK, so you’re staging, obviously, [crosstalk] because you’re hiding.

Police Officer 2:  Well, we tend to stay on the road, right. We need a place to park our vehicles. But you guys are technically not allowed in here because it’s closed.

Brandi Morin:  It’s closed.

Police Officer 2:  This place is closed

Brandi Morin:  By the police, or…?

Police Officer 2:  No, no, no, it’s just closed.

Brandi Morin:  Can you say what you’re doing?

Police Officer 2:  We’re just here working. That’s all we’re doing. There’s nothing to be worried about. If you have any questions, you guys were in touch with the DLTs?

Brandi Morin:  Yeah. OK.

Police Officer 2:  OK? You guys just can’t stay here.

Brandi Morin:  OK.

Police Officer 2:  OK? Alright. Thanks a lot, guys.

Irina Ceric:  There’s another way to address this, which is to look more at the politics and history of these sorts of struggles. This is not the only example of courts refusing to recognize Indigenous jurisdiction. This is not the only example of Canadian law facilitating the extraction of resources at the cost of the environment, the cost of workers, at the cost of, in this case, First Nations. So to me, this is not an unusual outcome of the foundation of Canadian law in both settler-colonialism and in the Canadian foundation in resource extraction as a national preoccupation.

Brandi Morin:  Well, you think that because it’s 2024, because we’ve had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, because we’re in so-called building nation-to-nation relationships, you think that things would be different by now.

Irina Ceric:  You would. You absolutely would.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Well, we want to see, obviously, respectful, responsible industry. Obviously we’re not getting respect here, and they’re not being responsible. Just what you asked me about them not hiring local, other people around us. We want to see stuff be sustainable. We do care about our environment. We do care about the lands, the waters. We do feel the encroachment of industry and the accumulative effects of not just industry, but also the environment. The wildfires. The droughts. We’re thankful for this rain. But it’s about finding that balance. We are educating our children now to become the operators, tradespeople, nurses, teachers, et cetera. We want to educate our peoples to adapt to modern society — But as well keep their traditional way of life.

Grand Chief Arthur Noskey:  It’s kind of absurd for Obsidian to start making those recommendations to the province and even to the courts, and even to try and enforce the RCMP to do something, as those that don’t know the treaty. The RCMP officers were presented at the treaty, a day of making treaty, and these were here for our protection against foreigners that would intrude in our way of life. Obsidian, you’re intruding without talking to the people, without doing a proper process because the government, you’re listening to the government more so than the leadership that is sitting at this table.

And I will say when it comes to jailing our people, our chiefs, I think you’ll see a lot of chiefs either in jail, and hopefully that the court systems or that the institutions can hold all of the Canadian First Nations people in jail. Because I think there is an uprising in the making, and I think at some point we need to start making those calls for that support.

Brandi Morin:  Just days after the failed May 13 meeting with Obsidian representatives, the chiefs of Treaty 8 traveled to gather in the same meeting room to support the Woodland Cree.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  I just want to say that Obsidian is changing the dynamics of industry within our backyard and others. For Woodland Cree, we are hoping that they remove the injunctions on myself and my people, that they remove the injunctions of our local joint ventures and their livelihoods.

Grand Chief Arthur Noskey:  And Supreme Court of Canada ruled that there must be consultation with landowners.

Brandi Morin:  Treaty 8 Grand Chief Arthur Noskey called on the province to step in.

Grand Chief Arthur Noskey:  Remove ACO Aboriginal Consultation Office, AER, Alberta Energy Regulator, and the Red Tape Ministry, because these agencies and ministries do not honor the Supreme Court ruling, the duty to consult. Premier Danielle Smith and cabinet, we call upon you to meet with Woodland Cree First Nation leadership and Treaty 8 chiefs to establish a table for revenue sharing talks with the province. It is important that the public and industry know that Alberta government’s First Nations consultation policy is their own policy. We are sovereign nations with our own consultation processes and laws.

Brandi Morin:  For decades, First Nations in Alberta have insisted the province pay up. Alberta makes billions in royalties earned from industry projects in First Nations territories. The province has largely ignored requests to share some of those benefits with Indigenous communities. The current situation could pressure Alberta’s government to change course.

Chief Sheldon Sunshine:  When we talk about the issue that my colleague here, Chief Ivan, and their community has dealt with Obsidian, we feel those impacts all across our territory. We deal with the same issues in our backyard. We’re here to support Chief Isaac and the rest of the Treaty 8 chiefs in solidarity in opposing this issue. It affects all of our First Nation people. And when you take a look at the resource development in our backyard, the government of Alberta has received over $30 billion, and the government of Canada is prospering as well — Yet, while our communities are suffering. This attack on Woodland community is an attack on all of our treaty rights.

Chief Dwayne Lovell Laboucan:  It’s pretty simple from our end: if you’re going to come and make a livelihood in our lands, we must too. That’s our message to oil and gas. You’re not going to come in here and start bullying us. We’re here to stay and we’re ready to fight. Hay-hay.

Brandi Morin:  Ultimately, this isn’t just about what’s happening in Woodland Cree territory. This is about a status quo that’s fundamentally untenable for Indigenous peoples. The status quo must change, says Chief Isaac.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Well just look at the GDP that comes out of our land from the forest sector, the oil and gas sector, even, for the longest time, billions, hundreds of millions come out of this land. Why are, as First Nations, we still administrate poverty? Obviously those comments that are made on greed, it’s people that don’t even understand the current situation and the reality of this country. We shouldn’t have to fight this hard for prosperity when we signed a treaty. A treaty is a nation-to-nation relationship.

And that people ask about our greed? Well, I think it’s actually the other way around. People don’t want to see us lift ourselves up. I’m not looking for a handout. I’m looking to just provide and to protect my people with our own ways and our own rights. We want to be part of the workforce. We want to develop megaprojects. We want to be owners of the resources.

And you’re darn right it is about money. My people shouldn’t be living in poverty. We deserve equalization payments. The chiefs that are around this table are the economic engine of this country, the economic engine of this country. Our resources supply the world with some of our trees, our oil and gas. And we could set a good example, a world-class example of doing things right. And we need that opportunity to do things right and that collaboration with industry, government, and communities — And in solidarity with our chiefs, our brothers and our sisters.

And I really want to commend them, the councilmen, the leadership, the elders, the youth. Our kids need a brighter future. Seven out of 10 of us are going to die sooner than the [rest of] Canada’s population. Seven out of 10 of our kids are in CFS issues. That’s because of poverty. So how is this greed? It’s actually the other way around, where a greedy American company wants to come dictate in our land? I don’t think so.

Grand Chief Arthur Noskey:  You’re talking about landowners that entered into a treaty with the imperial crown. How can there be anything higher than that in our lands? Where is that certificate of ownership, Canada? Where’s the certificate of ownership, province? So these are questions that still remain there. Right now they’re just brokering deals with industry at the expense of our lands, our resources, and just leaving their contaminants behind. They’re greedy for money, and it is obvious. Thank you very much.

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  I just want to make a quick comment in terms of why we’re here today in terms of what we’re doing. And it’s for our people. And I’d like to show you, this is what my daughter does every time I go home. I see her every four hours, and she takes this shirt and covers herself up. And the people need to know that we are fighting for our kids and their kids, for the future, so they don’t keep fighting. That’s one thing that people don’t understand. That we are passionate people. We are humble people, and we like to laugh, but at the same time, we have to protect this land, our treaty rights, for our future generation.

Brandi Morin:  Now you also said that if they were to come to arrest you, that you wouldn’t surrender.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Surrender. Of course not. I don’t think there’s a Cree word for surrender [laughs] or cede. No. I’m here to maintain the best interest of my community. And if I was, I know there’s a lot of support that I have out there. I think Evander Kane said it best: Sometimes you got to fuck around to find out [laughs].

Brandi Morin:  I’m Brandi Morin, reporting in the traditional territories of the Woodland Cree Nation for The Real News Network, IndigiNews, and Ricochet Media.

The shaky ceasefire in Gaza is entering the final days of its first phase, but the genocide of the Palestinian people has not been paused. On Feb. 25, Israeli tanks stormed Jenin, the heart of the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank, for the first time since the Second Intifada. From Donald Trump’s declarations that the US should “own” Gaza to promises to deport pro-Palestine student activists, the new administration’s intentions to accelerate the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and criminalize solidarity with Palestinians have been made clear. Abby Martin, independent journalist and host of Empire Files, joins The Real News to help analyze how war on Palestine is expanding and evolving.

Studio Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley

Transcript

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

Maximillian Alvarez:

Welcome to the Real News Network and welcome back to our weekly live stream Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Fear that Israel is preparing to unleash the same people destroying population, displacing civilization, erasing force that it unleashed on Gaza for 15 months, beginning just days after Israel and Hamas began Phase one of last month’s fragile ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli military has sent troops, bulldozers, drones, helicopters, and heavy battle tanks into the Northern West Bank, United Nations. Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez said on Monday that he was gravely concerned by the rising violence in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and other violations. Palestinian writer and journalist, Miriam Bardi told democracy now this week that what we are seeing in fact is a green light of annexation. What is happening right now, she said in the West Bank is defacto annexation of lands. This Israeli offensive, the so-called Operation Iron Wall, is one of the most intense military operations in the West Bank since the height of the second Infa Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation.

Just over two decades ago, Israel’s defense minister Israel Kaz, said this week that 40,000 Palestinians have been forced out of the refugee camps in Janine Tu and Hams. All activity by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in those areas has also been stopped. Now, Katz made it clear that this is not a short-term operation. In a written statement, Katz said, I instructed the IDF to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were cleared for the coming year, and to not allow residents to return and the terror to return and grow, we will not return to the reality that was in the past. He said, we will continue to clear refugee camps and other terror centers to dismantle the battalions and terror infrastructure of extreme Islam that was built, armed, funded, and supported by the Iranian evil axis he claimed in an attempt to establish an Eastern terror front. Now, I want you to keep those statements from Israel’s defense minister in your head as you watch this next clip. This is actually from an incredible documentary report that we filmed in the now empty Janine Refugee Camp in July of 20 23, 3 months before October 7th. The report was shot produced by shot and produced by Ross Domini, Nadia Per Do and Ahad Elbaz. Take a look.

Nadia Péridot:

The Real News Network spoke to Haniya Salameh whose son Farouk was killed by the Israeli army just days before he was due to be married.

Speaker 3:

Far

Nadia Péridot:

Like many of Janine’s residents is a refugee of the 1948 Zionist expulsion of people from across Palestine. Today, these depopulated villages either remain empty or have been raised to the ground to make way for Israel’s settlements. Palestinians are banned from returning to these

Speaker 3:

Homes

Maximillian Alvarez:

With these tanks and bulldozers rolling through the occupied West Bank right now with Israel launching new attacks in southern Syria this week with the ceasefire in Gaza, still very much in danger of collapsing before phase one of the deal is set to end on Saturday and with Donald Trump still joking that it would be best if the US took over Gaza. The bubble has officially burst on any pre inauguration hopes that people had that Trump’s presidency would somehow usher in peace in the Middle East and an end to the humanitarian horror of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from what remains of occupied historic Palestine and the United States’ support for it. Quite the opposite in fact. And not only that, but here in the so-called West the United States, Canada, Europe, we’re seeing a corresponding surge in state and institutional repression of free speech, the free press and the independent and corporate media sides speaking the truth about Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and our government’s complicity in it.

We are also seeing a surge in the criminalization of Palestine solidarity protests and attempts to classify solidarity with Palestine as support for terrorism. So listen, we need to get real about where we are right now, what we are facing, and how we can keep forging forward, fighting for what’s right and good and beautiful in times of great darkness and great danger, like the time we’re in now, fighting for peace in a world of war, fighting for life in a culture of mass death. And that is why I could not be more grateful that we’ve got the great Abby Martin on the live stream today to help us do just that. You all should know Abby by now, but in case you don’t for some reason and you’ve been living under a rock, Abby Martin is an independent journalist and host of the Empire Files, an interview and documentary series that everyone needs to watch and support.

She’s the director of the 2019 documentary, Gaza Fights for Freedom and is also directing a new documentary called Earth’s Greatest Enemy, which examines how the United States Empire is not only a primary contributor to climate change, but the central entity that imperils life on earth. Abby, thank you so much for joining us again. It’s always so great to have you back on the Real News. I want to start with the latest horrifying developments in Israel’s war on Palestine. Can you walk us through what we’re seeing and perhaps what we’re not seeing in the West Bank right now?

Abby Martin:

I mean, I think your intro did a really great job at laying out the current situation Max, and thank you for the intro. To me, that was wonderful. Look, it’s very clear that whatever ceasefire deal was negotiated, that the annexation and the green lighting of the further annexation of the West Bank was part of the sweetheart edition to that ceasefire deal. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen, just completely transition from Gaza to the West Bank where extremist settlers in tandem with Israeli soldiers are clearing out entire refugee camps and villages and at an expulsion rate that we have never frankly seen before. I mean, 40,000 Palestinians being expelled just over 35 days is just extraordinary. And this is happening almost on a daily basis. We’re at the barrel of a gun. Dozens of Palestinians are being forced and rejected from their homes. We’ve seen 60 Palestinians be killed in this timeframe.

Several children, just over the last week, we saw two Palestinian children being gunned down. This just is happening at such a rapid pace. It’s very dizzying, and it just seems like there are no measures in place whatsoever to stop this rapid annexation and this whole operation Iron Wall. It’s very clear that the ultimate goal is to clear out as much as possible and just have the plausible deniability, oh, it’s settlers. Oh, it’s Hamas fighters. Oh, well, we have to do it because of the violence that’s happening. I mean, again, if you don’t get to the root of the violence, it’s just going to erupt. It’s a tinderbox and it’s a pressure cooker. So all of the things that are happening as a result of the clearing out of these villages and refugee camps, it’s an inevitability. So you’re going to see waves of attacks, whether they be knife attacks or suicide bombings or like the inert bombs that didn’t explode and actually kill people on those buses. I mean, all of these things are inevitabilities. Once you engage on a full scale invasion and war to the native population, that’s already under a very extremely repressive police state dictatorship that prevents them from doing anything at all.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Could you say just a little more on that last point you filmed there in the West Bank, you’ve been there, you’ve reported on it many, many times. I guess for folks who maybe haven’t looked into the West Bank as much as they’ve learned about Gaza over the past two years, could you just say a little more for folks who are watching this about the state of life as such in the West Bank before this operation Iron Wall began?

Abby Martin:

Yeah, and a perfect example of that is this current ceasefire deal, phase one where people may be asking themselves how is it possible that hundreds of Palestinian prisoners really their hostages in their own right? How is it possible that there’s so many hundreds of Palestinians being held and being released at the behest of Hamas’ demands? It may be confusing to some to see just a couple dozen hostages from the Israeli side being released for hundreds of Palestinians. Well, the answer is basically the fact that there’s this repressive police state style dictatorship that wantonly just arrests hundreds of people, detains them, arbitrarily, keeps them without charges or trial, and that’s precisely what we’ve seen, ramp up and escalate in the aftermath of October 7th, hundreds and hundreds of Palestinians, including dozens of children and women, not to take away the revolutionary agency or political agency of women, but it is just unbelievable how many people have been detained arbitrarily and held.

Why aren’t they called hostages? I have no idea. But it just again, just kind of paints the picture of what Palestinians are living under. They cannot raise a Palestinian flag. They cannot practice any political activity. It is crazy. I mean, they can set up arbitrary checkpoints, resort these people’s lives to a living. Hell set up just random blockades that can reroute people just take hours out of their day just to make their lives extremely uncomfortable. But it just goes far beyond that. I mean, raiding killing Palestinians arbitrarily having no recourse whatsoever. You certainly cannot have armed resistance. I mean, anything that can be construed as a weapon in these people’s homes or cars can just subject you to not only humiliating tactics, but also just being thrown in prison. I mean, we’re talking about such a crazy level of control that simply the David versus Goliath, just symbolism of throwing a rock at a tank. There’s a law on the books that can put a Palestinian child in prison for 20 years for simply throwing a rock at an armed tank. So these are the kind of measures that have been in place since 1967 when this military dictatorship was imposed illegally. And ever since then, we’ve been placated as Westerners with this promise of a two states solution, which has just been a cover for the continued annexation of the West Bank and under Trump, we’ve seen just a complete rapid green lighting of just continuing that policy.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, man. I mean, I did not want to incorporate it as a visual element in this live stream because frankly, it’s too ghoulish and horrifying to give any more airtime to. But I would point folks, if you haven’t already seen it, to an AI generated video that our president shared on his truth social account, promoting the transformation of Gaza into a luxury beach front destination filled with skyscrapers, condos, bearded belly dancers like Monde Weiss reported the video shows Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing together in Gaza, Elon Musk eating hummus, the area being converted into resort called Trump, Gaza, a golden Trump statue and children running from rubble into picturesque beaches. What the hell, man? I mean, I guess where do you even find your center of humanity in such an inhumane timeline?

Abby Martin:

I mean, that’s what’s so creepy about it. It’s the dizzying spectacle of it all. And I feel like Trump, I feel like he was much more dialed in 2016 personally because he was less senile and whatever. He was younger and more astute. But now it does seem like he’s kind of, he doesn’t give a shit. I mean, he is just going for it and letting all of these crazy outliers just take the government for a ride. I mean, Elon Musk, this AI stuff, it’s like by the time that you’re trying to unpack this press conference where he is sitting next to this grinning genocide fugitive talking about how Gaza is a hellhole and how you’re going to get, why would you want to go back to Gaza? You’re just going to get shot and killed next to the grinning genocide fugitive, who did it. I mean, once you unpack that, he’s already signed another thousand executive orders once you try to make sense of this AI generated video of Trump’s golden head on a balloon, and kids running out of the rubble into a more attractive version of Elon Musk eating hummus and peta.

I mean, they’ve already done this, that and the other. So again, it’s the spectacle. It’s like no response is the good response. It’s so difficult to even maneuver this new political landscape even for us who follow it for a job. I mean, a perfect example is the sig. He twice the Nazi salute from Elon. I mean, it’s like, what is the appropriate response to this? Because they will just gaslight you and say what you see isn’t reality. And so by the time you’re like, no, no, no, that’s a Nazi salute. No, no, no, it’s like they’ve already done this, that and the other thing. So it’s such an insane time to be living and to navigate this political space, and I just keep comparing it to the mass hallucinations. Everyone’s relegated to their own framework of reality. The algorithm boosts whatever it is that you want to justify as that reality, and that’s kind of our respective mass hallucinations that we’re wading through. I mean, I feel like I’m living in reality, and that’s why I’m so aghast and horrified by everything. But

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, that’s why I wake up screaming every night. And in fact, so much of our politics is a war on the means of perceiving reality. It is a war over the narrative of what we’re actually seeing. And from everyone’s watching a plane crash down the road in Washington DC and it’s immediately a battle over is this DEI or is this something else? Is the fires in my home state of California? Is this A DEI thing? Is this climate change? The war over the means of perception, I think is really the terrain upon which so many of us are fighting or forced to fight in the 21st century. And I definitely want to circle back to Trump Musk and how we navigate all of this here at home in the second half of the discussion. But I guess before we move on, I wanted to bring us back to the West Bank.

You mentioned the gaslighting, right? You mentioned the ways that that war on perception, the top down narratives handed to us by the very villains who are committing genocide and destroying our government and so on and so forth. I am not drawing an equivalence between our situation and that of the occupied Palestinian. But I think in your amazing conversation and interview with the great Muhammad el-Kurd about his new book, I was learning so many lessons from him that feel very relevant to us today, particularly the gaslighting and the sort of top down effort to turn the victim into the terrorist. I wanted to play that clip really quick from Muhammad el-Kurd. This is a clip from Abby show, the Empire Files, which she interviewed Muhammad on recently. So let’s play that clip and let’s talk about what this can tell us about how to navigate what we’re up against now.

Mohammed el-Kurd:

Yeah, and I think the average person, anybody with common sense would understand that defending yourself against intruders, against colonizers, against thiefs, against burglars, against murderous regimes is a fundamental right that you are entitled to defend yourself and your family. And actually across history, people who have done so have been hailed as heroes. But violence itself is essentially a mutating concept. It’s something to celebrate when it’s sanctioned by the empire, and it’s something to pearl clutch out when it’s done by natives, by these young men in tracksuits. But again, this is, it’s not like a fundamental western opposition to violence or militias or whatever. It’s a rejection of any kind of political prospect for the Palestinian, because anytime the Palestinian has engaged in armed resistance or has engaged in kinds of resistance that have extended beyond the bounds of what is acceptable to a liberal society, that those are some of the only times we have been heard.

So what does that say about the world and what does that say to the Palestinian? When we are told time and time again, the only time people are going to listen to us and talk about us and put us in their headlines is when we engage in violent resistance. But ultimately, this is about the rejection of Palestinian. Armed resistance is about a rejection of a Palestinian national project is about a rejection of actually ending the occupation. Everybody can sing every day about ending the occupation, but when it becomes real, we are terrified of it. We lose our compass. We refuse, we refuse to even entertain it. For years, maybe all of my life, I’ve been hearing about a two-state solution while Israeli bulldozers eat away at our land in areas that are supposedly under Palestinian authority control. It’s like a circus where they’re just telling us these narratives to buy time while they’re creating facts on the ground, while they’re setting greedy the terms of engagement and creating the roadmap for the future while robbing us of any kind of future.

And while sanctioning even our ambitions, even our intentions, even our hopes and dreams. You know what I mean? There’s also a hyper, when we say defanging of Palestinians, it’s not just taking our rifles and vilifying our freedom fighters, but there’s also an interrogation of our thoughts. They ask us, do you condemn this and do you condemn that and do you want to do this, and do you want to throw Israelis into the sea? And what’s your issue with those people? And it’s never about actually engaging with you in a certain political uplifted discourse, but it’s about making sure you concede to the liberal world order before you are even allowed entry to the conversation. And that needs to be,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Everyone should go watch that full interview first thing. Second thing, everyone should go read Muhammad el-Kurd’s book by Haymarket Books. Perfect victim. Third thing, Abby, I’ve got just some questions I want to throw at you really quick. Can you talk about that clip, what Muhammad’s saying there and how this applies to what we’re seeing in the West Bank? A lot of these refugee camps, yes, they’re where freedom fighters lived, but also a bunch of regular people who have nowhere else to go. So can you help folks apply what Muhammad’s saying there to what we’re seeing unfold in the West Bank, but also how this applies to us here? It does feel eerily reminiscent of the right wing in this country, condemning violence of Black Lives Matter protesters while celebrating Kyle Rittenhouse shooting them. Right? That double standard does seem to be very much at play here. So I wanted to ask if we could talk about it in the context of the West Bank first and then bring it back home after that.

Abby Martin:

Absolutely. I think, look, it’s really, really clear to understand that the West Bank is under illegal occupation and under international law, Palestinians as well as other people under occupying forces have the legal right to armed resistance that is enshrined in law. And so when you’re looking at a place like the West Bank that hosts houses 3 million Palestinians, and a lot of people are resisting naturally, so of course, I mean, that’s going to be an inevitability you’re going to resist if you’re denied basic human rights, denied clean water, denied mobility. I mean, when you’re living under this harsh repression where you can’t even celebrate the hostages coming home, you can’t grieve, you can’t publicly mourn. You can’t erect a flag. I mean, it’s absolutely insane what these people are subjected to on a day-to-day basis. And given the genocide that we’ve seen erupt in Gaza, the unending slaughter of children, I mean, obviously Palestinians are united front despite the political schisms and divisions.

And so you’re going to see resistance in the West Bank, especially when you see full scale mobilizations to invade and annex your land illegally. And so it’s actually a legal right to see resistance mobilized against Israeli invaders. So first and foremost, we need to zoom out and realize not only is this an egregious and flagrant violation of just the ceasefire, the idea of a ceasefire that Israel considers a ceasefire, just no one reacting to them constantly violating the ceasefire, whether it be in Lebanon or Gaza or in the West Bank. They can just go on and do whatever they want with complete impunity. And the second that a Palestinian fights back, oh, they’ve broken the ceasefire. Oh, the deal’s off the table. It is so disgustingly. But when you zoom out from that, I mean, yeah, Palestinians have the right to resist. So what you’re seeing in refugee camps, what you’re seeing in places like Janine is resistance, legal resistance actually.

So when Israel uses that as a precursor to then further colonize, it’s just absolutely dumbfounding because it’s just completely violating every single law in the books, and this is what they’ve done for decades. And they’re ramping it up under the cover of the ceasefire of the genocides saying that Hamas fighters are on the ground. Oh, well, they did this. So of course we need to go and eject thousands of people from their homes say that they can never return. And it’s gaslighting upon gaslighting, but it’s also just a refusal of just basic reality and the facts that we know to be true Max. When you apply that to the United States, it is just such a double sighted. I mean, it just a completely absurd notion that we worship. We’re a culture of violence. We worship war. I mean militarism and war is so ingrained in the psyche of American citizens, especially in the wake of nine 11.

It’s just a constant thing. But it’s only the good arbiters of violence. I mean, of course, the US military can do whatever it wants around the world as long as it’s doing it in the name of democracy and human rights. If Ukrainians resist against evil Russia, give them all the weapons in the world, turn it into a proxy war where we’re throwing Ukrainians into just making them cannon fodder. I mean, it’s absolutely insane. But when you’re looking at just the basic tenets of what would you do if someone came to your home and said, get out, this is my home now because the Bible says that it is from thousands of years ago, get the hell out at the barrel of a gun. What would you do? What would your family do? Obviously you would band together and resist like anyone would, especially Americans. I mean, we’re talking about a country that has stand your ground laws that if you just go up and knock on the wrong door, you could get shot and killed legally.

So it is just the paradoxical nature of propaganda. It does not make sense and it does not equate, and it’s only because of the deep, deep embedded dehumanization of Arabs and specifically Palestinians. And this has been part and parcel with the war on terror propaganda, the deep dehumanization of just Arabs and Muslims in general, and Palestinians are just, I mean, it’s absolutely absurd how much they’ve been dehumanized where people, even my fellow colleagues as journalists don’t even consider Palestinian journalists, journalists. So it’s a disgrace upon disgrace. But I think what Muhammad’s talking about is so many salient points there of just the utter hypocrisy of the way that we perceive violence. And when it comes to actual decolonization and liberation, which are concepts that make liberals feel uncomfortable, they’d rather keep Palestinians in a perpetual victimhood and treat them as if they just need aid instead of need freedom. Because when you talk about what that actually means, it means fighting back. It means resisting this unending violence and slaughter. What do these people think it means? So what does that actually look like? How does that play out and how is it successful? And that’s why history is so sanitized, and these things are just rewritten by the victors because they don’t want to teach us the hard lessons of how entire countries and peoples have been victorious and have been liberated from empires and from their colonizers in the past.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, man, I think that’s powerfully put. And I just wanted to emphasize for folks, when Abby was asking us like, what would you do if someone came in and pointed a gun at you and said, get out of your home. That happened to Muhammad, that happened to him and his family. He became a very prominent international voice, like while settlers were taking over their home from the states. So we’re not asking a rhetorical question here. This is a real question. What would you do in that situation? And in terms of how those rules of engagement he talked about are set by this by definition, hypocritical by definition, like Ill intended entity that does not want us to win, that does not want us to have a leg to stand on. We’re seeing that being baked into this kind of repressive apparatus that is spreading out across the so-called west here to make an example, claiming that Palestine solidarity encampments on a college campus are a threat to the safety of Jewish students while Zionists beating the shit out of student encampment.

Students who are encamping on campus is not categorized in the same violent way. So keep that in mind because I want to kind of focus in here on this sort of the state of repression back here at home as the war across over Palestine. The war on Palestine intensifies because over the past two years, even with the ruling elites in government and this whole imperialist capitalist warmaking establishment doing everything that they could to maintain the longstanding, unconditional support for Israel’s genocidal occupation, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, while all of that has been going on, we have seen a sea change at the base of societies around the globe, and especially here in the United States, the explosion of the Palestine solidarity movement, mass protests in DC and around the country, the student encampment movement that I mentioned, but the empire is striking back. As you know, Abby, the reactionary ruling class answer to all of this grassroots opposition to Israel’s war on Palestine has been to criminalize the methods of that opposition and to even criminalize and legally recategorize solidarity with Palestinians itself as anti-Semitic, anti-American, and even supportive of terrorism like here in the United States.

For folks who may have forgotten in the first weeks in office of his new administration, president Trump signed an executive order to deport foreign university students who participate in Gaza solidarity protests in a chilling quote fact sheet that accompanied the executive ordered the White House said quote to all the resident aliens who joined in the pro jihadist protests. We put you on notice, come 2025, we will find you and we will deport you and quote, but this is not just happening in the us. Our colleague, Ali Abu Nima, Palestinian American journalist and executive director of the online publication, the Electronic Intifada, traveled to Switzerland last month to give a speech in Zurich. And after being allowed to enter the country, Abu Nima was arrested by plainclothes officers, forced into an unmarked vehicle, held incommunicado in jail for two nights, and then he was deported from the country.

And in Canada, things were getting very dark very quickly. pro-Palestinian Canadian author and activist, Eves Engler was jailed this week for criticizing Zionist influencer Dalia Kurtz on the social media platform, X Kurtz accused angler and his posts of harassment. And he was jailed by Montreal Police for five days. And all of this is happening back in Toronto. The largest school board in Canada has taken steps to adopt the institutional recategorize of Zionists as a protected class and anti-Zionism as antisemitism. And we actually asked our friend and colleague, the brilliant Toronto-based journalist and founder of On the Line Media, Samira Moine to give us a little update on that story. So let’s play that really quick, and then we’re going to go back to Abby.

Samira Mohyeddin:

The decision by the Toronto District School Board to receive this report on antisemitism is dangerous for a number of reasons. The most important being is that the report conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and moves to make Zionist a protected class of people under the anti-racism policy. So basically a political ideology such as Zionism will now be protected as anything else, will be like race, religion, gender, sexuality. It will fall under that realm, which means that to criticize a political ideology such as Zionism will mean that you will be falling under someone who I don’t know, is critical of someone’s religion, critical of their sexuality. It will actually make it so that this is a weaponization of people who criticize the actions of Israel, which is a state. So this is very dangerous, and we don’t know what sort of effects this will have, what effect will it have on teachers who are teaching history, who are teaching social studies? Does this mean that they can’t criticize Israel? What does this mean for Jewish students who are critical of Israeli actions? Will they be penalized? So there’s a whole realm of things that the Toronto District School Board really doesn’t have answers for yet, and we’re really waiting to see how receiving this report or what even receiving of the report means, what impact it will have, both on parents, on students, and most importantly on teachers who really don’t know how to navigate such a thing. And so this is very, very dangerous.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Okay. Abby Martin, what the hell is going on with all of this? How are you seeing, I guess, the broad sweep of all this repression?

Abby Martin:

I mean, even before the genocide in Gaza, I foresaw the writing on the wall because I myself was engaged in this litigation against the state of Georgia for their anti BDS law. So I knew that states were taking measures to preempt the wave of Palestine solidarity that they inevitably knew would come. And that’s why we’ve seen consulate officials and the Israeli lobby officials going and essentially seeking to undermine our first amendment rights, the constitutionally protected right to boycott a country that was enshrined during the Montgomery Bus boycotts during the civil rights movement. So I knew that pro-Palestine speech was among the most repressed, among the most criminalized because of these laws. And we’ve seen attacks on college campuses even though there’s this kind of notion that right wing speech is what’s heckled and suppressed and repressed on college campuses. I think it’s very clear as day, especially in the wake of the Gaza genocide, that pro-Palestine speech is the most repressed and criminalized speech in the country, even though we have the sacred First Amendment, which unfortunately places like the UK doesn’t.

So you’re seeing raids and arrests of journalists like Aza Wi Stanley from the electronic ADA as well, who was also his electronic communications were seized. I mean, people like Richard Medhurst, they are being arrested and detained with their communications seized and their devices seized under these absurd counter terror powers. I mean, usually the charges don’t stick at the end of the day, but it’s just meant to create a chilling effect and to cement that repressive state where you feel like you can’t even do your job as a journalist. So even though we have the First Amendment, it is not doing much to protect us, especially with what’s happening on college campuses. I mean, the threats even from Israeli government officials saying, you’re never going to have a job again. I mean, it’s just absolutely insane. I don’t even know the words to describe this political climate because like Muhammad articulated so well, it is living in someone else’s hallucination.

It’s like living in a fever dream imposed by someone. It’s just like, what are we even talking about here? You’re telling me that saying from the river to the sea is a terrorist incitement to genocide. While I’m seeing genocide, I’m logging onto my device and seeing a genocide. But you’re saying that people’s words for liberation is the threat. So it’s just this topsy-turvy reality that we’re trying to wade through. Meanwhile, people’s lives are being ruined and destroyed. People are being suspended, expelled. I mean, their jobs are being taken away from them for just speaking facts and just trying to stand in solidarity with people who are being repressed and occupied and killed, and what’s happening to journalists. I mean, the fact that Western powers, European powers are more concerned with criminalizing pro-Palestine journalism and speech, and they are stopping a genocide, really just says it all, doesn’t it?

These institutions, these global bodies that have been in place for the last 70 years to try to prevent the never again to try to stop genocide, at least in the era or the auspices of, and these same institutions have just been made a mockery of by the same states that have created them. I mean, I think we know at this point the rules-based order in these international bodies. It was never designed to really have egalitarianism or to protect all peoples who are oppressed. No, it was to protect and shroud the west with impunity. And when it’s a western ally that’s committing genocide in plain day, well, we see exactly what these institutions are designed to do. And we’ve seen the threats, the ICC sanctions against the members of the court, their families, what’s happening in South Africa from the Trump administration. It is an upside down world where drone bombings are not terrorism because that’s just seen as normal day-to-day operations of the empire, and its junior collaborators and its colonial outposts.

But words and incitement, all of these things are unacceptable. And so that’s what you’re seeing. You’re seeing an extreme policing of our language and intent, intent. Meanwhile, the people who are ruling the world, the global elite, can do whatever they want out of the shadows, plain as day, commit genocide and ethnic cleansing and boast about it and make all of us just scurry like mice trying to catch up. Meanwhile, we can’t say shit. And so it’s a war on the mind. It’s a war on our thoughts. It is beyond even an information war. I mean, it is a war on reality itself,

Maximillian Alvarez:

And those of us who are trying to report on it mean we didn’t even mention it, but there’s on top of everything, there’s the nonprofit killer Bill HR 9 4 9 5 or the stop terror financing and tax penalties on American Hostages Act that already passed the House of Representatives going to pass the Senate at some point. But that’s another thing that I think about daily because I am the co-executive director and editor in chief of a nonprofit journalism outlet. And this bill if passed, would effectively give the Trump administration the ability to unilaterally declare that orgs like ours are terrorist supporting, not because we’re providing material support for Hamas or anything like that, but because our speech, the way we report honestly about the genocide in Palestine is being re-categorized as support for terrorism. And so we could lose our nonprofit status that’s going to kill most nonprofits that get targeted.

It won’t kill all of them, but it’ll be a massive financial hit. But also the leaders of those orgs could be held personally liable. They could be attacked, like this is something that I have to think about and talk to my family about all the time. I mean this plus the firings of tenured professors at universities threats to deport foreign students who are participating in protests, locking up journalists for social media posts. This is a really intense and dark time. And while all of this is happening, Elon Musk and is leading a techno fascist coup in our government, and I want to end there in a second, but by way of getting there, since we’ve got you on, and since you mentioned it, Abby, of course, you, Abby Martin, were famously at the center of this critical free speech battle against Georgia Southern University when the university rescinded the offer to have you deliver a keynote speech because you refuse to sign a BS contract that illegally stipulated speakers were forbidden from openly supporting any boycott of Israel. So I wanted to ask if, just by way of getting us to the final turn, if there are any lessons that you learned even from just the decision to fight that we could really internalize and need to internalize to face what we’re facing today?

Abby Martin:

Yes, I think it’s a multi-pronged battle, and we have to utilize every arm of the fight. I mean, the courts are absolutely one important facet that we need to utilize. I think if there were plaintiffs in every state taking on these BDS laws, then hopefully it will go to the Supreme Court, even though they said that they didn’t want to hear it. Right Now, there are enough mixed verdicts that would bring this to the attention of the Supreme Court, and I think if anyone is trained in constitutional law, well, we don’t know about these Trump appointees, but I mean anyone who knows the Constitution would say it’s very clear these are flagrantly unconstitutional laws, and hopefully we would put an end to it. But I think that they’re just so desperate and they know that it’s going to take, it’s a long slog to challenge all these laws, but we absolutely have to have in every single state.

And that’s just one part of it, max. I mean, the media, obviously, the fact that Elon Musk has taken over our town hall, he is, I mean, on one hand what Trump and Elon Musk are doing is kind of exposing the incestuous relationship with the so-called legacy media and the way that the political establishment operates within it. But on the other hand, it’s very scary because they’re maneuvering it all to consolidate it with the right wings, sphere of influence, and using this kind of populist fake news rhetoric to do that. And that’s very disturbing and damaging because as leftists and people who are trying to do citizen journalism for grassroots organizing and things like that, we are in for a very tough road ahead because we don’t have billionaire funding like they do. But I would say my biggest lesson learned is that we have to take on every part of the battle they have. I mean, they’ve planned for 50 years taking over the institutions, taking over the media and taking over the courts, and we are 10 steps behind and we have to do everything in our power. And that means day in and day out. It’s not pulling the lever every two to four years. It’s being a part of this active struggle to maintain democratic rights, human rights, and try to have some sort of international solidarity with the people living under the boot of our policies.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s keep talking about that in this last 15 minutes that we’ve got here. One of the many folks that I’ve been thinking about a lot since Trump was inaugurated, really wondering what your analysis of all of this is. And so many of us are trying to figure out and articulate what is actually happening. I just interviewed three federal workers, two of whom were illegally fired for the podcast working people. We published it yesterday. Folks should go listen to what they have to say. It’s really important. But even there, we’re talking about battling the narrative that Musk himself and Trump and the whole administration and Fox News and these rejiggered algorithms on social media that are platforming and pushing more right-wing narratives. All of that is saying that this is all done in the name of efficiency that Trump and Musk are out there cutting government waste, attacking the corrupt deep state that’s getting in the way of the will of the American people. But if you talk to federal workers, they’re like, no, that’s not what they’re doing at all. They are slashing the hell out of it. They are just non-surgically destroying government agencies, laying groups of people off and throwing the government into disarray. None of this is done in the name of efficiency, and we shouldn’t even be taking that at face value when the guy who’s telling us that it’s being done in the name of efficiency is giving Ziggy salutes on public stages. So maybe we should stop assuming as the great

Abby Martin:

Adam Johnson said, it’s a stiff, armed, awkward gesture,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Stiff arm, Roman stiff

Abby Martin:

Arm, Roman salute in an awkward gesture.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It is nuts, but it’s just like, maybe the point being is, hey, maybe this guy is acting ideologically, maybe he’s acting self interestedly. Why do we keep buying the narrative that he’s acting uninterested in just the name of efficiency? That’s insane. It requires us to ignore the reality in front of our faces. But again, I wanted to bring us back to this point because everything we’ve been talking about now from tanks in the West Bank, the potential of the Gaza ceasefire falling apart, criminalization and crackdown on free speech and protest across the west, all of that is happening while like Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the unelected destroyer of government agencies is literally and figuratively like on a maniacal chainsaw, wielding rampage through the institutional guts of what remains of liberal democracy and the administrative state. And so this all feels so overwhelming, and I think most folks, because they know what you just said is right, that we’re playing so far behind and they have seemingly all the control, the impulse is going to be to close off to protect what’s ours, to hide, to silence ourselves. So I wanted to ask you, with those last few minutes we’ve got, what is your analysis of what’s happening in our government right now and what does this all mean for how do we move forward and keep fighting for what’s right and good, even though it’s getting really perilous and really dangerous out there? Oh

Abby Martin:

My God. I mean, it’s really difficult. And looking at the lessons gleaned from the Iraq war era when I was radicalized and activated to do media work and activism, what was different about that time was the fact that there was a more multi-pronged kind of united front with a lot of libertarians who were disaffected, a lot more like right wingers who hated the Bush administration. There seems to be a cult-like emergence of the sycophant, worshiping of a figure like Donald Trump. And that’s what’s so disturbing about MAGA in general and by proxy, someone like Elon Musk, a South African oligarch as well as the whole PayPal Mafia, all these oligarchs from South Africa coming over here and just seizing government control, which is completely illegal. I mean, that doesn’t even really need to be said, all the unconstitutional nature of what they’re doing, but it’s just so perplexing because of the way that he’s been able to siphon support from people who historically would not necessarily just worship a billionaire.

I mean, back decades ago it was the Republican party was kind of cartoonishly, just so detached from the working class because it was just so clearly just a party for billionaires and tax breaks for the wealthy. But because of the abject failure of the Democrats to form any sort of opposition, I mean, what is their project 2025? There is no goal. There’s no vision. They’re scrambling to figure out how could they even stand in opposition to what’s going on their 10 steps behind, but because of their failure and their ineptitude and the lies and the propaganda and the media manipulation and the war, the war on terror, because they’ve failed so horribly and mirrored Republicans on so much naturally, you’ve seen this kind of faux populism reroute a lot of disaffected people into the Republican party. And for the first time we saw people who were under a hundred thousand dollars or less actually vote en mass for Trump.

This is an unprecedented shift, a tectonic shift in how these parties have really played out. So I would argue the failure of the Democrats have driven people into the hands of Trump, and it doesn’t matter if it’s fake or not, they want someone to blame for their problems. And they look at Trump and they say, yeah, immigrants, trans people, sure, whatever will help solve my basically buffer my reality. They want people to say what is wrong and who’s doing it. That’s why Bernie resonated so much. I mean, he pointed to the oligarchic class, he pointed to the people, the actual robber barons who consolidated all of the wealth during the Covid era, but now we’re in this really bizarre, weirdly entrenched new Trump regime where he’s folded in all of the tech overlords, who, by the way, all the DEI rhetoric and all the people who are like corporations are woke, woke and liberalism have taken over and dominated our culture.

Actually, it was just the notion that women should have rights and gay people should be out because you saw the virtue signaling completely go by the wayside. The second that everyone resigned to the fact that Trump was going to be president again, what happened with Google, don’t be evil. All of these people who were actually protesting the Muslim ban and had really strong rhetoric against Trump back in 2016, they’re completely folded in just seamlessly because it never was about that. It was all virtue signaling. They were always right wing. They always didn’t care that Trump was who he is. I mean, it really is just so obvious. The ruling class never really cared about Trump or his policies or the threat of fascism or the erosion of democracy. They just cared that he was a bull in a China shop. He was just unpredictable. He was uncouth, and all they care about is that peaceful transition of power, and the system just keeps going, and the status quo just keeps churning on.

And that’s why January 6th was such an abomination for them. It wasn’t because of anything else. And so now I think everything’s been exposed. Everything is clear as day. That’s why we don’t see anything. There’s no actual opposition forming. And when you look at the grassroots and all the mobilized efforts, I mean, I think there’s such a fatigue with activism because for the last 15 months, people have been out in the streets opposing biden’s subsidization and oversight of genocide. So now we’re supposed to go and fight tooth and nail against the fascist takeover of the government. It’s like, God damn, for the last 15 months we’ve been out in the streets and no one’s been listening to us about stopping genocide. So I mean, it’s such a dizzying, disorienting time intentionally, the shock and awe of this mass firings of federal workers, the thousands and thousands of federal workers, it’s so clear as day what they’re doing.

They’re just gutting in the interim. They’re trying to do as much damage as they can because they know that the time that the courts basically do their jobs, it’s going to be too late. Trump has stacked enough courts at the end of the day, and Republicans have that. Even if there’s a million challenges legally, the damage is going to be done. You can’t pick up the pieces and just go back to the way things were. And that’s the intent. For all intents and purposes, they’re trying to gut any sort of semblance of institutions that care for people. Cruelty is the point. Poor people, elderly people, disabled people, those are who are going to be the brunt of these services that are being cut. The veterans affairs, I mean, all these people from the crisis hotline, all these veterans who are calling with suicidal ideation, those people are being cut Medicaid.

I mean, the statistic flying around 880 billion, that’s the entirety of Medicaid. So when they’re talking about, oh, these budget cuts are going to cut 880 billion from this one committee, yeah, that’s the entirety of Medicaid. Who is that going to affect 73 million Americans? I mean, the shortsightedness of all of this is just astonishing, but that’s not the point. They know how much damage it’s going to do. They don’t care. They want to gut everything and privatize everything, the post office, the va, every last bastion of government services that work that are good and healthy for a democratic society, and it’s going to do so much damage. I mean, just the environmental damage, the environmental damage. And what’s so funny, all of the discussions, people like to take everything that Trump says at face value. They’re like, oh, well, he says he wants to cut the Pentagon budget in half.

Oh, well, really, because on the other side of his mouth, he’s saying the exact opposite, that he wants to increase the Pentagon budget for this, that and the other. And when you look at what Hegseth is saying about what they’re actually cutting, it’s all the climate change initiatives that they were all the cursory attempts to try to placate environmentalists like, no, no, no. We’re greening this global military empire. So it’s just all, it’s so bad in every way, but I would just urge people to just not feel overwhelmed with the barrage of news, the rapid fire nature of the algorithm. Our brains are not meant to digest news in this way or information in this way. Let Max and I do it. Let us do it. Don’t get overwhelmed by the day to day just paralysis of the shock and awe of what they’re doing because that’s the intent. You cannot get paralyzed. You cannot just detach yourself from this. We have to be plugged in to the capacity that you can. We have to all be plugged into how we can all make a dent in our lives and let Max and I do the dirty work of sorting through the propaganda on the day to day. But it’s going to be a really tough road ahead, Max.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It is, and I appreciate everything that you said, and I just kind of had a final tiny question. I know we got a wrap, but on that last point, because Abby and I, our whole team here at the Real News, everyone you see on screen and also everyone, you don’t who makes everything that we produce possible. We’re going to keep manning our posts. We’re going to keep doing our work. We’re going to keep speaking the truth. But as you have learned from this conversation, there may be a great cost to pay for that. And I think that’s also something that we all need to sit with and think about because people don’t ask to be kind of in the moments in history they find theirselves in, but how we respond to those moments defines who we are as people, as generations and as movements. And so Abby, I didn’t go to journalism school.

I don’t know if you did. I never set out to be a journalist. I never thought I would find myself sitting in this chair as the executive director, co-executive director and editor in chief of a nonprofit journalism outlet. But if I can think back to even my early days, the through line from then to here, I was raised by great people who taught me to stand up for what’s right and speak my truth, especially speak it unwaveringly in the face of those who want to shut me up. And I’m not someone who shuts up easily. That’s probably why I’m here. That’s why Abby’s doing what she does. If you try to shut her up, she’ll file a lawsuit against your ass and win it, right? I mean, but there’s a non-zero chance that being who we are, doing what we do, because we’re going to do it.

We’re going to do it for you. We’re going to do it because it’s right. There’s a non-zero chance we could end up in prison for it or have our outlet shut down, but that just is what it is. And so Abby, with that kind of on the table, I just wanted to ask if you had any kind of parting words to folks out there who depend on our journalism, folks out there who do journalism, any final notes about the real state that we’re in, what we’re facing, but also how we need to be kind of stealing our hearts to keep fighting for what’s right and not allowing ourselves to be silenced, even though they’re going to try really hard to do so?

Abby Martin:

Absolutely. I mean, it’s going to be so hard for just average Americans and workers who are suffering the brunt of these policies. Obviously it’s going to be really hard for them to engage in the struggle because they’re worried about how they’re going to survive day to day. They have no savings and their living paycheck to paycheck, and it’s just going to get worse. I mean, look, I became a journalist out of necessity because I saw the failure of the institutional media and the legacy media and the drive to the Iraq war, and I realized that it didn’t matter if I was standing in a street corner with a sign. I mean, no one’s going to hear what you have to say unless you advocate through a media avenue. I mean, you have to utilize the tools that we have available to speak these truths, to speak powers truth to power, to hold, power to account.

And we’re in a very dystopian era where again, words are considered terrorist incitement, especially when it comes to pro-Palestine advocacy. I run a nonprofit as well. Empire Files is a nonprofit, and it’s this paradox where you have our job revenues and our ability to tell this information potentially being threatened with shut down. Meanwhile, you have charities very active and lucrative, being able to fund people from America to go over and take over a Palestinian family’s home, like literally, nonprofit charities can go fund a genocidal army to kill Palestinians for sport. So that’s the world that we’re living in. It’s a very topsy turvy world set by actually a crime syndicate and a global mafia. And the enforcer is the US military. I am in a place of privilege to the point where I can at least speak these facts. We’re not living under a totalitarian dictatorship yet where our First Amendment is completely gone.

So I will continue to speak out and speak these facts and hold power to account and speak the truth as I see it and not be played or propagandized by the billionaire class. I am happy that at least we can rise above this deep seated propaganda where they’re telling us black is white and saying, no, this multi-billion dollar propaganda apparatus does not work on me. And we’re able to see things clearly, and we’re going to speak those truths clearly no matter where they take us, because Max, I think you and I both know that even though it’s a dangerous road ahead, we’re not going to stop doing our jobs. We’re going to speak truth to power, and we see what’s happening to our colleagues. But you know what? I’m going to keep speaking truth to power because my colleagues are being gunned down, mowed down systematically.

And so until that threat is on my doorstep, you’re not going to be able to shut me up, man. You’re not going to be able to shut me up because my friends are being killed. And I take that very seriously because a threat to justice anywhere means that injustice is still rooted everywhere. So we have to keep fighting because we can’t stop. We’re going to let these criminals win. We’re going to let them destroy the planet and kill off the sake of any viable habitat for our children. We’re going to let that happen. No. Yes, the odds are stacked against us. Yes, the institutions have completely been hijacked by these maniacs, these genocidal maniacs and sociopaths. But that’s not enough to stop us. We have to keep fighting. We have no other choice. And even if we lose, well, we sure as hell tried. We sure as hell tried, and we owe it to every person on this planet that is living under the boot of our policies that doesn’t have the privilege of being an American citizen.

That’s just dealing with the brunt of the effects of sanctions, of war, of bombings, of this economic terrorism. We owe it to them and we owe it to the kids that we’ve brought into this world. We cannot stop, max. We cannot stop. And history has been stacked before. Yes, the crisis is more existential with the environmental calamities that we’re facing, but we’ve been in deep crises before slavery, the civil rights, I mean, not people literally living in abject slavery. We have to continue to fight for the better future that we know is possible. I would not be able to live with myself if I gave up. It’s not an option. It’s not an option.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Wholeheartedly agree sis. And I love you, and I’m in solidarity with you, and I’m as scared as I think I’ll ever be, but I’m not going to stop either. So it’s an honor to be in this struggle with you and to all of you watching again, we will continue to speak truth to power, and we will continue fighting for the truth and speaking that truth to empower you because that is also why we do what we do. Because when working people have the truth, the powerful cannot take that away from us. And it is the truth that we need to know how to act because we are ultimately the ones who are going to decide how this history is written. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few years, but I know what will happen if we regular people, people of conscious do nothing.

If we do nothing, I can tell you what’s going to happen. But what happens next is up to us and Abby, the Real News, all of our colleagues who are out there fighting for the truth. We’ll keep doing that as long as we possibly can to empower you to be the change that we need to see in this world because this world is worth fighting for and the future is worth fighting for, and it’s not gone yet. So thank you all for fighting. Thank you for caring. Abby Martin, thank you so much for coming on The Real News yet again, thank you for all the invaluable work that you do. Can you please just tell folks one more time where they can find you, how they can support your work? And then I promise we’ll let you go.

Abby Martin:

Max, thank you so much. I couldn’t agree more. I mean, the love and the family are in the struggle. And for people who may be feeling really isolated out in the middle of nowhere and feel, what can I do? I’m totally just immobilized from all of this. The paralysis from our political state of affairs, I mean, reach out. It is literally the most important thing you could do is reach out to your like-minded people in your area, go on meetup groups, figure out what people are doing to just generate activism with whatever issue because that is where the love and the family and the friendships are is the struggle and getting involved, and that’s going to take you out of this kind of atomization that the system imposes on us. I love Real News Network. I’m so honored to be on Anytime Max, I’m honored to call you a friend in a comrade. People can find my work at Empire Files, the Empire Files tv, and also our new documentary is going to come out this year. I’m really excited about it. Earth’s greatest enemy.com. Thank you so much again.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah, thank you sis. And all you watching that is the great Abby Martin, if you are not already, please, please, please go subscribe to her channel. The Empire Files support the work that she’s doing, and please support the work that we’re doing here at The Real News. We cannot keep doing it without you, and we do it for you. So please, before you go subscribe to this channel, become a member of our YouTube community, please donate to The Real News by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more conversations like this and more coverage from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world. And for all of us here at the Real News Network, this is Maximilian Alvarez signing off. Please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever. Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most, and we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe and donate to the Real News Network. Solidarity forever.

Across Maryland’s prison system, incarcerated workers assemble furniture, sew clothing, and even manufacture cleaning chemicals. In spite of making the state more than $50 million annually in revenue, these workers are compensated below the minimum wage in a system akin to slavery. But how does the system of forced prison labor really work, and how do state laws keep  this industry running? Rattling the Bars investigates how Maryland law requires government institutions to purchase prison-made products, and how legislators like State Senator Antonio Hayes are working to change that.

Producer: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

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

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to Rattling The Bars. Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to State Senator Antonio Hayes from the 40th district of Baltimore City about a bill he sponsored around prison labor in Maryland. The bill was designed to regulate Maryland Correctional Enterprise, which is the prison industry in Maryland, around their preferential treatment they receive for contracts, be it furniture, tags, clothing, or any chemicals that’s used for cleaning. The purpose of the bill was to regulate how much money they were getting from free prison labor.

Antonio Hayes:

They bring in anywhere in a high $50 million a year in business that they’re generating. So they perform everything from furniture making to license plates, to, in some cases, even on the Eastern shore, they have inmates working on poultry farms and agriculture. So the variety of services that they offered have expanded dramatically since its inception.

So here’s the thing, it’s not just state universities. All state universities are using it. The General Assembly is using it. The Maryland Department of Labor is using it. The Maryland Department of Education is using it. Maryland State Police is using it. Maryland DHS is using it. If you are a state agency, you are required by state procurement law to purchase from MCE as long as they have the product. So that’s why they’re able to bring in that type of revenue. Like I said, if you look at their annual reports, it’s somewhere around $58 million a year.

Mansa Musa:

Later, you will hear a conversation I had with former prisoner Lonnell Sligh, who was sentenced in Maryland, but was sent out of state to Kansas. And while in Kansas, he worked in prison industry. I was surprised to hear how Kansas is treating this prison labor force versus how prisoners are being treated throughout the United States of America. But first, you’ll hear this conversation with Senator Antonio Hayes.

I want you to talk a little bit about why you felt the need to get in this particular space, because this is not a space that people get in. You hear stuff about prison, okay, the conditions in prison, the medical in prison, the lack of food, parole, probation. But very rarely do you hear someone say, “Well, let me look at the industry or the job that’s being provided to prisoners.” Why’d you look at this particular direction?

Antonio Hayes:

Yeah. So interesting enough, I’ve been supporting a gentleman back home in Baltimore that has an organization called Emage, E-M-A-G-E, Entrepreneurs Making And Growing Enterprises. So the brother had reached out to me and said, “Hey, I’m manufacturing clothing, but I hear the correctional system is teaching brothers and sisters behind the wall these skills. I’d like to connect with them. So when brothers and sisters return into the community, I’d like to hire them.” Muslim brother, real good, very active member of the community. So I said, “Excellent. Let me reach out to Corrections.”

So I found the organization, MCE-

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. Maryland Correctional Enterprises.

Antonio Hayes:

Maryland Correctional Enterprises. And I asked them to come out and do a site visit with me so we could build a pipeline of individuals returning back to West Baltimore, Baltimore City period, especially if they’re already learning these skills so they could get jobs. And I’ll never forget the CEO at the time responding to me, pretty much saying, “Look, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. How dare you invite us to come into the community?” So I was taken aback by the thought that they would clap back in such a way. But if you look at my legislative agenda, it’s really focused around economics. A lot of the things that I push is around economics.

When my mom showed me how to shoot dice in West Baltimore-

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Antonio Hayes:

… one of the things she used to always say, “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.”

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Antonio Hayes:

So when I looked at this, like why MCE existed and the fact that they had a procurement law in the state, a preferred provider status, there’s three organizations that have a preferred provider status. It’s America Works, who hire individuals that have disabilities to have employment. Because if they didn’t do it, these individuals would probably be getting state resources from some other pot. But it takes people who have disabilities, so people who are somehow impaired. There’s another organization called Blind Industries.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Antonio Hayes:

They supply janitorial products to the state of Maryland, and these people are blind or visually impaired. And then you had MCE, which were people who were incarcerated for whatever reason. And it didn’t seem to really fit with the other two that were serving populations of individuals with disabilities. So then I began to research even more the existence and how much money they were generating. And I found out, here in the state of Maryland, they were generating revenue of upwards of fifty-something million dollars a year. Whereas, the individuals who are incarcerated, the individuals that were doing the work, were getting paid no more than a $1.16 a day. So that alarmed me, one, the fact that they had a monopoly, because they were eliminating opportunities for other individuals to participate in the economy. Right?

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Antonio Hayes:

So they had a monopoly over. And then two, they had an unfair advantage, because they were essentially paying wages that were subordinate to any other wage anyone could afford. So their overhead was so much cheaper, because they were taking advantage of the status of people who are incarcerated and paying them far less than anyone else could even think of competing against.

Mansa Musa:

And you know, it’s ironic, because as we’re sitting there, we’re talking, and we’re at this table, these chairs, all this furniture was made at Maryland Correctional Enterprise. But on back, I worked in the cash shop at Maryland Correctional Enterprise. And prior to becoming Maryland Correctional Enterprise, it was State Use-

Antonio Hayes:

State Use Industries, correct.

Mansa Musa:

… which is my next lead to my next question. So this particular, going back to your point, it’s three people, or it’s three organizations, three industries that get preferential treatment, but they created… In your research, did you find out that they created this entity solely to be able to get that preferential treatment procurement, or was it a bid more on who is going to get the third slot? Because the first two slots, I can understand, they [inaudible 00:07:45] the Maryland Penitentiary. Some guys had brought in. And they were networking with the Library of Congress to try to bring all the books in the Library of Congress into Braille. And they were getting minimum wage, and they were paying it to the social security. All that was being done in that entity.

But from your research, was this particular… Maryland Correctional Enterprise, was this created as an institution by the private sector for the sole reason to have access to the label?

Antonio Hayes:

Right. So what I found was, actually, the federal government at some point had made it against the law to transfer prison-made goods across state lines. So in order for the industry to… So also, there’s some tie to this. This has really evolved as a result of the abolition of the 13th Amendment.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Antonio Hayes:

So when you had the abolition of slavery, and individuals… They lost a workforce that they would’ve had.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Antonio Hayes:

So there was a need to supplement that workforce, and the way they did that was through the, what is it called? The loophole in the constitution-

Mansa Musa:

The constitution, right.

Antonio Hayes:

… that said that slavery was illegal except for those who were being incarcerated-

Mansa Musa:

Convicted of a crime, right.

Antonio Hayes:

… due to convicted of a crime. But in Maryland and another state, I think they needed a way to create an artificial audience, because they didn’t necessarily have an audience to make the purchases in order to make it sustainable. So what they did was they put this preferred provider label on it through the state procurement so they could create an audience and customer base to support the work that they were doing.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. And now I can see. I can see it now, because, like you say, it’s all about exploitation of labor on the 13th amendment, giving them the right to use convicted convicts. So they saw that loophole, they saw the opportunity.

Antonio Hayes:

Yes.

Mansa Musa:

This is continuing black hole. They saw the opportunity. Okay. As we wrap up on this particular segment of this thing, you spoke on the economics, that’s your focus. And we know that, coming out of prison, a person having job, the likelihood of coming back to prison is slim to none. Because if you got an income… This is just my philosophy, and I’m a returning citizen, I came out of prison. Once I got an income, it allowed me to be able to get my own place. It allowed me to be able to create a savings. It allowed me to get my credit score.

In terms of, from your perspective, what would it look like if, and this is something that you might want to look at from your office level, as opposed to the opposition of them having that right, wouldn’t it be more feasible if they gave minimum wage? If the advocacy from policy would be, “Okay, you get this preferential treatment, but in order to get it, you have to provide minimum wage and you got to let them pay into their social security.” Is that something that you could see happening?

Antonio Hayes:

I think something that shows that isn’t as unbalanced as the current system is, is definitely where we want to be. Remember, a lot of the stuff that I do is around economics. I would’ve never looked at the criminal justice system or this system as something that I would want to focus on. I just wanted to make sure that individuals that were returning back to the communities that I grew up in, West Baltimore, had an opportunity to be successful. And this current system, the way it’s structured, it doesn’t give individuals an opportunity to transition back into the community, to have a greater chance of success. It’s literally setting them up for failure.

And my last visit to Jessa, I met three individuals, if you combine their sentences together, they had a hundred years. Some of them were life, some of them were never coming back to the community, ever. And I know to some degree, you need something for these individuals to do. But what I’m told anecdotally is the people that most likely will have these opportunities are people who have very long sentences. Because from a labor perspective, going back to the whole 13th Amendment thing, it’s more predictable that they will be around for a long time, as opposed to just the opposite, using this as a training opportunity. So when they reintegrate back into society, they will have a better chance of being successful and a productive member of society.

I think this current system, the way it’s working, even if you look at the suppliers, where are they getting the equipment from? We’re subsidizing MCE, and the supplies we’re getting from, from somewhere out of state. Right?

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Antonio Hayes:

We’re not even doing business. This wood is being procured from some out of state company. We’re not supporting Maryland jobs. So I think we need to just reevaluate and deconstruct piece by piece, how could we better get a better return on its investment, not just for the state, but also for the individuals who are producing these products that we enjoy?

Mansa Musa:

That was Senator Antonio Hayes, who, as you could see, sponsored a bill to try to get the labor force, prison labor force in Maryland regulated. We’ll keep you updated on the developments of that bill.

Now, my conversation with Lonnell Sligh. Lonnell Sligh told me about his experience in working with the prison industry in Kansas. He told me that the average prisoner in Kansas has saved up to $75,000 while working in prison industry. That it doesn’t matter how much time you’re serving, if you have a life sentence or not, most of the prisoners that’s working in the industry have long term. But because of them being able to work in the prison industry, they’re able to save money, to assist their families, pay taxes, buying to social security, and more importantly, live with some kind of dignity while they’re incarcerated.

Lonnell Sligh:

The blessing of me going to Kansas, I saw the other side of that slave industry that we called and we thought about for so many years. Now, going to Kansas, I saw an opportunity where they afforded guys to work a minimum wage job. And in that, guys were making living wages. I met guys that had 60, 70 or a hundred thousand dollars in their account.

Mansa Musa:

From working in the prison industry?

Lonnell Sligh:

From working in the prison industry. So when I saw that, that kind of changed my mindset. Because at first, I thought it was a joke. Because they asked me say, “Hey, Mr. Sligh, you want to work in the minimum wage shop? Because you’re doing a lot of good things.” And I said, “Man, get out of here.”

So going back to what I was saying, when I found out that it was true and I was afforded to get a job there, it changed my whole outlook on it. Because now, my wheels started turning on, how can we make this better?

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lonnell Sligh:

You know what I mean? How can we change the narrative?

Mansa Musa:

Right. Okay. In every regard, okay, how did you change the narrative? Because, okay, now, reality being reality, Kansas might be an anomaly, and by that, I mean that might be in and of itself something that they doing. But overall, when you look at the prison industry throughout the United States of America, and it’s massive, they don’t have that narrative. So what would you say? How would you address that? What would you say about the Kansas model and the need to adapt it to other states’ prison industries?

Lonnell Sligh:

Well, you know firsthand that when I first came back to Maryland, my whole mindset was bringing some of the things from Kansas back to Maryland and taking some of the things that was progressive and good for Kansas back to Kansas. Now, the prison industry, we are in process now trying to bring that to Maryland. And one of the things that I’m advocating for, and I’m sure, because in the process when I got the job and I saw how we can, it’s an opportunity to make some changes and make it better for the people that’s inside, I crafted a set of guidelines and things that I presented to the administration.

So one of the things was allowing people with long-term sentences to be afforded that opportunity. So when they gave it to me, and I showed them through example that… Because I was never supposed to get out of prison.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Lonnell Sligh:

So I was never supposed to have that job. But the blessing in that, I showed them two sides of promise, and that was that now the companies that were coming in there had a long-term person that can be there that they can depend on, because they had a high turnover rate.

Then secondly, I crafted a thing as far as giving dudes the opportunity to learn financial literacy, things of that nature. Because one of the things that I know for sure, a lot of guys that’s getting those jobs, that was getting those jobs were leaving out of the prison with a lot of money, but they were just as ignorant as when they came in.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lonnell Sligh:

So if you got a hundred thousand dollars in your account and you don’t know how to pay bills or you don’t know any financial literacy, the first thing you’re going to do is go out and buy a Cadillac, a bunch of flashy clothes.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, yeah.

Lonnell Sligh:

So you’re going to end up broke or back in prison. So that’s one of the things that we are working to craft, bringing this to Maryland, having it upfront, having a criteria, a curriculum that’s designated the design for success. And one of the things that, like I said, in Kansas, the politicians, the prison industry, the corporate industry, if y’all want to help with this cause, you say you want to give people a second chance, what better way than bringing in private industry jobs, but making it something for the better, not as a slave camp?

Mansa Musa:

In terms of, how did you come out? And were you able to come out, after being in the industry, to be able to feel some sense of security financially? Or were you in need of getting support from family members to make sure that you had what you needed? Or were you able to save some money, bottom line?

Lonnell Sligh:

Absolutely.

Mansa Musa:

Not going into how much.

Lonnell Sligh:

Yeah.

Mansa Musa:

But what did your savings allow you to do in terms of adjust, readjust back into society? That’s really what it’s all about. If you’re coming out and you can’t adjust in society with the money that you made out of the industry, if you don’t have no sense of security with the money that you’re making out of industry, then likely your chances of survival is slim to nothing.

Lonnell Sligh:

Yeah. But I’m going to take it back even before, because remember, I was never supposed to get out of prison.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lonnell Sligh:

So having that job really took a burden off of my family.

Mansa Musa:

Okay.

Lonnell Sligh:

And it took a burden off of me, because now I didn’t have to reach out and ask for money, somebody to send me money to make commissary. So my whole strategy when I first got the job, because remember, I wasn’t ever thinking about getting out of prison, so my thing was helping my family, saving as much money as I can, building a bank account, like some of them guys that I knew had 60, 70, a hundred thousand dollars in their account.

So then I transitioned over to finding out that now I may have an opportunity to get out of prison. So that really changed the whole narrative and outlook that I had, because now I got in my mind that if I’m able to get out, not only can I afford to pay for a lawyer to help this cause, but now when I get out, I don’t have to come out in a desperate situation not knowing where I’m going to live at, not knowing if I can put a roof over my head or get a car.

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right, right. So then in that regard, the model that Kansas had in terms of giving the minimum wage, allowing you to pay into your social security, and allowing you to save, in that model, it allowed for you to transition back in society. But more importantly, while you were incarcerated, it allowed for you to be able to feel a sense of self-sufficiency in terms of taking care of your family, or providing for your children, not having to rely on them to put money on your phone or put money in your books. So that Kansas model is really a model that you think that… Well, then let’s just ask this, why do you think that other states haven’t adapted this model?

Lonnell Sligh:

Because one of the things we know is that it’s an old mindset. It’s an old way of thinking, that’s not progressive. And it’s not beneficial for a lot of states to transition or to try to do something better. They don’t want to help us. They don’t want to help the incarcerated person or the person that’s serving their times, even though they say their Division of Corrections. And they need to change that name from the Division of Corrections, because they’re not helping correct anything.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right, right.

Lonnell Sligh:

But Kansas most definitely afforded the opportunity for… But their mindset when this first started was in the seventies, so they were about making a dollar themselves.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right, right, right.

Lonnell Sligh:

So it evolved, and just like I said, it was still a hundred years behind the timing, by me being afforded to get in that space, it was a blessing because I was able to help bring a different light to it. But other states, just like I say, it’s about their bottom line and their control and old way of thinking. But my thing is, and what I’m advocating for is, is that you have to think outside the box. Because if you don’t think outside the box, then you’re going to get the same results, the same thing.

Mansa Musa:

Well, how do you address this part of the conversation? That long-term imprisonment people, that most people in those situations, those jobs after you spoke on this and have long-term, and so therefore, the benefits for them is not in comparison to the benefits of people that got short-term that can get the skill and get the money and come out. How do you… Can you have it both ways, or either/or?

Lonnell Sligh:

I think, for me, you can have it both ways. But one of the things that we mess up so much on in our way of thinking in society and in the department, we’re stuck on a certain way of thinking. So my thing is that, if you want to breed a successful person, no matter what kind of time you have… That’s my focus and my mindset, because I took a stance knowing I was never getting out of prison, but I took a stance that I was going to better myself and I was going to walk every day and do the things that I needed to make myself successful and act like I was getting out of prison tomorrow, even though I knew I was never getting out of prison. So for me, it was about me better than myself.

So having a minimum wage job or allowing a person to have a job that they can create wages, it makes a better person. It gives you a better product, whether you’re getting out or not. But you have to instill those things in people so that they can understand that it’s a different way. If not, you’re going to think that old way of thinking. Nothing is going to change.

Mansa Musa:

There you have it. Two conversations about prison labor. The prison industry. I worked in MCE. I earned 90 cents a day, a dollar and something with bonuses, approximately $2.10. The bonuses came from how much labor we produced.

On the other hand, you had the conversation I had with Lonnell about Kansas. In Maryland, I didn’t pay taxes, I wasn’t allowed to pay into the social security. I didn’t pay medical, and I didn’t pay rent. In Kansas, a person is allowed to pay into social security. That means when he get released, he had his quarters to retire. Pay the medical. That means, if he is released, he’ll be able to afford medical. Pay taxes. That means that he’s also making a contribution to society in that form. But more importantly, they’re allowed to save money. And in saving money, they will become less of a burden on the state upon their release.

What would you prefer? A person that earns slave wages and don’t pay back into society, or a system where the person is paying into society in the form of taxes, social security, medical, and also becoming economically sufficient upon their release? Tell me what you think.

Speaker 4:

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.

Within the first month of the new Trump administration, the federal government has already become nearly unrecognizable. Operating through the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been given carte blanche to wage war on every part of the government that stands in the way of the business and investment needs of the billionaire class. The ongoing attacks on the Treasury Department, the Department of Education, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) are just the opening salvo of a broader, darker plan to remake American society and government to serve the interests of the largest corporations and most powerful oligarchs. On this week’s livestream, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez will speak with organizers of the emergency rally that took place on Monday outside of the CFPB building in Washington DC to protest the Trump administration’s moves to effectively shut down the agency. Then, we’ll speak with media critic and TRNN columnist Adam Johnson and tech critic Paris Marx about DOGE’s attacks on democracy, Musk’s agenda, and the grim future of technofascism materializing before us in real time.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden, Adam Coley

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  Welcome to The Real News Network, and welcome back to our weekly livestream.

The Trump administration has effectively shut down the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the very agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage lending scandal. Since its creation, the CFPB has clawed back over $21 billion from Wall Street banks, credit card companies, and other predatory financial institutions for defrauded customers. Russell Vought, an unabashed Christian nationalist, founder of the far-right think tank the Center for Renewing America, a primary architect of Project 2025, and Donald Trump’s newly Senate-confirmed acting director of the CFPB, ordered all agency staff in an email Saturday to stop working and to not come into the office.

Hundreds of federal employees and protesters mobilized for an emergency rally in front of the CFPB headquarters near the White House in Washington DC on Monday. Democratic lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters spoke at the event, which was organized by progressive organizations Indivisible, the Progressive Change Institute, MoveOn, Americans for Financial Reform, and the National Treasury Employees Union Local 335, which represents CFPB workers.

Here’s Sen. Warren speaking to the crowd on Monday:

[CLIP BEGINS]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren:  This fight is about hardworking people versus the billionaires who want to squeeze more and more and more money. And now, now is our time to put a stop to this.

[CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  On Tuesday night, just 24 hours after that demonstration, dozens of CFPB employees were notified over email that they had been fired. For his part, Elon Musk, richest man in the world and unelected head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, celebrated the shuttering of the agency, posting Sunday night on X, the platform that he owns, Musk wrote “CFPB RIP” accompanied by a tombstone emoji.

Now Musk, it should really be noted, has a big fat obvious conflict of interest here. Just last month, his site X announced a partnership with Visa to offer a real-time payment system on the platform. And yes, the CFPB would’ve been scrutinizing the whole thing in order to make sure that users weren’t scammed and didn’t have their sensitive information stolen. Now it won’t.

But the wrecking balls that Musk and Trump are swinging through the government right now are doing incalculable damage that goes far beyond the CFPB as we speak. Trump’s administration appears dead set on manufacturing a constitutional crisis if and when they openly defy court rulings, ordering them to halt their numerous illegal moves to shut down agencies, seize operational control of government finances, and to access everyone’s sensitive government data. There’s very much a Silicon Valley esque move fast and break things strategy that’s being applied here.

And the big tech oligarchs of Silicon Valley who threw their full support behind the Trump-Vance ticket have much more at stake here than just Musk’s payment system on X. Through Trump, Musk, J.D. Vance, and others, Silicon Valley and its technofascist oligarchs are waging a coup of their own right now, rewiring our government and our economy to serve their business and investment needs and to accelerate the coming of the dystopian future that they envision for all of us.

Over the course of this livestream, we’re going to break down this technofascist takeover of our government that’s unfolding in real time. We’re going to talk about what the consequences will be and how people are fighting back. In the second half of the stream, we’re going to talk with media critic, Real News columnist, and co-host of the Citations Needed podcast, Adam Johnson, and we’re also going to speak with Paris Marx, renowned tech critic, author, and host of the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us.

But we’re going to start right now with the chaos at the CFPB and the protest action outside the DC agency headquarters on Monday. We’re joined now by Aaron Stephens. Aaron is the former mayor of East Lansing, Michigan, a senior legislative strategist with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and he was an organizer of Monday’s CFPB protest.

Aaron, thank you so much for joining us, man, especially with everything going on. Can you start by just giving us and our viewers an on-the-ground account of Monday’s action? How did it get organized? What did you see and hear on the day, and what were the real core rallying messages of the event?

Aaron Stephens:  Yeah, thanks for having me. So this is a really difficult time. I think that everybody’s dealing with a fire hose of news, the Trump administration taking actions, especially taking actions on Fridays, Saturdays to try and get away from the news cycle, to hide some of the worst things that they’re doing during the times when people might not be paying attention.

But we got news that some of the DOGE, those, I think, 20-something-year-old tech folks got into CFPB and started accessing some really sensitive data that the CFPB has and were looking to shut down the agency. You have to remember that Elon Musk, back when Trump first won reelection, tweeted that the CFPB was a redundant agency and one that needed to be deleted in the first place. So this is something that we were expecting to see, but of course we didn’t expect things to happen in the way that it did.

This is an agency that, DOGE, of course, is Elon Musk, is not an elected person. There’s been no act of Congress to authorize anything that’s been happening over at the CFPB, but we saw basically a takeover of the agency. People being told stay home, people being told don’t work.

And so we quickly mobilized with some of our congressional allies and some of our allies like Indivisible, MoveOn, the union folks, and Americans for Financial Reform to show that this was not going to be something that folks just stood by and let happen. We had about a thousand people there, maybe more, many, many members of Congress.

And I want to highlight the fact that it wasn’t just members that care and talk about consumer protection every single day. You had freshman members like Yassamin Ansari and senior members like Maxine Waters who are on the financial services committee, and Elizabeth Warren who, obviously, is the matriarch of this agency, but a lot of support from within the party here to really push back on what’s going on. The core message being that we’re not just going to stand by and let Elon Musk take over at this agency, and we’re not going to let what is really the financial cop on the street die in the darkness.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let’s talk a little more about that. For folks who weren’t at the rally or for folks who are maybe not fully up to speed on what the CFPB itself does or did, let’s talk a little more about what the CFPB does, why it was created. And as much as we don’t want to speculate, of course we can’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but if we have a shut down of CFPB, what is that going to mean for people?

Aaron Stephens:  I think you really have to look back at why this agency was created. This agency was created after the financial crisis in the late 2000s. This is an agency that is meant to hold banks and corporations and financial institutions accountable for malfeasance and advocates for consumers when they are wronged. This is an agency that, for instance, somebody who has been paying their mortgage on time, but the bank has been misapplying those payments as late and then their house got foreclosed on, they go to the CFPB. And the CFPB is the one that steps in and says, actually, you guys were in the wrong here. We’re going to keep this person in their house. They are the people on the street advocating for consumers. So getting rid of an agency like that is going to leave millions of Americans without somebody to go to.

I want to point out some of the numbers here. The CFPB has returned over $20 billion to consumers. It has a billion dollar a year budget and it has returned over $20 billion to consumers just on actions against corporations that have taken advantage of them alone. You have folks like Wells Fargo that have been taken action against, and they’ve had to pay back $2.5 billion for misapplying mortgage payments, like I mentioned before, and a lot of other actors that are, quite frankly, in the tech space, which Elon Musk is very, very related to, that are seeing action taken against them as well.

And so you can see the throughline there. Not having this agency protect consumers will mean that corporations will have a much, much easier time stealing from consumers and not having any kind of retribution against them.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I guess this is as much a disclosure as anything, because it’s very hard to sit here as a journalist, as editor-in-chief of The Real News Network talking about this, but I’m also someone whose family lost everything in the financial crisis. I’ve been open about this my whole media career. It’s where my media career started. We lost the house that I grew up in. This agency was created because so many millions of families like mine got screwed over in the 2008 financial crash, and now here we are, 15 years later, being told that shuttering this agency is a win for, I don’t know what, efficiency…?

Aaron Stephens:  For who? If you talk about efficiency, again, I’ll point out $20 billion returned to consumers, a billion dollar a year budget. That’s efficient to me. And we’re talking about an agency that is literally dedicated to protecting consumers. So the only thing that I could say this would be efficient for is helping big corporations take advantage of people. There is no other reason to go after an agency that is dedicated to making sure that people have a fair shake in a financial system that is usually difficult to navigate and sometimes, unfortunately, as we’ve seen many, many times in the past, takes advantage of consumers. There’s no reason to go after an agency like this other than to make it easier for those folks to do that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, I think that’s a really important point, and I want to build on that in a second and talk about what the attack on the CFPB tells us about the larger attack that’s happening across the government right now. But I would be remiss if I didn’t ask if you’ve heard anything from the folks at the CFPB who lost their jobs this week, or anyone that you were talking to on the ground on Monday. Our listeners want to know.

Aaron Stephens:  I want to couch this and make sure that the point of this really is to talk about the consumers that are affected by this, but there is a really important story that is not probably going to be as told, which is that there are civil servants that dedicated their lives to basically saying, you know what? — And many of them have very similar stories to you. I saw somebody get taken advantage of, my family got taken advantage of, and now I’ve dedicated my life to fighting for consumers, and this is the agency that I’m part of. All of those people got an email that said, your work’s not important, stop doing it.

And so that’s why so many workers showed up on Monday. And their message was very, very simple. It was, we just want to do our job. We just want to protect people, let us do our job. You’ve got hundreds of people that they’re probably not making as much as they might be able to in the private sector, and they’re doing their best to try and protect people, and they’re just basically being told this isn’t important anymore.

As part of a larger plan, we’re seeing the same playbook at different agencies. I’m not going to be surprised as Elon Musk goes and attacks Social Security, attacks the Department of Education. These are services that affect working families everywhere across the country, and you don’t see him having the same kind of vitriol to a large corporation that’s taking advantage of people. It’s very, very clear that what’s going on right now is they’re dismantling the agencies that are protecting people just to give tax breaks and give an easier time for billionaires to take advantage of consumers.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let’s tease that out a little more, because I would hope that that is the clear and obvious message that people are taking away from it. But you know as well as I do that, it’s not that easy, unfortunately. We’re going to talk about this in the second segment with Paris Marx and Adam Johnson, but this is as much a war over what Musk and Trump are doing as it is over the perception about what they’re doing.

And so I see people all the time, people I know, people I’ve interviewed, people in my family who are right-leaning or maybe politically independent, who are still very much buying the Musk and Trump line that this is all being done in the name of efficiency, rooting out longstanding corruption and wokeism and all that crap.

So I wanted to ask if, in good faith, if we want to talk to folks who are feeling that way and thinking that way, what does the attack on the CFPB, how does that fit into the larger project that you just described? How can people take that and what’s going on at the Treasury, and just what the hell is going on here and what’s the end game?

Aaron Stephens:  Let’s talk through some of their playbook, because what Elon Musk and Donald Trump will do is they will find one little line item budget thing that they know they can message on, and they will say, look at this inefficient spending, and it’ll be like $10 million in a budget of a billion. And they’ll say, look at this inefficient thing, this is the thing that we’re cutting. And they won’t talk about the millions and millions of dollars going to help consumers. But that’s the thing they’ll talk about so that way they can message to folks, no, no, no, look, we’re cutting. We’re cutting and we’re being efficient. But the reality is that they’re saying that publicly so that way behind the scenes they can cut the things that help people.

And so I think that the CFPB is, and one of the reasons why we are so passionate about it, is because there are so many stories of people being helped by this agency.

I’ll give another random example, although there are literally thousands. People that went to a for-profit college that was not accredited, took out large loans for this, and the CFPB helped state AGs sue that for-profit college, which led to not only money going back to those folks, but also loans being forgiven. Those are people that would’ve been in debt for probably the rest of their lives for a degree that wasn’t even accredited, and that’s the CFPB, that’s what they’re doing.

One of the reasons why I think centering this agency in this fight is a very, very good thing to do is because there are thousands of stories of people really going out there and seeking help from the CFPB and that agency doing the right thing.

One of the rules that they most recently announced, which is a great rule which is now being attacked by congressional Republicans, is their medical debt and credit reporting rule. You’re talking about folks that, for those who don’t know, when you have an amount of medical debt, it goes on your credit report and it can significantly impact your life in the future, not being able to get a mortgage or not being able to get a car. And sometimes those procedures are just not things that you can control. And the statistics have said it and the studies have said it over and over again: Having medical debt does not actually have any real determining factor on whether or not you’re going to be paying back car loans or house loans, and it really doesn’t affect anything. In fact, Experian has even said that publicly.

And the CFPB said, you know what? This should be something that we address. We should not have medical debt [be] something that is reported on their credit report. And there are thousands of stories of people saying, I had a procedure done in the ’90s. It was out of the blue, I couldn’t control anything about it, and now 20 years later, I can’t get a house. I have two kids and I can’t get a house. Those are the people that are affected by closing this agency.

And so I think centering those stories is really, really important in this conversation. And just talking about, really, who is Elon Musk and Donald Trump on the side of? Is it on the side of that person that is trying to get a home for their two kids, or is it on the side of the banks that just want to make sure that they can make every last dime out of these consumers? And I think the answer’s fairly clear to that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that’s powerfully put. And we do need to center these stories, if only to get people out of the hazy miasma of Trumpian rhetoric and actually see the reality in front of them. We were talking about this two livestreams ago, a day after the horrific plane crash in DC where over 60 people lost their lives. But that was another clear-cut example where the government bureaucrats, the deep state, useless, evil, faceless folks in the government are actually air traffic controllers. They’re working people who are making sure our planes don’t crash when we come in and out of an airport. They’re also the people in the CFPB, the NLRB, talking to workers about organizing every day. If you just look at this in terms of big awful government but you’re not actually seeing the details, we’re going to be sleepwalking into even more dangerous stuff.

And I want to hover on that point for a second because for people who are not right in the middle of this, people who don’t live and work in DC, and even for people who aren’t employees of the government and they’re really only seeing this from the outside through the media and social media, I wanted to ask you, since you were there, you’re in it, how are people who work in government responding to this? What is the range of emotions that you’re hearing and seeing from your colleagues there in DC?

Aaron Stephens:  I do live in Michigan, so I go to DC fairly regularly, but I’m here on the ground in the wonderful, greatest state in the country. There’s folks that are there that are terrified. They get an email one day that says, don’t come into the office, you’re working from home. Get an email the next day that says stop your work entirely.

And I think it’s very important that we engage the union in this protest too, because those are real folks that have families, jobs, lives that are completely in limbo because there’s an unelected billionaire that decided that he wanted to tweet to delete the CFPB, and that’s a really scary reality to live in currently.

To your earlier point about people not really feeling or understanding what a government employee is, I want to point out, I was a mayor back in Michigan, and I think that people have different opinions about different levels of government involvement, but I’ll tell you, when the pandemic hit and you needed those folks out there making sure that people were getting access to vaccines or access to rental assistance or whatever else it was, those are government employees, they’re doing their job. And those backbone, really important things for society are what government employees do. I think we can have discussions about where we can direct policy or direct money more efficiently, but shutting down agencies that are dedicated to protecting people is not the way that we need to go about things.

Maximillian Alvarez:  There’s a larger complicated point here to be made, but I have faith that we can manage it because we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Two things can be true at once. What’s happening right now is a catastrophe, and plenty of government agencies have drawn justified criticism and ire from working people across this country. I’ll be the first to say it.

I talked to working class people living and fighting in sacrifice zones around the country, people in Michigan, people in Baltimore, people in places like East Palestine, Ohio, who have been polluted by private industry, government-run sites, all this crap. The point being is that that is what the Environmental Protection Agency was created in response to a half a century ago. The Cuyahoga River was on fire every other month, and toxic pollution was rampant, and people across the country rose up and said, the government needs to do something about this. And it was fricking Nixon’s administration who created the EPA and actually had an understanding that you need to have a level of enforcement there that gives people confidence that this agency is actually doing what it says it’s doing.

Now over the last 50 years, both parties have contributed in one way or another, either by just cutting the budget, vilifying the agency, or leaning more towards the interests of the corporations that the agency’s supposed to regulate. And so you end up with people like the folks I talked to in these sacrifice zones not trusting the EPA at all, because the EPA is telling them that they’re fine and they can stay in their homes while they and their kids continue to get sick.

And so that is the situation that we are in with so much wrought that has been created in well-meaning or established-for-good-reasons agencies. But that doesn’t mean you throw everything out with the bathwater. Again, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, otherwise we’re going to have nothing left at the end of this.

Aaron Stephens:  Right. And I want to put a fine edge point on that. What we’re not sitting here saying is that everything is perfect, but look at where they’re targeting. They’re taking the frustration that people have that’s valid with government or the way that things are happening right now, and they’re using that frustration to attack agencies that are just holding corporations accountable. Where is the energy from them going? It is not going to address people’s actual concerns about government. They’re taking the, again, valid concerns that people have about the way that things are right now, and they’re saying, great, my solution is to give away tax breaks to billionaires. And they’re doing it in a more couched way.

But the reality is if they cared about people being taken advantage of, then the CFPB would be enhanced, not taken away. And you see where they’re diverting their energy into cutting, and it’s for public services for working families. It is not that real angst — And again, real angst — From people that are just angry at the current situation and the way things are. So they’re taking advantage of folks’ fear, unfortunately.

Maximillian Alvarez:  That, in many ways, is the political difference here between this MAGA-fied Republican Party and what I guess we would tend to call the Democratic establishment, not the whole party itself, but very much the ruling side of the party.

Trump, for all of his lies and the scapegoats and fictive enemies that he creates, is still identifying and speaking to those touchpoints of neoliberal system failure that people feel in their real lives. What is our counternarrative? What is the opposite vision of the future and governance that is being offered instead of the wrecking ball that is the Trump administration? That’s a question that all of us need to sit with.

And it’s a question that leads into, we only got about 10 more minutes here before we move into the next segment, but I didn’t want to let you go without asking about what this all means for the Democrats who are still in office right now, this party that people are looking to as the core institutional opposition to what Trump and the GOP are doing right now.

Axios dropped a story, which I’m sure you saw, earlier this week, sparked a lot of justified outrage all over the internet. And this article said, “Members of the Steering and Policy Committee — with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in the room — on Monday complained” about pressure from activist groups, including ones that helped organize Monday’s action and are putting them. They’re really pissed about the pressure these groups are putting on them to get off their butts and do something. And there was a quote from this Axios article that said, “‘It’s been a constant theme of us saying, “Please call the Republicans.”’” And that was from Rep. Don Beyer from Virginia, basically throwing up their hands and telling their constituents, hey, we’re in the minority now. There’s nothing we can do, go call the Republicans.

Is this the pervasive attitude from Democrats on the Hill right now that you’re hearing? Who’s fighting back? And tell us more about the work that you’re doing with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to be part of that fight back.

Aaron Stephens:  I think it’s important to note, I think everybody’s seen the responses to some of that article, but also the positive responses to our rally on Monday where Maxine Waters and Elizabeth Warren stood up and said, we’re not going to stand by. Or Maxwell Frost trying to get into USAID. People want to see Democrats fighting back. They feel like, at this moment, they are getting just hounded with news every single day from a different Trump administration action that is going to harm them in the long term or in the short term, and they want to know that their representatives are fighting back.

And so I think that some of that frustration is just going to manifest in people calling their Dem representatives and being like, what are you doing? And I think it’s important that Dem leadership hears that. I think that we as an organization are going to continue trying to channel our members to make sure that action is being taken on the Dem side and that we’re using every single tool in the arsenal, whether that be in the funding fight or whether that be pushing stateside, pushing on AGs and the courts. Whatever it is, people need to see Dems fighting back.

I certainly agree that this is a Republican agenda and we need to be holding them accountable for what they are doing. But again, people need to see Dems fighting back. And if they don’t see that, then they’re going to feel like they’ve been abandoned by the party that claims to be the ones that’s fighting for them.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Picking up on that, for folks out here who are watching and listening to this stream, what would be your message to them about why they should fight back and the ways they can? It could be calling your elected representative, but for folks who are maybe feeling like they’re not getting anything out of their representative right now, but we don’t want to leave folks feeling hopeless and powerless, that is never our aim. What’s your message to the folks around you, the folks you talk to these days about why they need to fight, not give up, and the different things that they can do to hold this administration accountable, preserve the things in our society, in our government that need to be preserved? What’s your message to folks right now?

Aaron Stephens:  My one big message is we need more stories being shared. There are millions of people in this country that have been impacted that are on Medicare and would be in a very, very bad situation if that was reduced, or Social Security, or again, had good action taken by the CFPB, or had their grocery store saved in their local community because the FTC stopped a merger. Those things, those stories need to be amplified.

And I think that it’s important that people are not just apathetic about the situation. I know that it’s difficult given just how much is going on, but show up to the town hall for your congressional member, stage a protest, do it in your own district. We need to be showing that, again, we are not going to stand by and let this happen.

And quite frankly, I think that Democrats need to see that when they do stand up and when they do take real action that they have support. I think they do just based on what the response was to this rally and what happened at USAID. But I think that we need to be also, while still calling out the folks that are maybe a little bit quieter, we also need to be celebrating the folks that are out there fighting the fight and make sure that folks know that if they do stand up, they’ll have backup. And I think that’s important to do.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Hell yeah. Well man, I want to have you back on soon because there’s so many other big questions to talk about here: What’s going to happen when we hit the debt ceiling crap again? What can we expect in the coming weeks, months, and years of this administration? We’re only one month into this thing, so we gotta pace ourselves, but we gotta know what’s coming ahead so that we’re not constantly immobilized by the onslaught of news on a given day. So having that long view, I think, is important for all of us. And I do want to have you back on to talk about that in more depth.

As we close out, I did want to ask if you had any thoughts you wanted to share on that, or if there were any other upcoming actions that you wanted to point people to? I’m hearing that there’s a national day of action that federal workers are going to be participating in on the 17th. Are there agency demonstrations that you know happening in DC? Just anything like that that you wanted to put out there before we let you go. And also tell folks about where they can find you.

Aaron Stephens:  Yeah, so feel free to find me on Twitter, @AaronDStephens — I’ll still call it Twitter — And go to boldprogressives.org, sign up for our listserv. We’ll send out action alerts on protests and different things that are going on there. We’re also going to be collecting stories from folks that are affected.

And I think, again, just because we have those connections in the Hill amplifying those of offices, so they have things to really push for, and they have a little bit more ammunition when they’re having these conversations on the Hill is important. And as you said, fortunately, it’s a marathon that feels like a sprint right now with everything going on. We just need to keep it going. I’d be happy to come back on. Thanks for having me.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Thank you so much, man. We really appreciate you being here. I appreciate the work that you’re doing. We hope to have you back soon, man. Thank you again.

Aaron Stephens:  Thanks so much. Have a good one.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Alright, gang. So we’ve got another hour in our livestream today. We want to thank again Aaron Stephens, senior legislative strategist with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, who was one of the organizers of Monday’s protest outside the CFPB. Thank you to Aaron. Please follow him on X, or Twitter, if you want to stay up to date with Aaron.

And now I want to bring in our next two guests here. They’re longtime friends of The Real News. We’ve interviewed them separately a number of times. I’ve had the honor of being on Citations Needed. Adam himself writes for The Real News. So I’m really, really grateful to see your faces and to have your critical voices here with us, guys.

And I just want to make sure, for folks who are watching, if you are living under a rock and you don’t know about Paris and Adam’s work yet, I actually envy you because you’ve got a lot of great work at your disposal. But Paris Marx is a Canadian technology writer whose work has been published in a range of outlets including NBC News, CBC News, Jacobin, and Tribune. They’re also the host of the acclaimed podcast Tech Won’t Save Us, which everyone should go listen to, especially right now. Paris is also the author of the excellent book Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation, which was published by Verso Books in 2022.

And we are also joined by the great Adam Johnson. Adam hosts the Citations Needed podcast, which everyone should also listen to. And Adam writes at The Column on Substack. He is a columnist for us here at The Real News. You should read every column he’s ever written for us because they’re all bangers and all critical media analyses. And he also writes for other outlets like The Nation.

Paris, Adam, thank you both so much for joining us today. We got a lot to talk about, and you guys are exactly the folks I want to be talking to about it. But I wanted to just, by way of transitioning from that first segment with Aaron into our discussion, if you guys had any comments on Musk, Trump, and votes attacks specifically on the CFPB, and any thoughts you had on why they’re going after the CFPB that maybe we didn’t cover in that first segment.

So yeah, Paris, let’s start with you, and then Adam, we’ll go to you.

Paris Marx:  Sure. Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that the CFPB is low-hanging fruit and something easy for them to take on. We know that the right has not liked this agency for quite a while, and then we can also see that an agency like that is going to hinder some of what Elon Musk and these other tech billionaires want to be doing. We know Marc Andreessen, for example, has been angry at this agency and blaming it for debanking people in crypto, which is probably not true, but is one of these conspiracy theories that he has embraced.

Elon Musk, of course, has ambitions of moving Twitter or X into payments and financial services and things like that. It is not a surprise to me that he would want to take on the CFPB right as he is getting into an area like that. And of course, as I understand, the CFPB has also looked into Tesla in the past and issues with Tesla. So yeah, it’s not a surprise to me that he wants to take on this agency, and I think we’re going to see him take on a lot of other ones as well and try to dismantle them too.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Adam, what about you? Were you surprised? You look surprised. You don’t look surprised at all [laughs]. Oh, wait, you’re muted, brother.

Adam Johnson:  My apologies. I want to start off by saying I thought that the intro, Max, you gave at the top of the show about 37 minutes ago was excellent. I don’t usually kiss ass to my host, but that was very, very well written, established the stakes. I thought that was really well done. I forget because you edit me, but you should do more writing. It was very good. It’s a complex thing to break down, and I don’t usually kiss the ass of the host, but I’m doing it.

But to answer your question, yeah, I mean, look, he’s obviously going after the liberal administrative regulatory state. These are all the Project 2025 wishlist, Silicon Valley wishlist of people they want to go after. He is going after it in a different way than previously. He is going after it in a way that is obviously not legal, which is another way of saying illegal. He is doing it in a way that is blatantly illegal, knowing that there’s not really any mechanism to hold him accountable. They are now openly and flagrantly violating judges’ orders, district judges’ orders. My guess is it’ll have to be escalated to the Supreme Court.

And again, as your previous guest mentioned, the fire hose element is because liberal good government groups and progressive groups only have so much resources, so everyone’s putting out fires. As you know as an editor at a progressive publication, that’s what these last three weeks have been, is just putting out a series of fires. That’s part of their strategy because they have far more resources. And of course, as you also mentioned as —

Maximillian Alvarez:  OK, so we lost Brother Adam for a quick second, but he’ll be back on. But yeah, I mean that is something — Oh, wait, do we have you back, Adam?

Adam Johnson:  Did I fall out?

Maximillian Alvarez:  You froze for about 30 seconds there, but go ahead and pick right back up.

Adam Johnson:  So sorry. I apologize. I said, while Democratic leadership in Congress has been largely a no-show, although that’s changed a little bit lately… Oh shoot.

Maximillian Alvarez:  OK.

Adam Johnson:  Hello?

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yeah. So little. Hey, man, it’s a livestream baby. So technical issues —

Adam Johnson:  I’m not sure why my wifi says it’s operating at full capacity. I’m not sure what’s going on. I apologize.

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, you’re good, man.

Adam Johnson:  I was in the middle of my denouement, and now I’m interrupted. Now I feel —

Maximillian Alvarez:  All right. Give me the denouement, baby.

Adam Johnson:  Well, now there’s a lot of pressure to make it a good denouement. No, I was saying that governors had pushed back, but they are attempting to dismantle the liberal state that they know they couldn’t possibly dismantle through Congress or other legal means.

Because here’s the thing, and this is, I think, a dynamic people have to appreciate, which is that Musk can try to do a few dozen illegal things and then what’s the pushback? He gets some court order that says, no, you can’t do that, but he can’t lose anything. It’s not like he’s going to go to prison, and to say nothing to the fact that he’s obviously abusing stimulants and surrounded by a bunch of Nazi Zoomers who are egging him on. So he’s very much high on his own supply. But he can’t lose, he can only be curbed. And so from his perspective, he’s thinking, what are they going to do, take away my birthdays? He can illegally try to shut down whatever department he wants, Department of Education, Department of Labor, to get rid of the NLRA and the NLRB, whatever, name it, because what does he have to lose by doing that? Nothing.

The only limiting thing is two things: Number one, how much resources they have on their end, but two, it will ultimately be congressional Republicans, because it’s very clear, obviously, Trump can’t run again. Musk doesn’t give a shit if this harms the long-term Republican Party brand. The only real counterforce here, other than lawfare, which Democrats are doing and ought to do, which is suing them, as well as these progressive groups like Bold Progressives and others, is that Republicans do have to run in 2026. And if they’re running on putting grandma on cat food, that doesn’t sound as good as going after whatever woke chimpanzee, transgender studies or some other bullshit they make up.

So right now they’re doing this… This is the project, this is the Heritage Foundation’s wet dream, and this is what we’re seeing. We’re seeing these full-blown assaults on the liberal and administrative and regulatory state because it serves Silicon Valley, it serves non-Silicon Valley, the wealthy in general. Again, we’re getting $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. We’re doing the 2017 tax cuts on steroids. This is why most billionaire money went to Trump and Republicans, despite their faux-populist rhetoric and token attempts to make taxes tip-free for waiters or other such trivial nonsense.

And so they’re just going to go until somebody stops them, because why not? Again, what’s the downside? It’s Trump’s. It’s not like Musk is going to get arrested for violating the law.

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, no.

Adam Johnson:  And even if he did, Trump would just pardon him. And this is why — Sorry, real quick I want to say one thing. This is why the Jan. 6 pardons were so key, because it’s a signal to every right-wing vigilante and every hardcore right winger that they can pretty much do anything they want that’s illegal so long as they are advancing the MAGA cause, and they can expect to not be held accountable so long as it’s a federal and not a state crime. So as long as they go from Kansas to Nebraska and commit a crime pursuant to Trumpism, Trump will pardon them no matter what, even if they have a record of all kinds of horrific crimes.

And so that kind of vigilantism and that kind of lawlessness is completely taking hold. That is an escalation from previous… The policies themselves are boilerplate Republican policies, but the extralegal, extrajudicial tactics are an escalation, they’re new. And we’re seeing some of the ways in which Democratic leadership either can’t or won’t be prepared to really address it on those terms.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And it’s even been, like you said, from the first time Trump was elected eight years ago to now, there has been a notable and concerted evolution of the MAGA movement to basically state sanction vigilantism. And you can see the examples of that, not just in Donald Trump and J.D. Vance cozying up to known vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse or the guy who strangled the poor man in New York on the subway.

That celebration of typically white men vigilantes, but also baked into the MAGA-fied legislation that’s been creeping through state Houses all across the country where you see the weaponization of citizens’ impulse for vigilantism as a necessary part of executing the policy. That’s why you get abortion laws in Texas that are encouraging everyday citizens to sue anyone who helps with an abortion, even the Uber driver who drives you to the clinic.

These types of policy points are making the point that Adam made there where you have a party that is not just pardoning the Jan. 6 insurrectionists for their crimes against the country and their violent crimes, but also sanctioning this type of vigilantist mode of politics in other policy areas as well.

I do want to come back to that in a few minutes, but I wanted to, before we get too far afield, come back to the big question that I wanted to ask you both because it’s a question that I feel is at the center of your respective areas of expertise. It’s in that Venn diagram overlap, and it’s something that I’ve been getting asked from our viewers a lot about. So I want to ask if we could break what’s going down now from this angle, because this is as much a war over what Musk and Trump are doing in practice as it is a war over how people perceive what they’re doing and how they want us to perceive it.

I have seen plenty of right-leaning people that I’ve interviewed from sacrifice zones and unions from around the US sharing Newsmax posts that are framing this all as a heroic, historic moment. And Musk is out there rooting out corruption, and I’ve seen others sharing Musk memes with his resting rich face and the texts saying, “‘They’ Lied and Stole from you for Years, and now ‘They’ — ” All caps — “want you to be ANGRY at D.O.G.E. from PROVING it. LET THAT SINK IN.” So this is the war that’s going on right now.

Paris, I want to start with you, and then, Adam, kick it to you. How would you describe the difference between what Musk and Trump say they’re doing and what they’re actually doing right now?

Paris Marx:  Well, it’s a gulf, right? But I feel like it depends on what you’re looking at. These are people who are talking about making government more efficient, making it work better, but actually they are embarking on a major austerity program in order to gut the US federal government and, in particular, the aspects and the departments and the agencies within the federal government that they have personal distaste for.

And not just them personally. Certainly, Elon Musk and his companies will have certain agencies that they want to go after and certain programs that they want to go after. But Adam was mentioning before, we can see the outline for this kind of program in the Heritage Foundation and these other right-wing groups that have been wanting to, basically, launch this campaign against the federal government for a very long time, to remake it.

By bringing in the tech industry and bringing in someone like Elon Musk, you get the ability to frame this as something that tech is doing to give it this framing that it is modernizing the government rather than taking it apart. And in particular, as they are starting to try to do mass layoffs, people often point to what Elon Musk did at Twitter as a comparison for what they’re trying to do with the federal government, where Elon Musk came in, laid off a ton of staff, most of the company, and then kept it running.

And they want people to believe that the government is a ton of fraud, a ton of waste, that you can just get rid of all these workers and then you’ll still be able to provide the services that the US government provides, run the government as it is, because there’s just all these useless bureaucrats who are around. Which is a right-wing narrative that we have been hearing for ages. This is not a new thing.

But what they’re also doing as they embark on this project is to say, yes, we’re going to gut all of these workers, but also now we’re going to roll out these incredible AI tools that are going to be able to do all the work of these various workers to provide these services. Because look, AI has become so much more powerful over the past couple of years. They’ve been spreading these really deceptive narratives about how AI is reaching this point where it’s going to be nearly as powerful as a human being, and it has this understanding that it didn’t have before, and it’s so much more capable.

And a lot of that is bullshit, but it really helps with this larger program to say, we are going to gut the government. We are going to bring forward this massive austerity program, but it’s okay because technology is now going to fill the gap because technology has gotten so much better. To present this as inherently a technological problem, not so much a political one, where they are using technology as a form of power against all of these workers and against, really, the American public as they embark on this massive transformation of the government.

And so far it has been focusing on specific agencies, but we’ve already seen the suggestion from people like Elon Musk that they’re going to have to go after Medicare and Social Security and these other programs that so many Americans rely on. It’s not just going to end at these things that they perceive as only being about the culture wars and things like that. It’s going to expand much greater as they continue down this road.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I have so many thoughts on that, but Adam, I want to toss it to you.

Adam Johnson:  So from the beginning of this stupid DOGE narrative, I’ve been pulling my hair out because the way it’s covered is the exact opposite of the way it exists in reality. I often compare it to the Biden ceasefire talks. It’s just a fictitious alternative reality that has no basis in fact. And the media’s running with it because if you’re powerful, editorially speaking, you’re assumed always to have good faith, even if there’s facts that completely contradict reality. So any skepticism is seen as being too ideological, too outside the lane of mainstream reporting.

So about two weeks ago, I wrote an article criticizing the media covering DOGE as a “cost cutting” or to find waste and abuse, these ostensibly postideological, tech-savvy, as Paris said, and we can get into that, the use of the ways that we’re doing a whole episode on the ways in which AI becomes this moral laundromat where you say, oh, we’re going to fire a bunch of people, which sounds evil, because don’t they have jobs? Oh, don’t worry, we’re going to replace them with AI. But it’s bullshit. Everybody knows it’s bullshit. It’s a way of firing people so they can have more control. These so-called bureaucrats, which is to say those who are part of the liberal and administrative state they loathe because they want to be able to fucking pollute rivers without anyone giving them any flack.

And the way the media covered this was, again, this is someone in Elon Musk who, if you follow his Twitter activity, which everybody in media does because mostly they don’t have a choice, he jams it in front of your fucking face. He posts right-wing white nationalist memes all day from 4chan. White genocide is a huge, “hashtag white genocide is a huge part” of his worldview. He’s obsessed with knockout game type lurid, VDARE, straight up white nationalist propaganda, has been doing this for years. Inauguration day, does a goddamn Sieg Heil three times, clear as day, non-negotiable, not even ambiguous, not well, maybe — No, no, clear as day does a Sieg, Heil — Oh no, it was just a troll. Oh, it was a Roman salute. Again, you can’t ironically murder someone. You can’t ironically do Nazi propaganda. You either do it or you don’t do it, OK?

So you would think this would be, OK, let’s interrogate what he means by waste and abuse. Is this how some bean counter at the OMB sees it? Is this someone, one of these admittedly right-wing think tanks like a center for tax fairness or one of these Peter Peterson Foundation? No, to him, waste is an ideological assertion. Fraud is an ideological assertion. 

Keep in mind, he’s been lying for weeks about fraud, citing public fucking databases that are already online as if it’s some great revelation that he’s found, oh, they did this, they spent this so-and-so USAID or State Department or whatever. And it’s like, yeah, it’s a public database and it’s not fraud, it’s just how government spending works. So he’s been overtly lying for weeks.

And yet, as I wrote on Feb. 3, this is how it was covered. The New York Times, they referred to DOGE as, “finding savings”, “budget cutters”. In a later article, they wrote “cost-cutting effort”. They called it “an efficiency panel”, “a cost-cutting project”. The New York Times wrote on Jan. 12, 2025, “DOGE is a cost-cutting effort to seek potential savings.” Washington Post did the same thing. “Government efficiency commission”, “non-governmental fiscal efficiency group”, “the efficiency group”, “proposed savings”. So here’s someone with overt neo-Nazi ideologic — OK, maybe that’s too hard for you. We’ll say far-right tech billionaire, whatever, someone who’s overtly ideological, and he’s consistently treated like someone who’s genuinely concerned with finding efficiencies.

Now, finally, after weeks of this shit, again, spreading outright lies about USAID — As much as I’m not particularly a fan of them, but just lying about them outright, completely making shit up out of context, accusing congresspeople of getting money from these organizations for some outright lurid conspiracy theories that, if he wasn’t the richest man in the world, we would say, this guy’s just an anonymous crank on Twitter, just completely made up horseshit.

They’re finally — They being the media — They’re starting to finally publish articles that commit the ultimate sin of reportage, which is the I word: Ideology, mentioning ideology. That this is not some postideological, postpartisan attempt to find deficiencies, but is, in fact, a right-wing attack on the liberal and administrative state for programs and departments that have been duly funded by the federal government. And a lot of these programs, of course, were begun under or continued explicitly by the Trump administration, but we can talk about the first one, we can talk about that later.

So here, finally we have The Washington Post — This is Aaron Blake — “Trump and Musk can’t seem to locate much evidence of fraud”. So now we’re finally pointing out that there’s no actual fraud, that them just calling everything fraud is like the Michael Scott “I declare bankruptcy.” You can’t just say it’s fraud. That’s a legal claim.

And so for weeks they’ve been saying there’s this fraud, and Musk uses this word all the time, fraud, fraud — OK, well, if there’s all this widespread fraud, Musk, then why has the Trump DOJ not arrested anyone? Because there’s no fraud. There’s just spending they don’t like, which they’ve now rebranded fraud. And then Reuters says “Musk’s DOGE cuts based more on political ideology than real cost savings so far”. So finally, after weeks of taking this at face value and in good faith — Which, again, is the holiest of holies, especially if you’re rich and powerful — Not if you’re, by the way, an activist, then you’re, as I note in my piece your ideology is…

I compared it to an article written about Democrats as part of a police reform panel, they referred to them four times as progressive, five different times as activists. So their ideology is put on the forefront. But if you’re a megalomaniac billionaire who shares white genocide all day that you took off white supremacist websites, ideology is just not mentioned. It’s not mentioned why you’re going after programs. They can say DEI — As long as you say DEI, not the N word, you can get away with anything, even though clearly this is racially motivated. Clearly it’s about chaining women to the stove. Clearly it’s about hating people with disabilities. Clearly it’s about hating gay and trans people. He fucking loathes trans people, posts antitrans shit all day.

So just now, I’m not in the business of complimenting the media, and it’s still obviously not nearly sufficient, but we’re just now seeing a pivot from people being like, oh, well maybe this isn’t about efficiency. Well, OK, it would’ve been nice had you done that before he destroyed several different federal programs. But we’re now seeing people realizing that indulging this premise of efficiency, which morons like Ro Khanna consistently do, boggles my mind. I mean, I know why. He’s got terminal lawyer brain and he fundraises with a lot of these Silicon Valley billionaires, so he has to play stupid –

That we’re like, OK, clearly this is a right-wing attack on the liberal and administrative state. It is entirely ideological to the extent to which you can even do efficiency nonideologically. Even that premise is suspect. But for someone who does a Sieg Heil on national TV, again, had you told me a month ago, well, Musk is going to do a very clear Sieg Heil on national TV and nothing’s basically going to change, and the ADL is a fucking shakedown operation, who he paid off a few years ago, is going to come to his defense, I’d say, now, clearly there has to be some limit to this. He can’t get away with anything. No, he’s got half a trillion dollars, he can pretty much get away with anything.

So we’re just now seeing, finally, people being like, oh, maybe his ideology is actually what’s motivating this rather than this… Again, I could go on and on. I have all these articles just in The New York Times cost-cutting panel, cost efficiency panel, reducing waste, fraud, abuse. It’s like this guy is sharing the most manic fucking right-wing chud conspiracy theories, completely misrepresenting how you read government spending documents and misrepresenting how you read RFPs, accusing Reuters of — By the way, he did that after Reuters wrote that article. I think that’s why they did it — Because an unrelated company owned by the same corporation did a defense contractor RFP on, I think, data protection or something. Not related at all to anything sinister. Completely takes it out of context, just consistently fucking lies all the time. Just straight up Alex Jones shit.

But because, again, because he’s so rich, he’s so powerful, people kept deferring to him as some kind of neutral expert, and it was literally driving me fucking crazy because sitting there watching this going, are we going to mention that he’s a white nationalist? Isn’t this kind of relevant since he’s going after specifically groups related to racial justice, civil rights, and, of course, anyone who, as you noted, anyone who undermines his bottom line ,just as a person who’s extremely rich?

Maximillian Alvarez:  All right, I got three quick things I want to say, then, Paris, I want to come back to you real quick. But the first is I would read the crap out of an Adam Johnson tongue-in-cheek weekly Low Bar Award where Adam Johnson rewards a publication for doing its basic-ass job of reporting the facts about something [laughs]. I would read that.

Second is just a note on the fraud thing and speaking, again, if we’re talking here as media critic, tech critic. In a former life, I was a trained historian, and so, for obvious reasons right now, I’ve been going back to my bookshelf and pulling all of the big history books that I have on the McCarthy period and the Red Scare, and I can’t help but hear what I feel are the very obvious and hackneyed echoes of the McCarthy period, when Sen. McCarthy’s there saying, I hold here in my hand a piece of paper with the names of communists in the government. And then you got this dickhead Musk out there saying like, oh my God, you won’t believe all the fraud I’m finding. I’ve got it all written here.

Adam Johnson:  He keeps doing these lurid, vague, conspiratorial appeals to some secret list he has, and it’s like, where? What are you talking about? And the evidence they share is just shit that was published already. It’s been online, been online because of good government sunshine law liberals, by the way. He’s just doing Alex Jones shit. He’s doing Alex Jones shit, but he’s so rich you can do it and no one cares.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and Paris, I have a question for you about that because, like I said earlier, this is a real struggle here over what the great Cory Doctorow would call seizing and controlling the means of communication. We’re not just talking about, like Adam said, not just rich billionaires. We’re talking about people who control the infrastructure and platforms upon which we communicate and commerce every single day.

And so, as much as this is the 21st century new digital politics that we’re all swimming in now, who controls the means of communication and who controls the means of public perception is really critical. And I bring this up because I can’t help but notice that, as we’re talking about here the narrative that Musk, Trump, Vance and their donors from Silicon Valley are trying to spin about this, I think your average person with a basic common sense can see the bullshit — But so much of them are not seeing it because they’re getting news on platforms that aren’t showing it. Or the algorithms are keeping them locked into echo chambers that are going to keep the points that we’re talking about here out of sight, out of mind.

I wanted to ask if you could talk about that side of things, as ridiculous as the top-down narrative about DOGE, about the government takeover that’s happening right now, what should people be considering about how these big tech overlords and their accomplices in the government are trying to also adjust our variability to see the truth for what it is here?

Paris Marx:  Yeah, it’s a frustrating one, and I feel like it’s not a uniquely social media discussion. If we look at news, we can see how, whether it’s cable news or radio, has been taken over by the right for years, and then they unleash similar strategies to try to shift how social media works, these narratives that cable news was too liberal and conservative voices were not present there or not as well represented. Meanwhile, you had Fox News pushing out these right-wing narratives. And good —

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, keep going. Sorry. Sorry. Keep going.

Paris Marx:  Yeah, sorry. Meanwhile, you had Fox News pushing out these right-wing narratives and all the liberal media adopting these framings and starting to talk about the issues that were being pushed by the right. What you had, very clearly, the right saw the opportunity to do this on Facebook and other platforms, where they kept saying that conservative voices were being silenced on Facebook or on Twitter, or because people were being moderated when they were posting hate speech, and things like that. And it was no real surprise that people on the right were being moderated much more for those things because they were much more likely to be saying them.

But even still, think years ago, you had Mark Zuckerberg going on this tour of America to talk to conservatives and all this kind of stuff to show that he was not going to give into censorship, and the types of things that he’s talking about in a much more animated way today. I feel like we have this narrative that there has been this shift in the social media landscape in the past little while with Mark Zuckerberg getting rid of the fact checkers and getting rid of everything that he considers woke at Meta, which I think was more of just an opportunity for him to get rid of a bunch of things that he didn’t want to be doing and to lay off more workers, which they’ve already been doing for a while now.

But we’ve seen social media companies already abandoning those sorts of things for a while before the election, up to a year or more ago. And there was a brief moment where they were doing some additional moderation during the pandemic in that period.

But for a very long time, these companies have been quite committed to these right-wing notions of free speech. Mark Zuckerberg and Joel Kaplan, who is now in an even more powerful position at the company, a Republican operative, they stopped Alex Jones’s initial banning on the platform for ages, kept pushing it off. They didn’t want to see Donald Trump be banned, all these sorts of things.

Social media is positioned as this place where we can all post what we want to post, and anyone can publish what they want on there. But the reality is that these are environments that are shaped in order to ensure that right-wing narratives are the ones that are being encountered most often by people, that the algorithmic recommendations are ensuring that you’re in that kind of an ecosystem unless you have explicitly tried to opt out of it. But even then, you’re still going to see a lot of this stuff.

And they are platforms that are premised on engagement in order to get ad profits. And what you do in order to make your ad profits is to piss people off a bit and serve them more extreme content so that they begin interacting with the world in that way. I think we saw that very clearly during the pandemic, when you saw people’s brains basically get fried. And it’s not solely because of social media that happened. There are many different reasons that these things have occurred.

But I think even just recently, if you think about before the holidays, people were losing their minds over all these drones that were like in the sky in the United States. This was a huge thing, and it was a big conspiracy theory, and even the mainstream media were covering it as though it was a real thing that people needed to be concerned about and not some bullshit that they needed to debunk. These are not just right-wing platforms, but platforms that spread a whole lot of bullshit that people end up believing because of the way that the information is presented and the ways that average people don’t have the media literacy that those of us who are constantly engaging in these things might. And even then, I would say that we occasionally fall for some bullshit as well. We occasionally see things that we might want to believe and then need to check into it and say, ah, damn, that was bullshit as well.

But anyway, that’s just a long way of saying that I think that these platforms, I called Facebook a social cancer recently, and that’s not just because of the recent changes that Mark Zuckerberg has made, but I think that these platforms have been very socially detrimental to the discourses that we have. And that’s not to say that traditional media is the most amazing thing in the world. Adam has a whole show where he discusses why that is not the case. But I think that we’re living in this media environment that is very polluted, that has a lot of problems with it, and the independent one that has been set up as the solution to it is often very much funded by these right-wing billionaires as well. And if you want to maximally succeed in the new media environment that’s being set up, you’re encouraged to be a right-wing piece of shit instead of to really hold power to account.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Adam, I know you got thoughts on that. Hit me.

Adam Johnson:  So here’s a fundamental problem, which is that the right wing embraces populism in the most superficial and aesthetic sense. They’re good at $50 million of condoms in Gaza, all these little thought memes, they’re extremely good at that, disseminating that to everybody. This idea that, again, Musk speaks in these demagogic or pseudo populous terms about he’s taking on the bureaucrats and the establishment — Again, he’s fucking worth $450 billion, but he’s taking on the man. Trump does this, obviously, very well.

And establishment Democrats and liberals run and are allergic to any form of populism. So naturally they’re going to fail in a media ecosystem where that kind of thing is currency, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. It is a party run by PR hacks and lawyers and eggheads, and they don’t speak in those terms, they don’t speak in that language, they don’t know how to fight back. And when someone within that milieu who’s better at speaking in those terms, whether it be Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, tries to defend the liberal administrative state, it can work, but it’s so rare.

And then meanwhile, you have people like Chris Murphy and talking about how, oh, actually Biden’s going to deport more people, and USAID is how we destroy China. And it’s like, well, that’s not a very populist framing, that’s just ratcheting up the racist machine.

And so there’s an asymmetry of what kind of rhetoric you employ. And again, Democrats, I think by design, just don’t have those kinds of [inaudible] talking points, the $50 million in condoms to dollars or whatever. They are talking about gutting $880 billion from Medicare and Medicaid. They’re talking about raising the retirement age. We’re talking about doing a lot of extremist right-wing shit.

And for a variety of reasons, liberals and Democrats have been unable to really message around that. They are a little bit better over the last week or so. But there hasn’t been a way of framing this as an elite attack on the liberal administrative state because liberals, for 30 years, have run away from the idea of government as something that’s good, something that actually protects you, that keeps your water clean, that makes sure that these fucking speed-addled billionaires don’t wreck every part of your life.

And I think what you see in the messaging asymmetry, the media ecosystem asymmetry, people did all this lamenting about why is there no liberal Joe Rogan? Why is there no Democratic media ecosystem? And it’s like, because the media ecosystem on the right embraces its extremists because they know, ultimately, it doesn’t really undermine their bottom line, whereas liberals’ fundamental project is disciplining, managing, and marginalizing the left, and partisan liberal content is just inherently going to be fucking boring. How many times can you spin for various unpopular policies rather than having a genuine space where you attack them?

And I think that plays into a similar dynamic here. So when we talk about why Musk has been good at messaging this, again, he goes on Joe Rogan, Rogan’s been doing a fucking six-month-long Musk puff fest about how great he is. This is someone who does have a huge working-class listenership. And they’re reframing themselves again, as Trump successfully did. And the cognitive dissonance of all these people being multi-billionaires is just something you put aside in your fucking brain somewhere. These are the rogue billionaires who are actually out to help you.

It’s what I call the, I dunno if you saw that Jason Statham film [The] Beekeeper. It’s this distorted vision of who’s fucking you over. It’s liberal bureaucrats and other billionaires, but not the good billionaires. And there’s also some cops, but some cops are good, and it’s really actually the deep state, but it’s USAID that’s really running the show behind the scenes, not the DOD or the CIA.

It’s obviously this warped vision because people, again, as you note, Max, in your intro and elsewhere, people have a vague sense that there is a system fucking them, and they need it to have a name and a face. And liberals don’t do that. They do this facile Republican billionaires — Oh, but they can’t reject billionaires because when the guy who just won the DNC said, we’re going to find the good billionaires, so we are going to take $50 million from Bill Gates, we’re going to take $50 million from Michael Bloomberg. So we can’t really have populist politics, so we have to turn it into this partisan schlock.

And I keep going back to Norman Solomon’s definition of neoliberalism, which is a worldview of victims but no victimizers. There’s never a fucking bad guy. And the extent to which there ever is a bad guy, it’s just this, again, it’s this particular billionaire here. It’s not a form of class politics. So it’s all very frustrated and limp and half-assed and doesn’t really resonate like the faux populism of the right.

To say nothing of the fact that they just have more control over social media, more control over, obviously, billionaires run the media, so there’s going to be a natural asymmetry that you can’t really do much about just by virtue of who funds things.

But you’re seeing that play out, and they are winning the messaging war to a great degree. Liberals have a liberal sort of elite media, your centrist media, New York Times, Democratic leadership in Congress. What’s the first thing they did after Trump won? You had Joe Scarborough go on TV and say, we’re going to work with Trump. We’re going to do bipartisanship. You had Hakeem Jeffries say, we’re going to work with Trump, we’re going to do bipartisanship, the minority leader. And there wasn’t a sense of, oh, we’re going to resist this time.

New York Times did a profile about how big liberal donors, Reid Hoffman, all these guys, Michael Bloomberg, are pulling back. They’re not really donating to the so-called resistance because, unlike last time, it can’t be filtered into this neoconservative project like Trump is.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I’ll say though, maybe one small bit of grace that we’ve gotten compared to the last time Trump was elected is we don’t have to suffer through year after year of mainstream media pundits saying today is the day Donald Trump became [crosstalk] [laughs] —

Adam Johnson:  Oh, well, yeah, that’s where a lot of the money went. They went through the conspiratorial Milleritism — Or as I ironically call it, Muelleritism. He’s going to come and he’s going to rescue you, and we’re all going to be saved at the 11th hour, and here’s an AI picture of Trump in prison clothes, and we’re going to get him.

In a way, that can create space for a genuine resistance where you do try to reorient a party that does address people’s root issues and economic issues and these genuine issues rather than the Liz Cheney brand. But I think that the point is that we’re going to work with Trumpism. Because whenever they say bipartisanship, nine times out of 10, or 99 times out of 100, they’re not talking about saving the spotted owl or preserving a natural — They’re talking about punishing Gaza protesters, increasing militarism against China. They’re talking about antiwoke stuff. That really was a bipartisan thing. Much of what Trump is executing is just an extreme version of what The Atlantic magazine and New York Times opinion pages have been advocating since, frankly, #MeToo, to some extent, George Floyd, which is like, oh, the wokes got too cute. They got overaggressive. We need to put them back in their place. And they view Trump as someone that could instrumentalize to do that.

So then Musk comes in and does this. And again, a lot of these austerity things Musk is doing is just kind of Bull Simpson on steroids. These are things that a lot of rich Democrats and rich Democrat donors wanted anyway, they just didn’t want it to go this far. And so to the extent to which Democratic elites and the media and Democratic leadership in Congress, again — Less so governors — Are responding now and actually are defending the liberal state, not just spooky stuff at USAID, but the very idea of a liberal state, I think it is coming from bottom-up pressure. I think it’s coming from these, not partisan hack groups, from genuine protests. I think you do see a liberal resistance, in a true sense, liberals.

There was a point where hardcore Democrat pundits on social media, total hacks, people that defended the genocide for 15 months would come on and be like, so are they going to do anything about this? And it’s like, yeah. And so they began to alienate even some of the more hardcore MSNBC set, and I think that’s why you’re seeing the shift now a little bit more.

Not to, God forbid I’m positive, but I do think, again, the lawfare stuff has always been there. A lot of the governors have been there. I hate Gavin Newsom, but he’s been suing, defending trans rights, the attorney general of California, Pritzker. These guys have been suing. It’s not like people are doing nothing.

But actual Democratic leadership has had no consistent message. They have no little $50 million in condoms to Gaza meme stuff. They have nothing to really counter the narrative that Musk is somehow taking on the deep state or elites of nebulous origin, even though he himself has $20 billion in government contracts. So he’s not the elite. It’s unclear.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, I want to hone in on that point, actually. I wanted to underline this in red pen, and I know folks in the live chat are asking about it, and it’s on all of our minds, but definitely worth noting here. In rapid pace, I’m going to read some quotes from other outlets that make this point. The Lever reported this week, “Elon Musk’s [Department of] Government Efficiency was reportedly canceling Department of Education contracts in the name of frugality.” As that was happening, “Musk’s rocket company was [this week] cementing a NASA contract adding millions of dollars to its already massive deal with the space agency. […] The new ‘supplemental’ contract dated Feb. 10 adds $7.5 million to SpaceX’s NASA work, according to the Federal Procurement Data System records. The overall transaction obligated $38 million to Musk’s company, as part of its overall deal with NASA.”

This is to say nothing of Musk’s other companies like SpaceX, which, Reuters reports, “SpaceX provides launch services to the Department of Defense, including the launch of classified satellites and other payloads. SpaceX’s CEO Gwynne Shotwell has said the company has about $22 billion in government contracts.” But it’s also important to note that “The total value of Musk’s companies’ contracts with the DoD are estimated to be in the billions [of dollars],” but we don’t know because a lot of them are classified. But you could go through, again, the obvious, what should be the obvious conflicts of interest here, is Musk is going in there like a bull in a China shop, saying he’s rooting out corruption and waste while he’s still securing contracts for himself and his companies.

And the other story there that folks were talking about this morning was, as The New York Times and first the news site Drop Site reported, that apparently the State Department had plans to buy $400 million worth of armored Tesla Cybertrucks, which caused a massive uproar. As of right now on Thursday, Musk has denied those reports and is calling Drop Site fake news, doing the standard like, oh, I’ve never heard of this, that never happened thing, even though it was written on the State Department’s procurement forecast for the 2025 fiscal year, including $400 million of “armored Tesla cars”.

So there’s a whole lot more we could say about that. But Paris, I wanted to come to you because there was another quote that I came across that I think people should really recall right now, and this was a quote from Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, who said that DOGE is a “revolution”, one that will be “very good for Palantir in the long run”. And this was something that Alex Karp said on Palantir’s fourth quarter earnings call.

And so this brings us back to the question of, again, the Silicon Valley oligarchic network that birthed J.D. Vance’s political career, that threw ungodly sums of money behind the Trump and Vance ticket, that are embodied in the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, that were sitting there in the rotunda on Trump’s inauguration day. You had Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Musk all there.

I wanted to bring this back to you, Paris, because, could we describe this as a capitalist coup by the big tech oligarchy? Are they trying to essentially force society and the market to become more dependent on their version of AI? Are they trying to force us to become dependent on crypto even though no one fucking wants to? How do people navigate that question? Is it that concerted? Are they using not just Musk, but Trump and the whole administration, to effectively take over our system of government so that they rewire our whole society to fit their needs?

Paris Marx:  Yeah, absolutely. And I don’t think that’s a big surprise. I think that that has been a project that they have been engaged in for quite some time now. It’s just they have an enormous amount of power and wealth that they can use to further force this onto everybody. And it’s not that this kind of tech oligarchy is unique in that way. I think that if we look at the United States, we can see that powerful capitalist interests have always been very influential in shaping government policy and what the government has been doing, and also what the wider society looks like in order to benefit themselves and their industries.

My book that I wrote was about the transportation industry, certainly looking at what Silicon Valley has been doing recently, but also going back to the early days of automobility and where you see these auto companies and these various interests working together to ensure that communities in the United States become dependent on automobiles because it’s great for the oil business and it’s great for the auto business and so many of these other industries that are associated with it. As we develop this mode of suburban living that is very consumer oriented, there was a concerted effort to create a particular kind of society that was going to be very beneficial to a lot of capitalist interests.

And right now what we see is these capitalists in Silicon Valley making sure that they are trying to remake the United States in their interests, in the way that they want to see it, and it looks like it’s going to be a total mess because they don’t have a very good understanding of how society actually works. They think that because they can code, or even just understand code to a certain degree, that they understand everything, and that is not the case. They’re very narcissistic people.

But you mentioned Palantir and Alex Karp. I was listening to an interview with an executive at Palantir just the other day where they’re talking about how they think it’s very essential for the Department of Defense to increase competition in the development of arms and weapons, because not just does that take the defense primes, the major companies that currently provide weapons to the US government and the US military, down from their current pedestal, but also opens the way for Palantir, Anduril, for these other more tech-framed startup companies to get in on some of those Pentagon dollars.

That is one of the things that they are very focused on in that sector of the tech economy. And a lot of these major tech companies are also reorienting to sell more AI to also develop more defense products so that they can tap into all of this money that the United States spends on defense.

And of course, they will promote that as a savings because one of the things that they always point to is SpaceX, to say, look, SpaceX reduced the cost of launching, and now the United States has this much easier ability to get things into space. And when you note that the United States is becoming dependent on SpaceX in a way that actually has people really concerned, that’s not a worry to them because they just say, oh, well, other companies could compete on cost, but they’re not. So the problem isn’t with SpaceX, it’s with everyone else.

And that is something that we’re also seeing, as you mentioned NASA, is NASA is going to be a focus of Elon Musk and the DOGE agency. There were reports today that DOGE people are now going to NASA to look through the books, and the acting NASA administrator is welcoming them to do that. And it seems quite clear that they are going to seek to remake NASA around Elon Musk’s priorities and SpaceX’s priorities in particular, potentially even the cancellation of the space launch system, which Boeing, and I can’t remember the other company that’s working on that, but essentially to cancel that and to make sure that SpaceX is going to get more business out of it.

So everywhere you look, they are trying to remake things in order for them to benefit from it. David Sachs, who is the AI and crypto czar, says that stable coin legislation is their first big priority. So to try to legitimize the crypto industry and to make sure that it’s easier to roll out crypto and these products throughout the US economy and financial system, despite the fact that we saw how scam laden this whole industry is and how these venture capitalists benefited from it.

We have reporting that Marc Andreessen, despite the fact that he’s not very public facing, he does a lot of interviews and stuff, but he’s not out talking a lot about what he’s doing with the administration, but reportedly he also has a lot of influence in the policies that are being pushed forward.

So a lot of these tech billionaires are trying to make sure that the changes that the Trump administration is going to bring forward are going to be in their interests, and that the things that are going to make them money and increase their power are things that are going to be pushed forward in the next little while.

That is not a big surprise, but we need to be aware of those things if we’re going to be able to push back on them properly and try to ensure that the tech industry isn’t able to remake American society in the way that it would want to see it, regardless of what that means for everybody else. Because I can guarantee you that, just as people have been increasingly waking up to the harms that have come of this industry and these tech companies over the past few decades, despite the fact that they were long positioned as increasing democracy and freedom and convenience and all this stuff, that actually there are a whole load of issues that have come of the transformation of the economy with these digital services because these people don’t really care about average people or the consequences of what they do. They’re capitalists. They’re just trying to make their money and increase their power.

Adam Johnson:  That’s what makes this whole deep state framing so goofy. These are all defense contractors. Palantir was co-founded by the CIA through its In-Q-Tel fund in 2003. Peter Thiel was on their original board of directors the year before he put the first big money into Facebook. This is someone who’s deeply into the so-called deep state Pentagon contract, CIA. It’s all fucking a show. It’s all an act. This is this victimization link of the deep state’s after them, and it’s like, you are the fucking deep state. And this is what they want. They want control over the government.

And a lot of progressives have said, why has DOGE not gone after the Defense Department? And I think that’s a little bit of a trap because I think they will go after the Defense Department in a very particular way, in the same way Josh Hawley holds up DOD bills because he wants to rename bases after Confederate generals. I think they’ll go after it for anti-“DEI” stuff to go after trans people, Black people, they’ll do that. They’ll call it efficiency, but they’ll do the racist disciplining aspect. But they’ll also just get rid of defense contractors that aren’t them.

Again, they’ll put it under the auspices of modernization, AI, all this slick dogshit to make it seem like it’s, oh, they’re just streamlining things. But it’s because they want to pay back a lot of their buddies in Silicon Valley. And some of these companies they perceive as dinosaurs, whether it’s Boeing or Lockheed Martin or whatever, will probably lose out on contracts to some of their Silicon Valley. They have a ton of money in defense contractors.

So I think they’ll do that. And maybe that’ll shave off, at the end of the day, a couple billion. But ultimately it’s just a power grab. It’s got nothing to do with genuinely taking on the power of the deep state or power of the CIA or power of the Pentagon. These guys are not interested in that. They are interested in the raw exercise of American imperial power, just like every other capitalist. They want to do it their way. If anything, it’s maybe a civil war within the defense contracting world, but it’s not going to meaningfully push back on the Pentagon.

So when people like Ro Khanna, and to some extent even Bernie Sanders, they get all cute saying, why don’t you defend, go after the Defense Department? I’m like, man, be careful what you wish for, because what they’re going to do is they’re going to purge it of fucking Black people and give their contracts to their buddies. So again, because all this is just in bad faith, it’s got nothing to do with efficiency, obviously. Clearly, in case it wasn’t obvious [laughs].

Paris Marx:  No, I think the thing to always remember is you think about the history of Silicon Valley, and when we think of Silicon Valley today, we think of the internet companies and digital technology and all this stuff, but Lockheed Martin and missile manufacturers and all that stuff have always been there. They were where the first microprocessors went, to go into these missiles. This relationship has always been there, and we’re seeing it very much come to the fore at the moment.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Guys, this has been a phenomenal conversation, and I could genuinely talk to you for two more hours, but I know I’ve got to wrap up and let you go. And so by way of a final, not a question to answer right here, but just maybe looking ahead to the next stream when we can get you guys back on to talk about this, let’s not forget that the world does not stop and end with the United States.

What happens here is also going to depend on what technology from China and other parts of the world do. And we’ve been seeing that there are plenty of companies, governments, people around the world who are salivating at the chance to make American capitalists and America itself pay the price for all of our bullshit in past years, decades, and centuries.

So I wanted to ask if you had any leading thoughts for things that people should keep an eye on when they’re also trying to get a handle on this subject? What outside of the US, particularly when it comes to China, should we also be factoring in here?

So let’s make that a final note. And also tell folks where they can find you and take advantage of your brilliant work after we close out this stream.

So yeah, Paris, let’s go back to you, and then Adam, we’ll close out with you.

Paris Marx:  Sounds good. Yeah, absolutely. China is the big competitor at the moment when it comes to technology because it has been able to actually develop a proper industry because it’s protected a lot of its companies, so it was able to do that. We recently saw the AI market get this big scare when a Chinese company called DeepSeek developed a more efficient generative AI model that had all these very energy intensive American companies running and getting nervous. I don’t think it’s ultimately going to change a whole lot.

But I would also say in this moment where you have Trump flexing the power of the American government and making it so that the exercise of American power is very short term and very transactional, that you have a lot of countries that were previously aligned with the United States that are still aligned with the United States getting more and more pissed off, I would say, with the US and the American government. I’m in Canada, so obviously I’m thinking about that a lot these days as we hear about major tariffs being put on Canada and Mexico and talk of Canada being a 51st state.

But you also hear what Donald Trump has been saying about Panama, about South Africa, about different parts of Europe, Greenland, Denmark, not to mention his new plan to take over Gaza, apparently, and turn it into a wonderful resort or something.

As the United States says more of these things and turns off countries that have been its allies, I think that there’s also an opening there, as we see the relationship between the Trump administration and Silicon Valley and these tech billionaires, for other countries to come together and to say, not just fuck the United States, but fuck Silicon Valley as well. And we can develop our own technologies to compete against this and increasingly try to reduce our dependence on American digital technology and these tech companies that we were told we had to be dependent on because of this moment and how the internet was supposed to work in this new neoliberal era that increased American power.

So I guess maybe it’s more of a hope. We see the Europeans getting increasingly frustrated. I know Canada is very frustrated, and I’m sure a number of other countries are as well. And I hope that that becomes actually some sort of a broader movement, for these countries to try something different rather than just keep being dependent on the United States. But we’ll see where that ultimately goes. I think China right now is obviously the one to watch in this area, but I hope it will expand beyond that as people get fed up with the US.

And on that, of course, Tech Won’t Save Us podcast is where I am most of the time. Usually I tweet or post on Bluesky these days. And I also have a newsletter called Disconnect.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Which everyone should subscribe to. And I can’t stress enough, go listen to Tech Won’t Save Us. You’ll learn a lot that you’re going to need right now to understand what the hell is happening.

Adam, let’s close out with you. Any final thoughts on that? And where can folks find you?

Adam Johnson:  This is, again, this is an example. What is fascism? It’s imperialism turned inwards. I think they are so high on their own ideological supply. They’re getting so greedy, they don’t understand that the liberal state, such as it is, all these DEI programs — The actual ones, not the racist canard — This is all to preserve capitalism. It’s an HR device. They’re trying to help you.

But Musk and these right-wing oligarchs, they’re so in their own world, they truly have developed what Cass Sunstein refers to pejoratively as a crippling epistemology. They’re so warped in their mind. It’s like going after USAID. It’s a soft power. It’s a regime change [laughs] like [inaudible]. Yeah, it does important work, but that’s not really why it’s there.

And I think that this level of myopia, I think we’re seeing this play out, and they’re so used to just consuming and consuming and consuming that they will let the world burn if it can get them an extra 5%. The smart billionaires, the ones who don’t really see much difference between $100 billion and $150 billion, who understand that, who donate to Democrats, who understand that they’re a fundamentally conservative force, are just losing the day. And they’re not really, they don’t have that much skin in the game, and they just will keep consuming and consuming until there’s nothing left to consume.

Even if, again, they blow up the very — It’s like when they talk about AI. The way they talk, you would think they don’t need consumers or people. It’s humanity without humans. It’s a very dark vision of the world. And Musk really does exemplify this. He is the epitome of this. He views everyone as an NPC. He’s the main actor. People either work for him or they’re in his way.

And this is a general pathology in Silicon Valley. It, again, it’s not everybody, but it’s a lot of ’em. This kind of Randian dark vision of the world of dog eat dog. And they don’t understand that savvy capitalists know how to adapt and throw the little piggy some slop, and they don’t even want to do that. So I think they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction in certain ways. And the question is, what force will emerge to counterbalance that dark vision? And right now, I don’t see that happening.

Maximillian Alvarez:  But I think the question itself is one we all need to sit with because we need to be the authors of that counter story. What is it? How are we telling it? How are we fighting to make it a reality? That is our task, but we know the story that these oligarchs want to tell and the role that they want us, as minor characters and cannon fodder, to play in their story.

And so we want to end on that note, as a call to action to all of us. What is the story that we are telling to counteract this technofascist takeover that ends with the potential destruction of civilization as such, the planet that we live on, if not checked. What is the check? What are we prepared to do? What are we going to do to fight for a better future that’s still worth living in for ourselves and our children? We need to answer that question in a hurry.

And I really cannot thank enough all of our incredible guests today on the stream: the great Aaron Stephens, Paris Marx, and Adam Johnson, who have contributed to making this a phenomenal conversation. I hope that you all learned as much from it as I did.

Please give us your feedback in the live chat. Reach out to us over email. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Become a donor and a community member today, because your support directly translates to us getting to do more shows like this, doing more weekly reporting on workers in the labor movement, on the people victimized by the prison-industrial complex, people victimized by the police, and this gross system of inequality and endless war. We are on the front lines holding a microphone to the folks who are fighting the fight there in the middle of the struggle.

And so we can’t do that work without you and your support. So please let us know how we’re doing. Please let us know what you’d like us to address on future livestreams, and other guests that you want us to have on.

But we do these streams for you. We do them to hopefully empower you and others to act in this moment, because if we don’t act and we let this all happen, we are headed towards a very, very dark place. We’re in a dark place right now, but things can still always get darker. So please fight however you can for the light, and hold it up, and we’ll be right there with you.

For The Real News Network, this is Maximilian Alvarez thanking you for the whole team here, everyone behind the scenes who is making this stream happen. We are with you, and we thank you for watching, and we thank you for caring. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.

[Outro] 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 a fragile ceasefire falters in Gaza, millions of displaced Palestinians are still without adequate shelter. Exposure and hypothermia now present grave threats to people’s survival. The Real News reports from the Gaza Strip.

Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt

Transcript

RANIA HAMD AL-HISI 

The cold. What can I say? The situation is dire. 

It’s very cold. Look, we’re living on the street. We’re living on a street. This entire campsite is suffering from the cold. Me? I am not a child, and I’m suffering from the cold. I’m not a child. God help the children. 

In the morning I try to wash, clean, or do something, and I can’t because of the severity of the cold. We’re literally living on a street. What is protecting us? A sheet. 

The children are exhausted, and we’re also exhausted. There is no immunity. We have no immune defenses at all. No nutrition, no heating, nothing. We’re exhausted. 

The whole camp is suffering; they have no electricity. No blankets, no sheets. Nothing to keep the children warm. This little girl is always wheezing from the intense cold. We’ve taken her to the doctor a hundred times since we moved to the tents. They don’t know what’s wrong. Her stomach hurts. Every time she eats, her stomach hurts her. From what? The cold. 

We’re not handling the cold, so how can the children? I witnessed something with our neighbor that I still can’t process. The sight of him holding his daughter and she’s dead. The whole camp now fears for the children. 

She’s a child. Our neighbors have a small child who’s seven months old. My niece is a child, my granddaughter is a child. We’re scared for them. My granddaughter developed a respiratory illness. This one is wheezing. Our neighbor, Um Wissam, had an attack. I have developed chest pains. I swear to you, I’ve been suffering for two months with chest and back pains. 

And our neighbor’s daughter, Sila… She died from the cold. We heard her mother. I carried her when she was dead. The girl, she was like ice. Ice. When I found her father carrying her, and her mother was on the floor… I carried the girl, I was the first to get to them, I found blood coming from her mouth. It was as if she had come out of a freezer. Frozen solid. I told them, “This girl has died from the cold.” 

MAHMOOD AL-FASIHI 

The night that Sila died was extremely cold. We’re living on the coast. At night it’s unnaturally cold. We adults couldn’t tolerate the cold that night when Sila died. Sila was perfectly normal. She didn’t suffer from any health problems. She breastfed three times that night. The final feeding was at 3:00 a.m. When we tried to wake her at 7:00 a.m. to feed her, we found her blue from the severity of the cold, and her heart had stopped. 

AFFAF HUSAIN ABU-AWILI 

Most of the cases we’re getting right now are called ‘cold injury.’ They are the result of severe cold and the change of season. These cases are usually less than a month old, a week, or two days old. The child arrives already frozen. We call it ‘cold injury’—it means a

deceased child. Of course, all of this is a result of the weather and the cold. Some can’t tolerate the cold. This environment causes respiratory problems. 

The scene is very difficult, the father carrying the body, people screaming. A terrible situation, it’s indescribable. A small child, loved by his family, and the mum awakes and finds him like that, dead. I mean, a terrible situation that defies description. 

Honestly, the situation is getting worse. Especially when it comes to respiratory inflammation in children and these sudden deaths, it’s increased a lot. Of course, it’s a result of the way people are living. Living in tents, lack of medicine, lack of warm clothing. 

MAHMOOD AL-FASIHI 

I have to collect plastic from the street to make a fire for my children. I don’t have gas, I don’t have anything. No basics of life, no heating. At night when it’s cold, my children have to huddle together from the cold. As much as I wrap my children, they’re still cold because of the severity of the cold. And nothing is available, the necessities of life are zero here. 

The severe cold and lack of nutrition have created a lot of problems for the children. They’ve developed skin problems, they’ve developed a lot of things. My children wake up in the middle of the night scared of bombs. Of the terror we are living in. We’re living in terror. We adults have developed mental health issues from the extreme pressure we’re experiencing. We have developed… what can I say? We’re exhausted. Seriously. We’re exhausted from the war. 

RANIA HAMD AL-HISI 

When it rains, the whole place swims. When it rained last time, everyone had to leave. Look, you can see. There are no covers, or anything, and no one has given us anything. I have a sister, Um Ahmed, who recently gave birth. Where does the baby sleep? She’s made a bed for him from cardboard. On cardboard! Fearing that he falls into the water. The boy is two months old. 

I swear to God, the thing that scares me the most. When it’s nighttime, I start praying: “Oh God, Oh God.” “Oh God please let us get through this night. God, don’t let it rain, please God.” God, please don’t let the people drown from the rain. 

All night and the morning too, we can’t sleep because of the bombs. And the rain. The night that it rained, I swear to God I suffered. When the rain comes, it’s not about me—I can tolerate it. It’s the children. I can tolerate it. But the children? 

Where’s the world? Where are the Arab people to see us? Would they like their kids to go through this? Now our children wake up from sleep, they’re thinking about water, they collect pieces of paper to help their moms make a fire, they’re thinking about the soup kitchen. That’s it. That’s our children. 

I swear to God, what is happening to us—I hope happens to everyone who isn’t seeing or hearing us. I swear to God, I’m talking to you and my fingers are frayed from the cold. So

what about the children? What about the kids, what should they do? I swear to God all they think about is the soup kitchen: “The soup kitchen is here! The soup kitchen is gone!” 

This girl, I’m telling you, she’s wheezing the whole night. I wake up and even to make her a herbal tea, we struggle. We don’t have gas or anything. I swear to God, you suffer so much just to make a fire.