“Juneteenth.”

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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
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I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
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On today's pod, Dan talks to Reverend William Barber about
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the Poor People's Campaign and the Moral March on Washington
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this weekend. Before that, we are very fortunate to have
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a guest host with us today who you may have
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heard before on this pod and on The Wilderness. She's
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currently working on a book called The Sum of Us,
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What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.
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She's the chair of the Board of Directors of Color
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of Change. Heather McGee is here. Heather, welcome back to
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the show.
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Hey, I'm so glad to be here.
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It's great to have you. So we're gonna cover the
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latest on police reform between Trump's executive order, the Republican
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bill that was introduced Wednesday, and the proposals from Joe
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Biden and the Democrats. But we also thought that after
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a few weeks of protests and with Juneteenth tomorrow, we
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could take a step back today, talk about some of
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the ways to make sure that this moment becomes a
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more durable, transformational political movement, which I know is a
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topic we can knock out in about an hour. But first,
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a few quick housekeeping notes. Check out this week's Pod
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Save the World, where Tommy and Ben talk about eroding
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press freedoms in the Philippines, Trump's failure to get any
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concessions from North Korea two years after his Singapore summit,
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and how the protests against police brutality and systemic racism
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are playing out in France. Also, Dan, you have something
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to tell us about a new Pod Save America miniseries.
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Yes, I am joining forces with all of our best friend,
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Alyssa Mastromonaco, for a three-part series to help explain the
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process by which presidential candidates pick their vice presidential nominee,
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how they do it, why they do it, and why
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it matters. It is a three-part Pod Save America miniseries
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that you will get on this feed that will start
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on Friday, June 26th.
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Excellent.
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Well, I'm excited for that. And then you guys are
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going to be able to tell us who he's going
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to pick by the end of that.
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No, this is, to be very clear, this is not
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about who we think Joe Biden should pick because we
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are not in the prediction game. It's sort of, in
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all seriousness, inspired a lot by the series that Tommy
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did on Iowa to help take this.
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Very important often behind the scenes process and explain to
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people what it means in a level of detail that
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we just simply can't do on a normal positive America show.
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Excellent.
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Well, I'm excited. All right.
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Let's start with what's happening with police reform in Washington
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right now. Senate Republicans introduced a bill on Wednesday that
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they want to start debating next week, basically creates new
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incentives for police departments to meet higher standards and and
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new reporting requirements on the use of deadly force and
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no-knock warrants. But it doesn't ban chokeholds. It doesn't ban
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no-knock warrants. It doesn't in any way limit the ability
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of police officers to use excessive force. And it doesn't
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touch qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being held
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accountable if they use excessive force. Donald Trump announced a
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similar set of fairly toothless reforms via executive order on
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Tuesday in a speech where he made no mention of
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racism at all, repeatedly praised police and said this. Americans
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want law and order. They demand law and order.
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They may not say it.
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They may not be talking about it, but that's what
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they want. Some of them don't even know that's what
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they want, but that's what they want.
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Some of them, they don't even know they want it.
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They want it.
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They know they don't want it, but they want it.
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But they want it. Yeah. Heather, it seems to me
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that both Trump's executive orders and Tim Scott's Senate bill
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are giving Republicans an opportunity to say they're doing something
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while actually doing as little as possible to reform policing.
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But I did see Van Jones on CNN, who's done
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a lot of work on criminal justice issues, say that
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Trump's EO is a good thing because it raises the
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floor on reform. What do you think?
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Yeah.
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Listen, I think this shows that the movement for Black
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Lives is winning. I think you know that, you know,
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first they fight you, then they ridicule you, and then
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they join you. And that's obviously what's happening, right? They're
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trying very hard to say, we've done something, we hear it,
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just as they did on criminal justice reform, because you've
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now got a multiracial, bipartisan, majoritarian desire to get something done.
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What is important for us as progressives and for movement
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leaders is to continue to signal to the same people
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who are outraged right now exactly what the solution looks like.
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Because Washington's going to do what Washington's going to do.
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You know, Washington's going to Washington this, which is, you know,
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create a database that doesn't ever get filled up. They're
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going to, you know, do an executive order that has
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no teeth. they're going to have some Black people in
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the Rose Garden, and it may even be some victims'
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family members, and that will be hard. But ultimately, the
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change is going to happen at the state and local level.
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And that's where you're really starting to see some more
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meaningful reform, and that's where it's really important just to
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keep up the pressure.
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Dan, why do you think Trump continues to amp up
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his rhetoric around law and order and his silent majority tweets,
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which he's been... tweeting up a storm about lately, when
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there is no evidence so far in any of the
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polling from the last several weeks that this is working
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for him.
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Well, John, I know it's not working. You know, it's
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not working. Heather knows it's not working. But I'm not
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sure Trump knows it's not working, right? Like he does
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not believe the polls. He went and hired a person
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known specifically as America's worst political pollster to explain to
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him why the CNN poll didn't work. And so I
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think part of this is he always thinks he's right.
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So he can't understand a world where his strategy is
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not working. But it's also, this is who Trump is.
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I was struck in that speech by how Trump, as
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someone who doesn't release his tax returns, doesn't respond to subpoenas,
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doesn't respond to Congress, is sort of the most transparent
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president in American history. Because when he was reading the
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parts about George Floyd and other African-Americans who were killed
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by cops, And there was no emotion, right? He could
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have been reading a recipe for beef stew. But when
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he got to the law and order part, you could
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feel the enthusiasm. Like, this is who he is. This
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is always who he's been. We've known this since the
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Central Park Five. And so he's just sort of being
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his authentic self. And I don't think we should read
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a lot of political strategy into it.
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I think he also knows he has a six to one,
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I think. fundraising advantage in his own coffers, not to mention,
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you know, the gap between the Republican party and the
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democratic party and all the different super PACs. And he
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knows that, you know, nine out of the top 10
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most active news slash activism, propaganda outlets on Facebook are conservative.
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I think he feels like this is going to be
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a slow burn. Like if I just keep up with
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the messaging and, the white American middle is going to
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tire of this. We're going to be able to define
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this issue in the end. And so I agree with
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you that, you know, this is who he is, but
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I also think he, he has a lot of faith
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in his ability to control the narrative and the message.
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And American history is on his side, right?
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Yeah.
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And so I think, I think that is right. If
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you were to pick what given to the propositions currently
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and what, the strategy, as morally repugnant as it is,
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that would have the best chance of success for him,
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it's probably the one he is choosing.
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And he's having it both ways, right? He can point
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to this executive order and say, I did something and
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Van Jones liked it. And then he can say, but
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my rhetoric is just the same.
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I also think he knows it's his only play, right?
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Like he, I mean, being the culture warrior and, you know,
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going with white identity politics is really it's worked for
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him so far. It's all he really knows how to do.
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He knows that trying to appeal to any kind of
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moderate voters, to voters of color, to people in the suburbs, it's,
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it's going to come off as inauthentic. He sort of
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gets that because that's like Dan said, that's not who
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he is fundamentally. And so he feels like I'm just
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going to go with what got me here. And he
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doesn't really know of another strategy. Um, Back to the Senate,
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McConnell now is basically daring Democrats to block the Republican
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Senate bill, asking if they want to make a law
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or just make a point. And they think that they have,
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you know, they have a talking point here that if
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Democrats block police reform in the Senate, then that's somehow
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a win for Republicans to say they tried, but Democrats
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blocked it. Do you think, Heather, that Democrats should negotiate
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to get something passed or should they just reject this
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as a stunt?
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So if the Republican plan was going to save lives,
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I would say maybe you should negotiate and do something.
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That said, it's not going to. It's not going to
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change fundamentally the amount or tenor of the police presence
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in Black and Brown neighborhoods. It's not going to take
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funding away from the police and orient it towards The
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kind of quality of life investments that, you know, white
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folks in the suburbs have been able to depend on
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to have their own safety and quality.
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Of life.
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And it's not going to hold bad, repeat offender, excessive
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force using white supremacist cops, of which there's some in
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every state, I am sure, accountable and let families hold
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them accountable. So for that reason, I don't think you
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squander what is a watershed historical moment of multiracial bipartisan
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uprising in every state in the country from, you know,
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Tuscaloosa to Salt Lake City on something that is not
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going to change the game. And I think that You know,
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what we have to spend our energy on is defining
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the win in ways that will actually change people's lives
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and save people's lives and save people's futures and then
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fighting like hell for it.
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Dan, what do you think? What would you do?
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I think the test that Heather puts on this is
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exactly right, which is if there was a deal that
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could save lives, then regardless of how close we are
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to the election, Democrats have a vocation to try to
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achieve that. But that is not what's on the table here.
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And I think this is certainly a conversation that should
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be led by, and the Democratic leaders should listen to,
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the activists who've been in the street and those who've
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been working on this long before the mobilization of the
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last few weeks. I think that the way this will
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play out, regardless of what Democrats do, is let's say
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they decide they take They listen to Pod Save America,
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they listen to Heather, and they say, we're going to
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reject this outright. We're not going to readily accept the
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invitation to play a lead role in Mitch McConnell's Kabuki theater.
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And they'll block it, right? And then what will happen
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is the Mitch McConnell staff will spin a lot of
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credulous Capitol Hill reporters about how brilliant Mitch McConnell is
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and that he has checkmated Democrats by forcing them to
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object to something that happens in the well of the
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Senate when no one is watching. And that won't matter, right?
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I don't think that there is some play on the
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floor of the Senate that is going to absolve a
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party that has enabled a racist president and, you know,
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run on explicitly white nationalist agenda that is going to
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somehow make them look less culpable for the situation we
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are in. Just because Brian Schatz blocked a motion to
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proceed to a Tim Scott bill. Like that does not
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seem like something that's gonna have real impact politically.
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Right.
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And I think what will have real impact politically is
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the stuff that we can control, which is what the
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Democrats do and what Joe Biden does. And this week,
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50 liberal groups sent a letter to the Biden campaign.
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This was anchored by folks like Dream Defenders, Mi Gente,
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and Our Revolution and the Working Families Party saying, we
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need you to stop talking about community policing because, I mean,
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just think about it, you know, community policing is not
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what the suburbs have, you know, or the wealthy suburbs have.
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They just have a good quality of life and enough
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money to meet their needs, right? They have housing and
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good schools and safe streets with, you know, lights and
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good infrastructure. And so there's a real push for Biden
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to change his response to this moment and stop trumpeting.
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I mean, basically what he said was we need to
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fully fund the program that we put out in the
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crime bill under the Clinton White House. And, you know,
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community policing is not something that anybody in over-policed communities
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really wants. People want a total shift in the priorities of,
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you know, the local and state government spending in their communities.
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And so it's really important, I think, for organizations that
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are representing, you know, working class brown and black folks
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to be able to have some influence on our standard bearer,
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given how much the Biden campaign needs our vote.
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Yeah, so I wanted to talk about that. So, you know,
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clearly Biden has moved to a better place on policing
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and criminal justice reform. than he was throughout most of
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his career, even throughout most of the primary, right? So
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he's embraced some reforms. He's called for national use of
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force standard, more diverse police departments. He's probably, he's embraced
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much of the Democrats bill, been on chokeholds, no knock warrants,
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reform qualified immunity. But like you said, he's got this
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calling for funding for community policing. He has explicitly come
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out against defunding the police. So, I mean, how much
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should activists sort of expect to get him somewhere better
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by November? And from the Biden perspective, what I wonder is,
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you know, he's not going to wake up tomorrow or
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maybe any time between now and November and say, OK,
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now I'm for defunding the police. But what could he
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embrace that would meet the moment, but also be authentic
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to or at least realistic about who he is?
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Yeah, I mean. you know, one of the key things
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to remember is that the police union really wrote, you know,
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Joe Biden's crime bill. And that's a really helpful sort of,
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when you think about all of these provisions in local
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police union contracts that give such immunity and lack of
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accountability to police officers, you know, and make that sort
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of code of silence you know, that's who was really
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at the table. And oftentimes we like for labor unions
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to be at the table, you know, writing bills about workers,
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but not when those workers have guns. And so, you know,
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the question now is what can Biden do? I do
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think that Joe Biden is a weather vane and he
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does recognize that the weather has shifted. And I think
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it is, I always believe, you know, that the left
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has less power than we think we do. And, you know,
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if our goals are important enough, then they're going to
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be hard to accomplish, right? And so I think it's
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incumbent upon the movement to do the work between now
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and November to use this incredible amount of attention that
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these issues have to educate the public and keep moving
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the needle. People are open who have never thought about
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something like defunding the police to like, okay, what would
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that look like? And there are examples, right? The city
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of Camden, New Jersey, you know, disbanded its police department.
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The country of Georgia disbanded its police department because it
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was just so corrupt and started from the ground up.
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You know, we're about to see what's going to happen
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in Minneapolis. And so I think it's really important for them,
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it's incumbent upon the movement and democratic leadership, actually, to
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keep up the education of the public about how much
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we spend on police departments. I mean, in New York City,
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it is $ 6 billion with a B dollars a year.
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It's just like an astronomical figure. And we've got to
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educate people so that Joe Biden, who's always going to
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want to seek a compromise, who's always going to want
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to be somewhere slightly left of center, is going to
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find that political train totally shifted under his feet by
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the time it comes to really legislate, hopefully with the
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Democratic majority in January.
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Dan, what do you think? You know how the Biden
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campaign goes. Can be. They are, especially right now, they're probably,
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you know, they're looking at their lead. It's probably making
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them a bit more cautious. They're probably thinking to themselves, well,
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he has moved a bit from where he was. They like,
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as Heather was saying, he sort of always likes to
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be in the center of where the party is. And
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so he will move based on that. But what do
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you think we can sort of hope from Joe Biden
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on this?
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I mean, I think all of that assessment is right.
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And I think it is the right of these groups
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to continue to put pressure on Joe Biden and every
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Democratic leader, right? Joe Biden would not be a Democratic
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nominee without Black voters, and he will not be president
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of the United States without Black voters. And these groups
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should make sure that their agenda gets a hearing. And
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it would not be realistic to think that Joe Biden
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is going to adopt everything in that letter. But Can
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they move him on some things? And I think potentially
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the community policing part may be the easiest place to
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move him, even though that is a program that Joe
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Biden has been very closely associated with. It is a very,
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very reasonable and rational request that is actually consistent with
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some of the other positions that Joe Biden has adopted
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to not put more money into police departments at this moment.
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And so I think they can and should push that.
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The thing that I would hope would be that Biden
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would sit down with these people and have a conversation.
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And I think that like that, like, because like, we
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should think about this, like, we have a lot of
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work to do to win this election. But if I
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was Joe Biden, I would think about this as the
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beginning of a governing partnership. Let's have these conversations now,
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because we are going to have to work together to
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solve these problems come January. And like, they're very, you know,
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the first group on that list is Black Voters Matter.
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And That is Latasha Brown, who is very familiar to
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people in this podcast, who is as reasonable and rational
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a person as there is. She just talked about a
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lot of these issues with us a couple of weeks ago.
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And that would be a good conversation for Joe Biden
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to have. So I hope they have that. And it's
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not simply like this either doesn't get ignored or is
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an exchange of letters. I think he himself has potential
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to be very, very good in that conversation and explain
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his point of view. And I think he will listen
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to them, which is the thing Elizabeth Warren always says
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about Joe Biden is he listens.
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I was thinking what you said, Heather, about sort of
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the obligation of Democratic leaders and activists to sort of
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do a lot of education on this, too. Because, you know,
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I mean, the polling is moving around all over the place,
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which we're going to talk about in a second. But,
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you know, when you ask people about defunding the police
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or cutting police funding, you know, it's not that popular yet.
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when you, you know, Data for Progress, we talked about
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this a couple weeks ago, polled, would you support an
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alternative to policing where sort of unarmed folks went and
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responded to mental health calls and things like that? And
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it was like 58% of people supported that, you know?
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And some of this, I wonder if it's about sort
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of framing this in a way that is at least
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gets majority support within the party or within the American public.
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And then you, at least then you can go to
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someone like Joe Biden and say, you should be for this.
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Most people are for this.
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Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I think,
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you know, at this moment when Americans watched the, you know,
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slow motion execution of a defenseless man for eight minutes
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and 46 seconds and Rightly so corporate America, white Americans,
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you know, most people of color who are not black
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are sort of saying, okay, you know what? We get it.
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We're listening. Tell us. And like, there's a moment right
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now where George Floyd's murder is making people who weren't listening, listen.
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And so that moment of conversation that's happening, that's putting
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people books about racism on the bestseller list that's making
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everyone from Pepsi-Cola to Vaseline to Tampax donate to the NAACP.
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It's an important moment for education. And so putting something
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out there that smashes through the Overton window, something like
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defunding the police, which is really focusing just on what
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we don't want, it's not focusing on what we do want,
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is a powerful intervention. But I completely agree that the
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question needs to be, what do we want instead? And fundamentally,
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it's a question of housing affordability, the foster care system,
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which often leads back to housing affordability because parents can't
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afford to keep a roof over their children and so
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end up losing them. It's about food insecurity. It's about wages.
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It's about social workers, yes, but it's also about just
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having the the dignity and the resilience and the strength
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because you have enough money and enough resources to just
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take care of your family. And it's also about getting
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cops out of schools where you're constantly criminalizing kids for
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what would have just been a detention. I really do
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think that focusing on what we do want, there's an
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ad that the Republicans have already started running that's like
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a white woman running around in her house because there's
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a home invasion, which is, of course, like, you know,
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the single scariest thing, right? And it really was a
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huge part of the NRA kind of surge after Ferguson
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was this idea that there were going to be more
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home invasions after riots. It was like immigrants, undocumented immigrants, and,
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you know, thugs on the street are going to invade
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your home. So that's why you need to buy all
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these guns for protection, not for hunting. And, you know,
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the Republican ad says Democrats want to defund the police.
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So there's no 911. Like she calls 911, there's no
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one there. And I do think we need our own
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ads that are like, here are the reasons why people
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call 911 and just show what would happen instead, right?
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I'm calling 911 because I hear somebody fighting next door
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and it's worrying me, right? That kind of welfare check
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is actually one of the huge things that happens. Instead,
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you get someone who doesn't have a gun. You get
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someone who's a social worker. You're worried about your neighbor's kid.
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You know, you have someone who comes and gets them
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connected to food aid. You know, you're worried about your
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own safety. You actually are able to get someone who
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can just get you out of the situation and get
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you into stable housing. These are the kinds of things
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we need to see as a totally different version that's
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not gutted out social services and a gutted out family
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economic security that doesn't depend on the police to oppress
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people whose only crime is, you know, often being working class, poor,
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black and brown, and indigenous.
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You touched on some of these sort of broader issues
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that I want to talk about. I mean, George Floyd's
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murder was the spark for these protests and this reckoning
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that's taking place right now. And a lot of the
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focus has rightly been on police and criminal justice reform.
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It's also opened up this bigger conversation about how to
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address systemic racism. Friday is Juneteenth, which is the day
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155 years ago when the last enslaved Americans were freed.
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And I think these last few weeks have made it
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painfully obvious that we still haven't grappled with that legacy.
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From a policy perspective, obviously a lot of this is
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about prioritization, especially when we're talking about government. If in
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November we have a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress,
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where would you begin?
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So I think first we need to recognize that part
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of the reason we haven't made more progress on racism
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in this country is because we have always had a
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well-funded economically, politically, and socially powerful minority that has never
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wanted to change the racial order. And they have been
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organized since our founding. And certainly I think even with
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more money and tools to influence our democracy, since the
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civil rights movement. And now, you know, they're known as,
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you know, sort of the Koch network and they have
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all of these other things that they espouse, whether it's,
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you know, attacks on government, the desire not to regulate,
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but fundamentally they want the racial and economic status quo.
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And part of the tools that they have used has
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been to fund a dominant story. And we see it
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all over right-wing media We see it all over the
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right-wing social media, but we also see it in our classrooms.
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It just minimizes racism and blames people of color for
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racial inequality and racial disparities. And so we've never actually
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been on the same page about the extent of racism
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and why we are in this place that we are today.
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So that's why I think it's really important for us
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to do what 40 other societies that have had the
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kinds of trauma that we have had to recognize that
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we need a truth commission in this country. And I'm
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not saying like shunt it off to a commission. I mean,
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something that has, where you can do it in every
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single community in the country. Right now there's a template
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called the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Effort that is
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happening in 20 campuses and 14 states and cities. I
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was just visiting with the one in Dallas. And you
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just have to rewrite your racial history. A friend of
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mine put it this way. She said, You know, I
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always thought that we were a country with racist people
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in it. I didn't realize that we were a racist country.
481
00:27:47.829 --> 00:27:53.490
And if you don't really believe that a country that
482
00:27:53.529 --> 00:27:56.890
was founded on a belief in racial hierarchy and founded
483
00:27:56.930 --> 00:28:00.089
on stolen land and stolen labor and only had a
484
00:28:00.130 --> 00:28:02.549
majority of white people believing that Blacks and whites should
485
00:28:02.589 --> 00:28:07.569
marry in the 80s, is not a racist country and
486
00:28:07.589 --> 00:28:11.130
that most of our laws and programs were created at
487
00:28:11.170 --> 00:28:13.910
a time where it was government policy to segregate and discriminate.
488
00:28:14.359 --> 00:28:16.039
And we've had some tweaks around the edges, but we
489
00:28:16.059 --> 00:28:19.259
haven't fully uprooted them. And as soon as we did
490
00:28:19.440 --> 00:28:22.380
start to do that in the 1960s, the Supreme Court
491
00:28:22.400 --> 00:28:24.920
spent about 10 years in that business and then the
492
00:28:24.960 --> 00:28:28.000
Supreme Court changed and they've actually been the ones to
493
00:28:28.160 --> 00:28:31.680
stop racial progress time and time again, use the Equal
494
00:28:31.720 --> 00:28:36.980
Protection Clause, to defend corporations and to defend white people
495
00:28:37.220 --> 00:28:43.359
from affirmative action and voluntary school integration and other such evils.
496
00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:49.619
So we've actually not had a sustained period of all
497
00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:52.220
hands on deck, let's solve this. And so I do
498
00:28:52.269 --> 00:28:56.589
think we need something like a truth and racial healing
499
00:28:56.630 --> 00:28:59.309
and reconciliation, whatever you want to call it, commission that
500
00:28:59.349 --> 00:29:01.029
gets us all on the same page so we can
501
00:29:01.069 --> 00:29:04.410
begin to turn it. And I do think that we
502
00:29:04.490 --> 00:29:09.730
need to recognize that your success as a family, so
503
00:29:09.789 --> 00:29:12.299
much of it depends on your inherited wealth. Even if
504
00:29:12.339 --> 00:29:15.460
it's like your aunt's $ 10, 000 savings bond or like a
505
00:29:15.519 --> 00:29:19.660
little bit of stock from your grandmother. Black people were
506
00:29:19.799 --> 00:29:25.710
officially denied that with every single, in every single way
507
00:29:25.829 --> 00:29:29.799
that the government created white wealth. from the Homestead Act
508
00:29:29.980 --> 00:29:34.089
to the affordable mortgages, to the VA, to the GI Bill,
509
00:29:34.410 --> 00:29:37.069
to the subsidization of the suburbs, every single one of
510
00:29:37.089 --> 00:29:41.470
those moves explicitly denied that to Black people. And so
511
00:29:41.519 --> 00:29:44.420
we have to have some kind of reparations, not even
512
00:29:44.500 --> 00:29:48.880
for slavery in my mind, but more for the inequalities
513
00:29:49.059 --> 00:29:53.039
in wealth building that happened in the 20th century. And frankly,
514
00:29:53.059 --> 00:29:56.240
well into the current decade with the financial crisis that
515
00:29:56.299 --> 00:30:01.289
could have been stopped and resulted in a loss of
516
00:30:01.829 --> 00:30:04.490
wealth for Black families of about 50% in the course
517
00:30:04.529 --> 00:30:05.390
of a handful of years.
518
00:30:06.990 --> 00:30:10.369
Dan, could you see President Biden leading something like this
519
00:30:10.529 --> 00:30:12.450
in early days in office?
520
00:30:13.750 --> 00:30:15.970
I mean, I would hope so. I think it's a
521
00:30:16.059 --> 00:30:22.440
very powerful idea, and I think it requires a shift
522
00:30:23.019 --> 00:30:28.119
in how all of us, from Joe Biden to us
523
00:30:28.160 --> 00:30:32.920
to Democratic Party leaders, think about institutional and structural racism.
524
00:30:33.460 --> 00:30:35.799
You know, I've thought a lot about this in, you know,
525
00:30:36.380 --> 00:30:39.119
like John, you and I, you know, primary experience in
526
00:30:39.160 --> 00:30:43.440
politics was helping the first African-American president get elected and
527
00:30:43.460 --> 00:30:46.490
then working in that White House for some number of years.
528
00:30:46.869 --> 00:30:52.970
And I think about how in 2011, when Donald Trump
529
00:30:52.990 --> 00:30:56.490
was doing his birther, And Obama finally responded, and we
530
00:30:56.509 --> 00:30:59.920
sort of launched a full response to it. Never once
531
00:31:00.140 --> 00:31:03.200
did Barack Obama or any one of us explicitly say
532
00:31:03.240 --> 00:31:07.960
what he was doing was racist. It obviously was, but
533
00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:08.859
we did not say that.
534
00:31:09.799 --> 00:31:13.849
No, we were all scared of saying that. He was
535
00:31:13.890 --> 00:31:14.470
scared of saying that.
536
00:31:14.490 --> 00:31:17.970
Yeah, and because of the double standard and tremendous expectations
537
00:31:18.029 --> 00:31:22.170
and burdens that were put on him as– an African-American,
538
00:31:22.630 --> 00:31:24.119
what he could get away with compared to a white
539
00:31:24.160 --> 00:31:27.160
male president, just like what a white male president could
540
00:31:27.180 --> 00:31:29.200
get away with that a Hillary Clinton as presidential candidate
541
00:31:29.220 --> 00:31:31.720
could not get away with, dictated the corners of what
542
00:31:31.740 --> 00:31:36.109
was acceptable. And since Trump was elected, Democrats politically and
543
00:31:36.130 --> 00:31:39.789
people around the country are more willing to explicitly call
544
00:31:40.029 --> 00:31:44.940
out racists, racist things people say. But what I think
545
00:31:45.220 --> 00:31:49.450
that masks is it creates this narrative about racism that
546
00:31:49.490 --> 00:31:51.369
if we can just get the racist out of office,
547
00:31:51.390 --> 00:31:54.289
we're going to solve the problem. When the problem isn't racist,
548
00:31:54.410 --> 00:31:58.049
it's racism. And it is institutional, and it is structural,
549
00:31:58.509 --> 00:32:02.230
and it embodies every part of our life and our
550
00:32:02.299 --> 00:32:06.980
economic history. And that is really the conversation that I
551
00:32:07.200 --> 00:32:11.380
hope we're having today that Biden has, which is, What
552
00:32:11.440 --> 00:32:14.880
does a politics and policy that truly attempts to grapple
553
00:32:15.019 --> 00:32:20.440
with institutional and structural racism looks like, right? Because it
554
00:32:20.480 --> 00:32:22.920
is so much bigger than Donald Trump. Donald Trump is
555
00:32:22.980 --> 00:32:27.119
president because we have a whole bunch of institutions in
556
00:32:27.160 --> 00:32:32.549
this country that are designed to disproportionately reward white people
557
00:32:32.589 --> 00:32:36.069
with power. He did not get the most votes. He
558
00:32:36.089 --> 00:32:39.809
won because we have electoral college, which gives massive amounts
559
00:32:39.849 --> 00:32:42.670
of political power to people in the whitest states in
560
00:32:42.710 --> 00:32:47.390
this country. And there's a policy agenda. There's a political strategy.
561
00:32:47.809 --> 00:32:53.269
There is structural reform. There is thinking about the cultural
562
00:32:53.329 --> 00:32:55.890
forces that we are up against. And it's just thinking
563
00:32:55.970 --> 00:32:59.920
about the conversation around the police and why that ad
564
00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.289
that Heather mentioned is so powerful is because we have
565
00:33:04.470 --> 00:33:08.769
a hundred years of popular culture that glorifies police and
566
00:33:08.809 --> 00:33:10.829
even bad police. Like that's been the theme of the
567
00:33:10.869 --> 00:33:15.170
last 20 years is the, the crooked cop who saves
568
00:33:15.230 --> 00:33:20.039
the day. You know, they call her outside the lines. And,
569
00:33:20.460 --> 00:33:23.039
you know, and like, we're like pushing up against all
570
00:33:23.079 --> 00:33:25.680
of that. Like what we're taught in schools, like Arnie
571
00:33:25.720 --> 00:33:27.859
Duncan tweeted, you know, our former education secretary this other day,
572
00:33:27.940 --> 00:33:30.960
how many of you learned about Tulsa in school? And
573
00:33:30.980 --> 00:33:32.109
the answer is almost no one.
574
00:33:32.119 --> 00:33:32.220
Right.
575
00:33:32.910 --> 00:33:33.089
Right.
576
00:33:33.539 --> 00:33:37.819
Our history– the history of– as taught in schools of
577
00:33:38.099 --> 00:33:43.869
race in America is slavery, civil war, Jim Crow, civil
578
00:33:43.900 --> 00:33:47.230
rights legislation, Martin Luther King, Barack Obama gets elected.
579
00:33:47.789 --> 00:33:49.029
That's it, right?
580
00:33:49.069 --> 00:33:51.829
Like there is no discussion of the legacy of that,
581
00:33:51.869 --> 00:33:54.900
how it impacts things now. And like that's all a
582
00:33:54.910 --> 00:33:58.980
part of this bigger conversation or commission, as Heather talked about,
583
00:33:59.099 --> 00:33:59.900
that we need to have.
584
00:34:00.819 --> 00:34:02.279
I sort of see this as, you know, there's, I
585
00:34:02.299 --> 00:34:04.420
think there's a real opportunity right now. And then there's
586
00:34:04.440 --> 00:34:08.099
a challenge with sort of the coalition that the Democratic
587
00:34:08.139 --> 00:34:10.699
Party has right now and sort of where public opinion is.
588
00:34:11.719 --> 00:34:15.329
Opinion on issues like race, the police, the Black Lives
589
00:34:15.369 --> 00:34:18.409
Matter movement has moved dramatically over the last few years,
590
00:34:18.469 --> 00:34:21.670
even the last few weeks. There was just a Quinnipiac
591
00:34:21.690 --> 00:34:24.550
poll out today that shows voters now support the removal
592
00:34:24.590 --> 00:34:28.929
of Confederate statues by 52 to 44% when they opposed
593
00:34:28.969 --> 00:34:32.369
it 39 to 50% just three years ago after Charlottesville.
594
00:34:32.389 --> 00:34:35.849
So you have these attitudes changing. We have a coalition
595
00:34:35.869 --> 00:34:38.900
in the party now that has many more college educated
596
00:34:39.340 --> 00:34:45.199
people in the party. White attitudes have shifted. The challenge
597
00:34:45.519 --> 00:34:49.559
as I see it is I sometimes worry that the
598
00:34:49.619 --> 00:34:55.199
response to this becomes individualized or is limited to Changing
599
00:34:55.260 --> 00:35:01.829
personal behavior or influencers posting or brands donating or corporations donating.
600
00:35:01.889 --> 00:35:02.150
Right.
601
00:35:02.269 --> 00:35:07.860
And sometimes it's harder to get people to focus on.
602
00:35:07.940 --> 00:35:11.780
I know, Heather, this is your life's work. sort of
603
00:35:11.800 --> 00:35:16.219
the larger economic structural issues at stake, right? Because you
604
00:35:16.239 --> 00:35:19.480
can feel good about donating, but the federal government can
605
00:35:19.500 --> 00:35:23.940
move trillions of dollars around and we have schools, districts
606
00:35:23.960 --> 00:35:27.889
that are still segregated. Affordable housing isn't built in our
607
00:35:27.929 --> 00:35:30.449
richest neighborhoods with a bunch of white liberals who are
608
00:35:30.489 --> 00:35:33.570
very well-meaning, right? There are these sort of big structural
609
00:35:33.610 --> 00:35:37.710
policies and challenges that we don't take on. And I
610
00:35:37.809 --> 00:35:41.610
wonder sort of how we get everyone oriented around the
611
00:35:41.670 --> 00:35:44.389
idea that sort of that's the ultimate challenge here when
612
00:35:44.409 --> 00:35:45.889
we're talking about systemic racism.
613
00:35:46.530 --> 00:35:48.679
A hundred percent. I mean, I think two things need
614
00:35:48.699 --> 00:35:51.840
to happen. One, this is a moment where a lot
615
00:35:51.880 --> 00:35:55.780
of white folks are educating themselves. And that is super
616
00:35:55.820 --> 00:35:59.019
important because they're unlearning a lot of the crap that
617
00:35:59.039 --> 00:36:02.539
we've been taught in schools. A lot of the, you know,
618
00:36:02.599 --> 00:36:05.940
terrible narratives from the media, Color of Change, the organization
619
00:36:05.960 --> 00:36:08.469
where I'm a co-chair has a, a series of reports
620
00:36:08.650 --> 00:36:11.840
about how much the police procedurals and the crime procedurals
621
00:36:11.880 --> 00:36:17.019
have undergirded the mass incarceration system, exactly what Dan was
622
00:36:17.059 --> 00:36:20.400
talking about. And I think that's important, right? Like, read
623
00:36:20.460 --> 00:36:23.059
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein to really understand
624
00:36:23.159 --> 00:36:28.130
how much the government segregated Americans. You know, read The
625
00:36:28.150 --> 00:36:30.989
Warmth of Other Suns. Go ahead and read White Fragility.
626
00:36:31.269 --> 00:36:34.369
Read The New Jim Crow. Read How to Be an Antiracist.
627
00:36:35.909 --> 00:36:40.309
And then though, don't stop with having educated yourself, right?
628
00:36:40.329 --> 00:36:44.800
Like that is a very individualistic, which is a trap,
629
00:36:44.949 --> 00:36:49.400
which is a trap of white American culture in many ways.
630
00:36:49.480 --> 00:36:51.039
It's sort of one of the dominant stories that we're
631
00:36:51.079 --> 00:36:53.599
told is like, it's just us on our own when
632
00:36:53.639 --> 00:36:58.550
we don't see the sort of invisible help that we've
633
00:36:58.570 --> 00:37:02.739
been given. So you educate yourself, but don't stop because
634
00:37:03.070 --> 00:37:05.500
no enduring change has ever happened in this country without
635
00:37:05.539 --> 00:37:08.039
collective action. And that's where you just, you need to
636
00:37:08.079 --> 00:37:10.780
get involved. And I think, you know, so many of
637
00:37:10.820 --> 00:37:15.920
your listeners have seen that happen with electoral politics over
638
00:37:15.960 --> 00:37:18.559
the past three years, you know, and have seen that
639
00:37:18.659 --> 00:37:22.079
actually when I get involved in a campaign and I
640
00:37:22.139 --> 00:37:24.119
knock on doors and I make phone calls and texts,
641
00:37:24.739 --> 00:37:28.559
I'm actually doing something collectively to change the structures of power.
642
00:37:29.019 --> 00:37:35.489
Imagine doing all of that on, candidates, campaigns, ideas, organizations
643
00:37:35.769 --> 00:37:39.210
that are fighting against structural racism. That's what we need.
644
00:37:39.230 --> 00:37:41.250
That's 100% what we need. And then I'd say the
645
00:37:41.289 --> 00:37:45.610
other part of it is really incumbent upon the democratic leadership,
646
00:37:45.630 --> 00:37:49.239
which is still overwhelmingly white, from the donors to the
647
00:37:49.320 --> 00:37:55.300
electives to the consultants, to really, really give people better options.
648
00:37:55.480 --> 00:37:59.349
And this is where, you know, fundamentally, like, Policy gets
649
00:37:59.489 --> 00:38:02.710
set and, you know, you can have a completely woke
650
00:38:02.789 --> 00:38:06.469
electorate that wants really big things. And if, you know,
651
00:38:06.570 --> 00:38:09.099
the elected officials just don't put it on the table,
652
00:38:09.760 --> 00:38:12.880
it doesn't really matter. And so actually the biggest education
653
00:38:12.920 --> 00:38:16.739
needs to happen in Congress and among the consultant class
654
00:38:16.800 --> 00:38:18.989
and the donor class. And it just needs to be,
655
00:38:19.610 --> 00:38:24.710
you know, a broader set of agenda items because I
656
00:38:24.789 --> 00:38:28.679
do think that people will follow. something that is bigger
657
00:38:28.820 --> 00:38:31.989
than the kind of piecemeal stuff that, you know, we've
658
00:38:32.030 --> 00:38:34.269
gotten from Democrats for the past 20 years.
659
00:38:35.349 --> 00:38:38.750
Well, and part of it is sort of the message
660
00:38:38.769 --> 00:38:41.909
and the story that we tell as Democrats too. I mean,
661
00:38:42.389 --> 00:38:45.739
Trump has sort of perfected, you know, a brand of
662
00:38:45.820 --> 00:38:49.340
white identity politics that Republicans have been practicing since the
663
00:38:49.380 --> 00:38:52.920
late sixties. They scare white Americans into thinking that progress
664
00:38:52.940 --> 00:38:55.219
for black Americans can only come at their expense and,
665
00:38:55.639 --> 00:38:57.980
And I think because this has worked for Trump and
666
00:38:58.019 --> 00:39:02.239
for Republicans, especially in swing states that have a greater
667
00:39:02.309 --> 00:39:05.510
share of white voters without a college degree, you get
668
00:39:05.530 --> 00:39:09.329
a lot of Democratic politicians who've been hesitant to take
669
00:39:09.489 --> 00:39:12.530
on systemic racism. And this is even sort of what
670
00:39:12.550 --> 00:39:16.280
Dan was talking about just a few minutes ago. You've
671
00:39:16.300 --> 00:39:18.719
done a lot of work, Heather, on how Democrats should
672
00:39:18.760 --> 00:39:22.960
think about this from a messaging perspective. Yeah. in some
673
00:39:22.980 --> 00:39:25.280
work on the race class narrative. Can you talk a
674
00:39:25.300 --> 00:39:26.820
little bit about that and sort of how that fits
675
00:39:26.840 --> 00:39:27.340
with the moment?
676
00:39:27.789 --> 00:39:28.190
Yeah.
677
00:39:28.349 --> 00:39:31.679
I mean, what we found was that you know, there's
678
00:39:31.699 --> 00:39:35.960
sort of three categories of voters. The, you know, our base,
679
00:39:37.099 --> 00:39:41.269
our opposition or their base, and then, you know, over
680
00:39:41.269 --> 00:39:44.289
60% of folks are persuadable, which means not that they're like,
681
00:39:44.429 --> 00:39:47.289
you know, completely moderate and in the middle. It means
682
00:39:47.329 --> 00:39:51.030
that they hold a the progressive story on race and
683
00:39:51.070 --> 00:39:53.570
the economy and government in their minds. And they also
684
00:39:53.630 --> 00:39:56.550
hold the conservative story. It's like, we've heard both stories.
685
00:39:57.190 --> 00:40:00.539
Sometimes the person who tells me the conservative story is compelling.
686
00:40:00.599 --> 00:40:03.219
And sometimes the person who tells me the progressive story
687
00:40:03.260 --> 00:40:06.159
is compelling. It's really weird for people like us who
688
00:40:06.179 --> 00:40:08.820
are like, you know, really see the world with our
689
00:40:08.960 --> 00:40:12.179
own story, but it's true. And it's the majority of people.
690
00:40:12.679 --> 00:40:16.239
And so what we found was that those, that 60%
691
00:40:16.239 --> 00:40:22.800
of persuadables are, was actually really supportive of policies to
692
00:40:22.840 --> 00:40:30.429
address systemic racism if they had a broader description and
693
00:40:30.590 --> 00:40:35.650
story of what racism was, who was selling it, who
694
00:40:35.690 --> 00:40:40.110
was benefiting from it, than the normal, you know, I'm
695
00:40:40.130 --> 00:40:43.280
a racist person, so I do something bad to someone. Rather,
696
00:40:43.460 --> 00:40:46.340
if we could tell the story of racism as something
697
00:40:46.989 --> 00:40:51.050
that is a political and economic weapon that is wielded
698
00:40:51.630 --> 00:40:58.699
by a few self-interested, sold and marketed to a broader public,
699
00:40:58.980 --> 00:41:03.239
but ultimately that doesn't benefit that broader public. Ultimately, these
700
00:41:04.300 --> 00:41:11.769
rules of white supremacy, these rules that support the fallacy
701
00:41:11.869 --> 00:41:15.659
of white supremacy are the kinds of rules that keep
702
00:41:15.699 --> 00:41:18.519
our tax code totally upside down, the kinds of rules
703
00:41:18.559 --> 00:41:24.960
that keep public education underfunded and in the category of
704
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:27.429
things that people have to mortgage their entire futures just
705
00:41:27.449 --> 00:41:31.050
to get a decent shot at. It keeps college affordability
706
00:41:32.010 --> 00:41:34.190
out of reach for the middle class who needs it
707
00:41:34.469 --> 00:41:39.570
the most. It keeps our public purse spending more money
708
00:41:39.690 --> 00:41:43.179
on war and warrior cops than it does on clean
709
00:41:43.239 --> 00:41:46.369
water and bridges that don't fall and dams that don't break.
710
00:41:46.389 --> 00:41:51.090
I mean, it's not working for our country. The coronavirus
711
00:41:51.130 --> 00:41:55.269
pandemic is just laid so bare that we are acting
712
00:41:55.309 --> 00:41:58.440
like a fifth rate country. And so much of it
713
00:41:58.579 --> 00:42:01.920
is because we have prioritized all the wrong things. We
714
00:42:01.940 --> 00:42:06.800
have let self-interested, greedy and racist and sexist people kind
715
00:42:06.820 --> 00:42:10.820
of loot the country and not invested in all of
716
00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:14.070
us because of this view that there are some groups
717
00:42:14.110 --> 00:42:16.849
of people that are just better than others. And so
718
00:42:16.889 --> 00:42:19.130
who's really benefiting from it? Is a white working class
719
00:42:19.150 --> 00:42:21.190
who can't get in, guy who can't get into a
720
00:42:21.309 --> 00:42:23.869
union because unions have been busted with a lot of
721
00:42:23.969 --> 00:42:28.510
racist fear mongering politics, is that guy really benefiting from racism?
722
00:42:28.989 --> 00:42:33.369
I wanna look at who's selling racism for their own
723
00:42:33.429 --> 00:42:37.079
profit more than who's desperate enough to buy it. And
724
00:42:37.119 --> 00:42:39.199
I think when we start asking that question, we will
725
00:42:39.260 --> 00:42:43.019
see that the Republican Party and the people who feed
726
00:42:43.039 --> 00:42:48.030
the Republican Party in its current iteration are selling white
727
00:42:48.070 --> 00:42:51.750
Americans a bill of goods that has worked. The majority
728
00:42:51.909 --> 00:42:54.309
of white Americans have voted for a Republican for president
729
00:42:54.929 --> 00:42:57.889
since Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. It is
730
00:42:57.929 --> 00:43:02.550
a white party with a white identity politics white leadership
731
00:43:02.710 --> 00:43:06.010
and a white base. And yet it is screwing the country,
732
00:43:06.250 --> 00:43:07.750
gutting it and stripping it for parts.
733
00:43:09.210 --> 00:43:11.170
Dan, what do you think about this? Because, you know,
734
00:43:11.650 --> 00:43:15.039
you can see how a lot of democratic politicians could
735
00:43:15.059 --> 00:43:19.099
sort of fall into the trap of embracing an almost
736
00:43:19.219 --> 00:43:23.980
colorblind economic populism, because we've sat in how many meetings
737
00:43:24.340 --> 00:43:27.119
with consultants and seen how many polls where the policies
738
00:43:27.139 --> 00:43:30.449
that poll the best are taxing the rich and, you know,
739
00:43:30.510 --> 00:43:33.800
investing in this and everything that is sort of economically
740
00:43:33.860 --> 00:43:36.940
populist in nature. And then maybe they'd want to sort
741
00:43:36.960 --> 00:43:40.539
of shy away from more direct discussions about race because
742
00:43:40.579 --> 00:43:43.659
that's not how you win over those swing voters. Um,
743
00:43:43.820 --> 00:43:47.079
but I think, you know, Heather makes the point very
744
00:43:47.139 --> 00:43:51.369
well from a ton of research that actually naming the
745
00:43:51.409 --> 00:43:53.809
people who are doing the dividing that are dividing us
746
00:43:53.869 --> 00:43:57.880
against each other, um, white, Brown, black voters, um, so
747
00:43:57.900 --> 00:43:59.840
that they can like loot the rest of the country.
748
00:44:00.199 --> 00:44:03.099
That's a much more powerful argument for a lot of
749
00:44:03.119 --> 00:44:03.599
these voters.
750
00:44:04.639 --> 00:44:09.420
I understand why democratic politicians and democratic consultants have made
751
00:44:09.440 --> 00:44:12.659
the decisions they have in the past. It is based
752
00:44:12.699 --> 00:44:17.510
on an outdated view of politics. And it's also based
753
00:44:18.369 --> 00:44:22.150
on this idea that racism is a binary choice between
754
00:44:22.190 --> 00:44:24.929
white supremacists and woke, and there's nothing in the middle.
755
00:44:25.230 --> 00:44:28.199
And it doesn't accept what Heather's research very clearly shows,
756
00:44:28.239 --> 00:44:32.940
which is people have very confusing, complicated, and often conflicting
757
00:44:33.030 --> 00:44:37.650
views about race. You know, and I have followed the
758
00:44:37.690 --> 00:44:39.849
work that Heather has done on this very, very closely,
759
00:44:39.869 --> 00:44:41.530
and it really sort of blows me away. And I
760
00:44:43.010 --> 00:44:45.349
have this YouTube series where we look at political ads
761
00:44:45.369 --> 00:44:48.500
where I talk to Anat Shankar, sorry, a collaborator on
762
00:44:48.539 --> 00:44:51.199
this work that'll be out next week. And what I
763
00:44:51.260 --> 00:44:55.239
think is a way to think about it is, Republicans
764
00:44:55.300 --> 00:45:00.750
are running a very explicit, racially divisive messaging and political strategy.
765
00:45:01.690 --> 00:45:06.869
And Democrats have tried to run an implicit racial unity strategy.
766
00:45:07.409 --> 00:45:11.849
And I think what is very compelling about what Heather
767
00:45:11.889 --> 00:45:15.389
is talking about is that you cannot elide the conversation.
768
00:45:15.409 --> 00:45:20.190
In a world where there is fear-mongering from a very, very,
769
00:45:20.289 --> 00:45:23.659
very powerful set of messengers on the right, You have
770
00:45:23.719 --> 00:45:26.300
to take that on and explain why it's wrong, who
771
00:45:26.360 --> 00:45:28.599
is funding it, and who it serves. And I think
772
00:45:28.619 --> 00:45:29.679
that's very, very important.
773
00:45:31.219 --> 00:45:33.719
And I also think that movements matter and movements work
774
00:45:33.760 --> 00:45:38.110
and movements shift opinion. I mean, you know, it's just,
775
00:45:38.989 --> 00:45:42.070
it's not just Donald Trump. It's not just the public
776
00:45:42.130 --> 00:45:46.289
execution of George Floyd. It's also six years of a
777
00:45:46.309 --> 00:45:50.550
Black Lives Matter movement that has been shaping consciousness. And
778
00:45:51.840 --> 00:45:54.300
and shaping the consciousness of Black people, all right? I mean,
779
00:45:54.719 --> 00:45:58.159
you know, from Barack Obama to many, many others, you know,
780
00:45:58.179 --> 00:46:04.949
this particular level of consciousness around Black identity and reclaiming,
781
00:46:06.010 --> 00:46:10.750
you know, Blackness and reclaiming our history and being willing
782
00:46:10.789 --> 00:46:15.820
to be, you know, unapologetically Black is actually.
783
00:46:15.559 --> 00:46:16.139
New, right?
784
00:46:16.179 --> 00:46:19.519
I mean, our generation of kind of older millennials or
785
00:46:19.539 --> 00:46:22.679
younger Gen X or, We grew up in that colorblind
786
00:46:22.780 --> 00:46:28.219
era as well. And so, right, Black Lives Matter has
787
00:46:28.239 --> 00:46:30.739
changed the world without a doubt.
788
00:46:32.280 --> 00:46:35.730
I also think this narrative sort of, it speaks to
789
00:46:36.309 --> 00:46:39.150
a longing that a lot of, I think, Americans have
790
00:46:39.210 --> 00:46:42.369
right now, which is people don't want to be divided
791
00:46:42.449 --> 00:46:46.679
by race, right? People don't want that, of all races.
792
00:46:46.909 --> 00:46:50.440
And the opposite of that is they don't necessarily want
793
00:46:50.559 --> 00:46:53.909
some sort of, happy unity that like papers over all
794
00:46:53.949 --> 00:46:56.590
the real differences and struggles, but there's sort of a
795
00:46:56.710 --> 00:47:01.349
longing for a solidarity that you can empathize with other
796
00:47:01.389 --> 00:47:04.849
people's struggles. And I don't think we've had sort of
797
00:47:05.670 --> 00:47:10.369
leaders who can really call on that desire that people
798
00:47:10.409 --> 00:47:13.550
have to sort of stand in solidarity with one another. Yeah.
799
00:47:13.909 --> 00:47:16.909
I don't think there's any more important word in America
800
00:47:16.949 --> 00:47:20.449
right now than solidarity. And I think it's, It means
801
00:47:20.570 --> 00:47:24.230
exactly that, that sense of having each other's back. It's
802
00:47:24.289 --> 00:47:29.179
not like a kumbaya, we're kind of all the same, right?
803
00:47:29.420 --> 00:47:33.760
It's not that. It's saying actually our struggles are different,
804
00:47:33.860 --> 00:47:35.340
but you know what, we're going to support each other
805
00:47:35.440 --> 00:47:38.909
through them, right? people are very scared for good reason.
806
00:47:38.929 --> 00:47:44.550
The planet's melting and our institutions are collapsing. I mean,
807
00:47:44.679 --> 00:47:47.699
everyone gets it, right? Like on a fundamental level, people
808
00:47:47.760 --> 00:47:50.559
are very, very scared. And so the idea that someone
809
00:47:50.719 --> 00:47:54.519
has their back is extremely powerful. And I think that
810
00:47:55.639 --> 00:47:59.940
the protests and the demonstrations and the uprisings in, again,
811
00:48:00.239 --> 00:48:04.400
all 50 states and just smashing through stereotypes of who
812
00:48:04.480 --> 00:48:07.070
actually goes out to protest So much of that was
813
00:48:07.210 --> 00:48:12.989
primed by this precious moment of solidarity, of national solidarity
814
00:48:13.030 --> 00:48:15.719
that we had at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic,
815
00:48:15.780 --> 00:48:19.460
where we showed that we were all willing for a
816
00:48:20.119 --> 00:48:23.800
few weeks to freeze our lives and do things that
817
00:48:23.840 --> 00:48:27.500
we never thought we would do in order to be
818
00:48:27.539 --> 00:48:31.869
a part of a shared national effort to save ourselves,
819
00:48:31.909 --> 00:48:34.289
to save our neighbors, to save our friends, save our families,
820
00:48:34.329 --> 00:48:38.010
to save the country. And we did it, right? Like
821
00:48:38.409 --> 00:48:44.590
essential workers did it and parents did it. And in
822
00:48:44.610 --> 00:48:47.550
many cases, local officials did it and teachers did it
823
00:48:47.750 --> 00:48:53.199
and childcare workers did it. Washington really didn't do it, right?
824
00:48:53.280 --> 00:48:56.719
We had leadership that was really unwilling to sort of
825
00:48:57.260 --> 00:49:01.079
stand and have our backs. But there was this moment
826
00:49:01.119 --> 00:49:04.940
of real sense of vulnerability and fear and also I'm
827
00:49:04.980 --> 00:49:08.510
actually willing to do something for my neighbor. And I'm
828
00:49:08.610 --> 00:49:14.610
feeling a shared sense of struggle with my neighbor, even
829
00:49:14.650 --> 00:49:17.170
though obviously it laid bare all these inequalities. I think
830
00:49:17.230 --> 00:49:20.400
the impulse that Americans had and just seeing each other
831
00:49:20.420 --> 00:49:22.900
and seeing the whole country do the same thing, which,
832
00:49:23.139 --> 00:49:26.739
you know, it's just so far from our individualized kind
833
00:49:26.780 --> 00:49:32.489
of consumer marketplace culture. It just really, I think, primed
834
00:49:32.510 --> 00:49:37.829
us for showing up for Black Lives in the wake
835
00:49:37.869 --> 00:49:38.949
of George Floyd's death.
836
00:49:40.150 --> 00:49:44.260
Well, hopefully we can turn that into something more lasting
837
00:49:44.440 --> 00:49:47.880
and durable than just a fleeting moment here. And I
838
00:49:47.920 --> 00:49:51.960
hope we will. Heather, thank you so much for joining us.
839
00:49:52.059 --> 00:49:53.500
This was a lot of fun.
840
00:49:53.840 --> 00:49:56.760
Oh, my pleasure. It's always good to be with you. And,
841
00:49:57.030 --> 00:50:02.550
you know, folks who are listening should read up, you know,
842
00:50:03.150 --> 00:50:06.449
do all the education you can, black, brown, and white
843
00:50:06.489 --> 00:50:09.730
folks and everybody in between. Learn about our history, the
844
00:50:09.750 --> 00:50:12.809
stuff that we've been lied to about, but also take
845
00:50:12.909 --> 00:50:15.489
action and join up. And there are so many organizations
846
00:50:15.550 --> 00:50:18.650
out there that are great and nothing feels better than
847
00:50:18.690 --> 00:50:21.389
moving in action in solidarity with your fellow Americans.
848
00:50:21.869 --> 00:50:25.360
Just along those lines, I would highly recommend Heather's TED
849
00:50:25.380 --> 00:50:28.280
Talk on this very topic, which is very, very powerful
850
00:50:28.300 --> 00:50:28.900
and very compelling.
851
00:50:30.579 --> 00:50:31.000
Thank you.
852
00:50:31.059 --> 00:50:34.519
Absolutely. And please come back so we can, I think
853
00:50:34.539 --> 00:50:37.659
we should keep having these conversations because it's important.
854
00:50:38.239 --> 00:50:39.360
Sounds great. Happy to.
855
00:50:39.880 --> 00:50:42.760
When we come back, we will have Dan's conversation with
856
00:50:43.139 --> 00:50:44.059
Reverend William Barber.
857
00:50:52.610 --> 00:50:54.889
He's the co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign and the
858
00:50:54.969 --> 00:50:58.449
president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. Reverend Dr.
859
00:50:58.489 --> 00:51:00.550
William Barber, welcome back to Pod Save America.
860
00:51:00.570 --> 00:51:03.280
Thank you so much for allowing us to be on.
861
00:51:03.340 --> 00:51:04.559
It's always good to be with you.
862
00:51:05.260 --> 00:51:09.610
Well, we are so grateful to have you. You revived
863
00:51:09.650 --> 00:51:12.460
the Poor People's Campaign in 2018, but this weekend you're
864
00:51:12.480 --> 00:51:15.579
starting a new push with new demands. What has or
865
00:51:15.619 --> 00:51:18.360
hasn't happened since 2018 that makes this such a critical
866
00:51:18.420 --> 00:51:19.500
moment for your campaign?
867
00:51:21.440 --> 00:51:25.760
Well, along with Reverend Dr. Leo Harris and now with
868
00:51:25.760 --> 00:51:30.389
45 state coordinating committees, we revived in 2018, but we
869
00:51:30.409 --> 00:51:33.010
were just beginning. And we knew that the first thing
870
00:51:33.050 --> 00:51:35.429
we had to do was audit America. So we did
871
00:51:35.530 --> 00:51:37.690
an audit of America, some of the best economists and
872
00:51:37.750 --> 00:51:40.030
others in the world, and to actually get a handle
873
00:51:40.070 --> 00:51:42.789
on what was going on. And we found out, we
874
00:51:42.829 --> 00:51:46.769
hear 39 million people in poverty, but it's actually 140
875
00:51:46.769 --> 00:51:50.320
million people, poverty and low wealth, 43% of the country,
876
00:51:50.360 --> 00:51:54.079
just to give you one of the glaring numbers. And
877
00:51:54.079 --> 00:51:56.500
700 people were dying a day from poverty, a quarter
878
00:51:56.539 --> 00:51:59.360
million a year. The next thing we wanted to do
879
00:51:59.420 --> 00:52:01.679
is we wanted to launch the campaign. We did six
880
00:52:01.739 --> 00:52:05.619
weeks of launching in 41 state capitals and the District
881
00:52:05.659 --> 00:52:09.289
of Columbia, putting our demands in place. And one of
882
00:52:09.329 --> 00:52:11.980
the things that has done, it has pushed the issue
883
00:52:12.019 --> 00:52:19.139
of poverty and our five interlocking justices, systemic racism, systemic poverty,
884
00:52:19.280 --> 00:52:24.849
ecological devastation, the health, denial of health care, the war economy,
885
00:52:25.289 --> 00:52:28.969
and this false modernity of religious nationalism into the public
886
00:52:29.010 --> 00:52:32.039
square more and more and more. And people are organizing
887
00:52:32.079 --> 00:52:34.420
at a very deep level. As I said, we now
888
00:52:34.460 --> 00:52:42.230
have 45 state coordinating committees, poor people, moral leaders, and advocates.
889
00:52:42.269 --> 00:52:47.130
We have 19 major religious denominations of every different religion
890
00:52:47.170 --> 00:52:51.050
in the country who are connected now. We have over
891
00:52:51.050 --> 00:52:55.159
150 partners now that have connected. And we have somewhere
892
00:52:55.219 --> 00:52:57.119
in the neighborhood of 10 to 12 unions that have
893
00:52:57.139 --> 00:52:59.750
connected with And people are really starting to see how
894
00:52:59.789 --> 00:53:03.840
we have to deal with these five interlocking evils, interlocking injustices.
895
00:53:04.380 --> 00:53:06.480
And then in 2019, we had a big Congress, and
896
00:53:06.519 --> 00:53:09.059
we actually proposed a budget. We found the money, we
897
00:53:09.099 --> 00:53:12.000
took on the lie of scarcity, and we actually presented
898
00:53:12.039 --> 00:53:17.889
that budget to the House of Representatives of the United
899
00:53:17.929 --> 00:53:20.869
States Congress at their budget committee. The first time ever
900
00:53:21.369 --> 00:53:26.750
that poor people, white, black, undocumented people, native had actually
901
00:53:26.829 --> 00:53:30.269
gone to the Congress and said, here's how we can
902
00:53:30.309 --> 00:53:33.150
fix these problems. Here's what needs to be done. And
903
00:53:33.210 --> 00:53:36.050
since that time, we've been doing a, we must do
904
00:53:36.139 --> 00:53:42.579
more mobilizing, organizing, registering people, what's called mobilizing, organizing, registering,
905
00:53:42.599 --> 00:53:45.860
educating people for the movement who vote. We did another
906
00:53:45.900 --> 00:53:50.429
study because we want our things based in reality. And
907
00:53:50.530 --> 00:53:53.559
one of the things we found out is from Columbia
908
00:53:53.619 --> 00:53:58.300
University study that if you just register 15% of unregistered
909
00:53:58.820 --> 00:54:01.719
poor and low wealth people in this country, you could
910
00:54:01.880 --> 00:54:06.280
fundamentally shift the politics. And so we began a tour
911
00:54:06.340 --> 00:54:10.170
to do that, register people across the country in a
912
00:54:10.210 --> 00:54:14.570
very targeted way with the goal of changing the narrative
913
00:54:14.650 --> 00:54:19.829
and building power And we were headed to D.C. for
914
00:54:19.889 --> 00:54:23.320
June 2020 on Pennsylvania Avenue when COVID hit right in
915
00:54:23.360 --> 00:54:26.480
the middle of it. And when COVID hit and exposed
916
00:54:26.980 --> 00:54:29.400
the level of poverty and the level of racism in
917
00:54:29.440 --> 00:54:33.960
this country and how the pandemic exported those, it drove
918
00:54:34.019 --> 00:54:36.280
more and more of our issues right into the heart
919
00:54:36.590 --> 00:54:41.820
of the political dialogue that poverty and racism and And
920
00:54:41.840 --> 00:54:44.309
the other things we have mentioned are actually threats to
921
00:54:44.389 --> 00:54:49.329
our very national security, threats to who we are as
922
00:54:49.429 --> 00:54:54.409
a society. And now we are headed toward this massive
923
00:54:54.469 --> 00:54:58.260
Four Peoples Assembly, Moral March on Washington, the largest most
924
00:54:58.300 --> 00:55:01.059
historic gathering of four and lower people and their allies,
925
00:55:01.639 --> 00:55:06.119
a digital gathering. And it's happening on the same day
926
00:55:06.380 --> 00:55:11.360
that the Trump administration is in Tulsa insulting the history
927
00:55:11.409 --> 00:55:16.199
there and the ugly racism of bombing and rioting and
928
00:55:16.239 --> 00:55:19.059
destroying a Black community. And we're going to be the
929
00:55:19.139 --> 00:55:22.800
contrast that day with hundreds of thousands of people online
930
00:55:23.199 --> 00:55:26.800
of every race, creed, color, sexuality saying that we need
931
00:55:26.880 --> 00:55:30.159
to be about the business of addressing these issues and
932
00:55:30.199 --> 00:55:34.360
bringing people together to change society rather than bringing people
933
00:55:34.380 --> 00:55:36.380
together to continue to divide society.
934
00:55:36.860 --> 00:55:39.969
The Poor People's Campaign is a nonpartisan organization, but much
935
00:55:40.010 --> 00:55:41.869
of what you call for in your budget and in
936
00:55:41.949 --> 00:55:45.849
your activities is generally considered to be progressive legislation. When
937
00:55:45.869 --> 00:55:48.090
you were out there making the case for your agenda,
938
00:55:48.190 --> 00:55:50.289
how do you make it to folks who do not
939
00:55:50.329 --> 00:55:53.550
necessarily identify with the Democratic Party or with progressivism?
940
00:55:55.320 --> 00:55:58.699
Well, I don't define progressivism quite the same way. Teddy
941
00:55:58.739 --> 00:56:01.940
Roosevelt was a Republican and he talked a lot about
942
00:56:01.980 --> 00:56:04.960
progressive ideas back in the area. I think too often
943
00:56:04.980 --> 00:56:08.449
that's exactly the mistake we've made. We see the issues
944
00:56:08.530 --> 00:56:12.809
we talk about as constitutional issues and moral issues. You know,
945
00:56:12.949 --> 00:56:15.429
in our deepest religious faith, it tells us that how
946
00:56:15.469 --> 00:56:18.920
we treat poor people and the immigrant and the sick
947
00:56:19.239 --> 00:56:21.820
are moral issues. They're not left and right or progressive
948
00:56:21.860 --> 00:56:26.369
versus conservative. Our Constitution says establish justice. That isn't a
949
00:56:26.409 --> 00:56:30.309
progressive or conservative. It could be both. If you're going
950
00:56:30.329 --> 00:56:33.809
to be a constitutionalist, then you want to conserve what's
951
00:56:33.869 --> 00:56:35.530
in the Constitution. And one of the things you want
952
00:56:35.550 --> 00:56:38.559
to conserve is the establishment of justice and providing for
953
00:56:38.579 --> 00:56:40.539
the common defense. But you would also want to be
954
00:56:40.579 --> 00:56:43.219
progressive in those things in order to make sure that
955
00:56:43.260 --> 00:56:46.280
you're constantly examining the areas of your society that are
956
00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:50.659
not just and being progressively active toward changing that. And
957
00:56:50.679 --> 00:56:52.559
so I think you, first of all, don't get tied
958
00:56:52.599 --> 00:56:54.840
up in the language of division. We have too much
959
00:56:54.940 --> 00:57:00.610
puny language, left versus right, Democrat versus Republican, conservative versus liberal.
960
00:57:00.710 --> 00:57:06.329
It just gets tired. And people are hurting, fixing, going
961
00:57:06.389 --> 00:57:11.719
into communities like Appalachia where coal miners don't have health care,
962
00:57:11.760 --> 00:57:14.019
but they have black lung disease, they don't want to
963
00:57:14.159 --> 00:57:17.400
hear about these little terms that we get caught up in,
964
00:57:18.050 --> 00:57:21.070
you know, talking heads. They want to know, how is
965
00:57:21.130 --> 00:57:22.650
it that I can get health care? How is it
966
00:57:22.670 --> 00:57:24.349
that we can get living wages? How is it that
967
00:57:24.369 --> 00:57:26.829
we get clean water? And if you can show them
968
00:57:27.070 --> 00:57:31.489
that the very people, for instance, that are pushing voter
969
00:57:31.590 --> 00:57:35.510
suppression laws. And when they get elected through voter suppression laws,
970
00:57:35.590 --> 00:57:38.690
it's targeted at Black people. Once they get elected, they
971
00:57:38.789 --> 00:57:41.769
use their power to block health care that hurts coal miners,
972
00:57:41.809 --> 00:57:47.809
to block corporations from poisoning their communities that hurt Black, white,
973
00:57:47.889 --> 00:57:52.679
and Asian and Latino and First Nation people, people began
974
00:57:52.739 --> 00:57:56.000
to see something. They began to see that they actually
975
00:57:56.539 --> 00:57:59.260
should be together. And so what we do is we
976
00:57:59.280 --> 00:58:01.440
just go to the people and we teach the truth.
977
00:58:01.519 --> 00:58:05.070
We show people that there's a connection between that poor
978
00:58:05.179 --> 00:58:10.050
person at the Delta of Mississippi and that poor farmer
979
00:58:10.210 --> 00:58:13.650
out in Kansas. Both of them need healthcare. Both of
980
00:58:13.730 --> 00:58:17.590
them are struggling with wages. Both of them find themselves
981
00:58:18.659 --> 00:58:25.730
are being constantly undermined by the corporate interests of this country.
982
00:58:26.070 --> 00:58:28.170
We can find people that are willing to have grown-up
983
00:58:28.230 --> 00:58:32.389
conversations about how systemic racism, whether it's against Black people,
984
00:58:32.409 --> 00:58:36.730
Latino people, or Indigenous people, Systemic racism is not just
985
00:58:36.809 --> 00:58:40.539
against those people. It's targeted at them, but it's against
986
00:58:40.559 --> 00:58:43.579
the democracy. It holds us back. And we found that
987
00:58:43.599 --> 00:58:45.820
there's a whole lot of people that are ready to
988
00:58:45.900 --> 00:58:48.920
get away from the labels and start dealing with what
989
00:58:48.980 --> 00:58:51.829
affects life. You know, what we do is we show
990
00:58:51.909 --> 00:58:55.650
people that poverty kills. It has a death measurement. Quarter
991
00:58:55.690 --> 00:58:57.690
million people a year die and don't have to die
992
00:58:58.070 --> 00:59:01.730
if we address the issue of poverty. Denial of healthcare kills.
993
00:59:02.050 --> 00:59:05.460
There's a death measurement. We know that thousands of people
994
00:59:05.519 --> 00:59:08.730
die for every 500,000 people that do not have healthcare.
995
00:59:10.050 --> 00:59:12.590
the South that all of the southern states that denied
996
00:59:12.670 --> 00:59:15.610
health care or the Affordable Care Act, the majority of
997
00:59:15.630 --> 00:59:19.260
the people that would have been impacted by receiving that
998
00:59:19.300 --> 00:59:22.960
health care are white. But most of the reasons why
999
00:59:23.000 --> 00:59:25.980
the governors and the legislatures denied it is because they
1000
00:59:26.000 --> 00:59:28.480
hate a black man who happened to be a president
1001
00:59:28.960 --> 00:59:33.030
named Obama. We have to have grown up conversations. And
1002
00:59:33.070 --> 00:59:35.869
when you do that, you get around a lot of
1003
00:59:35.909 --> 00:59:41.570
these labels. When you use moral fusion movements, not labels,
1004
00:59:41.590 --> 00:59:45.699
not party, you begin to talk about what's right and wrong,
1005
00:59:46.159 --> 00:59:49.420
not what's left and right. It is amazing how that
1006
00:59:49.539 --> 00:59:52.480
changes the whole conversation and pulls people together.
1007
00:59:53.539 --> 00:59:57.820
You know, you have been marching and organizing and having
1008
00:59:58.059 --> 01:00:00.409
registering voters and talking to people face to face. But
1009
01:00:00.469 --> 01:00:04.030
now we're existing in a pandemic that's going to make
1010
01:00:04.070 --> 01:00:08.010
a lot of those traditional forms of organizing less frequent
1011
01:00:08.030 --> 01:00:11.010
or perhaps too dangerous for people to do. Beyond having
1012
01:00:11.090 --> 01:00:14.349
a march transitioned into a digital gathering, what else are
1013
01:00:14.369 --> 01:00:16.110
you thinking about how you're going to do your work
1014
01:00:16.190 --> 01:00:17.030
amidst this pandemic?
1015
01:00:18.260 --> 01:00:20.739
Well, first of all, it's not a march. It's a
1016
01:00:20.780 --> 01:00:23.980
poor people's assembly, moral march on Washington. And I think
1017
01:00:24.119 --> 01:00:26.840
it's important for us to describe that. We never intended
1018
01:00:26.860 --> 01:00:29.960
to just have a march. We intended to bring together
1019
01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:34.239
poor and low wealth people because who will gather on
1020
01:00:34.280 --> 01:00:37.860
Pennsylvania Avenue, now they're going to gather digitally. They will,
1021
01:00:38.039 --> 01:00:40.579
in fact, first of all, tell their stories and the
1022
01:00:40.659 --> 01:00:44.800
pain that's being caused by these five interlocking injustices. And
1023
01:00:44.840 --> 01:00:49.110
it'll be a counterintuitive presentation. As I said, you'll have
1024
01:00:49.130 --> 01:00:52.469
a Latino from California standing with a fast food worker
1025
01:00:52.489 --> 01:00:55.909
from the Carolinas. You'll have a farmer from Kansas standing
1026
01:00:55.949 --> 01:01:00.340
with coal miners from Kentucky standing with poor and low-income
1027
01:01:00.360 --> 01:01:05.059
people from Mississippi counterintuitively and saying, look at us. Look
1028
01:01:05.099 --> 01:01:07.760
at us. We are America. Look at how these things
1029
01:01:07.860 --> 01:01:11.650
are hurting us and destroying our lives. Listen to the
1030
01:01:11.650 --> 01:01:14.230
140 million people. How do you ignore 43% of the nation?
1031
01:01:15.400 --> 01:01:18.489
Then they will change the narrative by changing the faces
1032
01:01:18.639 --> 01:01:21.590
and presenting this to America and to the world. And
1033
01:01:21.630 --> 01:01:24.150
then we are committing to be a power, but we
1034
01:01:24.190 --> 01:01:27.710
are also presenting a demand list, because the demands are
1035
01:01:27.750 --> 01:01:31.769
not— we don't believe you should just thirst the darkness, but
1036
01:01:31.789 --> 01:01:35.250
have demands. Now, we started using social media long ago
1037
01:01:35.289 --> 01:01:39.250
in this movement. We used it when we organized in
1038
01:01:39.789 --> 01:01:42.340
the Six Weeks of Action movement. We've used it in
1039
01:01:42.409 --> 01:01:45.800
our mass meetings that we've had throughout the country. We've
1040
01:01:45.820 --> 01:01:48.679
used it in our training. We've built a massive following
1041
01:01:48.760 --> 01:01:52.190
on social media. So we always had planned to use it.
1042
01:01:52.239 --> 01:01:56.010
The pandemic is forcing us to use it. Even if
1043
01:01:56.070 --> 01:01:58.969
we were on Pennsylvania Avenue, we were also going to
1044
01:01:58.989 --> 01:02:03.659
be using massive social media. But because of our advisors,
1045
01:02:03.719 --> 01:02:07.789
PhD epidemiologists, who said it would not be responsible to
1046
01:02:07.829 --> 01:02:10.210
put people on planes and trains and buses and cars
1047
01:02:10.250 --> 01:02:13.630
and bring them to D.C., we're utilizing this format. We
1048
01:02:13.690 --> 01:02:17.250
have now over 200 Facebook accounts that are going to
1049
01:02:17.289 --> 01:02:22.090
be streaming with us. MSNBC is giving us their platform. ABC,
1050
01:02:22.110 --> 01:02:26.170
their social media platform, will be utilized. We are using
1051
01:02:26.469 --> 01:02:31.309
every tool, every tool available. social media tool known to
1052
01:02:31.369 --> 01:02:36.949
humankind to pull people together. And we believe that the
1053
01:02:37.030 --> 01:02:41.579
movement has to use all of the tools. We see
1054
01:02:41.619 --> 01:02:44.559
it happening with many other groups. We need to continue
1055
01:02:44.579 --> 01:02:47.179
to do that. I often say, you know, Harriet Tubman
1056
01:02:47.539 --> 01:02:50.760
got 700 people out of slavery. She never had Google.
1057
01:02:50.780 --> 01:02:53.820
She never had Instagram. She never had Gmail. She never
1058
01:02:53.880 --> 01:02:56.809
had a cell phone. She had moss on the north
1059
01:02:56.829 --> 01:02:58.730
side of the tree, a north star in the sky,
1060
01:02:59.130 --> 01:03:01.800
and a. 38 pistol in her pocket. And that was
1061
01:03:02.940 --> 01:03:08.460
to protect herself as she was rescued and saved. But
1062
01:03:08.500 --> 01:03:11.099
the fact, no matter what, if she had had all
1063
01:03:11.139 --> 01:03:13.389
of the tools we have, and what we say is
1064
01:03:13.809 --> 01:03:17.110
we cannot see people in the past who did less
1065
01:03:17.170 --> 01:03:19.909
with more, and we don't do more with more. We
1066
01:03:19.969 --> 01:03:22.750
have more than they ever had. We cannot do less
1067
01:03:22.809 --> 01:03:25.760
than they did. And so we're using every form of
1068
01:03:25.869 --> 01:03:29.329
social media. We've also created a newspaper to reach out
1069
01:03:29.369 --> 01:03:31.730
to people who may not have social media and who
1070
01:03:31.869 --> 01:03:36.730
may be homeless and otherwise, because we really are building
1071
01:03:36.769 --> 01:03:38.840
a movement from the bottom up.
1072
01:03:39.500 --> 01:03:41.699
Here at Crooked Media, we have a program called Adopt
1073
01:03:41.780 --> 01:03:44.760
a State where we're encouraging our listeners to pick one
1074
01:03:45.000 --> 01:03:49.820
of the six battleground states to digitally volunteer, donate money,
1075
01:03:49.920 --> 01:03:52.409
try to help push those over the finish line. One
1076
01:03:52.429 --> 01:03:54.309
of our six states is North Carolina. That's the state
1077
01:03:54.409 --> 01:03:56.699
I'm on. You have been organizing and working in North
1078
01:03:56.719 --> 01:03:59.099
Carolina for a very long time. What advice would you
1079
01:03:59.159 --> 01:04:02.599
have for our listeners who have adopted North Carolina as
1080
01:04:02.619 --> 01:04:04.739
to how you build political power in that state?
1081
01:04:06.460 --> 01:04:11.260
Well, in North Carolina in 2012, we had a very,
1082
01:04:11.300 --> 01:04:17.269
very bad election that was determined by the 2010 redistricting
1083
01:04:17.289 --> 01:04:21.230
that was has been proven to be unconstitutional and racist,
1084
01:04:21.289 --> 01:04:23.889
but it was allowed to go through by the Justice
1085
01:04:23.909 --> 01:04:26.360
Department at that time. We disagreed with it. We took
1086
01:04:26.380 --> 01:04:28.179
him on in court, but it took us six years
1087
01:04:28.219 --> 01:04:31.159
to win. And because of that, we had more people
1088
01:04:31.239 --> 01:04:35.460
vote in a more forward-thinking way, but the redistricting created
1089
01:04:35.559 --> 01:04:42.230
a supermajority General Assembly, and it was a supermajority extremist Republican.
1090
01:04:42.250 --> 01:04:44.670
I don't even call them Republicans. It was something other
1091
01:04:44.710 --> 01:04:47.639
than Republican, maybe Tea Party or something. And in the
1092
01:04:47.679 --> 01:04:51.320
first 50 days, they went after, took, blocked health care,
1093
01:04:51.360 --> 01:04:55.170
blocked living wages, blocked increasing unemployment, cut a billion dollars
1094
01:04:55.190 --> 01:04:58.409
from public education, went after women, went after gay people,
1095
01:04:58.469 --> 01:05:02.269
went after Latino people. And then in April of that year,
1096
01:05:02.329 --> 01:05:05.309
they even decided they were going to go after voting rights.
1097
01:05:05.349 --> 01:05:08.190
They passed a bill, held on to it until after
1098
01:05:08.250 --> 01:05:11.289
June 25th, the day that the Shelby decision was decided
1099
01:05:11.309 --> 01:05:14.429
and gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. And
1100
01:05:14.449 --> 01:05:18.489
then they passed the worst voting rights, voter suppression bill
1101
01:05:18.510 --> 01:05:22.010
we had seen since Jim Crow. We fought them in
1102
01:05:22.070 --> 01:05:25.530
Mall Monday for four years. Over 1,200 people were arrested.
1103
01:05:25.949 --> 01:05:28.769
We registered people to vote. We took them to court.
1104
01:05:28.809 --> 01:05:32.309
And in 2016 and 2017, and even as late as
1105
01:05:32.389 --> 01:05:36.289
this year, we won every battle we took on against
1106
01:05:36.389 --> 01:05:41.780
massive voter suppression. And now the lines, the redistricting lines
1107
01:05:41.800 --> 01:05:46.619
have been drawn. The voter suppression tactics to end same-day registration,
1108
01:05:46.679 --> 01:05:52.079
early voting have been stopped. Voter ID efforts have been stopped.
1109
01:05:52.920 --> 01:05:57.369
The courts have called it, called what they did surgical racism.
1110
01:05:58.309 --> 01:06:01.610
In 2016, when we had just won a few things,
1111
01:06:01.710 --> 01:06:04.900
we were the only state that beat Donald Trump down tickets.
1112
01:06:05.369 --> 01:06:08.409
We won the governor's race. We won the AG. We
1113
01:06:08.690 --> 01:06:11.429
transitioned the Supreme Court to be one of the most
1114
01:06:11.489 --> 01:06:16.320
progressive Supreme Courts in the South ever. More Black women
1115
01:06:16.639 --> 01:06:19.460
on the Supreme Court than ever. More African Americans than ever.
1116
01:06:20.219 --> 01:06:24.219
And now we have a chance in this election to
1117
01:06:24.340 --> 01:06:29.480
fundamentally shift it. There's an opportunity now to unseat Tom Tillis,
1118
01:06:29.820 --> 01:06:33.659
who was the architect of voter suppression in the state.
1119
01:06:34.250 --> 01:06:38.110
as well as turn out in a massive way. There
1120
01:06:38.239 --> 01:06:41.179
are 4 million poor and low-income people in North Carolina.
1121
01:06:41.559 --> 01:06:44.960
If poor and low-income people registered to vote, we could
1122
01:06:45.059 --> 01:06:47.739
fundamentally shift that state. I think Trump may have won
1123
01:06:47.820 --> 01:06:52.659
by about 160,000 votes, but some 500,000 African-Americans alone that
1124
01:06:52.699 --> 01:06:56.579
were already registered didn't vote, and tens of thousands of
1125
01:06:56.699 --> 01:06:59.800
other people who did not vote. So where would you invest?
1126
01:07:00.099 --> 01:07:04.349
In massive GOTV efforts. I know we're going to be
1127
01:07:04.389 --> 01:07:06.929
doing efforts like that with the repairs of the breach
1128
01:07:07.889 --> 01:07:12.059
and the poor people's campaign and others. This right now,
1129
01:07:12.159 --> 01:07:17.159
the biggest focus for North Carolina is massive voter registration,
1130
01:07:17.239 --> 01:07:21.059
voter protection, voter mobilization. And it doesn't even have to
1131
01:07:21.099 --> 01:07:24.429
be partisan. If people know what has happened, I believe
1132
01:07:24.469 --> 01:07:28.429
people in our state are very concerned. bothered by the
1133
01:07:28.469 --> 01:07:30.429
fact that we have a general assembly that even in
1134
01:07:30.449 --> 01:07:33.849
the midst of a pandemic would still not expand Medicaid,
1135
01:07:33.969 --> 01:07:39.679
would still not increase unemployment. They are regressive. They are extremists.
1136
01:07:40.019 --> 01:07:45.510
They're mean-spirited. We've seen it. As I said, they cost $ 1, 200
1137
01:07:45.380 --> 01:07:49.619
million to get arrested in this campaign, and people have
1138
01:07:49.639 --> 01:07:53.119
been waiting and waiting and waiting. And now, In 2020,
1139
01:07:53.119 --> 01:07:57.570
we'll beat back the suppression laws, and it's time to
1140
01:07:58.969 --> 01:08:03.170
use those victories and do massive, massive voter turnout. That's
1141
01:08:03.210 --> 01:08:05.389
what we're going to be doing. That's where I believe
1142
01:08:05.409 --> 01:08:08.389
people should be invested. North Carolina is a battleground, not
1143
01:08:08.429 --> 01:08:10.750
only for the presidency, but for the United States Senate,
1144
01:08:11.369 --> 01:08:15.469
and to turn around a Southern General Assembly and make
1145
01:08:15.530 --> 01:08:17.729
it what it ought to be, a representative of the people.
1146
01:08:18.720 --> 01:08:22.369
Reverend Barber, thank you so much for The work you're doing,
1147
01:08:22.550 --> 01:08:26.050
you are an inspiration to all of us. Thank you
1148
01:08:26.069 --> 01:08:28.590
for joining us here on Positive America. I encourage everyone
1149
01:08:28.609 --> 01:08:34.449
to go to www.June2020.org to sign up for your assembly.
1150
01:08:34.869 --> 01:08:36.470
And thank you so much for being with us.
1151
01:08:37.449 --> 01:08:40.170
Thank you. Join us, everybody. And don't ever forget, no
1152
01:08:40.189 --> 01:08:43.649
matter what, forward together, not one step back. Take care.
1153
01:08:47.859 --> 01:08:51.470
Thanks to Heather McGee and thanks to the Reverend William Barber, John,
1154
01:08:51.510 --> 01:08:53.220
John and Tommy. We'll be back on Monday and I'll
1155
01:08:53.239 --> 01:08:53.939
see everyone next week.
1156
01:09:00.350 --> 01:09:02.659
Pod Save America is a product of Cricket Media. The
1157
01:09:02.699 --> 01:09:06.300
executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller.
1158
01:09:06.779 --> 01:09:09.539
It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is
1159
01:09:09.579 --> 01:09:13.579
our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
1160
01:09:13.720 --> 01:09:16.840
Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to
1161
01:09:16.880 --> 01:09:20.359
our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and
1162
01:09:20.399 --> 01:09:23.149
Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos
1163
01:09:23.399 --> 01:09:23.770
every week.