For hundreds of years, the Spanish banned the Incan Festival of the Sun—the Andean New Year. But since the middle of the 20th century, Inti Raymi has been back.
Today, communities, cities, towns and even universities hold Inti Raymi celebrations. They make offerings, light fires and incense. They say prayers to Pachamama and Inti, the sun. They sing and dance.
And it’s not just a celebration. It is an act of resistance.
This is episode 50 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.
To see exclusive pictures and video of Inti Raymi celebrations in Quito, Ecuador, you can visit Michael Fox’s Patreon: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow his reporting and support his work and this podcast.
In honor of the 50th episode of Stories of Resistance, we would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has worked hard to make this podcast happen and to all of those who have supported this podcast series.
In particular, Michael and Nadia Murphy, Sam Dodge, Ben Dangl, Kevin Zolitor, Hallo Pip!, Marc Becker, Jennifer from ASAP Manufacturing, Todd Haydel, Phil and Sue Cortese, Supapan Kanti, Michael and Maryann Fox, Josh Weinberg, Dot Goodman, Gary Tempus Jr, Tom Fox, Eric Kinzler, Jim Chomas, and Greg Wilpert. Also, a particularly huge shout out to Grahame Russell, Cara Orscheln, Judy Hughes, and Global Exchange for your tremendous support.
Transcript
In the Northern Hemisphere, it falls near the Summer Solstice — June 21st. The longest day of the year. The time when the sun reaches its apex in the sky. And begins to walk slowly back toward Fall and Winter.
But in the countries of the Andes Mountains of South America, and in particular, Ecuador and Peru, this date is even more important. It is the Andean New Year. Inti Raymi. The festival of the sun.
[MUSIC]
The celebration stretches back to the 1400s. It was the largest and most important festival of the Incan Empire. It would last for more than two weeks.
But it was banned by the Spanish, amid their blood-thirsty reign, that destroyed and banished all things Incan and Indigenous.
And it remained like that for more than 400 years.
Until… the middle of the 20th century.
Today… Inti Raymi is back.
A revival of the ancestral Indigenous history that was silenced and stolen.
[MUSIC]
And it’s not just a celebration
It is an act of resistance….
Grasping. And holding on to the rich cultural past of the region… and rooting the connection to the present. A prayer for Madre Tierra, Pachamama, Mother Earth and to Inti, the sun.
[MUSIC]
Today, communities, cities, towns and even universities hold Inti Raymi celebrations.
Like this one, packed with university students in Quito, Ecuador.
They light fires and incense
They say prayers to Pachamama.
And they sing and dance…
[MUSIC]
Singing and dancing… slowly rotating in a circle in one direction and then the other…
A rotation that symbolizes the spiraling of the sun.
The stars around the heavens.
The seasons.
The time for planting. The time for harvest.
And to “despertar la tierra”… to wake up the Earth.
See… Inti Raymi is also a harvest festival.
Dancing in thanks to Inti and Pachamama
For the bounty of crops they have collected
And the beginning of a new agricultural season.
Inti Raymi celebrations are often held over many days.
In some places, like Cusco, Peru. They reenact the ancient Incan ceremonies in the archeological site Sacsayhuaman.
In Quito, Ecuador, the main Inti Raymi celebrations are held in what they say used to be the Coricancha of the city… The city’s most sacred location. Today, the plaza sits in front of the centuries old San Francisco Catholic Church. A church… built over the ruins of the Palace of the Incan ruler Huayna Cápac
The name of the celebration this year, in Quito…. Is Inti Raymi – Territories of Memory and Resistance.
Inti Raymi
Standing up, despite the injustices of the past…
Singing and dancing to give thanks to the Sun and Mother Earth
Singing and dancing to celebrate
Reviving the traditions
And refusing to let go.
Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. I attended Inti Raymi celebrations in recent days here in Ecuador. Much of the music and sound in this episode are from those festivities.
You can check out exclusive pictures from the celebrations on my Patreon account. I’ll add a link in the show notes.
I am proud to announce that this is our 50th episode of Stories of Resistance. I hope you have been enjoying the series. In honor of the landmark, and also taking advantage of the theme of this episode, which is all about celebration and giving thanks… I would like to give a huge shout out to everyone who has worked hard to make this podcast happen and to all of those who have supported this podcast series.
In particular, I’d like to thank Michael and Nadia Murphy, Sam Dodge, Ben Dangl, Kevin Zolitor, Hallo Pip!, Marc Becker, Jennifer from ASAP Manufacturing, Todd Haydel, Phil and Sue Cortese, Supapan Kantithammakorn, Michael and Maryann Fox, Josh Weinberg, Dot Goodman, Gary Tempus Jr, Tom Fox, Eric Kinzler, and Greg Wilpert.
I would also like to especially thank Grahame Russell, Cara Orschelin and Judy Hughes for your tremendous support.
You are amazing.
And of course, a huge shout out to co-producers Global Exchange and The Real News.
And everyone working hard each day to make this happen.
Thank you so much.
You are all incredible.
[MUSIC]
If you have been enjoying this podcast series and would also like to support, you can make a donation to The Real News or head over and become a paid subscriber on my Patreon. Every little bit counts. I’ll add links in the show notes.
As always, this is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As I wrote for TRNN back in February, mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos is now completing the full ideological take over of the US’s second-most influential newspaper’s opinion section. But, like all good right-wing takeovers, it’s important for those engaging in said right-wing takeover that you not think of it as right-wing, or them as agents of right-wing ideology but, instead, above such petty, small-minded, and worldly matters. They are not only not right-wing—they really, really need you to know they exist above and outside of ideology.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post named the Economist’s Washington correspondent Adam O’Neal as its next opinion editor. In his announcement on Twitter, O’Neal parroted his new boss’ words from last February almost verbatim, telling Post readers in a chummy front-facing camera announcement that:
[Washington Post opinion page writers and editors are] going to be stalwart advocates of free markets and personal liberties. We’ll be unapologetically patriotic too. Our philosophy will be rooted in fundamental optimism about the future of this country. What we won’t be are people who lecture you about ideology or demand you think certain ways about policy.
(This phrasing is copy and pasted from Bezos’ announcement five months ago that the Post opinion section will work in “support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”)
To recap: Post opinion section writers will be “stalwart advocates of free markets” and be “unapologetically patriotic” but also not “lecture [us] about ideology.” The obvious flaw in this plan, of course, is that advocating for “free markets,” e.g. capitalism and patriotism, e.g. advocating for US supremacy, is very much an ideological position.. One may think they are inarguably cool and self-evidently awesome but they, nonetheless, are ideological conceits requiring ideological production and reproduction.
Despite the second-richest person in the world and his new mercenary mouthpiece’s implied claims to the contrary, “free markets” and “patriotism” are not organic features of reality like gravity or the cosmological constant, but ideological constructs. And requiring opinion writers embrace these ideological constructs, as slippery and vague as they may be, is an ideological litmus test for writing for Bezos’ publication. The Post opinion page revamp is thus an explicitly right-wing project designed to advance the ideologies of capitalism and US hegemony.
In a country of 330 million self-perceived free-thinking rebels––including, most gratingly, all of our mega-billionaires––all ideological formations must therefore present as edgy and subversive, as speaking truth to the powerful, even those openly marionetting for the world’s second-richest person.
So the question is: why is someone working for Toyota, walking around a Toyota car lot wearing a Toyota polo shirt walking up to me on the showroom floor and giving me a speech about how they don’t like cars, car companies, or driving? Why are right-wingers so concerned about not being perceived as such, but instead presenting themselves as post-ideological arbiters of “open debate” indifferent to the very thing they’ve been hired to do?
There are many reasons—some cynical, some psychological—but before we detail these, let’s examine the long, strange history of right-wing media personalities suspiciously insisting to their audiences, over and over again, that they are, in fact, ideology-free truth-tellers. It’s a subject I’ve long been fascinated with, having done twopodcast episodes on this and related topics. Since the 1990s, it’s been a consistent feature of conservatives to lay claim to post-ideology. Bill O’Relly insisted he wasn’t conservative or Republican. “I’m not a political guy in the sense that I embrace an ideology… I’m an independent thinker, I’m an independent voter, I’m a registered Independent,” he told NPR’s Terry Gross in 2003. “I basically look at the world from the point of view of let’s solve the problem, right? Whatever the problem is, let’s find the best solution to it. And if the solution is on the left, I grab it. If it’s on the right, I grab it.”
Glenn Beck made this his whole schtick as well. “You’ve lived your whole life in a responsible way,” the former Fox News huckster told his audience in 2009 while promoting the GOP’s Tea Party rebrand. “You’ve been concerned about this country through the last administration, in this administration. If you’re like most people, both administrations, it’s not about politics, you actually believe in something, and you thought for a while there, your politicians did as well.”
It’s not about going after Democrats, it’s about going after both parties. But then Beck, like O’Rielly and dozens before them, invariably proceeded to go after Democrats 98% of the time. It’s a popular posture. Everyone from Bill Maher to Andrew Yang to Bari Weiss to Republican Senator Rand Paul—who wrote a book called “Taking a Stand: Moving Beyond Partisan Politics to Unite America,” in which he claimed to go “beyond the left-right paradigm kind of thinking,”—has embraced this branding: I don’t do ideology, they consistently remind us, I’m a political actor unmoored from your oppressive labels—a maverick, a rogue, an independent iconoclast.
The most infamous recent example of this phenomenon is Elon Musk who—while openly promoting white nationalist bile on social media, bashing minorities, trans people and women, doing nazi salutes during Trump’s inauguration––continued to insist he wasn’t right or left wing, but instead a secret third thing. “I’m probably left of center on social issues and right of center on economic issues,” the sage-like enlightened centrist Musk claimed in late 2023, right before he dumped $250 million into successfully reelecting Donald Trump.
Obviously, the type of right-wing of each right-winger who claims They Don’t Do Ideology varies. There are differences between Fox News MAGA nationalism, Musk’s internet-addled neonazism, Maher’s glibertarian Zionism, Yang’s Silicon Valley techno-authorianism, neoconservatism, and what will likely be Jeff Bezos’ preferred flavor of right-wing—Club for Growth Republicanism promoting low taxes and generic Bush-era patriotism. But the new Washington Post op-ed section will no doubt be welcoming to all of the above while excluding those on the left, e.g. those who think “free markets” and “patriotism” are fraught concepts worthy of critique rather than mantras to mindlessly embrace or, at the very least, empty buzzwords that are the intellectual equivalent of Gerber apple-chicken pouches.
Interestingly, this is not, for the most part, a pathology on the left. I am a leftist, I write for left-wing outlets. I say so openly. Just the same, liberals are almost always openly liberal, openly Democrats. They wear their ideological preferences on their sleeve. Of course they’re ideological, because to do politics at all is inherently ideological. To be human is to be ideological. To deny this obvious fact, outside of being, say, a ‘neutral’ reporter who has to fake neutrality for professional reasons, isn’t just dishonest, it’s insulting to everyone’s intelligence.
Alas, being conservative is to be on the side of the establishment, of the powerful, of the billionaire class who O’Neal is literally parroting. It’s both inherent in the American cultural self-image, but also a necessary component of media branding, to perceive one’s self and one’s media project as not on the side of power. In a country of 330 million self-perceived free-thinking rebels—including, most gratingly, all of our mega-billionaires—all ideological formations must therefore present as edgy and subversive, as speaking truth to the powerful, even those openly marionetting for the world’s second-richest person.
It’s impossible to conceive of someone worth $250 billion taking over a publication and re-making it into his own image and telling the public, “I am a very rich person who wants to produce content that reinforces the ideology that permitted and continues to permit my obscene wealth and power.” This would be cartoonishly evil and undermine the efficiency of said ideological output. So, instead, we must continue to play this bizarre game where open promoters of right-wing ideology, of oligarchical power and control, of US global hegemony, are presented as free-thinkers allergic to ideology rather than public relations agents working on behalf of the most banal and ubiquitous of ideologies—American conservatism—in open service of their corporate and billionaire patrons.
As monied control over our media and the platforms required for their distribution grows tighter and tighter, this post-ideological “open debate” schtick grows more and more tedious and insulting to everyone’s intelligence. Advocating for “free markets” is obviously ideological. Promoting American “patriotism” is obviously ideological. If the super-rich are going to use media and social media as their ideological play toys, to promote their preferred worldview, the least they can do is have the decency to be honest about this fact, rather than smothering their right-wing rebrands in faux neutral, above-the-fray smarm.
The Boss has never shied away from expressing his political views.
And he’s not gonna back down now.
“In America, they are persecuting people for using they right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In my country, they are taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They’re abandoning our great allies. And siding with dictators.”
“In my home, the America I love. The America I’ve written about. That has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.”
Those were his words at a concert in Europe last month. Donald Trump responded over Truth Social, calling him a “pushy, obnoxious jerk” and a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker.”
The president of the United States also posted a fake video of himself golfing on social media appearing to knock Bruce Springsteen over with a golf ball.
How low can you go?
###
In dark times, music and song gives us hope. It can inspire us. The soundtracks to resistance, to change, to standing up for each other, to defending our rights.
###
Bruce Springsteen, like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, or Woody Guthrie, is one of those musicians who has often led the way with songs for the downtrodden. Songs for the working class, for hardworking Americans, for immigrants, for justice and freedom…
But not Trump-style freedom.
And right now, others have Bruce Springteen’s back.
“You know, when a hero like Bruce Springsteen brings up issues and make his thoughts be known,” Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder defended The Boss during a show in May, “and uses his microphone to speak for those who don’t have a voice, sometimes. Certainly not an amplified one. And I just want to point out that he brought up issues. He brought up that residents are being removed off of American streets and being deported without due process of law. And thinking that they’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideologies, as Bruce said.”
“Now look, I appreciate you listening and I bring it up because the response to all of that and him using the microphone. The response had nothing to do with the issues. They didn’t talk about one of those issues. They didn’t have a conversation about one of those issues. Ddin’t debate any one of those issues. All that we heard were personal attacks and threats that nobody else should even try to use their microphone or use their voice in public or they will be shut down. No that is not allowed in this country that we call America. Am I right or am I right?”
Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello performed before a backdrop covered with huge oversized buttons spelling out the words “FUCK TRUMP.” “FUCK ICE” was written on the back of his guitar. He too spoke out in defense of Bruce Springsteen.
“Alright this next tune, I’m gonna dedicate to my friend Bruce Springsteen. He got in a tussle with the president lately. And you know Bruce is going after Trump. Because Bruce his whole life he’s been about truth, justice, democracy, equality. And Trump’s mad at him cause Bruce draws a much bigger audience. Fuck that guy.”
This is not the first time Tom Morello has raged against the current US president. And it will not be the last. Almost a decade ago, even before Trump’s first term in office, Morello performed with Ani DiFranco on folk singer Ryan Harvey’s song, “Old Man Trump.”
That song was actually writtenby Woody Guthrie in 1954, about the racist discriminatory housing practices of his landlord, Fred Trump—Donald Trump’s dad. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Other musicians are also standing up. Folk singer David Rovics is prolific, with new songs each week. And many others have defended Bruce Springsteen.
In his show in Manchester, England, in mid-May, the Boss spoke to the audience. “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American spirit to rise with us, raise your voices and stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”
###
Bruce Springsteen’s powerful words have been included on his latest album, Land of Hope and Dreams.
It was released on May 20.
You can find it on Spotify or wherever you listen. I’ll add a link in the show notes.
###
Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.
I have long been an huge fan of Bruce Springsteen. If you’ve heard my podcast Under the Shadow, you know I grew up in Virginia, but I spent weeks every summer with family at the Jersey Shore, a couple of towns over from where Springsteen grew up. He is an icon, still.
Bruce Springsteen has never shied away from expressing his political views. And he’s not gonna back down now.
“In my home, the America I love. The America I’ve written about. That has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration,” he told a crowd at a concert in Europe, in May.
Donald Trump responded over Truth Social, calling him a “pushy, obnoxious jerk” and a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker.”
In dark times, music and song gives us hope. Bruce Springsteen, like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, or Woody Guthrie is one of those musicians who has often led the way with songs for the downtrodden. Songs for the working class, for hardworking Americans, for immigrants. For justice and freedom. And other famous rock idols have got the Boss’s back.
This is episode 47 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.
Visit patreon.com/mfox for exclusive pictures, to follow Michael Fox’s reporting and to support his work.
Clip of Bruce Springsteen criticizing Trump/Bruce Springsteen critica a Trump: “En mi país se ponen del lado de los dictadores”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2bT24hOXcQ
If a picture is worth a thousand words, his spoke novels. He was Steinbeck, Tolstoy, and Tolkien… all in one. His images capture the spirit of the poor and working classes.
And they grip the viewer. Refusing to let your eyes peal from the picture before you. Pictures in black and white. Pictures that seem to have been painted by brush strokes, but which are as real as the camera equipment he used.
Sebastião Salgado was an artist, and he was a documentarian, capturing the plight of the downtrodden, but also their soul. Their beauty.
He was criticized for this. They said he glorified poverty. He responded that the poor deserve just as good a picture as the rich. Probably even better.
Sebastião Salgado was born February 8, 1944, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. He trained as a Marxist economist. Joined the movement against Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1960s, and went into exile in France in August 1969 with his wife.
“I arrived in France with Lélia, my wife, at the end of the 1960s as an exiled person, fleeing the system of deep repression that existed at the time in Brazil,” he posted on Instagram almost two years ago. “Soon afterwards, the Brazilian military dictatorship withdrew our passports and we had to file an injunction to get them back. We became refugees here in France, and then immigrants. When I did a piece of work on refugees and immigrants, I already knew this story, in my own way I had lived it. For years, I had been looking for people who had been displaced from their place of origin and were in transit, looking for another point of stability. They left either for economic reasons, climate change or because of conflict. I realised a body of work called “Exodus”. In reality, I was photographing a part of my own life, portrayed in other people, some of them in slightly better situations than I had, and the vast majority in much worse conditions. It was a very important moment in my life, of identifying with these people, and of feeling deeply what I was photographing,” he wrote.
He first began taking pictures in the early 1970s with his wife’s Leica. By 1973, he had quit his job at the International Coffee Organization and became a freelance photographer. He traveled the world. Worked for several photography agencies.
He was covering the first 100 days of Ronald Reagan in 1981, when he was one of the only photographers to capture the assassination attempt on Reagan’s life.
Salgado sold the pictures to finance his first major photography trip to Africa.
Salgado’s projects would span the world. He would travel to 120 different countries on his photography trips. His pictures are big. Larger than life. Epic. Like the landscape photographer Ansel Adams’, but with grit. Portraying humanity…
The best and the worst.
And at their heart, revealing truth, struggle, the fight to survive, to exist. And the underpinnings of an unjust, unequal global system where so many have so little and so few have so much.
Like his 1986 pictures of the Serra Pelada Gold Mine, in Brazil. They seem like something from a dystopian future, or a long-forgotten past. Thousands of workers in shorts and t-shirts climbing through the mud on rickety ladders in near-slave conditions.
“He always had the idea that things are always going to get better, that we are on the path for development and somehow if he could create a warning, he could contribute to this process of social progress in society,” his son, filmmaker Juliano Salgado would later say.
Salgado shot masterpiece collections of pictures of workers. Of the fight for land and land reform. Of nature. The Amazon. Climate change. And when he visited communities, land occupations, or groups like Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, he didn’t just drop in, shoot and leave, like news agencies photographers then and now. He stayed for days. He documented it. He experienced it. He lived it.
Sebastião Salgado’s photography spoke volumes, portraying deep and profound truth, shining light on the problems and the injustices of the world in exquisite images that one simply cannot ignore.
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Sebastiao Salgado passed away on May 23, 2025, at the age of 81.
His legacy lives on.
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Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.
I have been a huge fan of Sebastiao Salgado for years. I’m happy I was able to do this short story on his tremendous life and work.
This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As always, you can find follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast at Patreon.com/mfox.
Thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 43 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.
Visit patreon.com/mfox for exclusive pictures, to follow Michael Fox’s reporting and to support his work.
“And the injustice that has been inflicted upon negros in this country by Uncle Sam is criminal. Don’t blame a cracker in Georgia for your injustices. The government is responsible for the injustices. The government can bring these injustices to a halt.”
Malcolm X.
Revolutionary. Muslim minister.
Black civil rights leader.
Human rights activist.
Black nationalist
“We want freedom, by any means necessary. We want justice, by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. We want it now, or we don’t think anyone should have it.”
He is one of the most radical and revolutionary US figures of the 20th century.
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska.
His parents were supporters of Pan-Africanism and Marcus Garvey.
They were often threatened, harassed and attacked by white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan.
When his father was killed in a street car accident
His mother believed it was white supremacists.
Four of Malcolm X’s uncles were killed by white violence.
Malcolm and his siblings grew up in and out of foster homes when his mother was committed to a mental institute after a nervous breakdown.
Malcolm X dropped out of high school after a teacher told him he had no future.
He lived in Boston with a half-sister. And then Harlem, NY.
He got involved in drug dealing, gambling and robbery.
In 1946, he was arrested and sentenced to eight to ten years at Charlestown State Prison for theft.
Prison would be the beginning of his transformation…
He joined the Nation of Islam, a muslim Black Nationalist religious organization.
He stopped smoking and eating pork. He began to pray to “Allah”
He changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X.
The X symbolized his true African family’s name, which he would never know because it had been lost when his ancestors were brought to the Americas as slaves.
When he left prison in 1952, he began to work as a minister in the Nation of Islam mosques
Slowly rising through the ranks. He helped to found and expand mosques in Boston and Philadelphia, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut and Atlanta, Georgia.
He led the temple in Harlem, New York.
In 1955, he married Betty Sanders, who would change her name to Betty Shabazz.
The Nation of Islam membership grew exponentially.
Even boxer Muhammad Ali joined.
Racist violence was rife throughout the United States
And Malcolm X stood against it.
The Civil Rights movement was rippling across the country.
The 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.
But Malcolm X disagreed with Martin Luther King Jr.’s calls for non-violent activism:
“We are non-violent with people who are non-violent with us. But we are not non-violent with anyone who is violent with us.”
He said African Americans should stand up for themselves.
He called for them to free themselves from the self-hate implanted by white society.
“Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin to such extense that you bleach to get like the white man? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of yourself to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much so that you don’t be around each other. No… before you come asking Mr. Mohammad does he teach hate, you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what God gave you?”
Malcolm X stood against racism and police brutality.
“Every case of police brutality against a negro follows the same pattern. They attack you. Bust you all upside your mouth and then take you to court and charge you with assault. What kind of demoracy is that? What kind of freedom is that? What kind of social or political system is it when a black man has no voice in court? Has nothing on his side other than what the white man chooses to give him? My brothers and sisters we have to put a stop to this and it will never be stopped until we stop it ourselves… This is American justice. This is American democracy. And those of you that are familiar with it, know that in America democracy is hypocrisy. Now, if I’m wrong put me in jail. But if you can’t prove that democracy is not hypocrisy. Then don’t put your hands on me.”
When a member of his temple was brutally beaten by police in 1957…
Malcolm X arrived to the police precinct with hundreds of supporters and demanded he receive medical attention.
Malcolm X later sued New York City for police brutality and won.
“We are oppressed. We are exploited. We are downtrodden. We are denied not only civil rights, but even human rights. So the only way we are going to get some of this oppression and exploitation away from us or aside from us is to come together against a common enemy.”
In the 1960 UN General Assembly in New York he met with African leaders
And even Cuba’s newly victorious leader Fidel Castro.
As his name grew, he became ever more outspoken.
“The history of unpunished violence against our people clearly indicates that we must be prepared to defend ourselves or we will continue to be a defenseless people at the mercy of a ruthless and violent racist mob.”
But Malcolm X also faced racist violence, death threats…
In 1962, Malcolm X’s relationship with the Nation of Islam soured
When he learned that the group’s leader Elijah Muhammad was having affairs with young secretaries, Malcolm X went public.
He broke with the Nation of Islam.
He converted to Sunni Islam and went on pilgrimage to Mecca.
He traveled abroad. Speaking in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
The Nigerian Muslim Students Association gave him the honorary Yoruba name Omowale, which means ‘the son who has come home’.
He said it was his most treasured honor.
In the United States, he started his own group — the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
“To bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere and first here in the United States and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary. That’s our motto.”
He continued to speak at University campuses.
But he faced increasing death threats from Nation of Islam leaders
For his break and outspokenness against them…
There were attempts on his life. His house was firebombed.
And on February 21, 1965, he was ambushed, shot and killed in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom just before speaking to members of his new organization.
Thousands attended his funeral, including prominent civil rights leaders.
Martin Luther King wrote to Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz:
“While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem,” he wrote, “I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem.”
Malcolm X was one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in the history of the United States.
His speeches and his words continue to inspire, even 60 years after his assassination.
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The climate crisis is not just a climate crisis—it is a planetary crisis threatening the very continuation of life and civilization as we know it. If humanity continues to lolligag its way to an apocalyptic future without drastically addressing this planetary crisis, “We are ensuring at best abominable lives for ourselves and our children,” Malcolm Harris writes in his new book What’s Left. But, Harris continues, “I refuse to believe that we have no alternative to the universal human project’s erosion into parochial barbarism and petty domination. That is an unacceptable outcome, and its giant advancing outline visible through the mist of the near future compels immediate radical action.” In this podcast, recorded at Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Cafe in Baltimore on April 29, 2025, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Harris about his new book and about three practical paths humanity can take to save itself from apocalypse.
Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
John Duda:
Tonight we are here to talk with Malcolm Harris about what’s left three paths through the planetary crisis. I was thinking about how to introduce this book and I made the mistake of starting to read some of the reviews that had appeared of it. There’s one by Adam Twos in the New York Times, and I like Adam twos. He’s okay. He does good stuff, sends nice emails, nice charts, big books on economic crisis. But I thought his review was really fundamentally wrongheaded because he is basically saying, oh, this is a beautiful, lovely book about the beautiful dream world we could have been in had Trump not won. But now that Trump has won, we have to scale back all our radical ambitions and focus on, I think he says rebuilding the institutions of civil society or something like that. And I thought that was fundamentally just totally wrongheaded based on the book and based on what I know about how radical ideas function in times when they’re not immediately able to be put into place, it’s not for nothing, right?
For instance, just on a policy level, right? It’s not for nothing that the Heritage Foundation wrote Project 2025 before Trump was elected the second time, right? They didn’t wait around until they had permission to do it and then lay out a plan for their evil shit fuckery that they’re doing. They went ahead and they created a plan for what they wanted to see in the world when they were out of power so that the minute they were in power, guess what? We’re fucked. Likewise, you don’t retrench your radical visions in the middle of crisis. You don’t step away from your desire to remake the world or your desire to deal with the Onrushing planetary crisis that’s coming our way just because you have a setback. In fact, I think those are the times when you redouble it. So I’m really excited to have Malcolm here tonight because this book is a really, really great roadmap to the strategic and tactical possibilities and imperatives that we are facing as a movement or as a movement of movements. And I’m really thrilled to have ’em here in person to talk through it. I’m especially thrilled to have Maximilian Alvarez here. Max has been doing some fantastic work if you haven’t seen it. And I’m tracing the connections between capitalists, hyper extractivism exploitation, and the effects on basically sacrifice communities in the United States. And I think it’s a really dramatic way of illustrating some of the conjunctions and hinge points that Malcolm’s book talks about in a larger sense. So please join me in welcoming both of them to Red Emmas.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright, thank you so much, John, thank you to everyone here at Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore, cafe and gathering space. Thank you all for making the trip out tonight. Just wanted to encourage y’all to please continue to support Red Emma’s however you can. We need spaces like this now more than ever, and I couldn’t be more grateful to be back here with Brother Malcolm and to talk about his really important challenging and thought provoking new book, what’s Left Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis. And Malcolm, first of all, I just wanted to congratulate you on publishing another book right after you just published one that it would take me two lifetimes to write. So congrats asshole.
Malcolm Harris:
They don’t pay you if you don’t keep writing. I have realized. So when people say another book, I say like, wow, you went to work again this week, didn’t you go last week? So stay tuned. There’ll be more of them.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I mean, you feel that in reading your works, right? I mean that these are words that even if you could turn the faucet off, well you couldn’t turn the faucet off, right? I mean, that’s the sense that I get that you’re a natural born writer and you need to write and think, and it’s such a pleasure to behold that as a reader and to be in conversation with you about it. And I wanted to sort of start by way of getting us into the discussion, and I’ll give everyone the same disclaimer I give when I do these events that there’s no possible way that we could condense this entire book into a 35 minute discussion and q and a afterwards. So our goal here is to really give you an overview and hopefully encourage you to go buy the book, read it, talk to us and Malcolm about it, talk to your friends about it, strategize with it.
That’s our goal here today. So we are going to talk about it for about the next half hour, then we will open it up to q and a. And I wanted to just by way of getting us started from Malcolm’s introduction where he writes and gives a pretty succinct, I think kind of picture of where we’re at right now. So Malcolm writes, clearly the humans of the 21st century have a problem with the way we handle our collective problems. We seem to be acting out the fable about the frog. The pot on the stove who only perceiving small increases in temperature eventually boils to death. But since we’re humans, we get the added benefit of being able to have a conversation about the fact that we’re slowly boiling to death while we slowly boil to death.
In so far as that is what we should reasonably expect as the outcome of our present social direction. We are ensuring at best abominable lives for ourselves and our children. I refuse Malcolm Wrights to believe that we have no alternative to the universal human project’s erosion into parochial barbarism and petty domination. That is an unacceptable outcome and its giant advancing outline visible through the midst of the near future compels immediate radical action. So Malcolm, before we really dig into the three paths out of the current planetary crisis, I wanted to just meditate a bit on the problem that you write about in the introduction, not just the crisis itself, but what’s keeping us stuck in this pressure cooker of mutually assured destruction.
Malcolm Harris:
Yeah. Well thanks Max, first of all for that wonderful intro and John as well, and everyone at Red Emmas for having me back again and all of you for joining me this evening. So I started this book, or the premise for this book comes from an experience I had in 2019 when I was consulting for the oil company Shell. And you might wonder why on earth would the oil company, shell ask Malcolm to go consult for them? And the answer is that my first book was called Kids These Days and it’s an analysis of the millennial generation. And I didn’t know at the time that all generational analysis is advertising copy. It’s just a promo for corporate consulting services. So every person that you’ve ever seen write a generational book, the way they actually make their money is by telling companies how to sell stuff to that generation, which I did not know at the time I wrote this book.
I thought it was important only to find out that that’s what the whole game was. And so Shell Oil, which has been conducting these future scenario exercises for decades where they try to imagine what’s going to happen deep into the future and try to adjust their business according to it, wanted me to come to London and work on one of these exercises with them. And these corporate consulting deals are such a good deal for writers compared to actually writing that they don’t think anyone’s going to screw it up. And so they don’t even make you sign nondisclosure agreements. And I am stupid enough to screw that up. And so I emailed my editor at New York Magazine and said, look, I’ve got a great story. And then I told she I’m going to be happy to go. I can’t wait to talk to C level executives about how they think about climate change.
And I did write that article, Michelle was not happy about that article. They refused to cooperate in any way with it, but didn’t deny anything that I wrote, which is great. But what really stuck with me was a conversation I had with this one shell analyst who had started working at a green company and his company got bought by Shell. And so he wasn’t even happy to be working there, but he was trying to figure out what his job was going to be. I was asking him what happens to oil wells when shell decarbonize them? And he said, oh, we sell them. I said, okay, who do you sell them to? And he says, well, we sell them to shady operators who are going to operate them with worse environmental conditions and worse labor conditions, and they’re going to start flaring the gas from these wells and we know that’s what’s going to happen.
And I was like, well, that doesn’t sound like a very good decarbonization plan for society, even though if that’s what accounts for Shell. And he looked at me and he said, well, we don’t plan to lose money. And that was a sense that really stuck with me for years, even after the article came out, because we need someone to plan to lose money. We need someone to strand some of those oil assets, not to end up burning them somehow or some way, but to actually leave them in the ground. And that requires somebody to plan to lose money. And there isn’t much of a volunteer pool for that, especially with companies like Shell who cannot plan to lose money and this analyst couldn’t plan to lose money and his boss couldn’t plan to lose money or they would both be fired and replaced by somebody who would.
And that’s not really how we think about the climate crisis. Usually we think about it as personal greed of people who are powerful and rich or shortsightedness of policy makers or whatever. But this is a deep structural problem that goes to the core of how our society arranges itself in the first place, not something that we can solve with a personnel change or even a change to our leadership. And so that was the premise attacking this book is that climate change isn’t the problem we think it is so far and not the way that people have written about it so far.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and John mentioned in the introduction that for the past couple of years I’ve been interviewing working class folks around the US living in so-called sacrifice zones, starting with the community in and around East Palestinian, Ohio where a Norfolk southern bomb train derailed and exploded unnecessarily three days later exposing all these residents to toxic pollutants that are accumulating in their bodies as we speak right now. And that was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg as I connected with residents in South Baltimore who were being poisoned just 20 minutes away from where we’re sitting, cancer alley, Louisiana, red Hill in Hawaii, so on and so forth. And it’s a really critical, and I think eyeopening test case for what you’re talking about because what I’ve learned going to and talking to folks living in these different communities is that if we’re talking about the jobs that are needed in today’s society and the vast scope of work that could be done, like New deal style, putting people to work, it’s remediation, it’s climate remediation, it’s cleaning up all the damage that we’ve done to our communities, to our land, to our planet over the past few centuries, but there’s no profit motive there.
And so it’s not, even though everything else tells you that this is what society needs, the imposition of the profit motive makes it just not even something worth considering. And I feel like that trap that’s keeping us in the boiling water that you’re talking about,
Malcolm Harris:
Absolutely. And people will, because we’re compelled to, we all have to find ways to make livings for ourselves individually. And so people will fight for those jobs destroying their own ecological communities. They’ll fight for oil jobs, they’ll fight for construction jobs for gas fired powered Bitcoin. Mines like the worst possible environmental and social planning. And we have union workers fighting for these jobs and it’s because we are constantly required to make ourselves valuable. So that’s the other side of this oil well, right? The oil well that shell is decarbonizing and this has been verified through reporting that they actually do this. They’ll sell off these oil wells to inscrutable new owners, owners you can’t even find the corporate name for, who will operate it with little to no oversight, with disregard for the law as their plan in ways that are hazardous not just to the environment as a whole, but to the actual workers who are working there approximately.
And yet people will fight for these jobs in every one of those flaring oil wells. People will feel compelled to sell their labor at those places of work. And it’s not because mostly someone’s put a gun to their head and said, you have to go work at this oil well tomorrow or I’m going to kill you and your family. And it’s not mostly because people think, oh, if I go work at this oil well, I’m going to get rich and I’m going to be able to do something completely different with their life. It’s the same reason people go to work all around the world. They know on some level if they can’t make themselves valuable to the system, that the things that they need in order to live will be taken from them, their access to shelter will be taken from them, their access to medicine will be taken from them, their ability to care for the they love will be taken from them. And in the face of that which is an individual task, the question of a clean atmosphere or decarbonized atmosphere or clean water or clean air, even though we know we need all of those things collectively, those questions go out the window because everyone individually has this responsibility to make themselves valuable. And fossil fuels are valuable, right? Fossil fuels can do a lot of work and they will find places where people can put them to work and can sell them.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I mean, I can tell you guys there is an openness, at least from the hundreds of workers that I’ve interviewed in industries like this, there is at least an openness to the possibility of transition. I remember when coal miners in deep red Alabama were on strike for two years at Warrior Met Coal.
We reported on this struggle. We talked to folks there and they themselves understood that coal is a dying industry and a dying product. But when they were basically saying what Malcolm is saying, it’s like, what are you going to do for me and my family? And as long as we get more than empty promises of some solution down the road, if you have a tangible concrete plan for us to maintain our livelihoods, we’ll leave this damn coal mine. But until you present that, those are the options that we have. And so I think that for all of us need to think about that and how to break that kind of hold, the existential hold that this system has on us that keeps us in this death cycle. And I want to talk Malcolm a little bit about the kind of three paths that you write about in this book that you see as presenting potential ways out of this crisis. But by way of getting there, I guess to cite like Bernie Sanders would say, our good friend Adam Ts, what path would you say we are on now with the current Trump administration, this drill, baby drill, let’s take Greenland. Where are we headed right now with this administration
Malcolm Harris:
For a Chinese century? And I say that jokingly, but a little bit not. I think it’s important to displace America as the central actor. From our analysis objectively of the world, which the world is in the process of doing right now, we’ve taken for granted that whatever was going to be happening this century or over the relevant time period for climate change was going to be happening in an American led order, if not an American dominated unipolar order, which has sort of been the assumption for a while. I don’t think that’s a good assumption going forward. And certainly if we’re looking for answers, it’s not starting now. We’re not showing climate leadership or Donald Trump has undermined America’s position as the world’s climate policy leader or whatever. That’s just not true. We haven’t, by no metric are we leading the world in climate policy. And so when people say like, oh, don’t we need a policy to build or something, we just need a abundance construction policy or whatever, I say, well, even if that was the answer, even if that were the answer, even if that’s what I was talking about, you wouldn’t look to America for it.
We’re not doing that by any standard. And other countries are way ahead of us, specifically the People’s Republic of China. So for me, I find it a relief not to be stuck in a perspective that assumes America’s going to be leading the world. And I think if we really dig our nails into that position, we’re going to get confused. We’re going to find ourselves advocating for positions that make no sense, not just the tariffs, but even the Biden era subsidies on American electric vehicles. Were just more an attempt to fight the Chinese electric vehicle market than they were an attempt to actually do climate policy paying people the $7,500 cost difference between an American electric vehicle and an Chinese electric vehicle so that they buy the American one is not actually climate policy, not any more than shell selling off an oil well is right.
You’ve got the same stuff happening in these scenarios. And I think we really do need world scale policy at this point. We need a global perspective on what really is a planetary crisis. And I don’t say the climate crisis, that’s not the title of the book. It really is a planetary crisis that exceeds just the numeric analysis of temperature increase. It goes to our social metabolic order, is what I call it. And really at the planetary level that these dynamics that we’re talking about are happening in every community, in every country in the world, whether that country is a socialist country committed to a ecological future or America, they still face these same problems. And we see socialist countries, it’s not like the socialist countries of the world have decided, oh, we’re not going to use fossil fuels anymore. Those people would, if that’s what the leadership of Venezuela decided, they would be removed and the people would install different leaders because the people of the country depend on those fossil fuel assets in order to make livings for themselves in this global economy, right? States have been unable to insulate their populations from those injunctions sufficient to be able to take a leadership stance. No state has been able to take that kind of leadership stance, and it’s not a coincidence.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And like I said, there’s no way that we’re going to be able to encapsulate the totality of all three of the kind of key paths out of this planetary crisis that you write about in this book. But I want to maybe give folks a bit of an overview of the three paths that you write about. And also could you say a little bit quickly about how you sheared away the options that you weren’t going to consider? I think you have a very effective way in this book of saying, yeah, there are many proposed solutions or paths out of this, but here are all the ones that I’m not even going to entertain because
Malcolm Harris:
Yeah. So originally I was going to use the whole book as an argument for why the climate crisis means everyone has to be a communist and they have to use value form theory to understand the climate crisis. And only by severing the connection between value and life at the planetary level, can we even find an analytically viable solution to the climate crisis. And then I thought about that for a little while and decided it was maybe not the most advisable argument to make one, because it turns out it’s not true. There are other analytically viable solutions to the climate crisis, which I’ll discuss. But two, and maybe more importantly, I don’t think it gives me a lot of rhetorical credibility. And I don’t think in the time period that we’re talking about, which is years, maybe some decades, not centuries, I don’t think any one position is going to be able to convince everyone, every progressive actor on the world stage to give up what they believe and follow one strategy.
So any claim that we’re going to collapse behind some specific strategy I think is unrealistic. And I wanted to write a realistic book. I think there are enough unrealistic solutions to the climate crisis out there, enough unrealistic books about the climate crisis. I wanted to do a realistic one, and that meant being realistic about the political field that I was operating in as well. But at the same time, I won’t anyone write about progressive solutions to the climate crisis. And so I had to draw a line between what I was willing to consider and what I wasn’t willing to consider. And where I put that line for me is that you have to agree that it is society’s prerogative to plan society, that the planning prerogative within society does not belong to a fraction of the capitalist class that is able to control investment under the current status quo.
It belongs to the entirety of a planetary society on our collective behalf. And that any solution that assumes that either that the market is some ancient God that we have to appease or a fundamental part of human nature or whatever, that we have to accommodate the market rather than perhaps using it as a tool ourselves. I wasn’t going to consider, it’s just like that’s not the purpose of this book. And I made the same decision about parochial strategies. If your strategy is build a bigger border wall around your country or build a wall around your city or pay more border guards and put people on gun boats, which again may be the dominant strategy right now as far as dealing with the climate crisis, but it’s not one I was willing to consider at the beginning. Max quoted me, I still believe in a solution by the planet for the planet, and I believe we’re going to be able to do this together and that we really will win. And that’s the position with which I wrote this book, and the question is how. And so the three strategies that I talked about, I tried to use really non triggering names for the strategies ones that anyone would be able to hear it and still work through the strategy on its own terms, rather than being like, oh, I’m not a liberal. I don’t want to hear about the liberal strategy, or I’m only going to read this chapter to see why they’re wrong or whatever. And so I named the strategies market craft, public power and communism.
I didn’t quite make it with the third one, and I’ll explain why, but first I’ll go through the first two. So market craft is, you could call it the liberal solutions. And it’s the idea that, and I take this term from the political scientist, Stephen Vogel, that markets are a tool that societies of people use to accomplish what they need and that we can use the tools of market crafting to create the market for the decarbonization goods that we need and the decarbonization outcomes that we need. And we don’t have to submit ourselves to the market, rather, we need to structure the rules and the ground in which they play. I use a metaphor that from the market craft perspective, complaining about the market outcomes of decarbonization is complaining about the quality of the cucumber sandwiches at your imaginary tea party with your stuffed animals, right?
It’s like it’s your tea party. You got to take responsibility for the quality, the outcomes. And so it means we’re not crafting the market very well. And in that strategy, I point to the People’s Republic of China as even though this is a capitalist strategy, but as people who are pursuing a much more successful market craft strategy than the United States. Second strategy is public power, which refers both to the power of the public and specifically organized to take control of what happens within society directly and decide what happens and make it happen rather than depending on unreliable market actors. But it also refers to public power as in publicly owned and operated utilities like literal public power. And the best example of the combination of both in the United States context is probably the Tennessee Valley Authority, which I talk about a lot in this section where under FDR, they decided, look, if capital doesn’t want to electrify the south, if it’s not worth it for them to develop this area of the country, then we’re going to just go in and do it ourselves. We’re going to set up a government agency and we’re going to backstop it with the federal government and their balance of payments, and we’re going to build the things we’re going to need, we’re going to build the dams we’re going to build. I talk about pump storage, hydro power a lot in this section, which is how 95% globally of grid scale energy is stored, which people may not know because the battery companies don’t want you to know.
And then communism, which I swear I tried different words. I was like, I’ll call it commenting or community or something that would let people experience the argument without getting reactive. And I ultimately decided that that was a violation of my implicit agreement with the reader to use always the best words that I could find because I think readers can tell when you’re being dishonest. Readers can tell when you’re trying to manipulate or play them or not, say what you really mean and just say something so that they believe it. And I trust my readers a lot. I trust them enough to use that word communism to describe this section, even if I don’t trust the reviewers of the New York Times to not freak out about it. I trust my readers more importantly to be able to read the book. And I’ve got a footnote in that section where I sort of explain this and I say to the reader, please trust me to communicate what I mean by this, which is that society should be organized from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs with the idea that something we all need collectively right now is to decarbonize our atmosphere urgently.
And only by breaking this question of our needs from the question of value, can we even approach them in the first place? So one way I talk about this is that the question, how many shoes does the people in this room need under capitalism and other value-based systems? It’s not a question about feet, it’s a question about how much each of our labor commands on the labor market and what kind of priority we place on buying shoes and what the shoe production system is and what wages are in the shoe system where shoes are produced. All these other questions that don’t have to do with the fact that we all have two feet and that we’re people who need shoes for our two feet, and we have a need for decarbonization that is much more like our two feet than our needs for shoes under the current system. And in fact, if we treat our need for decarbonization like shoes under the current system, we’ll never get it because you can’t buy decarbonization individually. You can only buy shelter from the consequences of an increasingly carbonized world. And so the communist strategy says we really have to seize control the basis for the arrangement of society as a whole if we’re going to solve a question of needs like that. So those are the three strategies.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So we got about five minutes here before we open it up to q and a. And I wanted to kind of quickly follow up there and ask, how would you evaluate the Biden years? I don’t think we should call Biden just an extension of neoliberalism. What you write about in this book, like the industrial policy of the Chips Act, the infrastructure or the Inflation Reduction Act, and that sort of market craft represented something, a breakage if it were from the neoliberal consensus. So would you put the Biden policy under the market craft form of addressing this crisis?
Malcolm Harris:
Yeah, not a particularly strong example when we think globally, and I think we have to think globally, and that was a problem with some of the left reception of the inflation reduction Act, was that it was based on the standards of what we thought we could achieve in the American political system, by which standards it was a victory. And I say so and even a surprising victory, but by the standards of the problem, by what we actually need to accomplish, it was relatively weak. And I think one of the problems with the Biden market craft approach is that they didn’t rely enough on public power to be able to say, look, some of these problems we just need to deal with directly, like the electrical grid is currently badly set up. We need to think about how we actually reform the electrical grid from the ground up.
If we were to approach this right now, how would we do it not struggle through the deregulation legacy of the nineties or whatever, which is currently what they’re doing. And so without that recourse to public power, without the recourse to saying, we’ll, just do it ourselves, if you don’t want to do it, we’ll just do it. You get stuck. And the way I talk about the three strategies is not like we’re looking for the key to the lock. I don’t think any of the strategies is the key to the lock. Instead, I talk about them as puzzle pieces. And the thing about puzzle pieces is that they have to be uneven. They have to have these inlets and protrusions. They can’t have all the answers. They can’t be solid, they can’t be square shaped or circles or whatever. Then they can’t lock together. And so the fact that all of these strategies have these problems, and I try to be very fair about how I present all of them.
I give five subsections about why they’re good strategies and three subsections for each of them about what problems there are, maybe those little inlets. But those problems and those advantages are what allow them to link together. And that’s what allows us, I hope, to be able to look back from a victorious future where we’ve won, which I really do believe we’re going to do. I do not think that there will be a thousand year Trump rike. It’s not going to happen. We’ll see if they get to six months, they’re not there yet, maybe four years, I don’t believe it. They’re not going to win. And so the question is how we are going to win and to think backwards. And if you look at every turning point historically of major progressive action, whether that’s the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the American Civil War, there’s always this composition of social forces where you look back and you say, well, those groups did not all agree together, right?
Abe Lincoln did not agree with John Brown about a lot of stuff, and yet we can look back and see the abolitionist movement take shape across these differences. And that’s the same thing in the French Revolution. The same thing in the Russian Revolution. Any sort of history, historical conflicts in the modern era has a composition, a progressive composition that looks a lot like this one, the one that I described in this book that goes from liberal all the way to radical, right? Karl Marx actually calls it the Party of anarchy, which is not the slogan for the book, also not maybe rhetorically the way to present the climate answers. But at Red, Emma, as I can call it, this is the party of anarchy. And I do think that that’s how the system will perceive it once we get a little more coherence on the left, that it will show itself to be a threat to the system, and the system will regard it as such.
And then it’s about holding together in that moment. And so a lot of the end of the book is about how we find this coherence across these lines of difference, even when we disagree, even when people stab each other in the back, even when people break promises and make mistakes, that we have to be able to find this coherence and pull this left wing coherence out so that we will able to look back and say, that was the climate movement, that was the alignment to progressive social forces that got us from where we are now to really where I believe that we’re going to be, and more importantly where we have to be. I don’t think we have an option than to fight for a planetary solution to our planetary problem. And so I look forward to doing it with all of you, and I hope this gives us some models about how we might cohere that framework and cohere into the movement that we need to be. So thank you all, and I’d love to hear your question.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Let’s give it up for Malcolm Harris
John Duda:
So I can come around with the mic for q and a. I do want to mention that we do have a big stack of Malcolm’s book in the bookstore. So if you do have to leave, you can exit through the book shop and you can pick one up, and if you can stick around, you can get it signed after the QA. Alright, so who’s got some questions?
Audience Member 1:
So what’s an example that’s come out, I don’t know, since the book went to press that’s made you really go, wow, I wish I I could have put that in the book. That’s such a targeted example of exactly what I was talking about in this section.
Malcolm Harris:
I dunno. I mean, I try to write books non actively. And so even for my last one, Palo Alto, which was very in the news cycle, whatever, people were like, oh, don’t you wish you’d added a section about crypto at the end? And I was like, no. The point is that it’s a longer term analysis that’s taking larger cycles into consideration. And so my fear about being responsive or reactive to the things that happen right in front of our face is that it can kind of throw our perspective off and we assign unusual importance to the things that are happening in front of us because they’re happening in front of us and they’re happening to us now, which is an understandable survival mechanism. You have to deal with the things that are in front of you right now, but hopefully one of the things I have to offer as an author is a sort of step back perspective to say, what’s really going on here and on what kind of cycle is it happening?
And I didn’t write this book assuming good things were going to happen in the near term. And I don’t think I’ve written any of my books assuming that good things were going to happen in the near term. And I’ve been right every time so far, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not committed to progress over time. And every book that I’ve written also contains the possibility that struggles will erupt. And in the 10 plus years that I’ve been writing now, those struggles have intensified, right? It’s true that things have gotten worse. It’s also true that the progressive forces within society have stepped things up, have changed so much just since I’ve been writing. I mean, I graduated high school in 2007, and so the way things were politically in 2007, which was only less than 20 years ago or whatever, completely different from what we began.
There was no organized left of any sort in the United States. It felt like at the time there was the anti-war movement and that was it. And that has changed so much. We’ve seen some of the largest movements in this country’s history since then, some of the largest uprisings in this country’s history since then. And I placed my hope in those conflicts. And so I definitely would’ve talked about what’s happening now, whatever. But it’s an example of what I write in the book and I write about the rise of fascist right wing, petro capitalist regimes throughout the world. And if you were sitting there a couple years ago thinking the United States could not be an example of a country where we had a right wing fascist, petro capitalist regime come to power, then I don’t think you’re paying very good attention, right? This guy got reelected, so you getting like, I can’t believe Trump got elected president, right? It’s like, so yeah, I insist on my ability to have written the book I wrote and have it still be absolutely relevant in this moment.
Osita Nwanevu:
First of all, congratulations,
Malcolm Harris:
Good to see you again.
Osita Nwanevu:
Thanks. I see you. I was wondering if you could say more about how you think that these three approaches could be knitted together organizationally and institutionally and politically. It is one thing to say conceptually that none of these approaches works on its own and we have to knit them together. But what does it actually look like as far as organizing? How do the communists organize with the market craft people? What do those spaces look like? What do those political forms look like?
Malcolm Harris:
Well, we’re going to have a talk about Stop Cop City pretty soon, right? What’s the date on the Stop Cop city talk? John May 21st. May 21st. So that’s one of the examples that I use in the text, absolutely that it’s a really good example of how, because also you had people on the boards of companies or whatever and people lobbying the boards of companies to pull out of Cop City to say, this isn’t worth it for you as a market actor because we’re going to put grassroots pressure on you in that way. It’s not just that we’re going to burn the construction equipment, which they did burn the construction equipment, but they also worked within the financial system to say, think about this board members of this construction contractor. You don’t want this. It’s not worth it for you. And I think that’s a negative example because you’re trying to stop cop city, but it’s a good one. It’s one of the examples I put in the middle of the Venn diagram where you had people in all three, you had people working for the state who were trying to stop it. You had people voting in a referendum, you had people making economic cases to the market actors, and then you also had communists halting construction enough to have these debates to be able to theoretically have the democracy weigh in the first place. And to do that, they had to burn construction equipment.
How we can think more productively, I think that’s not enough, right? It’s not enough to try to stop cop city and maybe to stop cop cities more in the future. We also have to build stuff and build power. And I advance in the final pages of the book speculative structure I call disaster councils that could include people working in all three strategies at the same time to plan in advance to think about what are the disasters likely to befall our communities and how can we all three as progressive elements within society plan for that eventuality? And one specific example I think is after the floods in Asheville and North Carolina, one of the most resonant images was police out lined up outside a grocery store with long guns and angry parents saying, please, I need to get inside to buy baby formula. And they weren’t trying to loop baby formula, they were just trying to buy baby formula, but the state’s reaction was to just clamp things down.
But the progressive forces within society could plan for such an eventuality, and so we could plan in advance with grocery store workers, with target workers, which vises that sell baby formula, that when these disasters come down, we know there’s going to be a flood in the next five years. We know this is what it’s going to look like when it happens. We’re going to move baby formula, we’re going to take the pallets out of the store and we’re going to move them to these five checkpoints and we’re going to have quarter sheets to let people know that that’s where they can come get free baby formula for their kids in an emergency situation. And that’s doable without raising a billion dollars. That’s doable without taking over the Democratic party. And that’s doable hopefully without getting shot. That’s something that we can plan in advance, and I think we can exercise leverage at that point because it’s not just about charity in that eventuality. It’s not even just about mutual aid that’s about building power and taking power to say that this is how we’re going to distribute things and this is how our society’s going to work in this moment. And because there is such a vacuum around those disasters and because we know they’re going to happen, I think that’s a place where if we’re being thoughtful and exercising foresight that the left in the United States can start exercising leverage right now
Maximillian Alvarez:
I also want to just quickly throw in, because OCE a’s question really got my brain churning about some of the nascent examples that exist already, where granted this symbiosis between the three paths out of our planetary crisis have not come together in a full unison, but there’s crossover there. I mentioned for example, I’ll use the labor movement as an example within the labor movement you can see traces of these three paths, right? Absolutely. And sometimes they’re directly at odds with each other within the same union. But I mentioned the Warrior Met coal strike in Alabama. A strike on its own is already a form of market craft or a strategy of market craft, as it were, where workers are using their collective labor power to discipline the company and use that force to hurt its bottom line and change its behavior because of it. So just from the nature of the strike itself, there was a market craft strategy there, but then when you also considered that this was happening in the coal industry that had added importance. But then when you add in the fact that the local DSA were some of the folks who kept showing up, even though those coal miners were not socialists, but after a while they were like, Hey, the socialists are the guys who keep showing up. And so you
Malcolm Harris:
Start or the anarchists
Maximillian Alvarez:
Or the anarchists, you start seeing those social bonds and the ideas and the relationships start to change people a little bit. But I would also point to, and Kim Kelly, the great Kim Kelly did some great reporting for us on this, how after a while when the strike itself wasn’t working, the union made the decision to fly a bunch of those coal miners up to New York and go protest outside of BlackRock, who was the number one like investor in Warrior Met Coal. And so that’s perhaps one example where you can see these paths sort of coming together. The last one I’ll mention just quickly is I also mentioned East Palestinian, Ohio, where I’ve been interviewing residents who’ve been poisoned by that train derailment. Prior to that, I was interviewing railroad workers who were working for companies like Norfolk Southern and who were prepared to go on a national strike about it before Biden and both parties in Congress conspired to crush that strike.
That was another form of market craft, right? The Railway Labor Act is it’s a codex of market craft preventing workers on the railroad from taking those sorts of actions. But anyway, I digress. The point is that we at the Real News put railroad workers in touch with East Palestine residents saying, why aren’t you guys talking to each other? You’re fighting the same company. And so out of those discussions, coalitions form and people start to realize the common bonds that they have and how they can work together to address these big monstrous corporate opponents that are hurting all of us. And out of this railroad labor, the more radical side of the rail labor movement, you have a national proposal for nationalizing the rails and electrifying them and turning them into a green rail system. So there are nascent, I think, examples of this, but I can tell you right now, no one has figured it out and they need a lot of pushing. And the old guard of the labor movement is not going to get us there. They need new thinking. They need new actors from community side, from the communist side, from all different sides
Malcolm Harris:
Who have played important roles in a lot of these actors, whether it’s UAW Wildcat strikes among the grad student workers or a trans anarchist contingent that blocked that coal train until the workers got paid. And they were ones who were holding down that encampment who said, if you guys need to go home to your families, go home to your families, we’ll hold it down even though we don’t have jobs here because we recognize that this is an important social struggle and what I call that communist ve, it can be very important, even just buying enough time to start up the public power struggle. I do in the closing sections, I really do talk about all the little overlaps and I give examples of, okay, what does it look like to do market craft and communism at the same time? What does it look like to do market craft and public power?
And what are examples of all of these? So I do talk about the specific overlaps, and it’s not only not impossible, but not even particularly hard to find examples. There’s a lot of constant crossing of lines in terms of our actual practical strategies. And one of the goals of the book was to get people out of a sort of identity reactive frame about their politics, which I think people on the left can certainly fall into where they’re looking for buzzwords, they’re looking for keywords so that they can figure out, okay, where’s this book positioned and where am I positioned in relation to it so that I know the politically correct positioning? And that’s more important than the logic that’s more important than the argument. And actually thinking through what it says. And I tried to give people as few of those as possible few places where they can just orient themselves cleanly in terms of their political identity. And so my hope is that that will result in people being more open to the arguments and more open to the overlap strategically and come out of it thinking of a lot of things they could do as opposed to things they don’t want to do or people they don’t want to work with.
Audience Member 2:
So I appreciate the fact that you’re talking a lot about things being together in the same timeframe in terms of these strategies overlapping and interacting. I’m curious if you also play with time in the book and escalation and building in these strategies and how one form might move into another form with time.
Malcolm Harris:
So I didn’t actually think about them as stages, which I’ve gotten a lot of questions about. Like, oh, is it one market craft, then public power, then communism, which is not how I thought about it because I think, like I said, the relevant period that we’re talking about is years and maybe a couple of decades. And in that period of time, I don’t think we’re going to see that full progression from one strategy to the other. I think there are going to be people working diligently, honestly and progressively within each of those strategies in the whole relevant time period that we’re talking about. Even if at the last minute people have to abandon one for the other or one of them wins or something in a particular moment, which historically happens, like the Bolsheviks win this power struggle, the liberals win the French Revolution power struggle.
It doesn’t become a proletarian movement in the same way. And I imagine that that will happen in this situation, and I think it’s too soon to tell in what way or in what direction. And so I talk about how we have to walk down all paths at the same time. So I lied. I do talk about it temporarily, but unfortunately it’s in terms of quantum mechanics in which the regular rules of time are suspended. And my argument is that in the big scale of things, what we’re talking about in the time period we’re talking about and the place we’re talking about is so tiny that that could happen, that the regular rules for time and space don’t have to apply, that we could walk down all three paths at the same time and find ourselves at the end of one that works. And that’s what I think we have to do. I also compare it to a football play at one point. There were a bunch of fun metaphors at the end, and I hope that one of them works for people, right? It’s like all of the metaphors don’t have to work as long as you find one that you can hold onto. But yeah, the time is a little complicated. I think thinking about it temporarily is tough. And that doesn’t mean we can escape from that. It means we have to go through it.
John Duda:
Got time for one more question.
Audience Member 3:
Hi, I enjoyed your talk. I guess I was wondering because a big issue I had with Biden personally was that I kind of saw him as being very hawkish on the international stage.
Audience Member 1:
Absolutely.
Audience Member 3:
And I think a lot of his green policy was tied to that. I think there was an interesting jet here article about how kind of biden’s his whole idea of the new deal. It was intertwined with kind of Scoop Jackson hawkish Cold War liberalism, which to me, the most depressing thing recently in terms of the democratic qualities politics has been the influx of neocons and the insistence of us pursuing primacy on the international stage in terms of confronting Russia, which I don’t really approve of Russia’s actions, but some of the stuff like the fact that they went from piping in natural gas through pipelines to liquified natural gas that goes through Spain or selling all their oil directly to Europe to selling all their oil, unrefined oil to India, that then gets rerouted to Europe through tankers in a much more costly fashion. It’s clear that you can’t have this type of drive for US primacy overall and also get to carbon neutrality. How do you go about addressing both domestic problems where the Democrats have become the hawkish party as well as kind of, I don’t know. I mean, I think Trump to some degree is doing it right. He’s kind destroying the US empire.
Malcolm Harris:
That’s true.
Audience Member 3:
And if there is a silver lining, right, there’s that. But yeah, I don’t know. What do you think emerges in 2028 maybe with another democratic presidency? I have trouble, I mean, I talked to somebody at a coffee shop after that election and she was just talking about how it’s good that Liz Cheney was invited into the Democratic party. And I just want to scream when I hear people talk about that, but sorry, I’m kind of all over the place.
Malcolm Harris:
No, no, I follow exactly. And that’s a big issue in the book. That’s one of the drawback sections for market craft. That market craft is traditionally organized nationally. And then you have, you find yourself paying $7,500 for everyone who buys a US electric vehicle just to stick it to China. And that’s your whole climate crisis or whole climate policy. But I think at a deeper level, this goes back to the coherence question because, and the Biden question, because we did under the Biden administration, saw a surprising amount of left-wing coherence and you saw pretty radical some of these market craft thinkers making headway into the administration and saying with some pretty relatively radical economic ideas that if we want to build something, we can build it. And if we want to do something, we can do it. And that led to the Biden administration spending a lot more money and pushing for bigger bills than it would have otherwise.
And it did feel for a moment like we were all part of the same conversation. And then the Biden administration broke that and they broke that with the slaughter of Gaza and they refused to take any responsibility for breaking that moment of coherence. And it’s entirely their fault. And we need to keep that blame where it belongs on those elements within the Democratic party that we can’t work with. Because there is a place where you can step past a line and make it so that people can’t work with you. And I was a big believer in the uncommitted movement, which gave them so many chances to cross back over and said, we understand everything about the situation, but we need you to show some kind of movement. We need you to reach your hand in some way back towards this part of the line and they wouldn’t do it.
And we are every day dealing with the direct consequences of that choice. That’s what we are currently experiencing. And so this is an important lesson about what happens if you fail to rally around those points of coherence. And I think one of those points of coherence needs to be internationalism. And we need to say we’re not afraid of the people of China, that they have the same problems we do and they’re looking for the same solutions we are. And we don’t hear that much in the Democratic party. We haven’t heard that much from our liberal representatives, but I think it’s a very popular position among Americans themselves. I don’t think Americans necessarily want war with the rest of the world, and I certainly think we can be talked out of it. And so the question is, are we going to see some leadership from the internationalist parts within the Democratic party to come out and say, this is fearmongering, all this tariff stuff is fearmongering, all the military stuff is fearmongering.
We need to reduce the military industrial complex and we need to spend that money instead of building bombs that are purely destructive. We need to build things that we can use and that solve our problems. And I think that means for those of us in the radical left, we need a direct front against the military industrial complex. I think as Americans, that’s one of the few things that we can offer very directly to the rest of the world, right, is to contest that planning element within society that says we plan for more bombs and more bombs and more bombs. It’s on us to stop them. And I think that’s the most internationalist thing we can do is stop the weapons industry. And that’s would show real leadership, not just nationally, but globally, and that we understand the planetary crisis and maybe we can drag parts of the Democratic party with us. I think that is ultimately a popular message. I think people understand that bombs are destructive, and I think people, liberals, the abundance liberals or whatever, who aren’t willing to say, we should build fewer bombs, our cowards, they’re cowards or they’re bigots one of the two, and neither puts them in an appropriate position to lead. And we should say. So.
John Duda:
Alright. Well thank you Malcolm. Thank you Max. Thank you everybody for coming. As I mentioned, the book is for sale in the bookshop. We’ll be open for a while. Grab a drink if you want one. Hang out, get your book signed. And thank you both. Thank you.
World-renowned political cartoonist Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of the new McCarthyist assault on free expression and higher education. While employed as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Booth became a target of Zionist and pro-Israel critics, and his work became a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing in March. Facing charges that certain cartoons contained anti-Semitic tropes, J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as “reprehensible.”
In a statement about his firing, Booth writes: “The reality – and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn – is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with the largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans/black/immigrant, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research – speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.”
In this special edition of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc sits down with Booth in the TRNN studio in Baltimore to discuss the events that led to his firing, the purpose and effects of political art, and how to respond to the repressive crackdown on art and dissent as genocide is unfolding and fascism is rising.
Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us.
A wave of authoritarian oppression has gripped colleges and universities. Life on campus looks in some ways similar but in other ways very intensely different than it did when I was a young man in the 1960s. International students like Mahmoud, Khalil are being abducted on the street and disappeared by ICE agents in broad daylight, and hundreds of student visas have been abruptly revoked. Faculty and graduate students are being fired, expelled, and doxxed online. From Columbia University to Harvard, Northwestern to Cornell, the Trump administration is holding billions of dollars of federal grants and contracts hostage in order to bend universities to Trump’s will and to squash our constitutional protected rights to free speech and free assembly.
Now, while the administration has justified these unprecedented attacks as necessary to root out so-called woke scours like diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and trans athletes playing college sports, the primary justification they’ve cited is combating antisemitism on campuses, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism, opposition to Israel, its political ideolog, Zionism, and Israel’s US-backed obliteration of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Now, our guest today is Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of this top-down political battle to reshape higher education in our country. Booth is a world-renowned political cartoonist based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in venues like Harvard’s Magazine, The Nation, The Village Voice, The Atlantic. Until recently, he was a lecturer at the Annenberg School [for] Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. And just days after the Trump administration announced it was freezing $175 million in federal funds depend, Booth was fired.
Booth’s work has become a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing, facing charges that certain cartoons he made contained antisemitic tropes. J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as reprehensible.
In a statement about his firing posted on his Patreon page on March 20, Booth wrote this: “The reality and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans, Black, immigrants, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research, speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.
Today we’re going straight to the heart of the matter, and we’re speaking with Mr. Fish himself right here in The Real News Studio. Welcome. Good to have you with us.
Dwayne Booth:
Great to be here.
Marc Steiner:
So I gotta ask you this question first. Just get it out of the way. So where did the fish come from?
Dwayne Booth:
Oh my gosh. Well, that’s a long tale. I attempted to name my mother, had gotten my stepfather a new bird for Father’s Day. And this was right after I dropped out of college and was living in the back of my parents’ house and fulfilling the dream of every parent to have their son return. I’m not getting a job, I’m going to draw cartoons, and my real name is Dwayne Booth, and I wasn’t going to start. I started to draw cartoons just as a side, and I couldn’t sign it “Booth” because George Booth was the main cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, and I couldn’t just write “Dwayne” because it was too Cher or Madonna, I wasn’t going to go for just this straight first name.
So I attempted to name this new bird that came into the house. My mother asked for names and I said, Mr. Fish is the best name for a pet bird, and she rejected it. So I said, I’ll use it. And I signed all my cartoons “Mr. Fish”, and I immediately got published. And one of the editors, in fact, who published me immediately had pretended to follow me for 30 years. Mr. Fish, I can’t believe Mr. Fish finally sent us. Oh, it was locked in. I had to be Mr. Fish.
Marc Steiner:
I love it. I love it. So the work you’ve been doing, first of all, it’s amazing that a person without artistic training creates these incredible, complicated, intricate cartoons. Clearly it’s just innate inside of you.
You have this piece you did, I dunno why this one keeps sticking in my head, but the “Guernica” piece, which takes on the Trump administration and puts their figures in the place of the original work, to talk about that for a minute, how you came to create that, and why you use “Guernica”?
Dwayne Booth:
Well, it’s called “Eternal Damn Nation”. And one of the things that we should be responsible and how we communicate our dismay to other people. Now, what we attempt to do as artists is figure out the quickest path to make your point. So we tend to utilize various iconic images or things from history that will get the viewer to a certain emotional state and then piggyback the modern version on top of it, and also challenge the whole notion that these kinds of injustices have been happening over and over and over again. Because the Picasso piece is about fascism. Guess what? Guess what’s happening now? So you want to use those things to say that this might refer to a historical truism from the past, but it has application now, and it speaks to people, as you said, it resonated. Why did it resonate? Because it seems like a blunt version of truth that we have to contend with.
Marc Steiner:
So when you draw your pieces, before we go to Israel Palestine, I want to talk about Trump for a moment. Trump has been a target of your cartoons from the beginning. And the way he’s portrayed eating feces — Can I say the other word? Eating shit and just having shit all over him, a big fat slob and a beast of a fascist. Talk about your own image of this man, why you portray him this way. What do you think he represents here at this moment?
Dwayne Booth:
Well, it’s interesting because, in many ways, what I try to do with the images, the cartoons that you’re referring to, is, yes, I try to make it as obscene as I possibly can because the reality is also obscene. So I always want to challenge somebody who might look at something like that and say, oh my gosh, I don’t want to look at it. It’s important to look at these things.
The reality is, yes, I create these metaphors, eating shit and being a very lethal buffoon and clown. Those, to me, are the metaphors for something that is actually more dangerous. He’s being enabled by a power structure and being legitimized by these power brokers that surround him to enact real misery in America and the rest of the world, so you don’t want to treat somebody respectfully who is doing that. You want to say, this is shit. This is bullshit. This is an obscenity that we have to not shy away from and face it.
And if it is that ugly, if the metaphor is that ugly, again, challenge me to say that I should be respecting this person in a different way, should be pulling my punches. No, no. We should be going full-throated dissent against this kind of person and this kind of movement because it is an obscenity and we have to do something about it.
Marc Steiner:
The way you portray what’s happening in this country at this moment in many of your cartoons, in many of your works, Trump next door with Hitler, Trump as a figure with his middle finger to the air, all of that, when you do these things. How do you think about transient that into political action?
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s one of the tricks with satire, and I think that satire, I don’t think people know how to read satire anymore. What stands —
Marc Steiner:
It’s a lost art.
Dwayne Booth:
It’s a lost art. People think that Saturday Night Live is satire, and it’s not. It’s comedy, it’s burlesque is what it is.
Marc Steiner:
It’s burlesque.
Dwayne Booth:
It’s burlesque, it’s parody —
Marc Steiner:
It’s burlesque.
Dwayne Booth:
And what it does is it allows people to address politics in a way that ends with laughter and ridicule, which is the physiological reaction. And when you laugh at something, you’re telling your body, in a way, that it’s going to be okay. We can now congregate around our disdain and minimize the monstrosity by turning Trump into a clown or a buffoon. Only then we can say we’ve done our work. Look at how ridiculous he is. Now we can rely on other people, then, to do something about it.
Satire is supposed to, from my understanding through history, is supposed to have some humor in it. A lot of the humor is just speaking the blatant truth about something, and it’s supposed to reveal social injustices and political villainy in such a way that when you’re finished with it, you’re still upset and you do want to do something about it. Again, if we have to start worrying about how we are communicating our disdain about something that is deserving of disdain, Lenny Bruce quote, something that always has moved me and is the reason I do what I do. When he said, “Take away the right to say fuck, and you take away the right to say fuck the government.”
Marc Steiner:
Yes, I saw that in one of your pieces.
Dwayne Booth:
We need that tool. So when I am addressing something that I find upsetting, I lead with my heart because it is a visceral reaction. It’s very, very upsetting. I pour that into the artwork that I’m rendering, and then I share with other people because people are suffering. I know what suffering feels like. So the emotional component is really, really important to me.
And if you notice, looking at the cartooning that I do about Trump, is those are very involved, most often, fine art pieces. They’re not the whimsy of a cartoon because it’s more serious than that. I want to communicate through the craft that I bring to the piece that I’m willing to spend. Some of those things take me days to complete.
Marc Steiner:
I’m sure.
Dwayne Booth:
This is so important to me, and you’re going to see my dedication to, A, giving a shit and wanting to do something about it. If I can keep you in front of that piece of art longer than if it was just a zippy cartoon, it might seep into your understanding, your soul, and your enthusiasm to also join some sort of movement to change things.
Marc Steiner:
What popped in my head when I first started looking into the piece was the use of humor and satire in attacking fascism, attacking the growth of fascism. Maybe think of Charlie Chaplin.
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah, The Great Dictator
Marc Steiner:
That was so effective. But the buffoonery that he characterized Hitler with is the same with Trump. It is frightening and close.
Dwayne Booth:
It is. And I would say, again, one thing I just want to be clear about is that there can be elements of parody and burlesque in there, because what that does is that that invites the viewer into the conversation. It says that this is not so dangerous that you should cower. This person is a fool — A fool who is capable of great catastrophic actions, but he’s an idiot. He’s an idiot. You’re allowed to be smarter than an idiot, and you’re allowed to lose patience with an idiot.
So the second question. So, OK, if you can inspire somebody to be upset and recognize that they are somewhere in this strategy coming from an authoritarian of I will devour you at some point, and maybe this is where… I don’t know if you want to get into the college experience necessarily right now, but that was one of the things that’s interesting about being a professor for. I taught there for 11 years, and it’s always been in my mind. I love teaching, but I was hired as a professional because I was a professional cartoonist. I’m actually a college dropout, and so I bring the practice of what I do into the classroom.
One of the things that was very interesting is, as the world blows up, colleges and universities are institutions of privilege. There’s no way around it. There’s students, yes, that might be there with a great deal of financial aid or some part of a program that gets them in, but by and large, these are communities of privilege. So it was very interesting to see when the society was falling apart, when there was an obvious threat before it was exactly demonstrated about academic freedom and so forth, the strategy from many colleagues that I spoke to was, all right, if we hold our breaths and maybe get to the midterms, we’ll be okay. If we can hold our breaths and just keep our heads down for four years, maybe things will be better. And my reaction was just, do you realize that that’s a privileged position? There’s people who are really suffering. If that is what your strategy is moving forward, then we are doomed because there’s no reason to be brave and stick your neck out.
Marc Steiner:
A number of the things running through my head as you were just describing this, before we go back to your cartoons, which I want to get right back to, which is I was part of the student movement into the 1960s. We took over places, we fought police, we got arrested and expelled from schools. I was thrown out of University of Maryland after three semesters and got drafted. Don’t have to go into that story now, but that happened. So I’m saying there’ve always been places of radical disruption and anger and fighting for justice.
How do you see that different now? I mean, look, in terms of the work you do and what happened to you at Annenberg, tossing you out.
Dwayne Booth:
Well, that’s a two-part question, and we can get to the second part of that in a second. But when it comes to that question of what has happened to college campuses, essentially, is look around. The commodification of everything has reduced the call for speaking your mind, for free speech. Because if you’re going to be indoctrinated into thinking that the commodification of everything is what’s calling you to a successful life, then colleges and universities become indoctrination centers for job placement, way more than even… When I was in college, it was different. You were there to explore, to figure out who you were, what you wanted to do, literally, with the rest of your life. It wasn’t about like, OK, this is how you play the game and keep your mouth shut if you want to succeed. That is the new paradigm that is now framing the kinds of conversations and the pressures inside the classroom to “succeed”.
But my thing with my classes, I would always tell my class a version of the very first day is, what you’re going to learn in this class is not going to help you get a job [Steiner laughs]. What it’s going to do, if I’m successful, and I hope I will be, is it will allow you the potentiality to keep a white-knuckled grip on your soul. Because the stuff we’re looking at is how did the arts community communicate what the humanitarian approach to life should be? That’s not a moneymaking scenario. In fact, there’s examples all through history where you’re penalized for that kind of thinking.
But what is revealed to students is that this is a glimpse into what makes a meaningful life. It’s not surrendering to bureaucracy and hierarchy. It’s about pushing back against that.
Marc Steiner:
Right. And the most important thing in an institution can do — And I don’t want to dive too deep into this now — But is make you question and make you probe and uncover. If you’re not doing that, then you’re not teaching, and you’re not learning.
Dwayne Booth:
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s where we are now. Just even asking the question has become a huge problem. Even when everything started to happen with Gaza and with Israel, we had some conversations in class, without even getting, I wasn’t even trying to start conversations about which side are you going to be on? This is why you should be on this side and abhor the other side. It wasn’t even questions like that. The conversations we ended up having was the terror on the campus to even broach the subject.
My classes where we spoke very frankly about, I can’t even say the word “Israel”, I can’t say it. And it was also among the faculty. And I don’t know if you’ve spoken to other faculty members at other universities, and this shouldn’t be shocking, but at some point, a year ago, we were told, and we all agreed unanimously, not to use school email. They’re listening. We were going to communicate with WhatsApp or try to have personal conversations off campus because we do not trust the administration not to surrender all of our personal correspondence with these congressional committees attempting to blow up universities.
And they did that with me. There was some communication about Congress wants all of your communication with colleagues and students.
Marc Steiner:
That literally happened.
Dwayne Booth:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
They wanted all your communication?
Dwayne Booth:
Yes. And I wasn’t alone. This is what’s going on on college campuses. So A, it’s a really interesting thing to ask because I don’t own the correspondence I have on the servers at school. I don’t. So it’s not even up to me. I can say no, but they’re still going to do it. So that kind of question, what that does is say, you are under our boot. We want to make sure that you understand that you are under our boot and that you’re going to cooperate.
So what was my answer to that? My answer was, fuck you. Because this is coming after a semester where a couple of times I had to teach remotely because not only there were death threats on me, but being the professor in front of this class, there were death threats on my students. So knowing that and really being angry at the main administration and the interim president Jameson for surrendering to this kind of McCarthyism. Again, that’s an easy equation to make, but it’s accurate. It’s a hundred percent accurate.
Marc Steiner:
I’m really curious. Let’s stay with this for a moment before we leap into some other areas here, that when did you become first aware that they were coming after you? And B, how did they do it? What did they literally do to push you out?
Dwayne Booth:
Me being pushed out, it’s an interesting question to ask because Annenberg actually protected me. Jameson wanted me out when The Washington Free Beacon article came out in February of last year.
Marc Steiner:
The one that accused you of being an antisemite?
Dwayne Booth:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
Dwayne Booth:
So again, what do we do with that? We clean house. We don’t look at the truth of the matter. We don’t look at the specifics. We don’t push back, we surrender. That’s the stance of the administration. So he wanted me fired, but the Dean of Annenberg was just like, no. So they protected me. It’s the School for Communication. It has a history of…
Marc Steiner:
It’s a school where you’re trained journalists and other people to tell the truth and tell the stories and dig deep and put it out there.
Dwayne Booth:
And to say no when you need to say no.
Marc Steiner:
Yes.
Dwayne Booth:
Right. So that happened. So they protected me. I was there because Annenburg protected me. It didn’t stop the administration, as you said at the beginning of the segment, Jameson then makes a public statement that basically says I’m an antisemite and that I’m reprehensible.
So that went on for all of last year, not so much the beginning of this semester because everybody was very focused on what the election was going to reveal.
So I was given the opportunity to develop a new class for this coming fall. So I took off the semester, was paid to develop this new course for, actually, about the alternative press and the underground comics movement of the ’60s and ’70s.
Marc Steiner:
I remember it well [laughs].
Dwayne Booth:
Very good. And so that’s considered the golden age for opinion journalism, which is lacking now. So I’m like, this is a great opportunity to, again, expose what our responsibility is as a free and open society. Let’s really talk about it. I even was going to start a newspaper as part of the class that students were going to contribute to. It was going to be a very big to-do.
Trump won. The newspaper was the first thing to be canceled. We don’t want to invite too much attention from this new regime on the campus. Again, it’s this cowardice that has real ramifications, as you were saying. These funds, as soon as there’s money involved, the strategy for moving forward becomes an economic decision and not one that has to do with people and their lives.
So me being let go, I was part of a number of adjuncts and lecturers who were also let go. So it’s not an easy connection to say that I was specifically targeted as somebody who should be fired. But that said, you could feel some relief. And as a matter of fact, being let go and then being, again, the attacks from the right-wing press increased, and all of a sudden we’re like, finally UPenn has gotten rid of the antisemite. And then we’re back in this old ridiculous argument.
And luckily, I’m not alone. I’m not so much in the spotlight because many people are stepping forward and, again, trying to promote the right kind of conversation about this.
Marc Steiner:
One of the things, a bunch of things that went through my head as you were talking, I was thinking about the course you wanted to teach on alternative press. I you ever get to teach that course again, I have tons of files for you to have, to go through.
Dwayne Booth:
[Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was writing the textbook.
Marc Steiner:
Textbook. Oh, were you? OK.
Dwayne Booth:
I’m going to France, actually, and I’m going to interview Robert Crumb. I’m staying over his house. Oh, that’s great.
Marc Steiner:
Oh, that’s great. He must be really old now.
Dwayne Booth:
Yes. I’m really looking forward to it.
Marc Steiner:
[Laughs] I was there at the very [beginning]. I helped found Liberation News Service.
Dwayne Booth:
Oh, see.
Marc Steiner:
And I was at Washington Free Press back in the ’60s.
Dwayne Booth:
See? So you know. I curated an exhibit on the alternative press for the University of Connecticut a couple years ago. Hugely popular. They have an archive that is dizzying. It might be the biggest in the country. And so when I was curating and putting together that exhibit, I would go in and I would be, all day, I wouldn’t even eat, and I would pore through these newspapers and magazines at the time. And I would leave, and I would actually have this real sense of woe because looking at what that kind of journalism was attempting and accomplishing made me feel like we have lost.
Marc Steiner:
Every city and community had an underground paper across the country, and Liberation newspapers were there to service all those papers and bring them together. The power of the media in that era was very different and very strong.
Dwayne Booth:
Well, the work that I do as a cartoonist and somebody who uses visuals to communicate this stuff, that was all through these newspapers, all through this movement. The idea being is the arts community is there — Well, let’s do it this way. The job of journalism, one could say, is that it provides us with the first draft of history, which we’ve heard.
Marc Steiner:
Exactly.
Dwayne Booth:
So the idea as a journalist, what you’re supposed to be asking yourself is what is the real story here? And I’m going to approach it and try to be objective about it, but what is the real story here? The job of an artist in the arts community is to ask the very same question. What is this story really about? What does this feel like? But rather than searching for the objective version of that, it’s about looking for the subjective. This is how I feel about it. And that invites people in to share their own stories. Because really we’re just stories. We’re really just stories.
Marc Steiner:
Storytellers.
Dwayne Booth:
Exactly. So if you can have a form of journalism that not only draws on straight journalism but also can bring in Allen Ginsburg to write a poem that will then explore what does it mean to be a human being? Why are we vulnerable and why do we deserve protection? Until you have that inside of a conversation, why argue in favor of protecting, say, the people of Gaza?
Marc Steiner:
Let’s talk a bit about that. Now, look, this is what got you fired [laughs].
Dwayne Booth:
Well, I don’t… Well, again.
Marc Steiner:
It’s part of what got you fired.
Dwayne Booth:
It created a lot of heat for me last year, we can say.
Marc Steiner:
It is a very difficult question on many levels, being accused of being an antisemite or a self-hating Jew. If you criticize Israel, whether you use the word genocide or slaughter, whatever word you use has infected the entire country at this moment. Campuses, newspapers, everywhere, magazines. And in itself, it seems to me, also creates antisemitism. It makes it bubble up. Because it’s always there, it’s just below the surface. It doesn’t take much to unleash it. So I think we’re in this very dangerous moment.
Dwayne Booth:
We are. But I would say that, with that broad description, if people only approach the question with that broad of an approach, I think we’re in trouble.
Marc Steiner:
What do you mean by that?
Dwayne Booth:
I think the question of attempting to criticize Israel and then being called an antisemite is conflating politics with religion, nationalism with religion. Because really, again, look at it. Just look at all of the conversations that people have been having. To criticize the state of Israel is criticizing the state of Israel. It has really nothing to do with criticizing Judaism at all. Now, if somebody is Jewish and supporting Israel, OK, they’ve made that connection for themselves. So therefore, you can’t have an argument that says, you’re hurting my Jewishness, my Jewish identity by attacking a nation state, because they’re two different things. And if you’re protecting the virtue of a nation state, that is nationalism.
Marc Steiner:
It is. I don’t want to digress on this too deeply, but I think that when you are part of a minority that has been persecuted — My grandfather fought the czars, people in the streets of Warsaw, in the pogroms. My dad fought the Nazis. When you know that they just hate you because of who you are, which is the excuse they used to create Israel out of Palestine, which makes it a very complex matter. It was FDR who would not let Jews here and said, you have to go. You want to get out of those camps? You’re going there.
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah. There is that. Yep.
Marc Steiner:
So what I’m saying to all that, I’m saying it’s a very complicated matter.
Dwayne Booth:
And so the argument, though, and I totally agree with you. So what is important for that, the fact that it is a complicated matter, then you need to create space for the conversation to happen, and you have to create the space to be large enough to accommodate all of the emotion, the emotional component that is part of this, because that’s also very, very real. And then the less emotional stuff, like what is the intellectual argument piece of this? So yes, it is all completely knotted up, but the solution is to recognize how complicated it is and then create the space for people then to untangle it.
Because again, that’s why I said about the broad approach. The broad approach is not going to help us. The broad approach is going to actually disenfranchise people from wanting to enter into the conversation. Because you don’t want to say, and as you can see it happening over and over again, anybody who says, I’m against Israel, what Israel is doing, immediately they’re called, they’re shut down by people who don’t want to have that conversation, as being antisemitic. And nobody wants to feel like they could be called an antisemitic, especially if they are not one. Remember, people who are antisemitic, they tend to be proud of the fact that they are antisemitic.
Marc Steiner:
Yeah, I know. But there are a lot of antisemites out there, a lot of racists who don’t admit that they’re antisemitic or racist.
Dwayne Booth:
Again, and the question, they don’t admit it. So again, so that’s where you need that kind of conversation to turn the light on in that darkness and give them the opportunity to either defend their antisemitism, have their antisemitism revealed so that they can then self-assess who they are. Because a lot of prejudices people have, they don’t know that they have them, and they have not been challenged.
So much of what we think and feel is reflexive thinking and feeling. You can’t burn that flag. I’m an American, it’s hurting my heart. Let’s look at the issue. What is trying to be communicated by the burning of the flag? It’s not shitting on your grandfather for fighting in the Second World War. But again, if somebody is going to have all that knotted up into this emotional cluster, it’s up to us as sane human beings who are seeking understanding and also empathy with each other to be able to enter in those things assuming, until it’s disproven, that we actually have the potential for empathy and understanding among each other. But you need to create the space and the conversation for that to happen.
Marc Steiner:
What was the specific work that had them attack you as an antisemite at Annenberg? What did they pull out?
Dwayne Booth:
They pulled out some cartoons that I had. It was interesting because they pulled out mostly illustrations that I had done for Chris Hedges. I’ve been Chris Hedges’s illustrator for a very long time.
Marc Steiner:
He used to work out of this building [laughs].
Dwayne Booth:
Yes, exactly. And so what they did was they pulled out these illustrations completely out of context from the article that I was illustrating, had them as standalone pieces, which again, if you’re doing cartoons or you’re doing any illustrations, what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to be provocative and communicate with a very short form. If it’s something as fiery as this issue, then you need, potentially, more information to know what my intent is as an artist. Those were connected to Chris Hedges’s articles that had them make absolute sense. So those were shown without the context of Chris Hedges’s articles.
They showed a couple cartoons that also were just standalone cartoons that had been published and posted for four months without anything except great adulation from readers, because I also work for Scheer Post, which is Robert Scheer’s publication. And I’ve known Bob for decades. And if you don’t know who Bob is, you should know who Bob is. He was the editor of Ramparts and has a very long history of attempting independent journalism.
Marc Steiner:
I can’t believe he’s still rolling.
Dwayne Booth:
He is. He’s 89.
Marc Steiner:
I know [laughs].
Dwayne Booth:
It’s amazing. And so he was running my cartoons. He lost more than half of his family in the Holocaust. He knows what antisemitism looks like. And so these cartoons that were pulled, again, I had nothing but people understanding what I was trying to say. But taken, again, out of context, shown to an audience that is looking for any excuse to call somebody an antisemite, which is the Washington Free Beacon, who has called everybody an antisemite: Obama, Bernie Sanders, just everybody. And framing the parameters of that slander, presenting it to their audience who blew up, again, then started writing me: I want to rape your wife and murder your children. I know where you live. All of those sorts of things all of a sudden come out. So that happened.
And so again, there I am — And I’ve had hate mail. I’ve had death threats before. I’ve never been part of an institution where the strategy for moving forward is being part of a community was… All right. I was told to just not say anything at first. We’ll see if we can weather this. And then when the Jameson statement came out, I wrote to my dean and I said, I have to say something now. I can’t sit back and just let these people frame the argument because it’s not accurate.
Marc Steiner:
Right, right.
Dwayne Booth:
Then I started to talk to the press, and again, started to say, we need to understand that there is intent and context for all of these things, and I cannot allow the truncation of communication to happen to the degree where people are silenced and then people are encouraged to self-censor.
Marc Steiner:
So I’ll ask you a question. I’ve been wrestling with this question I wanted to ask you about one of your cartoons. It’s the cartoon where Netanyahu [inaudible] are drinking blood.
Dwayne Booth:
It’s not Netanyahu. I know which… Is it with the dove?
Marc Steiner:
Yeah.
Dwayne Booth:
OK. Yeah. Netanyahu is not in there.
Marc Steiner:
That’s right, I’m sorry. So the first thing that popped in my head when I saw that picture was the blood libel against the Jews by the Christians that took place. My father told me stories about when he was a kid how Christian kids across from Patterson, the other side of the park, would chase him. You killed, you drank Jesus’s blood, you killed Jesus, the major fights that they had. So talk a bit about that. That’s not the reaction you want us to have.
Dwayne Booth:
No, no, no, no. Absolutely not. It is interesting because I think that’s probably the leading one that people — And now when all this started up, again, they don’t even show it, they just describe it, and they describe it so inaccurately [Steiner laughs] that it just makes me crazy.
Marc Steiner:
You’re not shocked, are you [both laugh]?
Dwayne Booth:
No, no. But in the cartoon, it’s actually, it’s power brokers. These guys look like they’re power brokers from the 1950s. I like to draw that style of… And if you want to look at these guys, they look completely not Jewish. I pulled them from, like I said, they’re basically clip art from the 1950s. So they’re power brokers at a cocktail party. It’s playing off of the New Yorker style of the cocktail party with the upper class.
So they’re upper crust power brokers. Behind them is a hybrid flag that is half the American flag and half the Israeli flag. And they are drinking blood from glasses that says “Gaza”. And there is a peace dove that is walking into the room and somebody says, who invited that lousy antisemite.
As a cartoonist, understand that when it comes to, as I said earlier, trying to figure out how to make the point as quickly as you can and as eye catching as you can. If you look through the history of the genre, drinking blood is what monsters do. They do it all of the time in their criticism of people who are powerful and who are called monsters. I, frankly, when I was drawing it, I [wasn’t] like, well, this might be misinterpreted as blood libel. I didn’t know what blood libel was.
Marc Steiner:
I’m sure you didn’t.
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah. And again, and it was posted for a long time and nobody’s said anything about it. But then when it was called that, it became a very interesting conversation because it was like, oh, OK. So now I can see how that would flood the interpretation of the cartoon. And again, this is what happens in regular conversation. And particularly if you’re communicating as somebody who uses the visuals as your form of communication, there’s a thousand ways to interpret a visual.
Marc Steiner:
There are.
Dwayne Booth:
There are. And as the artist, you have to understand that you’re going to do the best that you can and hope that the majority of people are going to get what you’re trying to do. Which brings us, again, back to that second question or that point that I was making earlier, which is let’s have the conversation afterwards. If you understand that my intent was playing off of not a Jewish trope but a trope of criticizing power — Which, actually, out of curiosity, I went through the internet and I all of a sudden started to assemble, through time, using people are drinking blood constantly who are evil. So it’s used and so forth.
And so the challenge with something like that was to then try to communicate that that was not my intent. I know a communications, a free speech expert, in fact. She and I had a really interesting conversation about it because she is such a radical, she’s been more radical than I am. She wanted me to know that it was blood libel, and she wanted to hear me say, yes, I knew it was blood libel, but I’m going to use that to force the conversation and reclaim what that blood libel was supposed to be as, A, this ridiculous thing that actually is being applied as a truism in this circumstance.
But all of a sudden it became this academic conversation and I was just like, whoa, I don’t need it to be that, because you don’t want to upset everybody and confuse what your communication is, obviously. So I said, it wasn’t that. She goes, you sure [Steiner laughs]? Are you sure you weren’t trying to do that? I’m like, no, I wasn’t trying to do that. So that’s what that one was.
Marc Steiner:
So I’m glad we talked about this because I think that… I’m not going to dwell on this cartoon, but when I first showed this to some of my friends —
Dwayne Booth:
You’re not alone [crosstalk]. I get it. I totally get it.
Marc Steiner:
As I was preparing for our conversation, that was their first reaction as well.
Dwayne Booth:
Right. Right.
Marc Steiner:
Because your cartoons, they’re really powerful, and they get under an issue, and it glares in front of your eyes like a bright light. And they’re very to hard look at sometimes, whether it’s Trump eating shit, literally [both laugh], and the other images you give us. It’s like you can’t allow us to look away. You want us to ingest them.
Dwayne Booth:
I want you to ingest them and then have an honest reaction. And then, again, it doesn’t have to be in a conversation with me, have a conversation with somebody else. Because that cartoon that you were talking about, it started a bunch of debates.
Marc Steiner:
The Trump one?
Dwayne Booth:
No, no, no.
Marc Steiner:
Oh, the blood libel.
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah, yeah — Don’t call it the blood libel one. See what I mean, man [both laugh]? So it started, what I would say is necessary debate to really get to the bottom of issues. Again, that’s really what we should be doing. We should be encouraging more and more difficult conversations. Because we’re not, and look at where we are. People are uncomfortable to even go into the streets. You don’t have to shout. You don’t have to carry a sign. People are being conditioned to be uncomfortable with making a statement in the name of humanity, even though humanity is suffering in real time in front of us. Look at Gaza. For me, there’s no way to frame the argument that can justify that. There’s just no way. There’s too many bodies, there’s too many dead people. There’s too much evidence that the human suffering that is happening over there right now in front of the world needs not to be happening.
Marc Steiner:
It needs not to be happening. [I’ll] tell [you] what just popped through my head as you were saying that, a couple things. One was the Vietnam War where millions of Vietnamese were slaughtered, North, South, all over. And we didn’t call that a genocide. We called that a slaughter. And then I was thinking as you were speaking about… I speak at synagogues sometimes about why we as Jews have to oppose what Israel’s doing to Gaza.
Dwayne Booth:
And I’ve gone to synagogues and seen those talks. That’s also what I’m [crosstalk] —
Marc Steiner:
They’re very difficult talks to have people just…
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
Because it’s an emotional issue as much as it’s a —
Dwayne Booth:
Exactly.
Marc Steiner:
— Logical and political issue. And so, when I look at your work, again, it engenders conversation. It makes you think it’s not just his little typical political cartoon. It’s like you sink yourself into your cartoons like an actor sinks himself into a part. That’s what I felt looking at your work.
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny because just hearing you say that, it’s true that quite often I forget about my cartoons soon after I do them because I’m already onto the next one. And I’ve done searches for things and found my cartoons that I’ve forgotten. I have no memory of doing them [Steiner laughs]. Some of them I don’t even get, and I literally have to call my older brother and say, what was I trying to say with this? He’s very good at remembering what I was trying to say and can decipher my cartoons for me.
But yeah, it is a form of meditation. If you look at the work that I do, again, if you’re going to stick with a piece of art for hours, you have to be able to sustain your focus on it. So I meditate while I’m doing it and see if it feels true to my emotional reaction to what’s going on, then I post it.
Marc Steiner:
So lemme ask you this question. So think of one of your most recent cartoons, I dunno which one, I’ll let you think of it since I don’t know what your most recent cartoon is, and it’s about Gaza and Israel and this moment. Describe it and what you went through to create it.
Dwayne Booth:
One of the most recent ones that I did was, as the death toll continued to climb, and I think it was right after Trump started to talk about how beautiful he’s going to make Gaza once we take over. The normalizing of that, and even the attempts to make it a sexy strategy, hit me so hard that my approach to that was, OK, well what would that look like? What would the attempt to normalize that amount of human suffering, what would that look like?
Well, it sounds like a travel poster that is going to invite people to the new Gaza. So I decided to do a travel poster riffing off of an old Italian vintage come to Italy poster, just like a Vespa. Let’s get a Vespa in there and a sexy couple. Now, I don’t want to render something that has Gaza completely Trumpified already. We’ve seen what that looks like. Let’s, OK, satire. But let’s talk about, let’s visualize what that would look like right now moving towards that. So I have this young couple on a Vespa coming down a giant mountain of skulls, heading to the beach. And out in the beach there’s some Israeli warships. And it’s rendered, at a glance, to be very gleeful, but then you start to notice the details of it and the attempt to normalize, again, an ocean of skulls, [and] nobody’s recognizing the fact that these are a slaughtered population. So that’s what I thought.
And so, again, sometimes what you want to do is you want to say, alright, this is an ugly truth that’s being promoted as something that is beautiful, I’m going to show you what that looks like as something that’s been beautified. And the reaction, of course, is just like, oh my God, this hits harder than if I showed the gore, in the same way that if you go back to Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”, right? He published that anonymously. And he also, it’s very interesting because it’s about what do we do with the poor, bedraggled Irish people? We make them refuse for the needs of the British. We will cook the children, kill some of the grownups, make belts, make wallets, all of these things to feed the gentry of the British.
What’s very interesting about that is he sustained the irony of that all the way through. You don’t have the sense, he did not turn it into parody or burlesque or wild craziness. He presented it as a solution to the problem. Now, if you look at that, it actually makes business sense. It would actually solve the problem — Minus all the horror of killing babies and killing a bunch of people. It makes good business sense.
Now, if you look at that and you see that as a parallel to what is justified by big business and corporations now, it happens every single day. It’s been completely normalized. Look what’s going on with the environment. Look at the Rust Belt across this country. All of that stuff is rendered in service of profit and economics the same way that “Modest Proposal” was, and people have been conditioned to see it as normal and ignore the human suffering.
Marc Steiner:
I’m curious. The first one is, where’s that latest cartoon published?
Dwayne Booth:
I actually gave it to Hedges for one of his columns, and then I posted it and people wanted prints. I’ve sold prints of it. And it was also in the paper that comes out of Washington that Ralph Nader does… Gosh, what’s it called? The Capitol…
Marc Steiner:
I should know this
Dwayne Booth:
Myself. I should know this too, because I’ve been doing cartoons for them for a few years now.
Marc Steiner:
Capitol Hill Citizen.
Dwayne Booth:
That’s it. See, I missed the word “hill”. Thank God.
Marc Steiner:
Capitol Hill Citizen.
Dwayne Booth:
Which is a great newspaper. And it gives me the opportunity to see my stuff on physical paper again, which looks gorgeous to me. I’d rather —
Marc Steiner:
Now that you’ve described the cartoon, I saw it this morning as I was getting ready for this conversation. I didn’t know whether it was the latest one you’ve done.
Now that you were facing what we face here, both in Gaza and with Trump and these neofascists in charge of the country, your brain must be full of how you portray this. I just want you to talk a bit about, both creatively and substantively, how you approach this moment when we are literally facing down a neofascist power taking over our country and about to destroy our democracy. People think that’s hyperbole, you’re being crazy. But we’re not.
Dwayne Booth:
No, it’s happening.
Marc Steiner:
And if you, as I was, a civil rights worker in the South, you saw what it was like to live under tyranny, under an authoritarian dictatorship if you were not white. I can feel the entire country tumbling in at this moment. So tell me how you think about that and how you approach it with your work.
Dwayne Booth:
It’s an interesting time because, in many ways, my work is quadrupled. Partly because it’s just what I’ve always done, but the other part is I don’t see this profession stepping up to the challenge at all. I don’t see any single-panel cartoonists who are hitting the Israel Gaza issue nearly as hard as I am.
Marc Steiner:
No, they’re not.
Dwayne Booth:
No. And I see a lot also, of the attacks on Trump. And again, it always strikes me as, how would the Democratic Party render a cartoon? That’s what I see out there. And it’s too soft. It is just way too soft. So as I increase my output, I feel the light getting brighter and brighter on me, which makes me feel more and more unsafe inside this society because yes, they’re targeting people who are not citizens, but what’s next? We all know the poem.
But at the same time, I feel like it’s a responsibility that I have, and I’m sure that you probably have this same sense of responsibility. Speaking up, talking out loud, even though it’s on my nervous system, it is grinding me down in a way that is new.
But that said, my numbers of people who are coming to me are increasing. I’m actually starting a substack so I can have my own conversations with people and so forth, because we have got to increase this megaphone. We just have to.
In fact, one thing that was interesting is just this last October I was invited to speak at a cartooning conference in Montreal. And the whole reason to have me up there and to talk about it was was from the perspective of the people, the organizers, I was the only American cartoonist who was cartooning about Gaza.
Marc Steiner:
Really?
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah. And I’d had conversations, remember, that there’s some cartoonists who are doing some things that, again, are just a little bit too polite. Because if we’re looking at this thing and we do think that this is a genocide, you can’t pull your punches. And so, in fact, when this stuff had happened with me initially with the Washington Free Beacon, I reached out.
There’s another colleague I have who’s a cartoonist, whose name is Andy Singer, and he and I have been in communication over the years, and he’s somewhat fearless on this issue. He and I were talking, and we came up with this idea, let’s publish a book that has cartoonists who, over the last many decades, have had a problem criticizing Israel for fear of being called anti-Semitic.
We sent it out to our colleagues and other international cartoonists and so forth. We found two, Matt Wuerker and Ted Rall, who were willing to participate in this project. I had a number of conversations with others who just contacted me privately and said, I can’t do it because I’ll lose my job. I can’t do it because I’ll be targeted and I’m too afraid. I can’t get close to this subject, my editor won’t let me do it, so I can’t do it. International cartoonists, different idea, a whole different approach, sending me stuff. I can tell my story. I’ve been jailed. I’ve been beaten up for this kind of work. And so it became a very interesting thing.
Again, the United States is, by and large, it’s an extremely privileged society. And yet, when it comes to issues like this, it demonstrates the most cowardice because we’ve been made to be way too sensitive about our own discomfort to advance the cause of humanity and justice, love, all of those things because we’ve seen that there is a penalty for doing that, and we do not want to give up certain creature comforts. We don’t want to be called something that we are not, and we need to be uncomfortable. In many ways we have to break soft rules. We have to chain ourself to fences and then make it an inconvenience to be pulled from those fences.
Marc Steiner:
This has been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate you being here today and for all the work that you do. And I think that we’re at this moment where the reason that many of us who are part of Jewish Voices for Peace and other organizations is to say those voices are critical in saying this is wrong and has to end now. And I appreciate the power of the work you do. It’s just amazing. And we encourage everybody, we’ll be linking to your work so people can see it and consume it. And I hope we have a conversation together in the future.
Dwayne Booth:
Thanks. I agree. Thanks a lot, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
Good to have you sliding through Baltimore.
Dwayne Booth:
Thank you.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, let me thank Dwayne Booth, also known as Mr. Fish, for joining us today here for this powerful and honest conversation. We will link to his work when we post this episode. You want to check that out.
And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for working on her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.
So please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
A dystopian reality has gripped America’s colleges and universities: ICE agents are snatching and disappearing international students in broad daylight; student visas are being revoked en masse overnight; funding cuts and freezes are upending countless careers and our entire public research infrastructure; students are being expelled and faculty fired for speaking out against Israel’s US-backed genocidal war on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. An all-out assault on higher ed and the people who live, learn, and work there is being led by the federal government and aided by law enforcement, internet vigilantes, and even university administrators. Today’s climate of repression recalls that of McCarthyism and the height of the anti-communist Red Scare in the 1950s, but leading scholars of McCarthyism and political repression say that the attacks on higher education, free speech, and political repression we’re seeing today are “worse” and “much broader.”
In this installment of The Real News Network podcast, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with a panel of scholars about the Trump administration’s authoritarian war on higher education in America, the historical roots of the attacks we’re seeing play out today, and what lessons we can draw from history about how to fight them. Panelists include:
Studio Production: David Hebden Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome everyone to the Real News Network podcast. My name is Maximillian Alvarez. I’m the editor in chief here at The Real News and it’s so great to have you all with us. Higher education looks very different today than it did when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan and then an editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education during the first Trump administration just a few short years ago. As you have heard from the harrowing interviews that we’ve published at the Real News interviews with faculty members, graduate students and union representatives, a dystopian reality has gripped America’s colleges and universities under the second Trump administration fear of ice agents snatching and disappearing international students in broad daylight student visas revoked on mass overnight funding cuts that have upended countless careers and our entire public research infrastructure, self-censorship online and in the classroom, students expelled and faculty fired for speaking out against Israel’s US backed genocidal war on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, an all out assault on higher ed and the people who live, learn, and work there is being led by the federal government and aided by police, internet vigilantes and even university administrators.
Now, when you go digging into the darker parts of American history to find comparisons to the bleak situation we find ourselves in now, one of the obvious periods that stands out is that of McCarthyism and the height of the anti-communist red scare in the 1950s. In her canonical book, no Ivory Tower McCarthyism and the universities historian Ellen Schreker writes the following, the academy’s enforcement of McCarthyism had silenced an entire generation of radical intellectuals and snuffed out all meaningful opposition to the official version of the Cold War. When by the late fifties the hearings and dismissals tapered off. It was not because they encountered resistance, but because they were no longer necessary, all was quiet on the academic front. In another era, perhaps Schreker also writes, the academy might not have cooperated so readily, but the 1950s was the period when the nation’s, colleges and universities were becoming increasingly dependent upon and responsive toward the federal government, the academic communities collaboration with McCarthyism was part of that process.
My friends, we now find ourselves in another era and we are going to find out if colleges and universities will take the path they didn’t travel in the 1950s or if we’re going to continue down the horrifying path that we are currently on. Today we’re going to talk about the Trump administration’s authoritarian war on an effort to remake higher education in America, the historical roots of the attacks that we’re seeing play out today and what lessons we can draw from history about how to fight it to help us navigate this hairy terrain. I am truly honored to be joined by three esteemed guests. First, we are joined by Ellen Schreker herself. Professor Schreker is a historian and author who has written extensively about McCarthyism and American Higher Education, and she’s a member of the American Association of University Professors National Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
She’s the author of numerous irreplaceable books including her most recent work, which she co-edited called The Right to Learn, resisting the Right Wing Attack on Academic Freedom and other Titles Like The Lost Promise American Universities in the 1960s, no Ivory Tower McCarthyism and the Universities, and many are the Crimes McCarthyism in America. We are also joined by Professor David Plumal Liu Louise Hewlett Nixon professor in comparative literature at Stanford University. David is the author of several books including his most recent one, speaking out of Place, getting Our Political Voices Back. He is also the host of the podcast speaking out of place which everyone should listen to. And lastly, we are joined by Professor Alan Walt. Alan is an editor of Against the Current and Science and Society. He’s the h Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus of English Literature and American Culture at the University of Michigan.
Wald is the author of a vital trilogy of books from the University of North Carolina press about writers and communism in the United States, and he serves as a member of the Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace and full disclosure here, I myself am a former student of Allen’s, but he really kicked my butt in grad school, so trust me when I say I don’t think you guys have to worry about any special treatment here. David Ellen Allen, thank you all so much for joining us today on The Real News Network. I truly appreciate it and I wanted to just kind of dive right in and ask if we could go around the table and start where we are here and now from your vantage points, how would you describe and assess what’s happening to higher education in America right now? Would you describe this as fascism, McCarthyism, an authoritarian takeover or something else? And does it even matter what we call it at this point?
Ellen Schrecker:
We can call it all of the above and then some or as my favorite sign at the first really big demonstration I was at I guess about two weeks ago, make dystopia fiction again. That’s where we are, and I used to get all sort of into, was it McCarthyism? Of course, it’s not just one man, it’s not even just Trump, although he seems to have a sort of lock on authoritarianism of a certain what shall we say, manic type. But it’s the difference between what I’ve been studying for the past 40 years, I guess if not longer, is that now everything is at play during the McCarthy period, and I do use the term McCarthyism just because it’s sort of specifically located in the anti-communist red scare of the Early Cold War. We could call it the home front of the Cold War if you wanted, just focused on individual communists, their past, their refusal to collaborate with that iteration of political oppression. And today it’s much broader. What the Trump administration is doing is focusing completely on everything that has to do with higher education as well as pretty much everything that has to do with everything else. I mean, this administration is worse than anything I’ve ever seen as a historian or studied. The closest that it comes to really is the rollback of the Civil War, the rollback against reconstruction when people were being shot by the dozens, and we haven’t gotten that blood thirsty, but I’m scared to death.
Alan Wald:
There are two points that I want to make. First of all, as Ellen very effectively pointed out, we’re now in this kind of broad spectrum crisis every single day, everything’s happening all at once. It’s hard to get a fix on what the most important thing to me from my perspective and my experience, you can’t lose sight of what precipitated the current situation. Would it begin, and I referred to it as the antisemitism scare. It’s an obvious comparison to the red skin, but there’s a pretext for what’s going on today, and that started several a while back like October, 2023. That’s when the real assault on student rights and academic freedom began and was started under the Biden Harris administration that is Democrats as well as Republicans. They targeted pro-Palestinian speech in action with this exaggerated claim. They were claiming that there was an epidemic of antisemitism rampant on the campuses.
You hear those two terms over and over epidemic rampant, and they said it was an epidemic that was endangering the safety of Jewish students. Of course, Jewish students were in the vanguard. Now we’re not talking about a small number of real anti-Semitic acts. Those could have occurred if there were real anti-Semitic acts I’m against. I want to oppose ’em if we can accurately identify them. But what was happening was this kind of bonkers exaggeration, a conflation of militant anti-Israel and anti-Zionist critique, which it can be vulgar or sometimes simplistic and sometimes not very helpful, but it’s not antisemitism. And it became a kind of smokescreen anti antisemitism now that Trump administration is using to attack all these other things because it worked. I mean, for a while they were trying to use critical race theory and so on, but this antisemitism and for various reasons we can discuss that was a better smear.
Now the other question you raised that I’ll try to tackle briefly is just this, is it fascism? I’ve been in study groups where we go back and forth about this. Are we talking about fascism as a rigorous theoretical economic concept or is this fascism thing and a rhetorical advice because we want to sound the alarm or is it just an epithet? Everybody’s a fascist. Reagan was a fascist, Johnson was a Goldwater, everybody. And what does it mean if you call somebody a fascist? What does that imply in terms of your action? Joe Biden did not do any great favors when he called Trump a fascist. Then he smiles and hands the guy, the keys to the White House. Is that what you do when there’s real fascism? Some people would say that that kind of obscures the situation. So we have to be careful about these terms.
I don’t think rhetorical overkill will help things. But on the other hand, there is the resemblance to classical fascism and what’s going on in terms of a mass movement right wing, the usurp of political powers and so on. At the same time as I understand that there is a fascist aspect, this, and maybe it’s a kind of new fascism post fascism on the edge of fascism, probably it’s more like or band’s dictatorship over Hungary where he used economic coercion to undermine the universities, undermine the press, undermine everything. But one thing about this fascism cry, if we go back to McCarthyism, and Ellen knows this better than I do, they left and especially the communist movement said that was fascism. They said it was one minute to midnight and the communists, they did what you do when you think it’s fascism. They sent a layer of people underground.
They sent a whole leadership underground because that’s what you do when you’re facing fascism. And it looked bad. 1954, they had executed the Rosenbergs, they had the leadership of the party and a lot of the secondary leadership were in prison. Lots of people were being fired, terrible things were going on. And yet in 1955 in December, in the deep South, which is where things were much worse, the Montgomery bus boycott occurred under fascism supposedly September 19, I mean December, 1955. And in September 57, the Little Rock nine stood up and went to a school and faced down a mob and so on. And in 1960, the sit-in movement began. This is just shortly after we supposedly had fascism, and then of course 1961 of Freedom Rides 1964, the Berkeley free spoof free speech. We know this because some of us, we lived through all that. So if that had really been fascism as people were saying, then why did it disappear in this matter? And it was just a small number of people at first who fought against it. So we have to be careful about using that term fascism. I think it’s good to look at the comparison and gird ourselves, but we shouldn’t get too hysterical and think all us lost start leaving the country like certain professors at Yale have done. We have to gird ourselves through a tough fight. And there are a lot of ways we could wage this fight, which I’m sure we’ll get into in a future discussion.
David Palumbo-Liu:
Yeah, I mean, I would just say in terms of fascism, we think we can all agree to bracket it and refer to it because there are certainly fascistic elements in it. And the classic definition, or one classic definition, I suppose there are lots, a fascism is the collusion of the business in political classes. And you can see that precisely in Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, the intense privatization of everything in education, not just education, but any kind of public good. That’s the primary aim that Musk is driving for. And for Bannon, its immigrants. I mean, it’s a very racialized attack, feeding off America’s pretty natural racism and the attacks on brown and black people. And I’m thinking, I’m here for the list of, I’m here as a substitute, a last minute substitute for Cherise Bird and Stelli, and I urge everybody to read her book Black Scare Red Scare because she puts these two facets together historically beautifully.
But I think that’s this powerful conversions of these two things. And when it comes to universities, the fact that they’re attacking the funding, which is public funding, is emblematic of what we’re up against. And so that’s where I think I would like to respond to the fashion what we’re up against. It is massive. The other thing I would add simply because I’m here in Silicon Valley is techno fascism. We are dealing with an entirely different mediascape. So thank God for the Real News Network. It is all US alternative media. It is an incredibly important instrument in the fight against the mainstream media and Trump’s absolute mastery of playing that. So I think we have to understand the technological changes that have occurred to make the battle both more challenging, but also offer us different kinds of instruments.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I mean, there’s so much to think about in just these opening responses from you all, and I want to dig deeper into the historical roots of this moment. But before I do, I just wanted to go back around the table really quick and ask if you guys could just tell us a little bit about what this looks like from your vantage point. What are you and your colleagues, your students, your former students feeling right now? I mean, David, we had you on during the student encampment movement last year, Alan, I was organizing in Ann Arbor during the last Trump administration. Things have, the vibe has shifted as my generation says. So can you tell us a little bit of just what this all looks like from your sides of the academy right now?
Ellen Schrecker:
I’ve been retired now for, I think it’s 12 years. And so my normal was a campus that is very different from all other campuses in the United States. It’s an orthodox Jewish institution whose sort of cultural, what shall we say, politics is that of the Zionist, right? So I could not do any organizing on my campus, not because I was afraid of being fired or anything like that, but I just never would’ve had any students in my classes. So that was that. But what I’m seeing now is absolutely amazing. It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, they are really out for blood, but on the same time, the pushback is amazing. During McCarthyism, there was no student activity whatsoever, or if there was, it was secret. And I think there was some, and it was secret. And then all of a sudden the civil rights movement sort of burst into full flower.
And there was a realization, I mean I do agree with Alan on this, that the civil rights movement ended McCarthyism, no question about it. All of a sudden the political establishment had to deal with real problems, not fake communist subversion. So hopefully the moment will shift and people will begin to think about civil liberties and constitutional freedom and free speech just like the good old days of the 1950s. But it’s still very, very scary and it shows you that we are living and have been living longer than we knew with a very powerful state. And I think I’ll leave it there
Alan Wald:
In regard to anti-Zionist activity, it’s kind of an amazing development. I came to University of Michigan in 1975. I was involved then in the Palestine Human Rights Committee, all three of us. And it was a terrible struggle. We couldn’t even get Noam Chomsky permission to speak on the campus when sponsored by departments. We had to use other means and so on. So to see a massive, relatively large anti-Zionist movement is inspiring and it is fed by a new generation of Jews that is unlike my generation. There was a generation of young people who were thoroughly indoctrinated in Zionism after the 67 war throughout the late last century whose eyes were opened mostly by operation cast led and the events in Gaza in the early 20th century. And now they’re angry that they were lied to and they’re kind of the backbone. I mean, of course there are Palestinians and other students involved, but an important element are Jewish students who realized that they were deceived about what’s going on in the Middle East.
So that’s good. There’s also a big upsurge of faculty activism in areas not seen before. As Ellen has documented, the a UP was not very nice during the 1950s. It kind of disappeared. A UP is terrific today. I mean, I dunno might have something to do with the departure of Kerry Nelson, but the new president is wonderful and the chapter here is vital and vibrant. And also the faculty senate at University of Michigan, which was pretty dormant during my time of activist politics, is now playing a terrific role, has a terrific leadership, but it’s not much around Palestine, I have to say. That’s why I’m worried about that issue getting pushed aside. They’re very upset about what happened with DEI, diversity and equity and inclusion here at University of Michigan because just overnight without any real threat from the government, they just dropped it and pretty much forced out the director who’s now moving on to another position.
And so people are upset about that issue and the procedure used and they’re upset about the other threats, although we haven’t actually had the removal of faculty from programs like they did at Harvard’s one. But the Palestine issue is not that central. And some of the things related to it, like the new excessive surveillance, which I guess Maximilian didn’t experience, but there are cameras everywhere now on campus. I mean, you can’t do a thing without being photographed. People are upset about that. Those kinds of issues are mobilizing people, but I am worried about somebody being put under the bus and a compromise being made around Palestine rights and Palestine speech.
David Palumbo-Liu:
I’m going to take the liberty of answering the question in rather a fuller form because I might have to leave. So I want to get some of these points and sort of picks up on what Alan said. But to answer your question directly, max, how is it like at Stanford? Well, the Harvard statement gave everybody a shot of courage and it was great. I fully support it. However, I find it very deficient in all sorts of ways, even while admiring it. I’ll tell you a short anecdote to illustrate what I’m talking about. We had a focus group in the faculty senate and I was sitting next to this person from the med school and she said, well, yes, it’s horrible. Everybody’s talking about their grants being taken away. That’s the real surgeons of a lot of faculty activities. My grants have been taken away, so she said five of my grants were taken away, but two got replaced after I went through this application process.
So maybe that’s the new norm. And I said, well, only in baseball is batting 400 a good thing. And she said, well, I’m in ear, nose, throat, whatever. Thank God I’m not in gynecology or obstetrics. Then I’d really be in my grants. And I said, well, I teach race and ethnicity. What are you going to say about me not even be able to give a class much less? So I said to her, think of this as structural, not particular. It’s a structural attempt to take over, not just the university, but everything public. And that’s something I think we really need to drive home to folks, is that unless we see all these struggles interconnected, and that’s one of the big problems with the university is it’s not that we’re woke, it’s that we’re removed. We are not connected to human beings anymore. We’re connected to our, too much of us and our ones are connected to research.
And Ellen mentioned Jennifer Ruth, who’s a strong ally of mine. The day of action was amazing. This was a national day of action that was put on by the Coalition for Action in Higher Education. And it combined not only labor unions, but K through 12. And it had a vision of what we could do that far exceeded the, I will say it, selfishness of some of our elite colleagues in our elite schools who are just there to keep the money rolling. All they want is to reset the clock before Trump sort of mythical time that things were fine, but it was fine for them. And if they don’t understand exactly what Alan said and what we all think, if we can’t protect the most vulnerable of us, then we are leaving a gaping hole in the structure so that protect all of us. And so we can’t throw Palestinians, immigrants, undocumented folks, queer throat folks to the machine saying, well, we will appease you with these things and this is what happens under fascism. So I really want to encourage people to look, check out khi, check out the new reinvigorated a UP, thank God that it has partnered with a FT. These are the kinds of things that I think, if not save us, at least give us a sense of comradeship that we are doing something together that can be productive at whatever scale.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I want to go back around the table and hopefully we can get back to you, David, before you have to hop off for your next class. But we already started getting into this in the first round of questions, but I wanted to go a bit deeper and ask, when it comes to the state and non-state actors converging to attack the institutions and the very foundations of higher education, what historical precedents would you compare our current moment to, right? I mean, it doesn’t have to just be McCarthyism, but even if it is, what aspects of McCarthyism or what other periods do you want to point listeners to? And also what historical antecedents have laid the groundwork for the current assault on higher ed? So Ellen, let’s start again with you and go back around the table.
Ellen Schrecker:
Okay, well, the main thing about McCarthyism, which is sort of a classic case of collaboration of mainstream institutions with official red baiters at the time, now it’s official, what is it? Defenders of the Jews, thank you very much. It’s that collaboration. McCarthyism did it very cleverly. I don’t think they intended it, but they had sort of McCarthy as their straw man. He was up there, he was a drunk, he was out of control. He was making charges against innocent people. And so they would say, oh, McCarthyism is dreadful. And then fire three tenured professors, and we are seeing that, or we were up until, if you can believe it, Harvard, I have three Harvard degrees. I want you to know, and I thought I loved every minute of it and thought I got such a lousy education. You can’t believe it. But that’s beside the point. That’s not what you go to school for anyhow. You go to school to stay out of the job market as long as you possibly can. But anyhow, what we saw throughout McCarthyism throughout the 1960s, throughout going way back to the beginning of the 20th century, is that your private institutions are collaborating with the forces of what will be called political repression.
Political repression would not succeed in the United States without the collaboration of mainstream establishment institutions, the corporations. I’ve been starting to have bad dreams about Jamie Diamond Dimon the head of Citi Corp that he’s coming after me next and they’re going to close out my credit cards and there I’ll be standing in line in the homeless areas. But what we’re seeing is and have been seeing and is the American form of political repression, is that collaboration between mainstream institutions, including the mainstream media, Hollywood certainly going along with depriving the American population of access to information they need. I mean, that’s one of our functions as a force for resistance is to give people the intellectual ammunition to fight back. And I think everybody else here would probably agree.
Alan Wald:
My view is that in the 20th century there’s always been this collaboration, but it had a lot to do with foreign policy. As I remember the World War I period when they fired professors from Columbia and other colleges is because they were anti-war against the first World war. And during the Little Red Scare, 1939 or 41, it was because of the hit Hitler Stalin pack to the beginning of World War I and so on, which the communists were opposed to US intervention and the allies and so on. Then during the McCarthy period, again, it was reinforcing US foreign policy in the Cold War and during the Vietnam period when professors were fired, Bruce Franklin and other people were persecuted. Again, it was US foreign policy and now today around the assault on Gaza and support of the Israeli state, and again, it’s US foreign policy. So I see that as a very consistent factor and at every stage, community groups, businesses, and eventually the universities found some way to collaborate in a process even in the red skier, which I think is the most obvious comparison.
The government didn’t do the well, government fired it. It had its own subversive investigation in the government, and they fired a lot of people and forced a lot of people to quietly resign. That’s very similar to the situation today. But in terms of the faculty and other places, they counted on the universities to do the firing. They didn’t send many people to jail. They sent Chandler Davis to jail because of the contempt of Congress, but the others were fired by the university and the public schools and businesses blacklisted them and so on. So there was this kind of collaboration that went all the way. And of course they counted on the private sector to jump in certain areas and do their dirty work. All those are red channels. Those were private investigators. That wasn’t the government. The government may have fed them names, but today of course, we have Canary mission and we have other organizations that blacklist people and publicize their names and so on. And of course we have these massive email campaigns against universities having speakers like Maura Stein, if she goes to speak somewhere about being fired, thousands of emails will suddenly appear and they’ll try to cancel or some way change the venue of her speaking and so on. So this kind of pattern of interventions is pretty much consistent and it pretty consistently involves the state working with universities and businesses.
David Palumbo-Liu:
Yeah. Well, I think that you asked be at the beginning where you asked us all what’s going on campuses and what’s really striking a lot of fear of course is ice. And I think back to the Palmer raids, the Palmer raids, which were sort of the beginning of the justice Department acting as criminals and the whole idea of during the red summer, for example, and Max, this whole stop cop city, the Rico case being pressed against the protestors, right? This imaginary notion that they were all conniving together like mafia when the actual mafia is in the White House itself. So I think the whole capture of the Justice Department by the fascist state is what’s going to be one of the most formidable things because, and we’re pressing our universities, there are laws about where ice can go and where not, but they’re turning. They’re not making any public statements.
Some universities are giving sort of surreptitious, covert good legal advice to people who are getting their measles roped. But this is what’s appalling to me. No university leaders are really coming out and saying, no, dad, God damnit, this is illegal. I mean, they’re not speaking truth, and that’s what makes the whole enterprise shaky and vulnerable to assault. The more you push back, the Japanese called it, well with the trade wars, it’s extortion. You don’t pay an extortionist. Columbia tried it and failed miserably, and yet other are lining up saying, well, maybe in our case it’ll be different. And that’s sort of the definition of crazy when you keep on doing the same thing expecting a different result.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and that takes my mind to the antecedent question, right? Because we’ve mentioned the new leadership of the American Association of University professors. I myself just interviewed President Todd Wolfson on our podcast working people, and he talked about this, how the decades long process of corporatization and neoliberal about which you have all written, and Ellen’s written an entire book about this subject, multiple books in fact. But Todd pointed to how that process over the past four decades has contributed to making universities uniquely vulnerable to the kinds of attacks that they’re facing now, which is a bit different from the situation described in Ellen’s book about McCarthyism and higher education that I quoted in the introduction where Ellen, you mentioned that in the fifties this was a period where colleges and universities were becoming more dependent on the federal government, and so they were more vulnerable to the top down like power moves of the federal government at that time. So I just wanted to ask what that looks like now in the year of our Lord 2025 when I ask about antecedents. What are the sort of changes to the very structure of higher education that have led to universities capitulating to the Trump administration, like David was just saying, or not defending their students, not defending academic freedom as vigorously as we would expect them to?
Ellen Schrecker:
Well, we could start with the backlash against the student movement of the sixties, which was orchestrated in large part by certain right wing groups, within groups of billionaires and right-wing think tanks and groups of libertarian, sort of pundit types that are now becoming fairly well known within the academic community before they were operating secretly. Now, they can’t quite keep everything secret because a lot of smart people have been writing about this, and especially the key work here that I always push is Nancy McLean’s book Democracy and Chains, which really sort of chronicles the rise of these right wings, think tanks that are creating scenarios for how you take over a university and destroy it. And also of course, how you take over a legal system and destroy it and how you take over a political system and destroy it often through the use of hundreds of millions of dollars.
I mean, we are talking about very big rich people, many of them, shall we say in the oil industry. I mean, they’re protecting their interests and they’re doing a very good job of that. I have the feeling that Elon Musk just sort of sticks a intravenous needle into the federal Treasury and withdraws however much money he wants. That is always the image I have of how he’s operating. And so the federal government is incredibly important here in a way that it wasn’t in the 1950s, in the 1950s, they were just throwing money at higher education. This is a period that’s been called by many historians, the golden age of American higher education. Well, it was in a certain sense, but they sold their soul at the same time to McCarthyism. So we’re always looking at these amazing contradictions and trying to figure out, okay, what’s their next step?
Rather than thinking about what should be their next step? How do we fight back? How do we can’t go back to a golden age? There was no golden age. Let’s start there and say, how can we get something that is going to support a democratic system of higher education for everybody in America and then go on. We’re not. But unfortunately for the past 40 or 50 years, they’ve just been backpedaling. These higher education establishment has been seeding ground to the forces of ignorance, and now we’re stuck with having to fight back. And luckily we are fighting back, even if not necessarily in a way that we love, because seeding an awful lot of ground.
Maximillian Alvarez:
With the few minutes I have left with y’all, I want to talk about the fight back, and I want to ask y’all like what lessons we can draw from our own history, both the victories and the losses about what we’re really facing and how we can effectively fight it, and also what will happen, what will our universities and society look like if we don’t fight now?
David Palumbo-Liu:
Okay, so I’ll say add my two minutes and pick up actually from what Ellen said, because yes, it was the reaction to the student protest movements in the sixties that for one thing made student loans unforgivable. That was Congress’s little knife in the gut. But remember the trilateral commission that Samuel Huntington headed, and he actually published this scree called There’s Too much Democracy. And to answer Max’s point, my recommendation is to restore a sense of what democracy should look like. And that’s the only way to do that is not to stay in our ivory towers, but to draw the resources for democracy and instill the capacity for action in everybody and make it possible for everybody to see that nobody is immune from this. This is tearing down the common trust that we have with each other and substituting this oligarchy that is beyond scale. Thank you so much for having me on. I’ll let you continue your conversations, but it’s been such an honor and a pleasure to be with Ellen. And Ellen and Max, I’ll see you a bit.
Alan Wald:
Okay. Look, first of all, I think that Ellen’s making a good point about the no golden age. It’s not if the universities were terrific defenders of student rights during the 1960s. I was at Berkeley. I mean, when I arrived at Berkeley, the National Guard was occupying the city. It was not a very nice atmosphere. And even here at University of Michigan, I was involved in a 15 year struggle to stop divestment in South Africa and get a degree for Nelson Mandela, 15 years. It took us of constant protests and trying to get to the regents meeting which they would ban us from, or they’d move to secret locations and have a million excuses. Oh, we can’t give a degree to Mandela in prison. We don’t give it to prisoners. Of course, eventually they gave in and they did give it to him, but it took 15 years.
And I mentioned already the problem with Palestine rights on the campus arguing for that was hell. So it’s not been perfect. I mean, now they’re invoking all kinds of new rules and regulations about time and place and bullhorn use of a bullhorn that they didn’t have before, or at least they weren’t punishing people before. So it wasn’t so great. And in terms of university repression, yes, it’s much worse for the Palestine protestors for some other groups, eil their protestors, they seem to get away with all kinds of things. But in terms of responses, first of all, everybody is saying, we need unity. We can’t give in. If we give in, it’s like putting blood in the water. The sharks come after you even more. And I apologize to these sharks who are offended by comparison with the Trump administration. But yeah, so we all agree on that, but I am concerned about them giving in on this IHRA definition of antisemitism.
Everybody’s praising Harvard, wonderful, wonderful, but Harvard already agreed to that horrible definition and they set a precedent, and that’s going to happen at a lot of places. And that is the wedge that’s going to cut out free speech and free discussion. If you don’t know this definition, the International Holocaust Nce Association that’s being promoted by Congress and supported by the Trump administration and I think will become the law of the land for Adeem. You should look at it carefully because of the 11 definitions of antisemitism. Seven, refer to Israel. Now, anybody who does research on antisemitism and the US knows that most antisemitism is young men who get it from social media. They get these conspiracy theories and so on. There is very little antisemitism on the left. The left is involved in criticizing Israeli state racism. But in addition, these 11 no-nos for defining antisemitism say that if you call the Israeli state racist, you’re an antisemite and antisemitism is not on the campus.
So instead of refuting that claim that Israel is a racist state, which it seems that way, especially with their law saying that only Jews have self-determination and not Palestinians, and they have 60 or so laws on the books against Palestinians and Apartheid and so on, instead of trying to refute that argument, they’re just trying to suppress it. And they’re also trying to suppress any comparisons with Nazi Germany. Now, that’s not something that I myself do a lot, but you can’t have scholarship without serious comparisons. And there’s certainly good arguments that there are comparisons to be made. So they’re trying to silence these things instead of refuting them in intellectual debate. And once they do that and get that institutionalized, that’ll lead to a lot of other things. So we have to draw a line, and I think that’s one of the things we got to draw a line on the IHRA definition.
Ellen Schrecker:
I couldn’t agree with you more, but it’s really hard when I get up to talk to sort of stick it in there and make sure that I say, Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, this has to stop. But at the same time, I know there are people who maybe aren’t aware of Gaza. It’s too horrible. You can’t look at it or something. I don’t know. It’s a very hard issue to deal with because I know that people will stop listening to you. How do you talk to, you make alliances with people who don’t want to hear what you say when you have to make alliances with those people. I don’t know how to do it yet. I’m learning, but I’m curious. I would like to discuss that issue and probably argue with you about it a bit.
Alan Wald:
Well, I’m not sure where the argument is. I think that the pro-Palestinian rights movement has to be more disciplined. I much support what Jewish Voice for Peace does. That’s why I join them. I think that they’re focusing on Stop the genocide. Jews don’t do it in our name. That’s great. Some of the other groups that march around waving flags that people don’t understand the difference between a Palestinian flag and a Hamas flag. So they’re told it’s Hamas flag and they believe it, or they use slogans that are incomprehensible or mean different things. Or
Ellen Schrecker:
If
Alan Wald:
You put a bus sticker on somebody’s house because you want to show that that administrator’s a Nazi, people know that the Nazi sign is something that’s used to intimidate Jews. So it’s confusing. So there’s a lot of stuff out there that needs to be cleaned up. I think it’s just a minority that’s not acting in a way that says, what will convince people before you do something, what is going to win people over? So there are debates about where to draw the line. For example, Peter Byard, he came here to speak recently and he said, I believe it’s genocide, but if I use the word genocide, people, they’ll shut up. They won’t listen to me. They’ll put their hands over their ears. So I describe all the things that amount to genocide, but I don’t use the term maybe in some audiences you have to do that. Solidarity is not just showing your anger and showing your support, it’s also figuring out how to help people. In this case, we have to build a mass movement to get the Zionist state and the United States off the backs of the Palestinians so that they’re free to determine their own future and their own kind of leadership, which I hope will be a democratic and secular one, not a conservative right wing religious one like Hamas. But we have to get the US and the Israeli state off their backs first. And that means building a mass movement.
Ellen Schrecker:
I have been waking up in the morning reading the New York Times much too closely and feeling incredibly depressed, and recently I am somewhat less depressed. I can go right to my computer and start writing something. I can feel that maybe it’s going to make a difference because I’m seeing much more fight back against political repression that I, as a historian, and I’m speaking as a historian, never saw in the past in a similar situation. And I think that I used to sort of say, well, we must fight. We must have solidarity. But I’d never said, I have hope, and now I do have hope. I think we are on the upswing, that the forces of ignorance are now shooting at each other and shooting themselves in the foot and are beginning to really understand that they’re not going to win because nobody what they want. And that’s as simple as that. Thank you.
Alan Wald:
I don’t think I can add much, but one mistake Trump is making is he is attacking so many different sections of the society that we have the basis for a majority against him. I mean, he is firing all these people. He is screwing up the economy. He’s taking away healthcare. I mean, it’s not just the universities. So there’s an objective basis for a majority toe against him. We just have to find a way to do that.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I want to thank all of our brilliant guests today, professor Ellen Schreker, professor Allen Wald, and Professor David Pumba Liu for this vital conversation. And I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. Before you go, I want to remind y’all that the Real News is an independent viewer and listener supported grassroots media network. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t have ads, and we never ever put our reporting behind paywalls, but we cannot continue to do this work without your support. So if you want more vital storytelling and reporting like this from the front lines of struggle, we need you to become a supporter of The Real News. Now, we’re in the middle of our spring fundraiser right now, and with these wildly uncertain times politically and economically, we are falling short of our goal and we need your help. So please go to the real news.com/donate and become a supporter today. If you want to hear more conversations and coverage just like this for our whole crew at the Real News Network, this is Maximillian Alvarez signing off. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, solidarity forever.
In the town of Vallenar, in Chile’s Southern Atacama region, a group of families live in rows of striped circus tents, on the edge of the highway under a never-ending heavy sun.
Theirs is a life on the edge. Always on the edge.
They are Chilean — their ancestors arrived here more than a century ago.
And they are foreigners.
Somewhere in between. Always in between.
“Where are you from?” we ask.
“From everywhere,” they respond, in Spanish accents that carry in their cadence the spray of far away oceans and the chill of distant mountains.
When they are alone, they speak their own language, Romani.
A language carried with them, when they came with their belongings and their memories.
Some of their people have left behind their ancestor’s ways.
But not them. They are Roma and they will not give in.
In the day, the men work, and the women read palms, sell trinkets and give blessings.
Their young children are with them, in the shade on the edge of a busy gas station parking lot. One of the few for a hundred miles.
The locals walk quickly past. They try to avert their eyes, as if these women in colorful dresses, and their children, were as bright as the sun, or as dark as the night. Or a plague. Or a virus that might catch them up and carry them away, or their kids.
The locals grip their children’s hands. They hold their pocketbooks close. They skitter to their cars, locks their doors and drive away.
They are afraid.
They should be. These women carry the strength of generations fighting to survive. When they look at you, their eyes do not waver. They stare into your soul.
They carry weight. They carry truth, though they keep it hidden. Their gestures are smooth and defiant.
They speak magic passed down from parents and grandparents.
Real magic. Magic for the receiver. And magic that will also line their pockets.
They live in a world on the borders of society. On the edge. Their homes are malleable, like their lives — made of tarp and fabric.
They have to be. It is their means of survival. To dance on the edge of the acceptable. To give and to take. To defend their own. To hold on to their culture, their language, and their way of life.
To resist.
This is the 17th episode of Stories of Resistance. This project is co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times.
Tomorrow, April 8, is the International Day of the Roma, or Romani, people. It takes place each year to focus attention on the discrimination and marginalization of Roma communities across the world.
Stories of Resistance is written and produced by Michael Fox. You can support his work and see exclusive pictures of many of these stories on his patron.
In times of darkness, music has often led the way.
Shining light on the injustices.
Breathing hope into the cracks.
Denouncing violence and repression… authoritarianism.
Sometimes openly. Sometimes with messages hidden between the lines.
This was true of the music written in protest to the Brazilian dictatorship.
[Music]
March 31, 1964… the military regime rolls in with a US-backed coup.
The dictatorship will last for 21 years. Hundreds are disappeared. Thousands imprisoned and tortured.
But artists stand up.
Their music inspires.
[Music]
Like this song by Chico Buarque and Gilberto Gil. It’s called “Calise,” which means Chalice. But it’s also a play on words. Cale-se means “shut up” in Portuguese. Exactly what Brazilian authorities are telling those in opposition to their regime.
The words of the song are a sometimes subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle, critique of the dictatorship.
“How difficult it is to wake up silently,” Chico Buarque sings. “If in the dead of night I get hurt. I want to let out an inhuman scream. Which is a way of being heard.”
There are so many more songs like this…. Chico Buarque’s “A pesar de voce” — “Despite You” — is written as though it’s a fight between lovers. But really, it’s a vent about the dictatorship.
“Amanhã vai ser outro dia,” the song begins. Tomorrow will be another day.
Chico Buarque is exiled for 18 months. For a time, all of his songs are censored by the dictatorship. It’s the military’s means of silencing opposition.
Many musicians go into exile. Particularly those performing MPB, Popular Brazilian Music. Caetano Veloso. Gilberto Gil. Rita Lee. They are detained and jailed for weeks or months.
Brazil’s rock icon Raul Seixas is imprisoned and tortured for two weeks.
But still the music plays.
Still it rings on.
Still musicians write and perform… Geraldo Vandré, Gonzaguinha, Vítor Martins, João Bosco. Milton Nascimento. And so many more…
Their words are more important than ever.
Some musicians create pseudonyms when censors are on to them. Chico Buarque releases material under the name Julinho de Adelaide. The band MPB4 becomes Coral Som Live.
They are openly defiant.
“You cut a verse, I write another,” they sing in the song Pesadelo, or “Nightmare,” by composer Paulo César Pinheiro. “You detain me alive, I escape death. Suddenly, look at me again. Disturbing the peace, demanding change.”
Resistance is sometimes loud and aggressive. Sometimes, it is melodic and beautiful.
But it is always necessary in times of darkness.
Shining light on the injustices.
Breathing hope into the cracks.
Denouncing violence and repression.
Singing songs of hope…
On March 31, 1964, the Brazilian military carried out a U.S.-backed coup against the democratically elected government, installing a dictatorship that would last for 21 years. Hundreds of people were disappeared. Thousands imprisoned and tortured. But musicians stood up, singing songs that were a sometimes subtle — sometimes not-so-subtle — critique of the dictatorship.
The military regime responded by censoring songs, music and artists. Some, like Chico Buarque, went into exile. Others were detained, jailed and even tortured. But still the music played on. Still, artists found a way for their music to reach the people. Still, the music gave hope that “tomorrow would be another day.”
This is episode 14 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
This week, in remembrance of the anniversary of Brazil’s military coup on March 31, 1964, we are taking a deep dive in Brazil. All three episodes this week will look at stories of resistance in Brazil. From protest music, to general strikes against the dictatorship, to the Free Lula vigil in more recent times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
To mark this anniversary, Michael Fox created a Spotify playlist of songs written in resistance to Brazil’s military dictatorship. You can check it out on his Patreon: www.patreon.com/mfox. There, you can also follow Michael’s reporting, and support his work.
In the far northern reaches of Chile, there is a land surrounded by borders. Peru on one side. Bolivia on the other. It is a land where soldiers forced assimilation with the barrel of a gun. Embrace your Chilean identity, or die. Those soldiers came in waves, always in the wake of the sound of boots marching, guns firing, tanks rolling.
But the people here were more than Chilean. Their blood ran from rivers of the Andes mountains. Or from their homelands far across the ocean in Central Africa. They were Aymara and Quechua. Black, Peruvian, and Bolivian. They sang their own songs. And danced their own dances. First quietly, and then louder and louder.
They borrowed dances from the homeland of their people in Bolivia. They built folk groups to practice and perform. And they grew.
Today, the Arica carnival is known as the fuerza del sol — the strength of the sun. It’s the largest carnival in Chile. 16,000 performers dance in 80 different groups.
For three days, the drums ring. The instruments play. The dancers move through the streets in synchronized succession.
This carnival is an act of resistance. A celebration of multicultural identity. Of Indigenous roots. Of remembering and celebrating who they are.
“This carnival is a mixture of cultures where we all embrace with one objective. To maintain our culture viva — alive,” says Fredy Amaneces. He wears an elaborate purple outfit with a colorful headdress.
The carnival begins with a ceremony for Pachamama, Mother Earth. An Indigenous shaman on a working-class street corner lights a flame and says a prayer.
Each joyful step is an offering to their connection with the land, and their past.
“We dance with our hearts,” says Judith Mamani, in a yellow Cholita dress. “We sing with everything we have, because these are our roots.”
Each jump, each twist and turn, each movement, re-lives a story of the past. Each shout and song a revival of their ancestry. Each move a defiant promise that their culture and identity will only continue and grow.
Regardless of what may come.
Stories of Resistance is a new project, co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at www.patreon.com/mfox.
This story is based on reporting Michael did for PRX The World.
This story originally appeared in Waging Nonviolence on Nov. 4, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
This story was published prior to the election and updated on Nov. 6 to reflect the results.
It’s important we squarely face Trump’s victory and what there is to do about it.
Trump has already signaled the kind of president he will be: revengeful, uncontrolled and unburdened by past norms and current laws. I won’t go through the litany of awful things he’s pledged to do, since that’s been well-established with his words, Project 2025 plans and excellent analyses from authoritarian experts.
Looking into an even more destabilized future is not easy. If you’re like me, you’re already tired. The prospect of more drama is daunting. But authoritarianism isn’t going away no matter the election results. So here’s some thinking about ways to orient so we can ground ourselves better for these times ahead.
I am blessed to have spent time writing scenarios about what might happen, developing trainings for a Trump win and working alongside colleagues living under autocratic regimes. One of the things they keep reminding me is that good psychology is good social change. Authoritarian power is derived from fear of repression, isolation from each other and exhaustion at the utter chaos. We’re already feeling it.
Thus, for us to be of any use in a Trump world, we have to pay grave attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion or constant disorientation.
1. Trust yourself
I started writing this list with strategic principles (e.g. analyze your opponents weakness and learn to handle political violence), but actually the place to start is with your own self.
Trump is arriving at a time of great social distrust. Across the board, society has reduced trust in traditional institutions. Yes, there’s more distrust of the media, medical professionals, experts and politicians. But it extends beyond that. There’s reduced trust in most community institutions and membership groups. Whether from COVID or political polarization, a lot of us have experienced reduced trust in friends and family. Even our trust in predictable weather is diminished.
This is a social disease: You know who to trust by who they tell you to distrust.
Trust-building starts with your own self. It includes trusting your own eyes and gut, as well as building protection from the ways the crazy-making can become internalized.
This also means being trustworthy — not just with information, but with emotions. That way you can acknowledge what you know and admit the parts that are uncertain fears nagging at you.
Then take steps to follow through on what you need. If you’re tired, take some rest. If you’re scared, make some peace with your fears. I can point you to resources that support that — like FindingSteadyGround.com — but the value here is to start with trusting your own inner voice. If you need to stop checking your phone compulsively, do it. If you don’t want to read this article now and instead take a good walk, do it.
Trust all these things inside of you because trust in self is part of the foundation of a healthy movement life.
2. Find others who you trust
I promise I’ll head towards practical resistance strategies. But the emotional landscape matters a great deal. Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism”explored how destructive ideologies like fascism and autocracy grow. She used the word verlassenheit — often translated as loneliness — as a central ingredient. As she meant it, loneliness isn’t a feeling but a kind of social isolation of the mind. Your thinking becomes closed off to the world and a sense of being abandoned to each other.
She’s identifying a societal breakdown that we’re all experiencing. Under a Trump presidency, this trend will continue to accelerate. The constant attacks on social systems— teachers, health care and infrastructure — make us turn away from leaning on each other and towards ideologically simple answers that increase isolation (e.g. “distrust government,” “MAGA is nuts,” “anyone who votes that way doesn’t care about you”).
In extreme cases, like Chile in the 1970s and ‘80s, the dictatorship aimed to keep people in such tiny nodes of trust that everyone was an island unto themselves. At social gatherings and parties, people would commonly not introduce each other by name out of fear of being too involved. Fear breeds distance.
We have to consciously break that distance. In Chile they organized under the guise of affinity groups. This was, as its name suggests, people who shared some connections and trust. Finding just a few people who you trust to regularly act with and touch base with is central.
Find people you trust to meet with regularly. (What If Trump Wins/Elizabeth Beier)
Following Trump’s win: Get some people to regularly touch base with. Use that trust to explore your own thinking and support each other to stay sharp and grounded.
For the last several months I’ve been hosting a regular group at my house to “explore what is up with these times.” Our crew thinks differently but invests in trust. We emote, cry, sing, laugh, sit in stillness and think together.
I’ve written an agenda for such gatherings right after a Trump win that you can use.
All of us will benefit from actively organized nodes to help stabilize us. In a destabilized society, you need people who help ground you.
3. Grieve
No matter what we try to do, there’s going to be a lot of loss. The human thing to do is grieve. (Well, apparently humans are also very good at compartmentalizing, rationalizing, intellectualizing and ignoring — but the damage it does to our body and psyche is pretty well documented.)
If you aren’t a feelings person, let me say it this way: The inability to grieve is a strategic error. After Donald Trump won in 2016, we all saw colleagues who never grieved. They didn’t look into their feelings and the future — and as a result they remained in shock. For years they kept saying, “I can’t believe he’s doing that…”
An alternative: Start by naming and allowing feelings that come to arise. The night that Donald Trump won in 2016, I stayed up until 4 a.m. with a colleague. It was a tear-filled night of naming things that we had just lost. The list ranged from the political to the deeply personal:
“Trump will leave the Paris Climate Agreement and that means much of the world will soft pedal its climate plans.”
“Ugh, I’m gonna have this man in my dreams. We’re all going to sleep less and wake up to bat-shit crazy headlines each morning.”
“Trump’s gonna constantly attack immigrants — the wall may or may not happen, but he’s gonna raise the threshold for racism. I don’t think I can take it.”
“Friends I know who signed up for DACA are never going to trust government again.”
And on and on. It wasn’t only a list, but it was finding the impact inside of us of sadness, anger, numbness, shock, confusion and fear. We alternated between rageful spouts and tears. We grieved. We cried. We held each other. We breathed. We dove back into naming all the bad things we knew we’d lost and things we thought we’d be likely to lose.
It wasn’t anywhere near strategizing or list-making or planning. It was part of our acceptance that losing a presidency to an awful man means you and your people lose a lot. Ultimately, this helped us believe it — so we didn’t spend years in a daze: “I can’t believe this is happening in this country.”
Growing up my mom had a copy of the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” Notably, that prayer comes from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as he was watching the rise of Nazis in Germany.
Trump’s first day likely includes pardoning Jan. 6 insurrectionists, reallocating money to build the wall, pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, and firing 50,000-plus government workers to begin replacing them with loyalists. There’s little reason to believe that day two will get much quieter.
Under a Trump presidency, there are going to be so many issues that it will be hard to accept that we cannot do it all. I’m reminded of a colleague in Turkey who told me, “There’s always something bad happening every day. If we had to react to every bad thing, we’d never have time to eat.”
An elder once saw me trying to do everything and pulled me aside. “That’s not a healthy lifelong strategy,” she said. She’d been raised in Germany by the generation of Holocaust survivors who told her, “Never again.” She took it personally, as if she had to stop every wrong. It wracked her and contributed to several serious ongoing medical conditions. We can accept our humanity or suffer that lack of acceptance.
Chaos is a friend of the autocrat. One way we can unwittingly assist is by joining in the story that we have to do it all.
Over the last few months I’ve been testing out a terribly challenging tool. It’s a journaling exercise that invites you to reflect on which issues you’ll spend energy on. It asks: what are issues you’ll throw down on, do a lot for, a little for, or — despite caring about it — do nothing at all for? That last question can feel like a kind of torture for many activists, even while we’re intellectually aware that we cannot stop it all.
Unaddressed, this desire to act on everything leads to bad strategy. Nine months ago when we gathered activists to scenario plan together, we took note of two knee-jerk tendencies from the left that ended up largely being dead-ends in the face of Trump:
Public angsting — posting outrage on social media, talking with friends, sharing awful news
Symbolic actions — organizing marches and public statements
The first is where we look around at bad things happening and make sure other people know about them, too. We satisfy the social pressure of our friends who want us to show outrage — but the driving moves are only reactive. The end result wasn’t the intended action or an informed population. It’s demoralizing us. It’s hurting our capacity for action. Public angsting as a strategy is akin to pleading with the hole in the boat to stop us from sinking.
Symbolic actions may fare little better under a Trump presidency. In whatever version of democracy we had, the logic of rallies and statements of outrage was to build a unified front that showed the opposition many voices were opposed to them. But under an unleashed fascist — if it’s all you do — it’s like begging the suicidal captain to plug the hole.
Let me be clear. These strategies will be part of the mix. We’ll need public angsting and symbolic actions. But if you see an organization or group who only relies on these tactics, look elsewhere. There are other, more effective ways to engage.
5. Find your path
I’ve been writing scenarios of how a Trump presidency might play out. (You can read the scenarios written as a choose-your-own-adventure-style book at WhatIfTrumpWins.org or order the book.) The initial weeks look chaotic no matter what. But over time some differentiated resistance pathways begin to emerge.
One pathway is called “Protecting People.” These are folks surviving and protecting our own — especially those of us directly targeted, such as trans people, folks choosing abortions and immigrants. This might mean organizing outside current systems for health care and mutual aid, or moving resources to communities that are getting targeted. Further examples include starting immigrant welcoming committees, abortion-support funds or training volunteers on safety skills to respond to white nationalist violence.
Another pathway is “Defending Civic Institutions.” This group may or may not be conscious that current institutions don’t serve us all, but they are united in understanding that Trump wants them to crumble so he can exert greater control over our lives. Each bureaucracy will put up its own fight to defend itself.
Insider groups will play a central battle against Trump fascism. You may recall government scientists dumping copious climate data onto external servers, bracing for Trump’s orders. This time, many more insiders understand it’s code red. Hopefully, many will bravely refuse to quit — and instead choose to stay inside as long as possible.
Institutional pillars understand a Trump presidency is a dire threat. The military, for one, is well aware that Trump’s potential orders to use them to crack down on civilian protesters would politicize them permanently.
These insiders will need external support. Sometimes it’s just folks showing compassion that some of our best allies will be inside, silently resisting. A culture of celebrating people getting fired for the right reasons would help (then offering them practical help with life’s next steps). Other moments will need open support and public activation.
Then there’s a critical third pathway: “Disrupt and Disobey.”This goes beyond protesting for better policies and into the territory of people intervening to stop bad policies or showing resistance.
Initially a lot of that prefigurative work may be purely symbolic. In Norway, to create a culture of resistance during World War II people wore innocuous paperclips as a sign they wouldn’t obey. The symbolism is to build preparation for mass strikes and open resistance. In Serbia, protests against their dictator started with student strikes before escalating to strikes by pensioners (which were both largely symbolic) before finally escalating to the game-changing strike of coal miners.
In effective “Disrupt and Disobey” type actions the ultimate goal is paving a path for mass noncooperation: tax resistance, national strikes, work shut-downs and other nonviolent mass disobedience tactics — the most effective strategies to displace authoritarians. (Training on how to do that in a new Trump era can be found here.)
Lastly, there’s a key fourth role: “Building Alternatives.”We can’t just be stuck reacting and stopping the bad. We have to have a vision. This is the slow growth work of building alternative ways that are more democratic. It includes grounding and healing work, rich cultural work, alternative ways of growing food and caring for kids, participatory budgeting or seeding constitutional conventions to build a majoritarian alternative to the Electoral College mess we’re in.
Each of us may be attracted to some pathways more than others.
Myself, I’m attracted to “Disrupt and Disobey” — though I know when certain moments hit I’ll be pulled into some immediate “Protecting People.” I’m perhaps too impatient for most “Building Alternatives” and too unhappy with the status quo to do “Defend Civic Institutions.” However, I’m delighted others will do that work!
I’m reminded of another way of finding your role that comes from my friend Ingrid’s grandfather, who lived in Norway under the Nazi regime. He learned that the resistance was hiding people in the basement of a church near a cemetery. As a florist he already traveled to and from the cemetery — so he found a role smuggling messages in funeral wreaths, delivering them all over the city.
He didn’t go out designing his perfect role. In fact, I’m not sure he would have looked at the list of possible “roles” and found his political path. Instead, he found his space by circumstance.
In other words: Your path may not be clear right now. That’s okay. There will be plenty of opportunities to join the resistance.
6. Do not obey in advance, do not self-censor
The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times’ cowardly refusal to endorse a political candidate is, it appears, a classic example of self-censorship. Trump did not have to make a direct threat to these media outlets. Their own leadership told them to “sit this one out.”
Why? Because they wanted to stay safe.
If autocrats teach us any valuable lesson it’s this: Political space that you don’t use, you lose.
This is a message to all levels of society: lawyers advising nonprofits, leaders worried about their funding base, folks worried about losing their jobs.
I’m not coaching to never self-protect. You can decide when to speak your mind. But it is a phenomenally slippery slope here we have to observe and combat.
Timothy Snyder has written a helpful book called “On Tyranny” — and turned it into a video series. He cites ceding power as the first problem to tackle, writing: “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
Put simply: Use the political space and voice you have.
7. Reorient your political map
A few months ago I sat in a room with retired generals, Republicans like Michael Steele, ex-governors and congress people. We were scenario-planning ways to prevent using the Insurrection Act to target civilian protesters, playing step-by-step who would give the orders to whom and how the worst could be avoided.
For a committed antiwar activist, the phrase “strange bedfellows” doesn’t begin to describe the bizarre experience I felt.
I came out of it realizing that a Trump presidency reshapes alignments and possibilities. The bellicose, blasphemous language of Trump will meet the practical reality of governing. When you’re out of power, it’s easy to unify — but their coalition’s cracks will quickly emerge. We have to stay sharp for opportunities to cleave off support.
How we position ourselves matters: Are we interested in engaging with people unhappy with the regime — whether because they love the current institutions or are unhappy with Trump’s policies on them? Are we able to tell a story that explains how we got here — and do political education? Or are we only interested in maintaining ideological purity and preaching to our own choir?
Even if you don’t want to engage with them (which is fine), we’ll all have to give space to those who do experiment with new language to appeal to others who don’t share our worldview of a multiracial true democracy.
Empathy will be helpful here. I write all this with a particular moment in mind: At the end of the scenario day, we whipped around the room with conclusions. The generals said “The military cannot stop Trump from giving these orders.” Politicians said “Congress cannot stop it.” The lawyers said “We cannot stop it.”
I could see a lot of pain in high-ranking people of great power admitting a kind of defeat. I felt a level of compassion that surprised me.
Only the left activists said: We have an approach of mass noncooperation that can stop this. But we’d need your help.
I’m not sure that projected confidence was well-received. But if we’re going to live into that (and I’m far from certain we can), we have to get real about power.
8. Get real about power
In Trump’s first term, the left’s organizing had mixed results. With John McCain’s assistance, we were able to block Trump’s health proposal. Rallies proved less and less effective as time went on. The airport shutdowns showed that disruptive action can activate the public and helped pave the way for the court’s dismissal over the Muslim ban. But Trump was still able to win huge tax cuts and appoint right-wing Supreme Court judges. The narrative lurched, and sizeble chunks of the population have now been captivated by the “Big Lie.” It was elections that ultimately stopped Trump.
This time will be much harder.
The psychological exhaustion and despair is much higher. Deploying people into the streets for mass actions with no clear outcome will grow that frustration, leading to dropout and radicalized action divorced from strategy.
Trump has been very clear about using his political power to its fullest — stretching and breaking the norms and laws that get in his way. The movement will constantly be asking itself: “Are you able to stop this new bad thing?”
We’re not going to convince him not to do these things. No pressure on Republicans will result in more than the tiniest of crumbs (at least initially). We’re not going to stop him from doing these things just by persuasive tactics or showing that there are a LOT of us who oppose them.
It will be helpful to have a power analysis in our minds, specifically that’s known as the upside-down triangle. This tool was built to explain how power moves even under dictatorships.
The upside down triangle. (What If Trump Wins/Elizabeth Beier)
The central tenet is that like an upside-down triangle, power can be unstable. It naturally topples over without anything supporting it. To prevent that, power relies on pillars of support to keep it upright. Casually, the left often focuses on pillars of support that include governments, media, corporations, shareholders and policy makers. Describing the pillars of support, Gene Sharp wrote:
By themselves, rulers cannot collect taxes, enforce repressive laws and regulations, keep trains running on time, prepare national budgets, direct traffic, manage ports, print money, repair roads, keep markets supplied with food, make steel, build rockets, train the police and army, issue postage stamps or even milk a cow. People provide these services to the ruler though a variety of organizations and institutions. If people would stop providing these skills, the ruler could not rule.
Removing one pillar of support can often gain major, life-saving concessions. In response to Trump’s 2019 government shutdown, flight attendants prepared a national strike. Such a strike would ground planes across the country and a key transportation network. Within hours of announcing they were “mobilizing immediately” for a strike, Trump capitulated.
Another example comes from the recently deceased long-time activist Dick Taylor. In his book “Blockade,” he writes about how he and a tiny group changed U.S. foreign policy by repeatedly blocking armaments sent to support Pakistani dictator Yahya Khan. The ragtag crew sent canoes to block mighty military shipments leaving from East Coast ports until eventually the International Longshoremen’s Association was persuaded to refuse to load them. This broke the back of national policy.
For larger system change we have to look outside of recent U.S. organizing. A good place to start is with Waging Nonviolence’s recent interview series with folks sharing key lessons on fighting autocracies and aiming for system change.
In our country, pressuring elite power is reaching its end point. Power will need to emerge from folks no longer obeying the current unjust system. This tipping point of mass noncooperation will be messy. It means convincing a lot of people to take huge personal risks for a better option.
As a “Disrupt and Disobey” person, we have to move deliberately to gain the trust of others, like the “Protecting People” folks. Mass noncooperation does the opposite of their goal of protection — it exposes people to more risk, more repression. But with that comes the possibility that we could get the kind of liberatory government that we all truly deserve.
9. Handle fear, make violence rebound
Otpor in Serbia has provided an abundance of examples on how to face repression. They were young people who took a sarcastic response to regular police beatings. They would joke amongst each other, “It only hurts if you’re scared.”
Their attitude wasn’t cavalier — it was tactical. They were not going to grow fear. So when hundreds were beaten on a single day, their response was: This repression will only stiffen the resistance.
This is attitude.
They were also practical. They would follow their arrested protesters to jail cells and insist on making sure they were being treated well. They would target police who beat them up — showing up outside their houses with pictures of the people they beat up. Their call was rooted in the future they wanted: “You’ll have a chance to join us.”
Handling fear isn’t about suppressing it — but it is about constantly redirecting. One activist described to me two motions in the universe: shrinking or expansion. When Donald Trump directs the Justice Department to use sedition charges against protesters or arrest his political enemies like Jamie Raskin or Liz Cheney, what’s our response?
Activist/intellectual Hardy Merriman released a studied response about political violence that had some news that surprised me. The first was that physical political violence hasn’t grown dramatically in this country — it still remains relatively rare. The threats of violence, however, trend upwards, such as this CNN report: “Politically motivated threats to public officials increased 178 percent during Trump’s presidency,” primarily from the right.
His conclusion wasn’t that political violence isn’t going to grow. Quite the opposite. But he noted that a key component to political violence is to intimidate and tell a story that they are the true victims. Making political violence rebound requires refusing to be intimidated and resisting those threats so they can backfire. (Training on this backfire technique is available from the HOPE-PV guide.)
We can shrink into a cacophony of “that’s not fair,” which fuels the fear of repression. Or we take a page from the great strategist Bayard Rustin.
Black civil rights leaders were targeted by the government of Montgomery, Alabama during the bus boycott in the 1950s. Leaders like the newly appointed Martin Luther King Jr. went into hiding after police threats of arrest based on antiquated anti-boycott laws. Movement organizer Rustin organized them to go down to the station and demand to be arrested since they were leaders — making a positive spectacle of the repression. Some leaders not on police lists publicly demanded they, too, get arrested. Folks charged were met with cheers from crowds, holding their arrest papers high in the air. Fear was turned into valor.
10. Envision a positive future
Spend some time envisioning how we might advance our cause. (What If Trump Wins/Elizabeth Beier)
I don’t feel certain, and I’m not predicting we win. But we’ve all now imagined storylines about how bad it might get. We would do ourselves a service to spend an equal measure of time envisioning how we might advance our cause in these conditions. As writer Walidah Imarisha says, “The goal of visionary fiction is to change the world.”
In my mind, we’ll have to eventually get Trump out of office. There are two paths available.
The first: Vote him out. Given the bias of the electoral college, this requires successfully defending nearly all local, state and national takeovers of elections such that they remain relatively fair and free.
Winning via the path of electoral majority has a wide swath of experience and support from mainstream progressive organizations and Democratic institutions. It’s going to be a major thrust.
In my scenario writing I’ve explored what that strategy could look like, including preparing electoral workers to stand against last minute attempts by Trump to change election rules and even stymie the election with dubious emergency orders. They don’t obey — and go ahead with elections anyway.
The second strategy is if he illegally refuses to leave or allow fair elections: Kick him out. That means we are able to develop a national nonviolent resistance campaign capable of forcing him out of office.
I’ve written several versions of this: One where large-scale strikes disable portions of the U.S. economy. If you recall from COVID, our systems are extremely vulnerable. Businesses running “just in time” inventory means small hiccups in the system can cause cascading effects.
Sustained strikes would face deep resistance, but they could swing communities currently on the fence, like the business community, which already is concerned about Trump’s temperamental nature. Trump’s own policies might make these conditions much easier. If he really does mass deportations, the economic injury might be fatal.
In another scenario I explore another strategy of taking advantage of a Trump overreach. Autocrats overplay their hands. And in this imagined scenario, Trump overreaches when he attempts to force autoworkers to stop building electric vehicles. UAW workers refuse and keep the factories running. Eventually he’s unable to stop them — but in the process he’s publicly humiliated.
A very public loss like this can cause what Timur Kuran calls an “unanticipated revolution.” He noted many incidents where political leaders seem to have full support, then suddenly it evaporates. He gives as an example the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79. “None of the major intelligence organizations — not even the CIA or the KGB — expected Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime to collapse. Right up to the revolution, they expected him to weather the gathering storm.”
Kuran’s analysis reminds us to look at Trump’s political weakness. Political hacks like Lindsay Graham appear to be sycophants — but if given the chance to turn their knife in his back, they might. This means exposed political weaknesses could quickly turn the many inside Trump’s campaign against him.
That feels far away from now. But all these remain possibilities. Practicing this future thinking and seeing into these directions gives me some hope and some strategic sensibilities.
On the days when I can’t sense any of these political possibilities (more than not), I zoom out further to the lifespans of trees and rocks, heading into spiritual reminders that nothing lasts forever.
All of the future is uncertain. But using these things, we’re more likely to have a more hopeful future and experience during these turbulent times.
CORRECTIONS 11/6/24: Hardy Merriman’s name was incorrectly spelled. And the quote from Otpor was mistated as “It doesn’t hurt if you’re afraid.”
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Sep. 19, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
Every day I encounter, in some form or another, the idea that everything is doomed to always get worse. Faced with a daily inundation of horrors and political bad news from around the world, it’s easy to slide into feeling that nothing can change and that no actions we can take make a difference.
But we have to resist this feeling, because this is the mindset of nihilism — it’s what authoritarians want us to feel. Their power thrives on our exhaustion and silence.
I often wake up and fall asleep unsure of my own ability to truly face this world as it is, in the fullness of pain and grief, in the obscene cruelty of a genocide aired on social media. I watch fascist leaders on TV making light of others’ pain and bragging about being strong men, hypocritical liberals claiming empathy while funding destruction.
I protest and write and collaborate and read, looking hopefully to literature and science fiction for a sense of a better future, or at least a more deliciously imagined one. But every day I also contend with nihilistic ideas, the worry that people are set in their ways, the fear that nothing can change for the better.
This is the work of media overwhelm and attention saturation, the constant feed of outrage mixed with frivolity, without suggestions for action or connections to others. The current media landscape, and the trend toward believing that everything is always getting worse, can create a feeling that nothing we do makes any difference. We cannot let this work on us.
Daily inundated with pulls toward nihilism, I stay hopeful through a careful practice, a careful focus on what matters. Here are five things keeping me hopeful right now.
1. The Elders
I have been listening to The Nerve! Conversations with Movement Elders, a podcast of the National Council of Elders that pairs young activists and organizers with elders who have been in the movement since the 60s or 70s. In the most recent episode, elders Frances Reid, Loretta Ross and Barbara Smith joined with younger activists Nautica Jenkins and Hannah Krull to talk about voting and national politics.
“No Black person has ever had the luxury of relying on the Supreme Court for our liberation,” said Ross, a longtime southern Black organizer, responding to questions about recent devastating Supreme Court decisions. “We never fell for that okie doke … it’s people’s power that decides how people’s human rights are upheld and respected.”
The elders throughout this podcast series assert that we need multiple tactics, long-term visions and also short-term strategies to improve immediate conditions. They discourage activists from getting broken down by infighting or seeking political perfection over effective action. And they discourage us from thinking of ourselves or our moment as special.
“One of the sayings from the civil rights movement that I was told,” Ross said, “was that we’ve got to stop thinking of ourselves as the entire chain of freedom. Because the chain of freedom stretches back towards our ancestors and stretches forward towards our descendants. We just have to make sure that the chain doesn’t break at our link, do not give up because of apathy or being so sure that we’re right that we’re not willing to question what we’re doing, or how we’re dissuading people from being active.”
2. The Young People
It’s easy to slide into feeling that nothing can change and that no actions we can take make a difference…. It’s what authoritarians want us to feel.
At the Socialism 2024 conference in Chicago this September, I heard members of the youth antiwar organization Dissenters speak about their practices of international solidarity.
A lot of the ambient “kids-these-days” talk is about how young people don’t know about organizing for power, or are obsessed with superficial and siloed forms of identity politics, or are apathetic. Anyone who believes that would change their minds if they took the time to listen to youth organizers like these speak about global imperialism. Three Dissenters — Christian Ephraim, Rubi Mendez and Josue Sica — reported back on their recent delegations to Cuba, the Philippines and Guatemala, giving detailed analyses of the lessons about the force of U.S. imperialism and the power we have to challenge that from the belly of the beast. They drew parallels among anti-imperialist and workers’ struggles around the world, connected U.S. support for dictatorial leadership abroad to U.S. support for the genocidal Israeli government, and provided specific action steps for supporting struggles in each country.
Meanwhile Peyton Wilson, the communications organizer for Dissenters who moderated the panel, called on everyone in the room to stop being despairing and instead “join an organization.” The message felt disciplined, old-school, inspired and fresh. I thought to myself, imagine being born after 9/11, into a society of mass shootings and endless war and climate catastrophe; coming of age as Donald Trump was voted into office; going out into the world just as the Democrats served up another four years of half-baked policy; and deciding that the only option is to acknowledge your relative privilege and access and keep on fighting with everything you’ve got. It put hope in my bones to see and feel this — not naïve optimism, but a refreshing sense of responsibility.
3. Small-Scale Organizing Works.
In my capacity as the Abolition Journalism Fellow at Interrupting Criminalization, I work with a lot of incarcerated writers, and we often do flash call-ins and protests over censorship, clemency campaigns and retaliatory actions taken against our folks in prison. These abuses range from shutting people in rooms without AC during the hottest Texas summers to “sentencing” people to indefinite solitary confinement without due process. While not every one of these campaigns is successful, a surprising number are — when prisons target people with additional forms of punishment, they are also assuming the outside world won’t pay any attention. Just this year one of our folks finally emerged from years of solitary confinement; another accessed necessary health care; another had major advances in her case for freedom, all with the support of small but strong outside campaigns.
As incomplete and sometimes unsatisfying as they are, each success like this should be celebrated. They show people inside that they are not alone, and they show prison officials that they are being watched. They lead to concrete change and raise consciousness about the inherently abusive nature of prison itself. Phone blasts, emails, petitions — they make an actual difference and they strengthen our networks of resistance. Participating in small-scale actions like this reminds me to focus on what I can do where I am, right now.
4. Our Movements Are Changing the Conversation.
We are still witnessing a genocide in Palestine. We are still watching as people are churned and cycled through criminal legal systems in the U.S. We are still watching the acceleration of climate catastrophe as most of our leaders walk the deadly road of “compromise” on the Earth’s future.
Practicing hope means paying attention to what is possible, and planting ourselves in the places where we can help those possibilities grow.
But we also can’t and shouldn’t deny that our movements for justice are changing the conversation. Take trans people — currently a scapegoat and pariah of right-wing activists. I’m not happy to be in the crosshairs, but the reality is that we have cracked open a universe of possibility with our movements for trans liberation, showing people that gender is a constellation rather than a binary, influencing health care providers and educators and social services to expand and accommodate us, insisting on more expansive languages, and sensitizing the general public to the routine violence against us, particularly against trans women and Black and Brown trans people. There is immense vulnerability that comes with these successes, and it will take disciplined solidarity to stem the tide of the attacks on our communities. And still, we should not deny or ignore that we have, through organizing, changed the conversation about trans bodies — and therefore about all bodies — permanently.
In recent years, our movements have worked unexpected wonders in carving out space in the public conversation for abolition, and for mutual aid, and for just economic futures that see beyond capitalism. We have also moved the public in the U.S. significantly on Palestine; in spite of an aggressive and persistent pro-Israel propaganda campaign perpetuated from the very top levels of power in this country, a majority of U.S. adults support a ceasefire in Gaza and disapprove of Israel’s violence in the Gaza Strip. A Harvard Kennedy School survey this spring found that young people support a permanent ceasefire by a 5-to-1 margin. Led by Palestinians, U.S. solidarity actions have generated meaningful change in the conversation — although we have yet to exercise our power to stop the genocide. Building that power requires us to steadfastly recognize and build upon those wins. To ignore them only cedes more space to those who would have us give up hope.
5. Joy and Humor
In The Nerve podcast, Loretta Ross recalled a mentor of hers when she was young advising her to “lighten up.”
“You should have joy and pleasure from being on the right side of history,” he told her, “not anguish and despair. Let the other people have that.”
Joy is not just icing on the cake or the purview of the privileged. It is an exercise in hope that has always been rigorously practiced by people facing impossible situations of oppression. Laughter, pleasure and small acts of connection are precisely where we find our power — and the soul fuel that makes it possible to go on.
Hope isn’t a feeling or a firm belief that things will go our way; it is, as Mariame Kaba often says, a discipline. Practicing hope means paying attention to what is possible, and planting ourselves in the places where we can help those possibilities grow. These acts may be as simple as putting a pen to paper, picking up a phone to call or venturing into the streets to protest. Grief and even despair may overshadow us some days. But wallowing in hopelessness is exactly what they would have us do, those who would break the chain of freedom. Our actions, even in the face of apathy and overwhelm, are just links in the chain.
While Maximillian Alvarez was inside the Labor Notes conference this past April, attending panels and sharing space with intelligent, hard working organizers, Mel Buer was wandering the conference grounds outside, meeting folks and talking about the joy of being a member of the working class as they sat in the grass and ate their lunches and talked with friends, old and new. There’s something to be said about the people you meet when you’re sharing cigarettes outside a conference center–one such person was today’s guest, adorned in UFCW buttons and sharing his poetry with Mel while they smoked together on a bench near the conference. On this week’s episode of Working People, Mel sat down with labor poet and union grocer George Fish, a wonderful man full of stories about his life and work, his experiences growing up and ultimately leaving the Catholic Church, his politics–honed through decades of life experience–and his relationship to his writing and poetry.
Studio Production: Mel Buer Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mel Buer:
Hey everybody, it’s your host, Mel Buer, and welcome back everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, dreams, jobs, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership with In These Times magazine and The Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you.
Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. If you love what we do and are looking for more worker and labor-focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network, and please support the work we’re doing here at Working People because we can’t keep going without you. Share our episodes with your coworkers, friends, and family members. Leave positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and reach out to us if you have recommendations for working folks you’d like us to talk to. And please support the work we do at The Real News by going to therealnews.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world.
I first met George Fish at the Labor Notes Conference in April where we shared a cigarette break outside of the conference hotel and talked briefly about what it meant to us to be part of the labor movement. The energy of the conference was incredible, and the optimism surrounding such a gathering was truly infectious. Before he went back inside to attend the conference, George shared with me some of his poetry about working in a union grocery store. Fascinated by his work and his life experience I shared my contact information and thus began the journey of getting him onto the show. For this episode, we had an interesting conversation about his life, his work as a freelance writer, and his current work as a unionized grocer. At the end of the conversation, George was kind enough to read one of his poems. Welcome to the show, George.
George Fish:
I’m George Fish. I’m a published writer and poet. I also work as an essential worker in the produce department at Kroger here in Indianapolis, Indiana, also known as Indianoplace, the World’s largest county seed. And I’m active in my union, UFCW Local 700, the Indiana Mega Local. I’m in Essential Workers for Democracy. And I view myself as a Gramscian organic intellectual. I didn’t go into my job to organize the working class. I went into my job because I needed a paycheck, and I’m very glad I published two poems so far in Blue Collar Review, the Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature. I have a wonderful editor there, Al Markowitz. By the way, you can look it up, Blue Collar Review is out of Norfolk, Virginia, and it’s an honor to use my poetry to reach my fellow workers, and I’m also reaching my fellow workers on my jam right now because our contract comes up in a year. We got a very pro-company contract and a lot of people are dissatisfied, so I’m trying to organize people to talk about the contract, so in a year we can get a better one.
Mel Buer:
Great. Welcome to the show. I think a great way to just start off this short conversation is to talk a little bit more about your work at Kroger, and your work with the UFCW. When did you start organizing with the UFCW?
George Fish:
Actually, I never started organizing. I got a job there very late in life in 2015. I had applied at Kroger many times before and almost got hired in the late eighties, but didn’t need to hire basically because I was considered too “introvert” according to their personality tests we had to take, but they needed people in 2015, and I got hired, and once I was in the union… By the way, on my first day of orientation, I joined the union and have been an active member since, and being with…
And about a year, a year and a half ago, I got in contact with Essential Workers for Democracy. We were very dissatisfied with our 2022 contract, which a lot of us found great pro-company, and it passed on two votes, the first vote it got roundly rejected, but the union insisted on another vote, saying that only fewer than 10% of those eligible to vote have voted on it. The second time it went through, but 40% voted against it, so there’s a lot of good basis for opposing that contract among my fellow workers, justifiably, and I’ve talked to my fellow workers, they’re concerned about pay, about COLAs, about more time off, about paid sick days, other matters too.
So, I’ve been talking to my fellow workers, just low-key, and following the advice I heard from Labor Notes of 80% listen, 20% talk, which I don’t always do, but getting to know my fellow workers. And I think I’m well regarded there as a union activist who has good things to say, and I hope to encourage them because the contract still weighs weight, and Indiana and Indianapolis do not have a tradition of activism, but we need it. And part of what I feel why is important is letting my fellow workers know that they are the union, it’s not the union rep. By the way, we have a very, very good union rep, a black woman. She doesn’t take any guff from management.
And it’s not the officials, and it’s not the international union officials, it’s not the stewards, it is us, the rank and file. And I think that a lot of people have taken inspiration from what the Teamsters and what the UFCW were able to do because they had a rank-and-file voice. And that’s what I’m trying to do within the UFCW. And I’m proud to be a union member, and I’m very glad to be a union member because I have protections that I worked… I worked 14 years in non-union shops as a temp, and, of course, had no rights. And we always dreaded they’d say, “Management wants to talk to you,” then they dress you down, and dismiss you from your job. And if you were lucky, you got unemployment compensation. If you weren’t lucky, you didn’t. But I’ve got this job security, and I tell you what, unions are a working man or woman’s best friend.
Mel Buer:
I agree. Yeah. I didn’t have union representation until I started this job at The Real News. The difference between the work I was doing in non-union shops or teaching or working as a freelance journalist, it’s night and day, and I really appreciate the ability to be able to have a bit more say in how the workplace runs and to be respected for that. So, I definitely appreciate the union difference here, and I’m glad that you have also noticed that. We met outside of Labor Notes, sharing a cigarette, and you had showed me some of your poetry, and you have just described yourself as a Gramscian intellectual working-class poet. When did you start writing poetry? What inspired you to start writing?
George Fish:
Actually, I had for a long time wanted to write. I wanted to be a writer. Unfortunately, I had an alcohol habit, so I was drunkenly talking about writing instead of really writing. Back in the fall of 1980, I was in my early thirties. I was in forced sobriety for lack of money, and I actually wrote a short story to get published, and I was so excited that I started pursuing it from then on. And then, in 1984, had my first article, In These Times, that was followed by an article Monthly Review. So I started writing for the National Left Brass. I worked on a staff of a small magazine here in Indianapolis.
I started poetry, Christmas Eve 2004, I was in an angry mood from my ex-Catholicism, and I wrote a bunch of very angry irreligious poems just as therapy, and then put them aside and looked at them two weeks later and saw that a couple of them really worked out. So then, I started pursuing poetry and published my first poem in 2007 in the Indianapolis area-based Tipton Poetry Journal. And I’ve had about 30 poems published nationally, mostly in small Indiana publications, but also in the website, New Politics, and also, Blue Collar Review.
So I combine both working and writing, and unfortunately, writing doesn’t pay anymore, so I have to keep my day job at Kroger, where I’m a produce stocker, and I’m an older worker. I’m now in my late seventies, and I can’t afford to retire because of a poor work record for 38 years, so I don’t get that much in social security. But I do get a small pension for the union, and thanks to the union, which even though I was still working, contacted me, says, “You eligible for this pension.” So I was really grateful for the union, making sure that I got my pension money before I was too old to receive it or dead, and so I’m glad for that. And my wages, unfortunately, make up 69% of my income, so I still have to work.
It’s a physical blue-collar job. I’m on my feet eight hours a day, heavy-lifting of 50-pound bags of onions and potatoes, 30-pound bags of onions, 40-pound boxes of bananas. But it gets tiring, and as long as I can hold up to it, I’ll do it because, unfortunately, there is so little social safety net, even for the elders, that should I be too old to work, I would have such a drastic drop in income that I would really be hurting. So, I combine all three and write whenever I can because writing is my lifeblood. It gives me a sense of wanting to live, and be a part of life, and contribute. And I’m glad to say a lot of people like my writing. They like my ironic sense of humor. You see, I have a sardonic sense of humor. That’s because I have a million one-liners. I keep them so tense like sardines. Yes, I make a pun out of anything. So, I came late in life, but I’m glad, and it’s good to be alive after a rough, rough time growing up.
Mel Buer:
Yeah. Do you explore any of these experiences working at the age that you’re working, or the experiences that you’ve had in just in the last 30 years of your life? Are these some of the themes that you explore in your poetry?
George Fish:
Not yet. My poetry can be very eclectic. I’ve written a lot of things. Basically, yes, they’re all explored indirectly. I had a hellish childhood, being raised Catholic in small towns, a lot of it that was in the Pope Pius, the 12th era, was before Vatican II, and I became an atheist at 18 when I entered college. By the way, I have a Bachelor’s in economics from IU Bloomington, Indiana University Bloomington. But I explore it indirectly because I write a lot of irreligious poetry that my good ex-Catholic friend, that John has said, is theologically correct. So it’s highly irrelevant, but yet it’s theologically correct because I get back at the Catholic Church by skewering on them with my poetry. But you’ve given suggestions on more topics I can write about.
My first poem in Blue Collar Review is based on a true story of an encounter with an obnoxious manager at Kroger, that inspired me to write a poem. And like I said, I was encouraged by Blue Collar Review editor, Al Markowitz, who is a very helpful editor and always takes the time to give you a personal letter of critique if he doesn’t accept something or he wants to change. He’s very good in that realm, and I’m glad to say that every writer really benefits from a good editor.
Mel Buer:
I agree. My editor is here at The Real News, and the editors that I’ve worked with over the last, oh, 10 years or so, are really the reason why I improve, frankly. I know that I’m going to give you time at the end of the episode to read a selection from one of your poems, but I really of want to drive home some of the other themes that maybe you work with, so we’ve already talked about traumatic upbringing within Catholicism. I am also a born and raised Catholic, and grew up in the Catholic Church, probably had quite a different experience than you did, but still walked away from my relationship with that faith at a younger age, in the last 10 years or so.
George Fish:
You’re a lot younger, I can tell by looking at you. You’re a lot younger. You’re a lot younger than me. I’m usually old enough to be your father, if not your grandfather.
Mel Buer:
Yeah, I’m 32. Yep. But I went to high school in the Catholic Church, so I graduated into… I was 18 or 19, and then I went to a Catholic Jesuit University for two years in Colorado, so it was just… I don’t know, natural progression into the various stages of education that is controlled by the Church, and then fell out of it quite quickly, and also had struggles with alcohol and found there was no room for both faith and my addiction at the time. And so, I don’t know, I felt left behind by God and I used to write poetry about the same stuff. You get angry when you grow up in a faith like that and you find that your life circumstances don’t quite match up with what is supposed to happen or what you think is supposed to happen.
And so, I can understand wanting to write back to that. And I think that poetry specifically has this unique characteristic where you can start and have those conversations with the pieces of your life that you are most affected by. And I was wondering, are there other moments in your writing career in the last 30 or so years where you found that writing has particularly helped with, whether it be the alcohol, or the questioning of your faith, or other moments in your 30 years?
George Fish:
Yes, important. When I started writing seriously on a regular basis, I was writing for a number of small magazines that had deadlines. It helped me overcome my horrible previous habit of procrastination because editors just didn’t mess around when you didn’t make deadlines, so it got me off… It helped me break through procrastination because I had to meet deadlines. I had to be good fast, and I think it helped me learn to be good fast because I was an active freelance writer-journalist who had to produce something every week or every month and had to do it, so I did it. You don’t want an editor scorned on your back.
I want to thank you for sharing. We have a very similar parallel experiences. I also want to say that because of my writing, my writer’s biography is in Who’s Who in America for both 2019, 2020, that I know of. So, everybody check that out at the library, and I’m very glad that writing has given me my Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame, so if I may be egotistical or individualistic on that regard, but every writer, when I think about writing, writing is a very egotistical business because when you’re a writer, you have the chutzpah to believe that what you have to say is so well written and so incisive and so interesting that total strangers will read you. Yeah.
Mel Buer:
Yeah. What are some of the things that you did write about, and you said you got published in In These Times and other publications locally and elsewhere, what was the focus of your journalism beat?
George Fish:
Lots of things. I would be assigned articles by my editors in the magazines. I wrote on things, I wrote for many left publications, Indiana themes. I wrote about how the Indianapolis Colts extorted the city to pay for an expensive stadium. That was the Colts Extortion Board. That article I wrote for Against the Current. I wrote a lot on Indiana issues because that was your Indiana publications. When Indiana signed a Religious Freedom Act that discriminated against gays, I wrote a poem about that, and that was published in New Politics. So, I’ve combined my political and other interests with my poetry and writing, and not just political interest, I also wrote a poem that was published, T.S. Eliot Was Wrong, which starts out with the famous epigraph from T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land, “April was the cruelest month,” and I write that, but T.S. Eliot was wrong, very wrong. Although his language is vivid, picturesque, I say, “April was not the cruelest month. January is because January is cold and freezing and flu season.”
I write on a lot of different themes, but a lot of irreligious themes and a lot of political themes. And I’m a great lover of blues music and punk rock, and also classic rock and roll, including 1950s rock and roll. And I have a special fondness for early ’62 to ’65 Beatles because I think the Beatles did some of the greatest teeny-bop ever been done in rock and roll, early Beatles song. I don’t want to be just a one-dimensional person. I’m more than just a one-dimensional political walk. I just want to be as fully engaged in life as I can, and I’ve been successful at it so that I’m not just a jack of all trades and a master of none. As my old academic advisor, IU Bloomington, he said, and I quote, “Knowledgeable and unusual variety of activities, and that’s wonderful.” Thank you. Yeah.
Mel Buer:
Yeah. Do you ascribe to a certain type of leftist politics? Is there a specific ideology or political tradition that you find you identify with?
George Fish:
Well, for a long time, I was part of the Trotskyist far left, but now I consider myself a social Democrat, a democratic socialist in the sense of Michael Harrington, the left wing of the feasible. I think what’s important now, and of course, as I get older, it becomes more important because I know that my days on this planet are numbered. I want to see results in the here and now for me and for my fellow workers. And one of the big issues that concerns me, of course, is the Republican threats to social security and Medicare, which had my age, 77, I rely on.
But, yes, I would consider myself right now an anti-authoritarian democratic socialist, social Democrat. I was very, very enthusiastic about Bernie Sanders’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, and wrote an article in New Politics praising Bernie Sanders 2016 candidacy when he announced it in 2015 and started a discussion on that going on in New Politics. So, basically, I think revolution is a will of the wits, I don’t think it’s going to happen, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do things to make our lives better in the here and now, and that’s what my politics is about now.
Mel Buer:
I tend to agree, pragmatic politics at this current moment.
George Fish:
And that was one of the things always so exciting about the Labor Notes Conference this past April 19th to 21st, is that it’s obvious now to me that the left wing of the labor movement is now a mainstream part of the labor movement. It’s not a fringe. It’s when 4,700 union activists from all over the country gather in one spot, you know you’re not a fringe. You may be a minority voice, but you are an important voice in the labor movement itself now, which is so different from the old Meany-Kirkland AFL-CIO I remember.
Mel Buer:
I was going to ask, in the last couple of years, there is this resurgence of… Not just in the popularity of, or I would say positive thinking about labor organizing, but also the new organizing and a… Oh, I don’t know, it’s like the clouds broke and the sun came out for the first time in a long time. What is the most exciting thing based on your experience of unions in the past and what we’re seeing in the last couple of years? What is the most exciting thing about seeing this resurgence in labor activity?
George Fish:
I think in the emergence of the organization active in Essential Workers for Democracy, taking a cue from what was done in the Teamsters and the UAW and trying to democratize a very top-down union, the UFCW, which represents over a million people and a lot of in the groceries and food processing who really need good unionism. And I think that’s been an honor to be able to participate with EW for the Essential Workers for Democracy and the good people who are involved with it, who are seasoned union militants, mostly on the West Coast, especially in the UFCW mega local, Local 3000, which represents Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, but also strong base in California. And we are all over the country, even in the Midwest, which lacks in activist culture.
Mel Buer:
Yeah, I see a lot of what UFCW 3000 is doing here on the West Coast because I’m based in Los Angeles currently. And it’s really exciting to see that not just the UFCW, but other unions are taking on this inspiration of creating reform movements inside of unions. They care so much about the way the union operates and they want to see it improve. They want this to be a new generation of union activists who are participating democratically within the institution of the labor union. And I think that is a really exciting piece of the new era of union organizing, this more modern era of union organizing.
George Fish:
Oh, yes, in for a long haul, it took a long time for UAW, for democracy, to win, but it did with Shawn Fain, it took a long time for TDU, Teams for Democratic Union, to make a difference, but it did. And one man, one vote, which encourages the rank and file to participate, and as I said before, it’s… Give us a sense that we are the union, it’s not the officials, it’s not the union rep, it’s not the stewards, it’s we ourselves, the rank and file, and when we have a voice, we really feel empowered to make a difference in our unions I feel.
Mel Buer:
Absolutely. Well, we’re getting to the end of our conversation, but I did want to give you time to… I would say we probably have time for one poem, or one selection from one of your poems. Which one would you like to read, and go ahead when you’re ready?
George Fish:
I would read my very first one, which is a show one, it’s only one page based on a true story that happened to be at Kroger in 2021, during the time of COVID when we had to wear mask and my mask inadvertently came… Wasn’t on my face that I got chewed up by a manager, and then a non-union shop would’ve gotten fired for what I did, but had protection because there the union, and was in Blue Collar Review in the spring of 2022. It’s called, I’m so glad I’m working in the union workplace.
Mel Buer:
All right, go ahead.
George Fish:
This was especially given home to me during the height of COVID when upset because the heavy box on an ill-stacked pallet nearly fell on my foot. I was so upset I forgot to pull up my face mask. It was on my face, attached over my ears, but in my upset, I’d forgotten to pull it up. Was obnoxiously reprimanded it by obnoxious assistant manager, and I blew up angrily in his face, in a non-union workplace, I would’ve been fired, perhaps some, barely. Instead, rather than have to face that assistant manager the following day, I simply went to the store manager and requested a personal day off, which was granted because the ability to do so was part of the union contract. Going home, I immediately applied through the union for a month’s disability lead, which was also granted. In the meantime, the nasty assistant manager was forced to take a vacation, and when I came back to work a month later, not only had I calmed down, he had too. He wasn’t hassling me any longer as he had, and even more beneficially, I had a job to return to. That is what union protection is all about. Ensuring you don’t pay through the nose for an inadvertent mistake by getting fired for.
And that is the poem I read to great satisfaction and appreciation at the Great Labor Arts Exchange, at the Labor Notes Conference, and I’m very proud of that all.
Mel Buer:
You should be. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about your writing, to talk about your poetry, and it’s been a joy talking to you, and I’m really glad that we finally, after a couple of months, got a chance to sit down and really discuss what makes your writing and your life experience unique. So, thank you so much for coming on, George. I really appreciate it.
George Fish:
Great. Appreciate it. And please send me an email with the link to the video so I can share it with others.
Mel Buer:
Absolutely. And as always, I want to thank you all for listening, and thank you for caring.
We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon and check out the awesome bonus episodes we’ve got going there for our patrons. And go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network, where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for The Real News newsletters so you never miss a story, and help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today.
Once again, I’m Mel Buer, and we’ll see you next time.
Cats and dogs. Truth and lies. Substance and spectacle. The second presidential debate of the 2024 election, and the first between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, took place on Sept. 10. In stark contrast to the first debate, which put the final nail in the coffin of the Biden candidacy, Trump was clearly on the defensive in this round. Yet with the candidates neck-and-neck in the polls, it seems unlikely that this debate will meaningfully swing voter opinion in favor of Harris. Maximillian Alvarez, Marc Steiner, Stephen Janis, and Alina Nehlich respond.
Studio / Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome, everyone, to The Real News Network podcast. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News.
Stephen Janis:
My name is Stephen Janis. I’m an investigative reporter at The Real News.
Alina Nehlich:
My name’s Alina Nehlich, and I am an editor here at The Real News and co-host of the Work Stoppage podcast.
Marc Steiner:
I’m Marc Steiner, host The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And it is so great to have you all with us.
Now, before we get going today, I want to remind y’all really quick that The Real News is an independent, viewer- and listener-supported grassroots media network. We don’t take corporate cash. We don’t have ads, and we never put our reporting behind paywalls. Our team is fiercely dedicated to lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle around the world. But we cannot continue to do this work without your support, and we need you to become a supporter of The Real News now. Just head over to therealnews.com/donate and donate today. It really makes a difference.
All right, well here we are. It is Wednesday, Sept. 11. Last night, former President Donald J. Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris met in person for the first time in Philadelphia, where they squared off in their first and possibly only debate in the 2024 election season.
Early polls taken over the past 24 hours suggest that the majority of viewers felt that Harris delivered the winning performance. And given the openly vented frustrations from the Trump campaign surrogates and the jubilant spin from Harris surrogates, that is certainly the narrative that has begun to crystallize after the debate.
Harris’s campaign said today that she was open to a second debate in October, but Trump said he was “less inclined to do another debate.” So this may very well have been the one and only time the country will get to see the two candidates that they’ll be voting on in less than two months debate on stage.
There were so many storylines going into this high-stakes debate, and there are lots of storylines coming out of it. And our whole Baltimore-based team was here at The Real News Studio last night watching the debates live. We’ve been furiously discussing as a team how we’re going to be moving forward from the debate with more on-the-ground reporting on the election between now and November.
But before we all rush back into the field with our cameras and microphones, we wanted to get some of our team together here on The Real News podcast to break down the debate itself. And I’m so excited to have my colleagues Marc Steiner, Stephen Janis, and Alina Nehlich on to tackle this beast.
So I got tons of thoughts. I know you guys do too. Let’s dive right in. All right, so I want to go around the table here, and we’re going to put our pundit hats on. Not something that we normally do —
Stephen Janis:
No, we don’t.
Maximillian Alvarez:
…Here at The Real News. Of course, we’re focused on-the-ground reporting. And just as a constant disclaimer, I want to remind everyone The Real News Network is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit news outlet. We are not here to tell you how to vote. We’re not here to electioneer, but we are here to give you the information and perspective you need to act. So that is the frame in which we are going to be having this discussion.
I want to go around the table and start by having us give our pundit reflections on the debate itself and the expectations that we had going into the debate. What were we going into this debate looking for, and what were some of the key takeaways that stood out to us? Stephen, let’s start with you.
Stephen Janis:
Well, I think everyone went into this debate wondering if Kamala Harris could perform in a national forum like that against Trump and distinguish herself to the point where she could actually move the needle a bit. I do think that was what people were looking for, and I do think she delivered on that. Clearly, by all accounts, by the snap polls, by the punditry that we listened to, she won that debate decidedly on that.
But I think what’s going to be the interesting question going forward, will that actually matter? And if it doesn’t matter, what does it say about the dynamics of this election? Because, in some ways, when you watched it, it was like watching two different realities never intersect. She was making points, and Trump was making points, but neither really seemed to be situated in a reality that was cohesive or coherent.
So I think it’ll be interesting, very interesting to watch to see if this really changes any people’s minds. That’s what my question would be.
Alina Nehlich:
Yeah, I think that that’s pretty correct, Stephen, with at least what most people were expecting. I know that some of us, or I should say that some people maybe more on the left were watching to see what the expectations were going to be surrounding the responses from the more liberal side of the electorate and just see the way in which things were going.
And also to what extent Kamala was going to keep moving right. Because what we did see was lots of war hawk talk and anti-immigrant sentiment. And so I guess we were kind of expecting that, but we definitely got plenty of it. Not only from Trump, which we definitely expected, but we also got plenty of that from Kamala.
Marc Steiner:
Well, I think that she came in strategically equipped. She was talking to the undecided. She was talking to the middle of the road. She was there to make Trump look like a fool and lace it with a little bit of policy.
But really, I think strategically, having lived through a lot of politics and run a bunch of campaigns as well, when you’re prepping somebody for a debate, you focus on what the weak point of the opposition is, and you go after it. And that’s what they did. She was there to make him look stupid and not prepared and unpresidential. That’s what she did.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and to take a step back even further. Going into the debate. This was something that we discussed a lot here at The Real News Network, Stephen, you and Taya Graham were at the RNC in July.
Stephen Janis:
Yes, we were.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And we were talking about just how much the political scene has changed since you guys were in Milwaukee less than two months ago.
And let’s think about what you guys were going into. We had a plan. We had a plan for your coverage going into the RNC, and then two days before it started, someone tries to assassinate Donald Trump. It was a really intense moment for all of us. I can really only imagine what it was like for you and Taya to be in there at that moment when the fervor, post-assassination attempt fervor was so intense, and it had, as you described in one of your pieces, a religious kind of tone to everything.
So you had that. And out of that moment where Trump survived, his supporters were effusive with praise, and it really felt like, compared to the decaying Joe Biden, that this race was over. There was an act of God tipping the scale for Donald Trump. It was in that haze that I think he made the pick of J.D. Vance for his vice presidential running mate. And I think he regrets that a lot.
So since then, again, Biden dropped out, Kamala took over the ticket. Her momentum has been surging. She picked Tim Walz as her vice presidential candidate. The DNC was in August. Democrats had somehow, in the span of a month, managed to retake the momentum that felt so unshakably in the control of Trump and the Republicans.
Stephen Janis:
I think one of the things that, watching the convention up close, is that Trump, his drama, his dramatic hold on our attention depended a lot upon Joe Biden and Joe Biden’s inability to offer anything appealing or any sort of visual contrast or even ideological contrast, because Biden was not a very good communicator at this point or ever really was.
And when you’re at the convention, there was this dystopian vision of American life. It was a constant drumbeat of things like inflation and crime, without any policy whatsoever.
And I think the Trump campaign had based its entire strategy on the aesthetics of Trump somehow being stronger, invoking fear, and then having this very… I mean, let’s say, I don’t want to use the word feeble, but that’s kind of what… Feeble old man, and what happened to them.
Of course, as you point out, when he showed up with the bandage on his ear, there was an ecstasy in that room that was very unsettling in some ways. Because it wasn’t really attached to any political reality, it was more a rhetorical statement.
But then when Kamala comes in, suddenly that contrast in the aesthetics and all that dynamic shifted in a second. And suddenly, as we could see last night in playing this out last night, Trump looked old, mean, bitter, and somehow disconnected from reality. So that’s a really good point, Max.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and I just wanted to, again, remind folks about how much has actually shifted since the last debate.
Stephen Janis:
Oh my God.
Maximillian Alvarez:
There’s a constant knee-jerk assumption that we all make, and that people we know make, which is that the debates don’t matter. People who support Trump are going to keep supporting Trump, people who support Biden are going to keep supporting Biden. Then the debate at the beginning of this summer happens, and the result is Biden drops out of the race.
The result was seeing an open revolt with the party elite. The donor class, the media class rebelling against Biden staying on the ticket. That’s a significant thing to happen in a presidential race, but it’s already… It’s old news at this point.
And that is the other part that I wanted to mention going into the debate. What I was looking for and what I was thinking about was, what I was really fascinated by is that over the past two months, it feels like Donald Trump has become victim of the very things, the very qualities of the internet age that have catapulted him to his success and his star power up until now. The very things that have a allowed Donald Trump to thrive as a political force in the internet age have been biting him back over the past two months.
And the two examples I would give is one, Trump has always thrived on the fact that the internet age has conditioned us all to have the long-term memory of goldfish. And he weaponizes the insatiable pace of the 24-hour news cycle to constantly just generate new headlines with the crazy stuff he says, the crazy things he’s doing in office, the crazy accusations that he’s making. And since 2016, the media and the political class have never really figured out how to deal with that, how to counter that. But Trump is a creature of the internet in that way, and he knows how to swim in those waters, and it’s helped him so much over the past eight years in the Trump era.
And yet he forgot that lesson when the assassination attempt happened. He thought that that vibe that you were feeling in the RNC, Stephen, was going to carry him all the way through November. And something as consequential and historic as an attempted assassination on a former president, current presidential candidate, that shit got memory hold in a month, less than that. People forgot. People stopped caring, and Trump doesn’t know what to do with that. But so he’s a victim of the thing that made him a success. In the same way that Trump as the internet troll, as we all know how great and adept he is at the art of trolling, he picked JD Vance as his vice presidential ticket, and then the internet just had a field day with that. And they’ve been trolling him left and right and ridiculing Trump, Vance, and Democrats had pounced on the sort of, these guys are weird messaging, and stoking the internet meme machine that has been attacking Trump and the Republicans.
I don’t think Trump knows what to do with that quite yet because he spent the whole of August complaining about how Biden should have to get back on the ticket because he was an easy opponent. Right? And so going into this debate, I was like, “How is Trump going to attack?” Because I think he’s got a lot of pent up rage and aggression, of course. But he’s also shown a lot of vulnerabilities in the past two months. So that was also what I was going into. And the last thing I’ll say, because I’ve been talking a lot, is we knew that this debate, for all the reasons we’ll talk about in a few minutes, was going to be a carnival-esque display of capitalist politics crafted in the capitalist spectacle of horrors that …
Again, we all know what’s wrong about this system, what’s wrong about the election, the way we talk about elections and all that kind of stuff. So we knew it was going to be a carnival-esque display, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t going to be a consequential one. Just like the last debate, this debate could have had and may still have real ramifications for the shape of this election and the fate of the country that hangs in the balance. And so I want pick up on that and ask if we could focus in a little more on the debate itself in our impressions of how Trump and Harris handled themselves with all of that leading up into the debate itself.
Alina Nehlich:
Well, speaking a little bit to what Stephen was mentioning with the RNC and Trump being a strong man in contrast to Biden’s more feeble, or however you want to phrase it, position in the election. I think that what we saw in the debate was Kamala trying to take that strong person narrative and use it against Trump in that same way. I mean, I believe at one point, she even called him weak on things. I mean, there’s always this, “I’m tougher than you.” And it’s really interesting how the Democrats have gone in that direction compared to … Maybe I’m still a little young in that I’ve only seen what five elections in my lifetime, but I don’t always think of the Democrats as the, “I’m the strong person,” compared to the Republicans. And the fact that that is now Kamala’s take, was surprising to me. But also looking at the way that, as you were saying Max, about the very short attention span of people, they do want to just have an image in their head.
I think that even part of the purpose of this debate was to put Kamala up there on stage and remind people that this is the candidate in a certain sense. Sure, I bet some people have seen press conferences, maybe some people have seen clips of her rallies. But I don’t know if they really had a true mental image of her as the potential president and her being up there on stage with the camera and her looking nice in the suit and all that. It really did actually give that kind of presidential look. And I think that that was another major purpose of the debate itself, along with just the interesting change in the way that the rhetoric is going from the Democrats.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And just a quick note on the Democratic posturing outflanking Republicans by being more Republican than they are. It’s been a back and forth thing. But yeah, it was really in the early ’90s when the new Democrats with Clinton … After getting their asses whooped by Reagan and Bush, Democrats were really soul-searching. And the answer they came up for was let’s out-right the right and be tough on crime, and let’s kind of build … take the gun out of their hands because they’re always calling us weak, and yada, yada, yada. And so for my lifetime, it’s been a back forth between trying to position themselves as the more compassionate side, the more progressive side. While at the same time as Alina was saying, I’ve witnessed at first as a conservative who grew up in the first 20 years of my life, and now as the lefty nut job you see before you. Right?
I’ve seen the ways that Democrats have jockeyed for position to establish themselves as the more, the stronger, no BS, tough on crime … I mean, the party that could simultaneously say, “We are the compassionate party that wants to have the most lethal fighting force on the face of the planet,” kind of thing. And so it was just really arresting to me to watch on the debate stage, all of that political maneuvering, all of the policy decisions, all of the messaging campaigns that have had real harsh, real world impacts for working people culminate in the thing that Democrats wanted to get out of that, which was taking out of a Republican candidate’s hand the ability to say, “Well, you guys are soft on the border. You guys are soft on Gaza.” And Kamala could say, “No, we’re not. I love Israel more than you. We’re stronger on the border than you. My husband and I … or my running man and I are gun owners.” And then that’s it. Is that what it was all leading to, just like that rhetorical, “Nope, you can’t get us there, so we win,” kind of thing.
Marc Steiner:
I think what you said is true. I think it’s also more complex than that. I think that because being someone who’s a deep believer in dialectics, there’s an intertwining of things here. And so first of all, take into account that we’re living in an America at this moment where a Black woman, a Black Asian woman is running neck and neck, if not a little bit in front to be president United States in a country with a deep racist past. We might live on politics and the intricacies of that. Most people don’t. People look at this very symbolically. They look at it as, look where we’ve come. Look what’s happened. I mean, think about our country historically. We had a civil war. We had reconstruction that destroyed everything they fought for in the Civil War and began lynching of Black people and disenfranchising Black folks in the south.
And after reconstruction, we had the Civil Rights movement and all the pushback from the right and the right and a large part of the white world against everything we fought for in civil rights. And I say we, because that was me. And now you’re seeing this complexity up there. When Kamala Harris is up there, she was … And I’m not talking politics at the moment. I’m just talking about what people take in. Here was this woman standing solid, strong, taking on this big white fat buffoon, and she wiped the floor with him. And so yes, I mean, that has something to do with the complexity of how you appeal to people in America. So why did Teddy Roosevelt win? Because he came off as a badass, “I’m a bull moose. We’re not going to take anything from anybody.” That’s why he won. That’s not all of America. That’s part of America.
Stephen Janis:
Obviously Harris was much more competent, right, than Trump as a debater.
Marc Steiner:
Absolutely.
Stephen Janis:
Okay. And so it’s been a mystery in me the past four years because as leftists or people who lean left, we’ve seen a lot of progressive legislation. We’ve seen a lot of progressive ideas actually become reality under the Biden administration, but it hasn’t affected the electorate at all. And that’s what I’m wondering about the debate. Obviously Harris was more competent, did a better job. But it will change people’s minds in the sense that they seem inured to any sort of policy? The Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act. All these things have been implemented in a much less neoliberal way and more … well, some of them are market-based. But some of them, like Infrastructure Act or the Inflation Reduction Act are much more traditional, leftist, progressive, let’s say.
But it doesn’t really … and Marc, I don’t know or Max or anyone can weigh in on this, it doesn’t seem to connect with people. Everyone thinks everything is miserable, and Biden’s done a horrible job in the economy. And yet, what we would want as progressives to see happen, happened, and even we don’t like it. So it just makes me wonder whether the debate matters in that sense.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I think it’s a great question. It does speak to the spectacle of the debate itself. And I think this partially answers the question. Right? I mean, but it’s something we talked about after the RNC and the DNC, right? These are spectacles manufactured for the camera. They are politics-made symbol at its highest point. It’s politics made for the camera. And the same is true for the debate stage. Marc, you mentioned the image, the symbolism, and the impact that that has on people. Let’s not forget that television, like the first televised debate swung that presidential election away from Nixon towards Kennedy. Nixon looked sweaty.
Marc Steiner:
I watched it. I did watch it. [inaudible 00:23:25].
Maximillian Alvarez:
So you can testify, right? I mean, Nixon was not ready to be on TV and glow and shine through the way that Kennedy did, and that had a major impact. And so I mentioned that just to mention that in terms of stage managing the spectacle and the symbolic value that people project onto that, and that’s projected back at us, is almost its own thing.
Stephen Janis:
Max-
Maximillian Alvarez:
Divorcing policy.
Stephen Janis:
Just one thing. [inaudible 00:23:52]. Marc, I’m sorry, but Marc, you can answer this. Oh, I’m sorry. Oh my God. But just quickly, I want to throw this question out. Nixon got in trouble for being a little sweaty, and yet Trump was insane. Why does that-
Marc Steiner:
Different era.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh yeah, our country’s gone …
Stephen Janis:
Sorry, I just wanted to ask that question. I apologize.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh, no. We got decades of insanity that have compounded from that moment on. But yeah, but Trump still, again, he’s able to … he’s a product of that same lineage that itself has gone through decades of evolution with the transition to 24-hour news cycle, cable TV, reality TV, streaming, the internet. So I think you can connect a through line to Donald Trump today to Nixon 60 years ago. But I think that the media environment, our expectations, the ways that politicians have played to the debate and to the television and the ways that has shaped the very politics that our two-party system bases itself around. There’s a whole … don’t worry. We can have a whole long discussion about that, but at another time. I guess the point I was just trying to make though is that in terms of the symbolism and the spectacle of these debates, they almost operate on their own terms, divorced from policy in the political reality that we all live in.
There is some semblance of a connection, but it’s almost like a production that we have to analyze on its own terms. And I wanted us to just hover there for a second because on the terms of the debate that we all watched, I think to extract some of the key points that we’ve offered here, Kamala Harris went in prepared. Like Marc said, she had a key objective there, which it seemed apparent to us that she achieved. My two cents in watching that is that where she was most effective as a debater was baiting Trump and distracting him. I don’t think she nailed a knockout punch against Trump because you just don’t do that against Donald Trump. He’s going to keep going no matter what. He’s going to keep talking even if he sounds like an idiot. That’s his strength. This will just keep going and move past it.
But what she managed to do with all of these traps that she laid, calling him weak like Alina said, mentioning his crowd sizes, mentioning people in his own party who have called him out as a failure, mentioning world leaders around the country who he’s a disgrace. Right? She knew each time she mentioned those, that the next time Trump got to speak, he was not going to address whatever he was asked to address. He was going to go back to the insult or the thing that he took as an insult, and he did every single time. And so what that did was it distracted Trump from being more of an attack dog against Harris and the Biden-Harris record. And so in that way, she was a success on the debate stage, but it’s … again, it was more of evading the kill blows from Trump and keeping and knocking him off kilter, making him look like more of a buffoon.
But in terms of articulating a positive vision for the country, in terms of really hammering home what Harris and the Democrats are going to do to address the things that Trump was speaking most directly to, like people’s pain in today’s economy and the inflation squeeze that all of us have been feeling, things like that, this narrative of national decline. I don’t know personally how well she parried that, with the exceptions being when she talked about abortion. And I mean, that was honestly the main one. Yeah, her message on the economy was still, I mean, she mentioned the small business thing 800 times, but I don’t know, what do you guys think?
Alina Nehlich:
I guess when it comes to … and I’m sorry if I’m jumping ahead of other people here.
Marc Steiner:
You’re not. Go ahead.
Alina Nehlich:
I was just thinking about the kind of spectacle nature that you’re talking about and how it was a question is, how can Trump be so divorced from reality? Not to give Kamala way too much credit, but she’s at least a little bit more grounded than Trump. You think, you look at what is happening on the internet today, it’s just loads of memes. It’s whether it’s be the silly, the ridiculous pet eating story, or the one where Trump’s like, “Kamala’s letting trans people get gender-affirming care in prison,” which is fine and good if it was real. And that’s why some of the memes are out there being like, “Wow, so trans people are now trying to go to prison to get these things that were promised to them by Donald Trump.” And I mean, I think some of those memes are a little distasteful for a couple of reasons. But I do think that the fact that the memes are going around, that is emblematic of what this whole thing is really about.
Marc Steiner:
I think most people in America, most people period everywhere on the planet, are not into the intricacies of policy. They’re just not into the intricacies of policy at all. That’s not their lives. They know what they believe, what they think is right and wrong. And you had Kamala Harris there talking about … She didn’t come into detail. You talked about opportunity economy. She talked about reproductive freedom in America. She talked about making housing more affordable, things people can relate to. She didn’t have to point out, “This is how I’m going to do it. I’m going to give X number of people houses.” But what she did was articulate a vision that appealed to people’s gut. And that she was talking last night to the undecided voter in America, to those in the margins, to those who will make a difference in who wins this election.
My take on this, what happened last night, it was a very savvy, strategic move on the part of the Democrats and Kamala Harris, the way they handled the debate. And she came off tough as nails. And we’re in a world now where a tough black woman, I know she’s Black and Asian, but a tough Black woman in America was anathema to this country. It’s not the same anymore in terms of the visceral reaction people have because America’s changed. It is changing, not changed. It’s changing. And so the old White Way is not the only way in America that people look at. And I think that she played into all that. If there was a real left alternative in America, it’d be different there. There isn’t. Most of the left alternative is either inside the Democratic Party, inside the burgeoning labor union movement. They’re not in any coalesce group. We don’t have an NDP like Canada has. So I think people saw in her somebody who is fighting for them and not for the corporate interests, viscerally speaking.
Stephen Janis:
To your point, Marc, I mean the left has been very harsh on Biden. And a lot of the programs that have been passed, I mean, were not cohesive because we don’t really seem to fixate on execution and competence. And that’s the thing. I mean, she was much better, obviously a master debater compared to Trump. But I just wonder if three or four days down the road now and the polls are still the same, what do we conclude from that? Where are we? Is it because the left isn’t embracing this candidacy, or is it something else?
Marc Steiner:
We’re a divided nation. And we are a deeply divided nation. Since the Civil Rights movement to the anti-war movement, to the organizing that happened in the ’60s, politically and with unions, there was this right-wing surge, and they are a powerful force.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I want to round us out by of talking about that. How much do we think this debate is going to matter in the election?
Stephen Janis:
Good question.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And let’s also throw our pundit hats off for a second and put our reporter hats back on. Given the work that we do every week, police accountability report, work stoppage working people, the Marc Steiner Show, I want us to round out by also talking about what and who was not being represented on that debate stage or in election. And how should our audience and regular people out there navigate it? So that’s where we’re going. But by way of getting there, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say, let’s at least go around the table and talk about our best favorite crazy moments from the debate last night, because there were many, and I’m sure listeners who want to hear be all serious all the time.
So what were some of the most ridiculous standout moments for you guys? I mean, we’ve already … I guess we took the most ridiculous one, so no one can use that. But Trump just farting out of his mouth this right wing conspiracy theory bullshit about undocumented migrants like eating people’s pets. It’s just nuts. It really spoke to what you said, Stephen, about how for one moment we got to see these two alternate versions of reality sharing the same space, but they’re barely even talking to each other. They’re barely, if at all, on a shared terrain of reality.
Stephen Janis:
Let me just go first because someone takes my … and I’ll make it very quick. I just thought the handshake moment was fascinating because Kamala comes out and just forcefully puts out her hand.
Marc Steiner:
Walks to him.
Stephen Janis:
And walks to him. And we talked about spectacle symbol. I thought that was highly symbolic more than anything else, because she just demanded that … because that was always a tradition, that candidates would shake their hands. Look, we all have different views and left, right, whatever, but we do want to see people be civil. We all want some civility. And the fact that she went out and made that statement in gesture showed that I think she was not to be trifled with. So that was my moment.
Alina Nehlich:
Okay. So I already mentioned those two, so I’m not going to talk about the two that I brought up before. But I think that one of the moments that that really stuck out for me was when Trump said, “I’m speaking to Kamala,” because that was just wild. So see, especially with the basically near pro-genocide rhetoric that was going on on the debate stage for Trump to call out that moment, which was based in a rally where Kamala was trying to stop anti-genocide protesters from voicing their demands and saying, “I’m speaking.” And then to see Trump do that, I don’t know. I thought that that was very funny to me in a ironic but also horrible way.
Marc Steiner:
It was so many jabs and barbs that she threw at him that he just didn’t know how to respond to. I mean, when she said, “81 million people threw you out of office.”
Maximillian Alvarez:
No, she said, “81 million people fired fired Donald Trump.”
Marc Steiner:
Fired. Fired.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I’m sorry, fired. She very specifically used that word.
Stephen Janis:
That was brilliant.
Marc Steiner:
He came out, “You’re fired,” from his TV show, and 81 million people. That’s right. Right, exactly. I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right, Max.
Stephen Janis:
That was brilliant.
Marc Steiner:
I think what happened in this race at the moment because of the debate is that it gave the Harris-Walz ticket a boost, and it pushed them ahead. I think viscerally, people liked watching what happened. Americans like seeing [inaudible 00:35:51] ass kicked. I mean, they do. It is part of the nature, when you’re boxing, wrestling, rugby, football. And I think that this is really going to give them a boost. And I think that he’s nervous and frightened to death at the moment.
Stephen Janis:
It’s got to be particularly humiliating for him because you had MMA fighters and wrestling and Hulk Hogan at his … I was there.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
Stephen Janis:
It was like a world wrestling match more than a convention.
Marc Steiner:
He plays a tough guy, but he’s a punk. Yeah, I’m sorry. That’s not a partisan Republican/Democrat thing. I’ll stop here, Max. But when you grow up like I did, and like you did, you can tell a phony on the street when they act like they’re a tough guy. You know exactly … I’m sorry, I’ll stop.
Maximillian Alvarez:
No, no, no. I mean think, because again, if we’re talking about how people are seeing this, that matters. Right? And especially it matters for someone like Trump who has based his entire political career on being that strong person. Absolutely. And having that unshakable strength and virility. And the only thing I would add to that is just that I think what Democrats and folks in the liberal center for whatever that means in today’s political arrangement in most other countries, our political center would be the far right of other countries. As you said, we don’t really have an institutional left to speak of, yada, yada yada.
But I do think one of the things that the Harris campaign has shown is that Democrats have been learning from the first time we saw Trump ascend in 2016. They have learned a few things. Let’s be honest. None of us thought that Harris was going to make Walz her pick because it seemed like the right pick, it seemed like the obvious pick if they wanted to win and garner people’s votes. But just by everything we knew about the Democratic establishment, the past was telling us it was not going to be Walz. And then it was. Right? And then even them doubling down on, “These guys are weirdos,” messaging, it was like, holy shit, I’m not used to the Democrats being good on offense.
But at the same time, I think what the debate showed hopefully is that one of the things that … one of the perennial, sort of the Trump era is that everyone has been longing for that never going to come moment where Trump is cornered and admits defeat and admits he was wrong. He’s never going to fucking do that. Pardon my French. Ever. The guy I always think of is the general in Mars Attacks when the Martian is shrinking him with a ray, right before the Martian squashes him with its boot. And the guy is just shooting at the Martian the whole time yelling at him. That’s Trump. He’s not going to stop yelling and shooting ever. And so stop trying to corner him into a moment where you’re going to get this admission of guilt or anything. He’s not going to give it to you. So the best that you can do is just expose him and make him look weak and use his personality against him so that the perception of him changes even if he never does.
Stephen Janis:
Max, we were taking, as were taking Uber to the through here to watch the debate, there was a man who had been a Democrat and he was Muslim, and he said he was voting for Trump. And we were asking him about this, how he could reconcile Trump’s comments and things he said, and he got back to your point about, “Trump is strong. Trump is … he will subdue dictators.” Even though as we point out every problematic aspect of Trump’s foreign policy and how bad he would be for the Palestinian people, he still stuck to his guns that Trump, he was going to vote for Trump. It’s strange.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Strange is absolutely the word.
Stephen Janis:
I can’t rationalize it.
Maximillian Alvarez:
No, because so much of it is irrational, right? Again, that’s the burning core of Trump’s politics is there is an irrationality at the heart of it that doesn’t need to be bogged down by rational justifications.
Stephen Janis:
Not at all.
Maximillian Alvarez:
It’s just vibes and anger and frustration and all these ugly feelings given a direction to go in. That’s what you need. And that’s again why we got to stop to over-intellectualize the Trump movement, because if we don’t understand the role that irrationality plays in keeping that movement going and in keeping people believing in it, then we’re never going to understand Trump and his appeal.
And the last thing I would say just on the weirdness, the strangeness of the debate that just kept hitting me was every single time Trump would go on a bonkers rant that he would end with, “They are destroying this country. It’s going to be bedlam, everything …” Just the most batshit thing he could say, followed quickly by a, “Thank you, Mr. President,” from the moderators and moving on to the next thing. Just that dissonance, because it just shows that this is … I know in 2016 from the moment Donald Trump descended that golden escalator, well in 2015, we’ve been reciting the mantra, “This is not normal.” It fucking isn’t, but it’s become our normal. But when I see stuff like that, it’s just these little hints that like, man, this is just a ridiculous and dangerous and frightening political reality that is being treated with the gloves of political normalcy.
Stephen Janis:
The moderates this time where a little bit better than the previous.
Maximillian Alvarez:
They were. They absolutely were.
Stephen Janis:
But you’re right. You’re right. It’s become normalized, and we cover it like that.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Right.
Alina Nehlich:
Well, and I was going to say, if we could get to the reporting part that you had mentioned a little bit ago before we wrap up here. I did want to mention, you mentioned the wildness and the contradictions. I think that looking at the … Kamala the existential crisis of climate change and then being absolutely against a fracking ban. We produced more oil and all of these things that are horrible for the environment, but then somehow still claiming to be so pro-environmental is I think one of the things that stands out in regards to that aspect of the debate to me. Specifically as someone who is younger and cares really a lot about the planet being burned to death.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yep. Well, let’s end on that because in a way, this is fitting, right? [inaudible 00:43:12]. Because again, we don’t do punditry all the time here. Right? I mean, we wanted to give our reflections on the debate, but our bread and butter, what we’ve been doing before this, what we’re going to be doing after this, as you guys listening know, is we’re going to get out there and report. We want to tell your stories. We want to see how this stuff is impacting you and your communities. We want to talk to the folks who are fighting back against this right wing demagoguery, against this bipartisan consensus on doubling down on anti-immigrant sentiment, pro-genocide support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
We want to go to the front lines of struggle where these things are not just talking points, but they are people’s lives and lived realities. And so that in a way is that’s what we’re going to be covering throughout the rest of this election season and beyond.
So it’s like this podcast is the breather between. But I do want to maybe just end on that point, like Alina was saying is, what from our reporting past and future? Do we really want to emphasize for folks that was not being addressed on the debate stage or that is not going to be impacted by this current election, or what either these two candidates are saying? I guess just any thoughts we wanted to share on stories we really want folks to focus on or just reflections that we want to leave people with before we ourselves head back out into the field to do our reporting.
Marc Steiner:
If Harris wins, we have a lot of work to do. Different kind of work. And that is to talk more about the union organizing going on, people rising up from the bottom and fighting. It means taking on the right wing in this country and what they can do to America. It means fighting for justice, Israel, Gaza. There are things we have to really put out there that have to push the envelope and push the discussion.
Stephen Janis:
I hope that we can emphasize, I see very little mention of what I think drives all of these problems, is economic inequality and rising economic inequality. And that we are going to continue to bring that context to our reporting.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yes. Absolutely. And like Alina said, the absurdity of how neither of the parties is really taking the climate crisis seriously as we are quite literally in the final years to do something to seriously change the outcome for our children and our children’s children. And we’re not doing it. And so to see what is going to be the defining political and existential question of the rest of our lives and our children’s lives, be batted around in such a blase, meaningless moment on a debate stage. When I look back as … if I make it to 70, and I’m looking back at that, I have a feeling-
Marc Steiner:
[inaudible 00:46:08]. What you talking about?
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I’m just saying I probably won’t make it to that. But if I do, looking back at moments like that and looking at the world that our parents’ generations left us with, I don’t think I’ll be able to really ever make peace with that. But yeah, obviously we talked about this after the DNC. The cognitive and emotional dissonance between the joyful, jubilant nature of what was going on inside the convention and the reality that we’re reporting on every week of a genocide happening in our name with bombs made in this country, with our tax dollars. We are showing people the human cost of that. We published two documentaries on it, from one from the West Bank, one from Gaza this week. That is all happening while this is all happening. And so what we’ve seen from both parties is they are not going to change course on that.
So what we know is what we’ve been reporting on over the past year, that it’s going to depend on the people of the world to make that kind of change, to make power bend to their will. And that is where we’re going to be at the places, where working people here in the U.S. and around the world are building power and making power bend to their will. And so with that, let’s wrap up this post debate podcast.
I’m so, so grateful to my colleagues, Stephen Janis, Marc Steiner, Alina Nehlich for this incredible conversation. Please let us know what you thought, share your reflections on the debate and storylines that you want to see us cover moving forward between now and November and beyond. And please one more time before you leave, we need your support to keep bringing you more important coverage and conversations just like this. So head on over to therealnews.com/donate and support our work today. We really appreciate it. For The Real News Network, this is Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.
Recent polling data suggests a near twenty percent increase the number of Black men voting for Trump in 2024 while Black women remain the bedrock of the Democratic party and their most loyal and consistent contingent of voters. However, there are some women who are leaving to not just join the Republican Party, but take on active leadership roles. Taya Graham speaks with the National Engagement Director of Moms For Liberty Tia Bess, and the Black Media Director for Trump’s reelection campaign Janiyah Thomas to try and understand why they choose to support the Trump-Vance ticket and how they defend their policies and outrageous comments, as well as the personal cost of being vilified for their controversial conservative views.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Today we are diving into a topic that is almost taboo in this country, Black conservative women who are joining, and in some sense, shaping the current Republican Party. We often hear about Black men turning conservative, and I actually produced a piece on that phenomena when I covered the Republican National Convention last month. But today I’m going to delve into the stories of women, and specifically, Black women who are crossing over and declaring their allegiance to the grand old party despite social pressure and the general expectation that Black women vote blue.
Well, my next guest decidedly don’t. Let’s remember, Black women are the most consistent democratic voters in the country. The party relies on Black women’s votes to carry them over the finish line. So this is no idle decision to cross the line and go to the other side. So what happens when these Black women say no to the Democrats? Why are they joining the GOP and what are they gaining and what might they be losing? Well, today I’m joined by two prominent figures who are challenging established norms, Janiyah Thomas, the Black media engagement director for Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign, and Tia Bess, the national director for Moms of Liberty, a Black woman with a wife and family of her own. Both of these women are at the forefront of the conservative movement in hugely important roles, advocating for values that many would argue stand in stark contrast to the communities they represent. We’ll explore their motivations or challenges and how they reconcile their identities with their political beliefs. And I’m so excited to speak with these women and grateful for their time. Thank you both so much for joining me.
So first, let me ask you a question to help everyone get to know you a bit. Tia, were you ever a Democrat? And can you share part of your journey from voting blue to supporting President Donald Trump and aligning yourself with the Moms for Liberty? Can you maybe share with me a specific experience that led you down this path?
Tia Bess:
Sure. Well, thank you so much for having me on. It’s always a pleasure. And let’s just say I was a Democrat. I looked at my voter registrations card yesterday and it took me back because it was a day before my birthday when I was in high school. And I remember asking, “What do I put? What party do I put?” And they simply told me this basic line, “If you’re Black, you register Democrat. If not, you register Republican.” Because the Republicans only want to take away the benefits from the poor and they’re only rich and white. That’s it. And that stuck with me from 18 to my 30s because I thought that, “Okay, I’m a poor student. I was a homeless high school student, and of course that was how my family was eating. So I wouldn’t want my benefits to be taken away.” So for years, I party voted.
I voted for Obama because he was Black. I voted for Hillary because she was a woman. I voted [inaudible 00:02:53] because he was a Black male. If it had a D next to it, you automatically got my vote. And I didn’t pay attention to the policies. I was extremely liberal, democrat, progressive, but I had to remember about my old school values, the old school values that our grandparents had that really started aligning with other parties. And it no longer represented just an old school thought, but it was moving forward to what I felt was best for my family.
Taya Graham:
Well, it’s interesting that you said that you voted for President Obama because he’s Black, because obviously we have Vice President Harris and the race who’s Black and a woman. People are very excited about this. They feel that this is historic. So it’s interesting. So let’s say 10 years ago you would’ve voted for Vice President Harris?
Tia Bess:
I mean, of course, because I’ll put it like this. Well, we’ll say Black. But everyone has their own definition of what is Black. You’re biracial. My son is biracial. My son is actually really African-American. He’s half African and he’s actually African-American and Caribbean. It’s just we understand how America is, how they have that one drop rule. Doesn’t matter if your dad is white or your mom is white or whoever’s Black, they have a one drop rule.
Taya Graham:
Well, it’s actually really interesting that you bring up her Blackness because that was a question I had that I felt that Trump’s rhetoric, JD Vance’s rhetoric, questioning whether or not she was a Black woman. I mean, that’s a little bit.. Don’t you think that’s really divisive? I mean, I think that really does take us back to the idea of the one drop rule.
Tia Bess:
Well, here’s the thing. Growing up myself dealing with colorism, I’m a Black woman and I’ve been Black my entire life, but I’m not bright skinned. I don’t pass the brown paper bag test, I’ll be honest. We’ve had family members who felt that I was too dark to be in the family. It’s terrible that it is that way. But if you are being voted, if you’re being elected on the basis of being Black, start off that way. Yes, you’re Asian or Indian American, but be proud to be Black.
Taya Graham:
But wait a second, I mean she went to a historic Black university. She joined a Black sorority. I mean, that seems like someone who’s proud to be a Black woman to me.
Tia Bess:
Well, I would say I would be proud to be biracial. I would represent both parts of my family. You really have to say, “No, I represent Jamaican and Indian ancestry.” Bring it together. If you have parents from both races, bring it together because both of those races made who you are today. Be proud for both sides.
Taya Graham:
That’s really interesting that you felt that she wasn’t representing both sides of her family because she has spoken about both of them. I would say this, isn’t even debating whether she is Black or if she’s Black and Asian? I mean, isn’t that actually just really divisive? I mean, is that what we should be talking about at all, honestly?
Tia Bess:
Honestly, at the end of the day, it’s petty. I want to care about your policies. I want to care about how are you going to make our country greater, how are you going to take care of our kids at school. You could be purple. I just want to make sure that you have the best interest of our country in mind.
Taya Graham:
Janiyah, I have to ask, how did you become the Black media engagement director for the entire Trump re-election campaign? I mean, what factors influenced your decision to take the role? And I have to say, especially in the light of what people view as President Trump’s controversial stances on issues affecting the Black community.
Janiyah Thomas:
I mean, I think overall, I’ve kind of been doing this for a while. I originally was the Black media coordinator at the RNC. That was my first job. So I’ve been working with Black press and I love doing it because sometimes I feel like getting good stories working with Black-owned media, I feel more rewarded because it’s not as easy to do that all the time, versus working with New York Times, they’ll do anything and write about anything. So it feels more rewarding to work with Black-owned media. And also, a lot of, as you know, a lot of Black people rely on Black media to give them factual information, especially when we’re in election year. So I mean that has everything to do with part of the reason I took it is because it’s something I thought was really cool and I feel really passionate about working with Black media. And I love Donald Trump also, but I think it’s important to have somebody that’s able to speak to those issues, speak to that community, and also someone that’s able to develop relationships with that community as well.
Taya Graham:
Well, I can see that you play a really important role in helping the Black community understand the Republican Party, but I would have to say it has been strongly criticized for its stance on racial issues. For example, I have to ask you about affirmative action. I mean the Supreme Court back in 2023 rejected race-based affirmative action in college admissions. We just got in information from MIT, there’s a drop in Black and Latino students and increase in Asian students, and this is just a fax. This is just a new information that’s coming out since the removal of affirmative action. And this was a direct result of the conservative justices that President Trump appointed. So what would you say to people who are saying that this means the Trump administration means less opportunity for Black Americans and not more?
Janiyah Thomas:
I wouldn’t say that it’s necessarily… The takeaway from that shouldn’t be that it’s less opportunity for Black and brown communities. I think that the overall point of the affirmative action decision is based on the simple fact of merit. I will speak personally to myself and say that I don’t want to be rewarded for something just because I’m Black or I’m a woman. I want to be there and be in that position because I’m the best person to be there. So the entire argument around affirmative action on the Republican side is, “We care more about your work ethic, your merit, and you should be rewarded based off of that.”
Taya Graham:
Well, you know what? I do agree with you about merit, but I’ll even use my myself as an example. I went to a public school and I actually got great SATs, great grades, but I didn’t have some of the extracurriculars that let’s say I might’ve had if I had gone to a more prestigious high school. And one could argue that affirmative action may have given me an opportunity to prove myself. I mean certainly I would have, and I actually witnessed this, would’ve been put on academic probation, kicked out law scholarships if I didn’t perform. But what would you say to people that’s like, “We’re just trying to get the foot in the door. We’re just asking for equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Just opportunity.”?
Janiyah Thomas:
I mean, I think overall that argument, what you just said, especially about your high school experience and things like that, a lot of that has to do with state level stuff when it comes to the education system. And I think that we need to focus more on those type of issues at the state and local level, especially when we’re talking about schools and inner city communities. And I think that something else we need to start doing better is implementing more mentorship programs so that these people in these underprivileged communities have more options or know that there’s another way out or there’s other things that you could be doing. There’s more to life than just what you’re seeing in the neighborhood.
Taya Graham:
Let me talk to you a little bit about your org. You’re the National Engagement director. I mean, you have a prominent role. So can you talk to me a little bit about what kind of influence you have on the organization stance on diversity and inclusion? And I don’t mean DEI. I mean making sure that Moms of Liberty represents a wide demographic of people and represent people from a wide demographic of communities, like for example the LGBTQ community. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about what your role is and maybe give an example of how your input has influenced or changed policy.
Tia Bess:
Well, for me, I’ve lived in multiple states, military family. I just really, this is going to sound really interesting, but I’m just going to say it, we have to get back to basics. A lot of these issues are non-partisan issues. There are issues that we can both agree on. I mean, think about it like school safety. For my role as the national director of engagement, it really means a lot to me. I’ve lived in neighborhoods of Philadelphia with drive-by shootings, with gang violence. I’ve lived at the beaches, I’ve lived in the hood, I’ve lived in the trailer park. I’ve lived in so many places where I realized that people are people.
So when I bring this perspective into our organization, it helps create a better understanding with my kids being biracial and international. They bring in the aspect of learning how to speak with people. Here at Washington, D.C., actually tomorrow I will be attending a Islamic center because you know what? Even parents who are Muslim care about their kids too. They care about the way that their kids are being raised up.
Taya Graham:
Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned that you’re going to this Islamic conference there because this is an organization that is perceived, and please correct me if I’m wrong, perceived as conservative and as Christian. I think there are people in the organization, for example, who would believe that there’s a biblical definition of marriage between being a man and a woman, that a family should have a female and a male at the head of the table taking care of a family, that that’s what a family should look like. In all honesty, that’s not what your family looks like. I mean, isn’t that a conflict for you in the organization that some people have, let’s say, very biblically based views of marriage?
Tia Bess:
Well, I’ll back it up just a little bit. Moms for Liberty is nonpartisan and it represents every background and every religion. We have people who are Jewish. We have people who are Muslim. We have people who are Hebrew Israelites. We have people from so many different backgrounds, but we care about our kids. Parenthood is going to unite this country. As far as what each individual person believes, that’s their household. But as far as myself, yes, I have a partner. I’ve been in a relationship with a woman for eight years. But for me, with being in the LGB community, I want to make sure that my kids fully understand that you’re still a child. Let kids be kids. Do not shove it down a child’s throat because they still need more data. They don’t even have a baseline for a relationship.
Being a teenager is a confusing age in your life. It’s a confusing stage. I have background in behavioral therapy, case management, and human services. And for me, I love helping people. So helping a child understand that you are beautiful inside and out, give yourself time to grow.
Taya Graham:
I think that’s something you said that’s very beautiful. And I think people, whether they’re independent or Democrat or Republican would agree that they want to protect their children and nurture their children and make sure they feel included, but I noticed you said you’re a member of the LGB community and you left off the T, and that is something that I believe Moms of Liberty has been called out for again and again, that people believe that Moms of Liberty is engaging in harmful and regressive strategies when it comes to transgender children and transgender people, and I’m wondering if you can address that.
Tia Bess:
Well, no, actually, I have multiple friends who are in the transgender community. I have friends who are drag queens. We talk about it all the time. I have one friend, he’s like, “Look, I just want to be my own letter.” Because being an individual by yourself, I don’t really know how fully the best way to explain it. But if you… I forgot the best way to explain it. I believe that each child is perfect. That’s my personal opinion.
And what about the tomboys? We have tomboys. We have some young men who like to play with their sister’s dolls. In my opinion, there is no right or wrong way to be a boy or girl. You have to grow.
Taya Graham:
Well, I would agree with you, to give children the space and the freedom to discover who they are and not put them in a box of our ideas of what femininity is or what masculinity is, because we both know that changes. I mean, I remember a hundred years ago, pink was a boy’s color. So things change, our ideas about this change. But I have to say, people have really called out Moms of Liberty specifically, that people say Moms of Liberty is actually attacking trans children and trans kids experiences in school being that trans kids won’t be included, that they attack unisex bathrooms or bathrooms that are available for transgender children. I mean, how do you respond to people who have those concerns?
Tia Bess:
Well, we have had… I actually have a friend, she’s a new member of Moms for Liberty, and she’s transgender with her partner. No child should be attacked in the restroom. I understand both sides. I understand the concerns of the mothers who have young ladies who have been assaulted in restrooms by young men who are assuming that identity that weak. We have multiple parents who have had issues happening in schools with their young ladies, and I know a lot of fathers are concerned about that. We’ve made proposals that we need to have the funding and build additional restrooms. Everyone deserves the right to go to the restroom. That’s a bodily function. Everyone should be comfortable in that restroom. Build single restrooms or family restrooms, or their individual handicap restrooms. So you can actually have your full privacy. But everyone deserves privacy during that time, especially our young ladies.
Taya Graham:
Well, I think you make a good point. And I think this speaks to what you’ve told me you call old school values or conservative values. And I just want to check, you do support former President Trump’s reelection campaign, right?
Tia Bess:
Yes, I do.
Taya Graham:
Okay. And I don’t mean to put too fine a point on this, but President Trump’s history includes multiple marriages, affairs, very insulting language, serious allegations, and this all contrasts sharply with traditional values and conservative values. And I know you’re a Christian woman and that you regularly attend church. I mean, how do you reconcile these aspects of him with your support for him as a candidate?
Tia Bess:
Well, here’s the thing. A lot of people on both sides feel like, I don’t belong here. Not at this organization in general, but in a period. They feel like, “Well, you’re Black. You shouldn’t be around all these people who don’t look like you advocating for parental rights.” I have some people who say, “Wait,” I have some people who are Christian who say, “you shouldn’t be here because you’re in a two-mom-strong household. We don’t agree about that.” And it’s not up to them. It’s my choice. It’s my life.
So I’m a good parent. I care about my kids, I care about the community. I help other people’s kids just for the basic needs. And we all want to feel that we have a place in this world. So yes, I know that Donald Trump has made a lot of comments. I’m going be honest with you, I didn’t even like the man at first. I didn’t like anybody who was Republican. But then I started to realize everybody lies. I didn’t like anybody from any side.
My biggest thing I wish is that some days I wish there wasn’t even a party name because I’ve met some great people that we don’t even start talking about politics because I tell them, “I don’t want to know your political views because I think you’re a great person. And if you’ve passed out in front of me, regardless if you’re LGBTQI+, if you’re man, if you’re a woman, if you’re young, old, it doesn’t matter your race, if you passed out in front of me and because of my first responder background, I’m going to get down and try to save your life. That’s going to be my first concern. And that’s what I want people to get back to.
I’ve met President Donald Trump and I’ve met Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And if any type of way that I feel I’m being discriminated against, I won’t support you.
Taya Graham:
How would you reconcile President Trump’s behavior, which critics say often contradicts conservative values? I mean, not to be crude, but if Vice President Harris had been married three times and had five children with three different men, I think people would not consider her a representative of conservative values. I think people would be very critical of those personal choices. So I just want, if you can respond to critics of the former president who say he does not embody conservative values or Christian values, what would you tell them?
Janiyah Thomas:
I mean, I think a lot of these critics, a lot of it’s coming from media people, which from my experience, their perception of reality and what actual voters care about are two different things. So I would say that I’ve never heard an actual regular voter when we’ve been on the trail mention any of these things. So I think that, I mean, the point is to say to the critics like, “We saw what four years of President Trump looked like. We saw what four years of Kamala Harris and the Biden administration looks like.” And I think that for a lot of, especially Black and brown people, we were all doing better under President Trump’s leadership. And I think that it’s more about what he’s done as a candidate and what he’s done as being the president of the United States, less and less about his personal life.
Taya Graham:
Well, it’s interesting you said that because as the Black media engagement director, you’re trying to reach out to the Black community and show people that the Republican Party perhaps isn’t what it’s painted by the media, that it is inclusive. But I would say this, President Trump selected J.D Vance as his vice president. I would say if he wants to show the Republican Party was in a new era and welcoming Black and brown Americans, Senator Tim Scott would’ve been an excellent choice. So I’m just curious what your take is on the choice of Vance over Scott, and do you think that affects the party’s image among Black voters?
Janiyah Thomas:
I mean, like I said earlier, we care about, I mean, who’s the best person for the job. And President Trump made that decision and chose J.D Vance as our vice president candidate. I mean, obviously I am from South Carolina. I think Tim Scott’s amazing. But I mean, it’s not always about what you look like to show people we’re the party of being inclusive. I think we can do that in multiple ways. And President Trump is not the traditional Republican candidate. So I think a lot of the things that he’s done and is wanting to do hasn’t always aligned with traditional Republican politics. So I think there’s ways to show that we’re inclusive and want more people to come join the party. Like example, having someone like Amber Rose speaking at our convention. That’s not something George Bush may have done, but just simple things like that. Just showing and showing up like we’ve been going to Democrat-ran cities and meeting with voters there. And that’s not stuff traditional Republicans do either.
So I think there’s more ways to show that he wants more people in the party and to be more inclusive versus who the vice presidential candidate is. And I think overall, our message with Black voters resonates the best with President Trump. I think that the reason we’re seeing an uptick of Black voters supporting President Trump is because they like his message. And again, like I said earlier, they’ve seen four years of Trump and they’ve seen four years of this administration, and I think that’s made it very simple for a lot of Black and brown voters.
Taya Graham:
There are people who feel that… I mean, Black women are considered the bedrock of the Democratic Party, and of course there are Christian conservative women that still vote Democrat. I mean, so how do you respond to critics who say that you and other Black conservatives in leadership roles are they’re just for optics, or even worse, doing this for cynical reasons. How would you respond to that?
Janiyah Thomas:
I mean, I’ll say at the end of the day, I don’t have to explain myself to anybody but the Lord and my parents. So my motive for doing what I’m doing has nothing to do with cynical reasons or to be the token Black person. Like I said earlier, the role of being able to have someone that can engage with Black press and has developed relations with Black press is very important in this election cycle. So I think that is the reason why I’m here. I care about making momentum with Black voters, and I care about getting our message to that audience, whether that’s traditional/non-traditional or Black owned media. That’s my overall goal.
So I would say the critics and people are going to say what they want to say. They’re going to say stuff regardless who you’re on the right or the left. There’s always going to be somebody criticizing you. But I mean, we always get that typical, you’re an Uncle Tom, you’re a token or whatever. And at this point, I don’t care anymore, but it is more hurtful coming from other Black people because I think that the larger conversation we need to have as a community is we need to talk more about why we can’t have conversations, why we can’t disagree and agree to disagree, why it has to be a whole family fallout because one of us wants to think differently than the rest of the family. I think the bigger conversation is, what can we do better as people to be able to have those tough conversations? Because if we want equality, then I think that it means equality on the right and on the left.
Taya Graham:
That’s a really interesting point that you want there to be space for diversity of opinion. And you pointed out quite rightly that the media sometimes is at fault in helping to, let’s say, inflame rhetoric or highlight questionable rhetoric. In particular, I would say there’s been quite a bit of discussion around President Trump and Senator Vance questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’s Blackness. And knowing… I mean, how would you even define personally what it is to be Black enough in America? I mean, isn’t that really divisive rhetoric?
Janiyah Thomas:
The funny thing is, is I hear more white people asking this question than Black people, especially when it comes to media. One, I’ll say that what he has said, especially during the NABJ Convention in that situation in particular, he didn’t say anything that Black Twitter hasn’t been saying for years, first of all. So I mean, if your algorithm aligns that way, then you’ve seen these tweets and you’ve seen these things. And the point of it is basically to say that she is a flip flopper and she goes back and forth on her identity and policy. So the point is to say like, if you can’t stand firm in your identity, how can we trust what you say you’re going to do as the president of the United States? And-
Taya Graham:
But the thing is though, I mean she went to a historic Black university. She joined a Black sorority. I mean, it’s not like she hasn’t-
Janiyah Thomas:
But since when are those qualifications for Blackness? I know white people that have done the same thing. I think we need to stop trying to categorize ourselves and put ourselves in this box to say like, “Okay. Well, you did XYZ, so that makes you Black enough.” You know? I don’t think that those two things are the qualifications, but I don’t think there is a qualification. I don’t think it matters what she is or what she isn’t. I think it’s more so about what she has done and what she can do.
Taya Graham:
What do you think it says to Black voters that he would overlook someone like Senator Scott for a junior senator like Vance?
Tia Bess:
Well, I’ll say this. Initially, I’m not a political person. Like I tell anybody, before Covid, I would rather have a root canal. [inaudible 00:27:16]. I turned off that TV so fast because I couldn’t stand anybody because all I saw were politicians just pandering to our communities. It has been going on for 30, 40 years from my sight, and I’m just tired of seeing the degradation of society. I’m tired of seeing run down Black communities and Black schools. There’s neighborhoods where kids can’t go for school choice. There’s neighborhoods where they can’t get a transfer. So what about these babies? So I want to make sure that I’m following policy. I want to know what your policy is. I will no longer vote party or just because I like your name, but I want to vote for your policy.
As far as President Donald Trump choosing J.D Vance, I’m going to be honest, at first, I didn’t know that much about the man, but I like his background and the struggle and the grit that he’s been through. Sometimes in order to meet people where they’re at, you got to bring in someone who’s been where they’re at, who’s been down in the ditches. Maybe God has other plans for Tim Scott. We don’t know what the bigger plan is, but either way, regardless on who wins, I’m still going to respect that decision. I’m still going to hold that person up in prayer because they are the leader of our country.
Taya Graham:
I think you made it really interesting point. I mean, I’m a lifelong Baltimore city resident, so when it comes to public schools that need help, communities that are under siege by violence, please believe me, I know that intimately. And I thought it was interesting that you said that you did not want to be involved with politics at all. So it makes me wonder what pulled you in? Because when you talk about schools and public schools, there is I think very solid criticism that some of the strategies that the Moms of Liberty organization has would actually lead to public schools becoming underfunded. So that in the process of getting school choice, that it would actually lead to money leaving these public schools, putting them in an even worse situation, and then just putting money into private and religious schools that in general are doing better.
Tia Bess:
Well, I think that the power belongs to the people, and it goes back to the state level. Every state is different. Philadelphia is not Jacksonville Florida, Philadelphia is not rural Kansas. Each state is different. But I’m a graduate of public school. I’m grateful for my teachers that actually saw that there was a need and they sacrifice and they really put their heart into everything.
I’ll tell you how I got started with Moms for Liberty and just in general. Like I say, I wasn’t a political person. I have a special needs son who has autism. I was just like any Black southern mama. I did not play about my baby. My son couldn’t hear and he couldn’t speak. So basically, I had a mute child. I went to the school board meeting as a Democrat. And prior to going to the school board meeting, I would send emails and emails and emails, “Please help my son. What am I missing?” And every time I would go to the school to talk to the principal, I was just another angry Black woman or someone they would see coming, they wouldn’t pay attention to me. And everyone that’s watching understand, you understand what it’s like when your voice isn’t heard, when you know that your baby is going to excel and no one will listen to you.
It was during Covid where they told me that I could mask train my son or I could potty-train my son. If I wanted to send my son back to school brick and mortar, he had to be mask trained. Now you tell me how do you mask train an autistic five-year-old who is speech and hearing delayed and has sensory issues. They wanted me to send my child to school to wear a mask, a face shield, and sit behind plexiglass for 18 hours a day. And I said, “No, because I know what that baby needs.” And I spoke up. My son was excluded from field trips because he was unable to mask even though we had a medical exemption, even though he was covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. They were treating special needs kids wrong, and they were special treating my son wrong, and no one was speaking up for the little boys and little girls who couldn’t speak.
Taya Graham:
I really appreciate you sharing that, and I think that’s important to people to understand because when we were at the RNC, and this was a conversation we had off camera, I think it was really a really honest conversation because people haven’t heard that aspect of your story. I’m sure online that you can talk about this. There is a lot of accusations of you being used by this organization, I think it’s the politest way I could put it, or that people would say that you were there for optics, that you’re being tokenized both as a Black woman and as a member of the LGBTQ community. So I was hoping maybe you could share a little bit about some of the pushback that you’ve experienced and how you respond to it.
Tia Bess:
Well, for me, when they… I’m not going to cry during this interview too. When they excluded my son from the second field trip, he was in the first grade and he asked, “Mommy, why can’t I go make candy at the candy factory with my class?” And I said, “Oh no, you’re going to that field trip.” And I took him and I paid the venue. The school harassed us the entire time at the field trip. They made us sit in the back of the auditorium because he couldn’t mask. So they made us sit in the back. And at that time, I felt like a second class citizen. Nobody should feel like that.
And because I was speaking up, I had a Duval County school board member call me a token person, I mean a racial slur. But the reason why a lot of people who look like me don’t speak up is because they’re afraid of criticism. They’re afraid of being called an Uncle Tom and everything else. But I’ve met a lot of Black people within the organization, Black and brown people, who are tired of being unheard who care about their kids, and they’ll take those arrows regardless. And I know what people say. No one knew that I was in the LGBT community until I told them, because that’s not my primary identity. My main identity is I’m mom, I’m there for my child.
Taya Graham:
Let me ask you this, I mean this conversation around being Black enough, I mean, isn’t this… I mean, don’t you think this rhetoric risk alienating voters? I mean, if Black Twitter is talking about it, if white people in the media are asking about this, I mean this idea of being Black enough, I mean it makes me go back to the one drop rule and people being measured in sixteenths and quarters and eighths. I mean to bring that up, I understand that you say you think it’s a symbol of flip-flopping, but this is the type of rhetoric that seems to divide, not unite.
Janiyah Thomas:
No, I understand what you’re saying, but I’ll say that I think that we need to focus more on remove her race and gender out of the conversation and focus more on the policies. I feel like the more we keep focusing on whether she’s Black enough, Black people have been having a conversation about who’s Black enough forever. And are we ever going to get to a conclusion? Probably not. So does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? We’re definitely not going to get to a conclusion before election day, so why are we still talking about it? I think we need to talk more about the things she’s done in the past and what she’s been doing as the vice president and what she claims she wants to do in the future.
Taya Graham:
Well, you know, Janiyah, that’s actually a fair point to put aside race and gender. And so let’s put it aside for a moment and have you address some of the broader concerns that Trump’s policies are divisive or harmful to the American democracy. So for example, there are Republicans like Olivia Troy who said they felt more welcomed at the DNC, arguing that they were voting for democracy rather than for Democrats. So how do you counter this narrative? What would your response to be to those Republicans like Ana Navarro or Stephanie Grisham who was a former White House press secretary? What would you say to these lifelong Republicans who say that Trump is a threat to democracy?
Janiyah Thomas:
I mean, I think that we had a traditional convention with traditional votes from the delegates. Yes, they kind of just shove Kamala Harris down everyone’s throat basically with their process. So I’ll say that I think that I don’t care as much about what they’re doing and saying at their convention on the left or whatever, and these Republicans or former Republicans going to join and vote for democracy as they say.
At our convention, we had never Trumpers for Trump, including our vice presidential candidate. We don’t talk about it a lot, but he was at one point a never Trumper, and now he is on our presidential ticket with him. I think we care more about uniting the party and they care less about that. So I mean, if they feel like going to the DNC is they’re upholding democracy, then that’s their business. But I think that most people can see that what we’ve done on our side is nothing about what we’ve done. Nobody’s lost rights with President Trump as the president. I mean, I don’t think that that argument of upholding democracy, we’ve never done anything to do the opposite. I think if anything, we could say the opposite about the left.
Taya Graham:
Well, I think people would assert, and actually I’ve had conversations about this because I was really excited to have the opportunity to speak with you and Tia, and they are genuinely concerned that former President Trump would not accept election results if they were not in favor. And they did point to January 6th and the things he said that day and what occurred as an example of that, as well as some of his recent comments. I mean, that’s where this pushback is coming from, from people who really are concerned that he would not accept election results and perhaps stall and stall the process.
Janiyah Thomas:
Again, as I said earlier, I think this is another thing that I only hear coming from the DC people or people in the media. I don’t think that the January 6th situation is a top of mind issue for voters. I think what people care about is the economy. They care about immigration, they care about crime. Those are the biggest issues for people. I’ve never once heard a voter say they care like January 6th is a determining factor in the election for them.
Taya Graham:
Something that just came up when I told people I was going to interview you, they said the Republican Party stance on LGBTQ rights, and of course especially the rights of transgender individuals, is seen as regressive and even harmful. And they were very concerned that the current GOP platform gave no specific protections for gay marriage. And I think their concern is valid because this isn’t just about the future. I mean, I think it was back in under Trump’s Department of Justice, they argued before the Supreme Court that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not protect LGBTQ+ people from workplace discrimination.
So they see rulings like that. I think there was a ruling, I think it was like Philadelphia versus Fulton back in 2021. There was an LGBTQ family that wanted to know marry partners wanted to adopt a child. This organization refused and it was a Catholic charity and it was justified in the Supreme Court. So people look at this and they see that underneath the guise of what they might call religious freedom, that they feel that bigotries are coming through and that it will erode people’s rights in this country, rights that were hard fought.
So I would say this. How do you justify? Or what would you say to people who say, “This party actively works against LGBTQ community rights?” I mean, how would you respond to that? For example, those Supreme Court decisions, I think, really do show a door opening there for bigotry.
Tia Bess:
Well, this is what I say. I had an anonymous one person send me a message on Instagram and they asked me, they said, “Tia, you’re a lesbian and you went to an event with Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson.” And they told me and they wanted to know, and they said, “How could you come to this event when he doesn’t like gay people?” And I heard that and I said, “Well, you know what? When I see him, I’m going to ask him.” I made sure. I actually spoke at the legislative days in South Carolina, because I said, “Listen, if you’ve got a problem, we can talk about this.” I pulled Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson aside, I’ve met him multiple times, and I said, “I have a question for you.” I said, “You see me. You know me. You met me.” I said, “I’m a two-mom-strong household.” I said, “But I believe that what you do as an adult is your personal private business and leave the kids out of it.” I said, “How do you feel about that?” He said, “I agree with you 100%.”
It was a conversation that we had very briefly, but I didn’t feel any type of discrimination from him. And everyone knows this. If I feel discrimination or if you treat me some different kind of way, I’m going to call it out. So if there’s people who have concerns, I want you to email me, send me a message. I’m going to go find out straight from the horse’s mouth. And if that’s how you feel, then I don’t want anything to do with you. I mean, there’s discrimination on both sides. I’ve seen it on both sides. And that’s not okay.
I mean, I’ve seen it from… And I guess it’s a person’s personal preference. I’ve seen it from Democrats, I’ve seen it from Republicans, I’ve seen it from Christians. I mean, I’ve seen it from multiple faiths. If someone has a bad experience from it may be someone in the LGBT community or whatnot, if they have a bad experience, they’re going to judge you just when they look at you. If someone has a bad experience with Black people, the minute they see me, they’re automatically going to turn… Whether they had a violent crime from someone who was Black, they’re going to use experience to judge you. But I think that we all can do our part by showing people to get a chance to know us. People who are in the community, they have regular relationships. They’re not just perverted people who only think about sexual acts. No. So I mean, I tell people all the time, “If there’s a question and you really feel like you want to know more, reach out to me. I’ll go always to the top and go ask. I’ll get answers.”
Taya Graham:
So let me ask you about abortion and choice. Now, when I was interviewing some of the Moms of Liberty, I met a lovely woman who admitted to me off camera that she wasn’t completely pro-life and that she believed there should be exceptions for the life of the mother, rape, and incest. But I sense that she believed that her viewpoint would be found on by other members of your organization. So I have to ask, what is Moms of Liberty’s stance on abortion? And given the fact that the Republican Party is increasingly hard-lined stance on abortion, including JD Vance’s opposition to exceptions for rape or incest, how does your organization address the concerns of women who feel their rights are being stripped away?
Tia Bess:
When it comes to that issue, and that’s a very good question that you ask, I can’t speak on behalf of our organization because each woman has been through her own journey in life. I’m not here to judge anybody. I’ve never walked a mile in your shoes, nor will I try because everyone’s been through something that has shaped them. So you’ll never hear me judge somebody for what they’re doing because I’m not you. I can’t be. I can’t live your life for you. So that’s a good question, but I won’t judge anybody. As a woman, I won’t do that.
Taya Graham:
At the DNC, there were women who came forward, one woman who nearly lost her life to an ectopic pregnancy because she couldn’t get termination services by doctors because they were afraid of prosecution. There was a very moving story of a young woman who was on stage who’d been sexually assaulted by her stepfather, and she had to have an abortion at age 12.
So I have to ask you, hearing these women’s stories, how does the Trump administration want to move forward on this issue? Because as we’ve seen as some of these hard-line rules that have come into effect to prevent any form of abortion from six week onward or at all, no exceptions, rape or incest, how does the Trump administration want to move forward on this issue? Senator Vance has come out very firmly against any exceptions for rape or incest. Is there any chance that President Trump will go against some of his fellow Republicans and put his trust in women to make these decisions and choose to take government interference out of the picture? Will he choose to push aside his fellow Republicans and put his trust back in women?
Janiyah Thomas:
I’ll make this answer very short and simple because I don’t want to get into the personal stuff, but I will say that President Trump has come out and said that he’s not promoting a national abortion ban. Whether the media wants to cover it or not, he’s not doing that. And basically the point was even with the Supreme Court case, is to leave it to the states. So what he stands for is leaving the abortion rights, women’s rights, reproductive rights, or whatever we want to call it, is up to the states to decide. So less big government, more small government.
Taya Graham:
Let me change the topic slightly and ask you about something that Moms of Liberty is well-known for, which is asking for the removal of books from libraries. Now, I would say this, in a time where children have access to the entire world in their pocket, there are a lot of people who think just removing these books from libraries, it’s just performative. And that actually it opens a dangerous story to banning books that people just dislike or find problematic. And let me give you a small example of that. There’s a graphic novel called Mouse, which describes the Holocaust that this young man writes it from his father’s viewpoint. And that book was set to be banned in Tennessee. It was for one small image in the book where it was a shot of a woman in a bathtub. An entire book, a powerful book on the Holocaust through a child’s eyes and a Father’s eyes was going to be banned.
And then I even saw for some of the Florida Moms of Liberty, some of the Judy Blume books. I mean, these are books I read as a young girl that I found helpful. So I have to ask, I mean, what do you say to people who feel that this is a book banning and that’s an un-American thing?
Tia Bess:
Okay, I’m going to keep it real with you and all your viewers because that’s exactly what I do. I get to the bottom of stuff. Okay, so a prime example, which they said was To Kill a Mockingbird. People are like, “Oh, they’re…” And that’s not so much banning, no. You can buy the books anywhere you want. Is it age appropriate? That’s we’re going to go there with, age appropriate. But when it comes to Kill a Mockingbird, my daughter, my high schooler just received a permission slip to read that book. I signed it. I signed it. Because when it comes to book challenges, it’s not all Moms for Liberty who are challenging books. Any concerned citizen taxpayer in that area is allowed to challenge a book. There’s a book challenge committee. As far as… What’s the best way to put it? If there’s pornography in a book, it doesn’t belong in school. If you can’t read it out loud, it should not be in a school.
And I actually found a book at my daughter’s middle school at the time that explicitly went to details about how to perform oral acts, I’ll put it that way. Very lik Fifty Shades of Grey type. And that was concerning to me because people said, “No, that book isn’t there.” I told my daughter to go to the library and take a picture of that book with the school’s barcode on it. And I went and I read that book aloud. If I read it in front of a stranger’s child, they would call the police on me because of how graphic and how it describes having intercourse.
Taya Graham:
But was this a book that was assigned to students?
Tia Bess:
It’s at the public library that you can just go pick up, and there are some…
Taya Graham:
But wouldn’t that be the responsibility of the parent to say-
Tia Bess:
In our schools, in our county, in Clay County, there is a form that we actually created, school board members. And it says, “I would like my child to check out any book, but I would like to receive an email copy of what they checked out.” That makes sense. At the public schools library, we actually came up with a solution in Clay County, “Okay, [inaudible 00:48:11].” It doesn’t sound unreasonable. You need to know, “Okay, my child checked out this book.” And as a parent, you might supplement what they’re reading. If you’re reading about something, I want to talk to you and ask you, “Well, why do you feel that way?” Not judgmental, but, “Why do you feel that way? How can I help you?” Just to understand. But that’s my right as a parent to know, “What do you have questions about? I’m your mom. I mean the best interest for you. I don’t want to harm you. I want you to be the best person possible.” So-
Taya Graham:
I can see though, that some people would say, “Well, that seems reasonable that a parent would be informed about a book a child took out.” And then there’s some people say, “That’s incredibly invasive for a young person that is finding their way in the world to know that their parents might see every little thing they’re looking at.” I mean, I remember the Judy Blume book I was looking at was about puberty, and it helped answer some questions that I didn’t feel comfortable talking to the adults in my lives about. But if I knew those adults would be informed about that book, I would’ve been a little less likely perhaps to take it out.
Tia Bess:
Well, I think so too, is that as parents, we got to step up our game. As parents, we’ve been asleep at the wheel. It is not the TV’s job to raise our kids. It’s not TikTok’s job, YouTube’s job. We got to put down our personal devices and actually talk with our kids. What happened to having dinner at the dinner table?
As far as the book that’s in Tennessee, I’ll research it. I will research it because I believe that there are things that do belong in the libraries, but it’s not all of Moms for Liberty that are doing book challenges. There’s other organizations that do book challenges.
Taya Graham:
There’s a good portion of Americans, and I would say this from polls as well as social media, as well as even our own comment section on YouTube, there’s a good portion of Americans that find former President Trump and Senator Vance’s insulting, even divisive. There were Vance’s remarks on people without children not contributing to society, that they don’t have any true stake in its future. And of course, the infamous childless cat lady’s remark. There are some really derogatory remarks that President Trump made about women, women who are admired journalists, whether it was April Ryan or recently Rachel Scott of ABC. He referred to them both as nasty. He even called Maxine Waters, Senator Waters low IQ. So these things, people do remember. I mean, how do you address concerns of voters who feel alienated and even alarmed by this rhetoric who say, “This feels to me that President Trump, Senator Vance, they don’t respect women”? I mean, how would you respond to people who remember those remarks and it hurt them?
Janiyah Thomas:
I’ll say, I think it’s important for people to do their research past a 30-second clip. I think that a lot of times, especially in these situations with candidates or just even any type of public figure, we always see on social media or even on the news, it’s like a 30-second clip. You don’t get the whole gist of the argument. I’m not talking about anything, one particular comment in general, but I’m saying that the left sits there and they name-call, they attack President Trump all day, but if he says anything remotely negative about somebody, then it’s a whole ordeal. And it’s not fair to always have a double standard with the right and the left. And I’ll say also that I think that-
Taya Graham:
Well, it’s a little different when the president of United States calls you out as opposed to the power that a reporter might have. If the president of the United States calls you out and says that you’re nasty or that you’re low IQ, the whole world hears that. It’s not the same as somebody on social media calling him an authoritarian. I mean, that’s the power of the office.
Janiyah Thomas:
But this current administration has also attacked him personally, and they call him a racist, and that’s the narrative they like to spin around him all day. So there’s not that much of a difference between the two things to me if you’re attacking somebody’s character in that way.
Taya Graham:
Well, the difference… I mean, and now this is not to go on the defense for the Biden-Harris administration by any means, but the differences are those are two sets of equals. People who’ve both held the office of the presidency, have wielded political power, who have money in their bank accounts. That’s different than a president calling women nasty. There are other remarks, I won’t go into detail out of respect for your time and being here, but there have been some very derogatory remarks made towards women.
Janiyah Thomas:
Well, I’ll say that, I mean, I think that we all need to, like I said, do our research and look into somebody’s past before you make an assumption about who they are as a person. I’ll say President Trump has done a lot to empower women. He’s empowered female architects in designing his buildings in the past. I mean, we have a female chief of… I mean, not chief of staff, sorry, a female campaign manager. He’s also had Kellyanne Conway as a campaign manager. He had Sarah Sanders, one of the first women and mothers to be press secretary. He’s had a bunch of powerful women around him. And I think that also, even if we’re talking about Kellyanne Conway, she’s one of the first women to win a presidential election. So I think that he’s done a lot to empower women. And I think that what the narrative that they try to spend around him isn’t always fair. And I think that if people did more than research and looked into his past, you would see he has done a lot to empower women. And I’m here obviously, so…
Taya Graham:
Well, I think the strongest case that he currently has is the fact that you’re here and you’re kind enough to spend your time with us. And we really do appreciate that.
I will just ask you one last question out of respect for your time, and hopefully this will give you some room to share why you support Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party so much. So I’m going to quote civil rights legend John Lewis here. He said, “We may have arrived on different boats, but we’re all in the same boat now.” So in a time where many people believe that Trump’s rhetoric seems to divide rather than unite, how do you interpret and respond to this sentiment within your work? How do you want to communicate to Americans that Trump’s boat is big enough for all of us?
Janiyah Thomas:
So I have two part answers to this. The first thing is to go based off of the quote you just stated. I think that especially with the younger generation, our concept of collective consciousness may not be as true anymore because we have a lot of Black people that grow up in rural environments. We have Black people that grow up in the suburbs, and we have Black people in the inner city communities. And I can say from my family, I grew up completely different than some of my cousins that are still in Virginia. So my outlook on life is completely different than theirs. So the way I vote and the way I feel politically might not always be the same as those people. And I think that it’s important for all of us to look at the issues that matter to you and vote your issues.
I’m 100% down with supporting President Trump because I care so much about the economy and he is also one candidate that implemented the First Step Act, and that’s a huge criminal justice reform that has taken us a step in the right direction. So I can say that I think Black people have a true champion and a leader in President Trump, and I think that our vote is for everybody. We want all people here. We’re welcoming all people. Like I said earlier, President Trump is not the traditional Republican candidate, and I think that his message and his straightforwardness resonates with a lot of people. And I think that at least with President Trump, what you hear is what you get. He’ll stand on his word and he doesn’t make promises he’s not going to keep. So I’m with President Trump because of that.
Taya Graham:
Well, today’s discussion has given us a lot to think about, and I’m really grateful that our guests were willing to let me really delve deeply into their belief systems and even test those foundations. I mean, we’ve explored the intersections of race and gender and politics through the eyes of two powerful Black women who are deeply embedded in the conservative movement. Janiyah Thomas as the Black media engagement director for Trump’s re-election campaign is focused on amplifying policies she believes will make inroads with the Black community, while Tia Bess as the national director for Moms of Liberty is advocating for her vision of family values and individual rights, even when those beliefs put her at odds with the broader LGBTQ community.
Their stories highlight the challenges of navigating identities that don’t always align with mainstream political narratives. And whether you agree or disagree with their positions, it’s clear that their voices add a dimension to the ongoing dialogue about race, gender, and politics in America. So as we close, I want to thank Janiyah and Tia for their time and for sharing their perspectives with us.
This conversation is just a small part of a much larger debate about the direction of our country and the role of diverse voices within it. If there is one thing to remember, it’s that the Black community is not a monolith. And even though the Democratic Party has been able to count on Black women as the bedrock of their vote, they should not forget this loyalty must be earned and is not guaranteed.
Thank you so much for joining us for what I hope will be a series of provocative conversations. I’m your host, Taya Graham, and I want to thank you so much for joining me today.
The 2024 Olympics have come and gone. For an entire month, The Real News’ Dave Zirin was on the ground in Paris covering the stories corporate media wouldn’t—from the struggle of Paris activists against homeless sweeps to the stories of the Palestinian delegation. In a special recap episode of Edge of Sports, Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff look back on the highlights of the real stories of the Olympics.
Studio Production: Jules Boykoff Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Hey, this is Dave Zirin from Edge of Sports TV, only on The Real News Network. I hope you’ve enjoyed the videos that have been produced out of Olympic Paris. And if you’ve enjoyed these videos, then you might be wondering at times, “Well, who the heck is holding the camera this whole time?” And I can’t wait to answer this question because the guy holding the camera, the cinematographer if you will of the whole operation, is also the person who thought through and produced every segment with me. And he just happens to be probably the foremost expert on the politics of the Olympics on Earth. That’s who I had holding my camera, which if you take a step back from it, pretty damn cool. And he’s on right now.
This is our sum up. We’re going to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of what we saw in Paris. If you don’t know his name, you should Jules Boykoff. How you doing, Jules?
Jules Boykoff:
Hey. I’m doing great, David. It’s so fun to see you on the screen. Miss you here in Paris.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, Jules still in Paris. I’m back in Takoma Park, Maryland, which they do say is like the Paris of suburban DC, so not bad. Actually, you know what? They say paris is like the Takoma Park of Europe. I don’t know if you’ve-
Jules Boykoff:
There you go.
Dave Zirin:
… heard that. So Jules, I wanted to start off just by you and I going back and forth about the good that we saw in Paris. Anything that we saw. It could be on the field. It could be off the field. It could be in the streets. And I’m curious because we’re going to go good, the bad, and the ugly. And I’m curious for you, when you think the good of the Olympic Paris experience, what comes to mind?
Jules Boykoff:
Well, for me, the good was twofold. One, it’s the athletes. I mean, it’s the athletes in the Olympics that make the Olympics worth anything, and some of them really shined in huge ways. I think everybody knows Simone Biles was amazing. Léon Marchand was bigger than Jesus here in Paris. But there were some athletes who maybe didn’t make the headlines who I think also deserve props.
Dave, we were in the stadium that night when we watched Layla Almasri, the Palestinian runner in the 800 meter, set a national record for Palestine. That was special. And later that night, we watched a runner from India cross the finish line well after all the other competitors. And yet, the crowd was going wild as if she’d almost won the race. And that was really cool too. And for me, that is really more the Olympic spirit than you often see in those hyper-competitive arenas.
But in terms of off the field, I think there were a lot of wins. First of all, there were lots of activist struggle in the streets. We were there for pretty much all of it. This is a total David versus Goliath situation, and it wasn’t just that they were there. They organized in really smart ways. They crossed boundaries in regards to strategies and tactics and came together for the Olympic moment, and they performed a lot of really important duties during the game, such as giving informational tours to journalists who are visiting from afar to let them know the situation, Saccage 2024 was doing that, or taking journalists out on tour and doing outreach like Médecins du Monde and the Revers de la médaille did.
The Revers de la médaille was a really important group that we came to know quite well. And their leaders, people like Paul Alauzy, Antoine de Clerck, were instrumental in creating these moments for people like us to really learn what it’s like to be an unhoused migrant youth in the city during the Olympics. And it got harder for them. It got harder. From every single Olympic migrant that we talked to from the Olympics, they said life got harder under the Olympics.
So those are my goods, people standing up for justice when it’s not even easy to do. But I want to know what you think, Dave. What are your goods for this one?
Dave Zirin:
Well, I mean, I’ll take your lead and go good on the field and good off the field because we know that what happens on the field can ricochet in dramatic and electric effect off the field. And to see Imane Khelif, the boxer from Algeria, succeed and even win gold despite a torrent of abuse from some of the most powerful right-wing and fascist mouthpieces on earth was amazing.
For folks who are unfamiliar with the story, people like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, J.K. Rowling, a true rogues’ gallery of people decided on their own with their own expertise that Imane Khelif was trans or Imane Khelif was a man. I mean, they misgendered her constantly. And all it really was, at the end of the day, was bigotry, pure and simple, and racism, pure and simple. And it was also a hell of an explanation for everybody about the ways that transphobia really affects all women and the way it affects cisgender women as well like Imane Khelif, who don’t conform to white Eurocentric standards of what women should be. And to see her succeed in the face of that, I mean, I can’t imagine what it took.
And one other aspect of this that I think didn’t get talked about nearly enough is that she was also able to accomplish everything that she accomplished as an Algerian boxer and to do this as someone from Algeria in Paris has a symbolic import that I think the global media did not grasp. Because Algeria, of course, was a colony of France. They had to wage a bloody, brutal national liberation struggle against some bloody, brutal oppressors to gain their freedom. There is a monument in Paris for the 140, and that’s by the way a low number, 140 Algerians who are drowned right in the Seine. Drowned in the Seine frankly just a few years before you and I were born. This is not ancient history. And they were drowned in the Seine for no reason other than bigotry, cruelty, and to put down a national liberation movement. And of course, Paris is home to a lot of Algerian immigrants, migrants, Algerian French citizens. And so to see that in the context of all the other abuse that Imane was facing, I mean, that’s something that honestly gives me chills.
As far as off the field, I mean, I got to say it can feel very embattled here in the United States to stand up for Palestinian liberation in the face of a genocide. And to be in Paris and to see the graffiti on the walls, you did an amazing collection of photographs of just people writing, “Free Gaza, free Palestine,” in all sorts of ways across the city, that was beautiful too. It’s going to sound corny as hell, but I kept thinking of the Simon and Garfunkel song Sound of Silence, where they say, I believe, the signs of the prophets are written on the subway walls, tenement halls.
Okay, maybe they’re not going to speak about Palestine, or they’ll do their best to not speak about Palestine, but guess what? Palestine has the hearts of the people of Paris. What you and I of course saw not only in the opening ceremonies, where they got a huge cheer in the bar that we were in when the Palestinian delegation went down the Seine, but you and I also heard it in the closing ceremonies when the Palestinian delegation was announced and the crowd went absolutely wild. I mean, for a people who sometimes seem to be so absent of global solidarity in the face of just horrific situation, to see that was just very heartwarming.
And I’ll just throw onto that our experience meeting Fadi Deeb, the only person in the Palestinian Olympic delegation from Gaza, the only Palestinian who’s going to be in the Paralympic games. To meet him and be witness to his heart and his resolve, I mean, that was worth the trip all in itself.
Jules Boykoff:
Hundred percent agree. It was just such a treat to meet Fadi. Never forget that moment. And when we went in that Turkish restaurant with him, and the men who owned the restaurant just were so excited to see Fadi. They served us on the nicest plates that night. We got the best treatment because of Fadi. And I think he’s just this incredibly charismatic, strong, beautiful human. And I just share that with you, Dave. It was an unforgettable night.
One thing I just want to add, the night before the Olympics officially opened, activists put together a big counter opening ceremony event. Had well over a thousand people there, and this really beautiful thing happened because there was also a Palestinian protest right next to it. And the two events merged together, and you saw the people who were there for the counter Olympics going and supporting the Palestinians, who are yelling across the street at some people that were heckling them. And then you saw the Palestinians coming and supporting the people that were speaking on the dais that night. And I thought, “Wow, this is really interesting moment of these movements coming together to support each other in the context of the Olympic games.”
Dave Zirin:
Mm. And one quick joke that I heard that I loved. You mentioned the Palestinian runner, Almasri.
Jules Boykoff:
Mm-hmm.
Dave Zirin:
Her first name was what? I’m blanking. What was her first?
Jules Boykoff:
Layla.
Dave Zirin:
Layla. I knew it was Layla. But Layla Almasri is that some right-wing hack posted that Almasri in Arabic means Egyptian as a way to say, “Ha, ha. There’s no such thing as a real Palestinian people. Even her last name is Egyptian.” And someone responded, “Well, you’re going to be pretty upset when I tell you about Michael Jordan.”
Jules Boykoff:
Wow. Oh my God.
Dave Zirin:
That was just a great, great one. I just loved it.
Jules Boykoff:
I love… Say her name over and over again. I realized when I mentioned the Indian runner in the 1500, I didn’t even say her name, and I really should. It’s Ankita Dhyani. And it was beautiful to see Ankita push on through to the finish line, and it was beautiful to see all the people around us cheering for her as if she were winning the gold medal. So yeah, I learned a long time ago from some smart people say people’s names, and I just want to make sure I did that too.
Dave Zirin:
Glad you did. Absolutely. So let’s go to the bad right now. There was plenty of bad. What strikes you in your brain stem right away when I say the bad of the Paris Olympics?
Jules Boykoff:
Well, maybe we can go back and forth on this one. So I’ll just do one for starters, and it was so interesting. Macron, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, was so bad and he was so trying to take advantage of the Olympics as a trampoline for his own political career and his own ego. And walking up to all the athletes after their matches and cupping their heads against their will in his hands, just being a little grabby fella, it didn’t go over well here.
And Dave, after you left, I went to one of the fan zones. It was at Place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad, where, as a side note, that’s where a lot of unhoused people were living, and they were cleared out to make space for this fan zone. I was there for the United States playing against France and for the gold medal match in men’s basketball. And as you probably know, when Embiid, Joel Embiid, came on the screen, he got a fair amount of booing. He could’ve played for France, chose to play for the United States. It was more playful, but I’ll tell you what. When they put Emmanuel Macron’s tanned visage on the screen, it evinced thunderous boos and jeers from the crowd. I just found that so interesting.
So you know full well politicians try to use things like the Olympics to boost their political careers. And with Macron, it absolutely flopped. He was pulling at around 25% people saying that he could solve the problems of society in France around early July. It only went up to 27% by early August when the games were in full flow. So big L for Macron in these Olympics.
What about you? What’s a bad for you?
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, it’s hard because the bad and the ugly cross back and forth, back and forth. So I’ll just say for me, one of the bad things for sure was the treatment of some of the athletes who deserve better. And I’m really thinking of, first of all, Jordan Chiles, the bronze medalist who they’re trying to strip her bronze medal away as we’re having this conversation, even though she and her Romanian counterpart have talked about sharing the bronze medal. I’m sorry, I don’t have the Romanian counterpart’s name at the tip of my tongue. Maybe you could look that up or something, because you’re right. You got to say people’s names.
I mean, it was just so IOC, International Olympic Committee, to be like, “Oh, you came up with a collective, athlete-driven solution. Yeah, we’re not having that.” I mean, that to me was just wow. This is Thomas Bach in an absolute nutshell. And while this isn’t bad, it’s good although I’m scared who’s in the wings, I couldn’t be more thrilled that Thomas Bach is going to step down as head of the International Olympic Committee because I think his reign is really, I think, going to be defined, when we look back, as one of an Olympic games built on a foundation of injustice.
Jules Boykoff:
Yeah, no question about that. I was actually a little surprised that he decided not to run for another term and have them bend the rules for the International Olympic Committee because under his reign, the organization has clearly become much more autocratic and authoritarian. So.
One of the bads I want to point to is the repression that activists face, over-the-top repression. Now, everybody knows with the Olympics, the security forces used it as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to amplify all their weapon stocks, get special laws on the books, and also just basically do whatever they want in the streets as a free pass. And thankfully, there were no terrorist attacks during our time here in Paris or during the entire Paris games. But the security forces in charge, they turned their attention to activists. And this all too often happens with the Olympics. When terrorism doesn’t happen, and thank God it doesn’t, they turn their attention to activists.
And we interviewed one young man, Noah Farjon, who was part of the group Saccage 2024 who was bringing a couple journalists to a toxic tour, they called them. They were just informational tours. We went on one, Dave. It’s just some information. There’s not even a loud megaphone. It’s just somebody talking about, in this case, Natsuko Sasaki, one of the members talking about “Here. Here’s what happening in Saint-Denis. This is how the gentrification has happened. Here’s the environmental effects.” Total informational tour. Nothing spiky, nothing nonviolent. And when Noah was bringing these two journalists to the place where we all met up, he was scooped up by police and detained, him and the journalists, for 10 hours.
It doesn’t end there. He actually… They tried to do another toxic tour that focused on police repression and ironically, the police swooped in yet again and issued 135 Euro citations to every single person there who did not have an official journalism card. And so Noah, once again, was scooped up. They called him a leader of this illegal protest. I don’t think this is a protest. This is just a gathering and informational tour. And they brought him in, this time only for seven hours of questioning. And when they questioned him, he told me that they focused on his politics, which was just fascinating to me and really harrowing as well.
I mean, you think about what would’ve happened if the Rassemblement National, the right-wing party that almost got power from these recent French elections, if they got power, you know they would’ve taken full advantage of that situation. He might be still sitting in jail somewhere given the language that they used to talk about protesters around the Olympics. And so I just want to say it is bad what happened here in regards to the ramping up of the security structure and the use of it against people just simply exercising their democratic rights.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, I’m going to build on that because this was one of my bad things, too, and I really hope that people in Los Angeles are going to listen to what I have to say. They talk about terrorism. There are thousands upon thousands of heavily-armed troops and police officers from over 30 countries, from the United States to Western Europe to the Middle East. Now, the part that’s bad in all of this in my brain is not just the cracking down on activists, but also the fact that they were miles and miles from the security zone. I mean, we saw it. They weren’t just protecting Olympic facilities and foreign dignitaries and wealthy tourists. They were in working-class neighborhoods, middle-class neighborhoods.
Performative force, performative violence or the prospect of violence, the specter of violence. And you imagine that in Los Angeles. And the part that really chills me is the memory of seeing that all these police officers and soldiers and elite special forces, people from all these different countries, were all wearing an Olympic patch on their shoulders almost as if to say, “Yeah, do not think for a second you’ve got the democratic rights that may exist in France. This is IOC autocrat land, and we’re going to make sure that these Olympics come off without a hitch at the barrel of a gun.”
And a very interesting thing happened. I don’t know if you saw this. After the men’s gold medal basketball victory, the US men beating an incredibly plucky French team that I was rooting for heart and soul, I got to tell you, is that Ayesha Curry, Steph Curry’s wife was brought to tears by one of the armed officer people about the way she was treated and pushed along in horrible fashion. And there’s footage of one of Steph Curry’s teammates yelling about it like, “What’s going on here?” And she was with her kid and all this stuff.
And there was a small part of me that was like, “Wow, this is terrible,” but also like that line from Bruce Willis in Die Hard like, “Welcome to the party, pal.” It’s like, “Let people…” Because that was so hidden in the coverage that this specter of violence and armed force existed everywhere, all around. And that, to me… I mean, combing the mainstream sports pages. And I got to be clear when I say mainstream sports pages, that was the only sliver of oxygen that I saw that said, “Wow, you just really were not free to come and go as you please in Olympic Paris.”
Jules Boykoff:
Yeah, that’s a really interesting point. And partway through our experience here, we realized that every single video that we were shooting for The Real News Network, every single one was interrupted at one point by a police siren. And we said in one of the pieces we wrote that it was like the soundtrack for the Olympic games. And that kept-
Dave Zirin:
That was your line. Credit where it’s due.
Jules Boykoff:
Is it?
Dave Zirin:
Say your name.
Jules Boykoff:
I didn’t even remember that.
Dave Zirin:
Say your name.
Jules Boykoff:
All right, all right. But, I mean, that’s incredible. We weren’t shooting 10-hour-long videos. We’re shooting five-minute, 10 minute here. Every single time, it was interrupted by a siren. I just thought that that was absolutely incredible.
Dave Zirin:
And don’t forget getting interrupted at one point by a guy with a submachine gun.
Jules Boykoff:
They were everywhere. And hey, look. We were joking one night. We were going over to do an interview, and we were coming back through and we had a big gaggle of people with their machine guns. They weren’t always pointing at the ground either, which was a little unnerving. And we were a little bit worked up and we were like, “Yeah, we’re in our 50s, white cis guys from the United States, and yet we’re worked up.”
And every time we saw somebody that had been pulled over by the police, every single time it was a young man of color. And it wasn’t just once. It wasn’t just twice. It was dozens of times that we saw this. And so that’s living in the Olympic city as a young person of color, and that was just harrowing and really obvious too.
Dave Zirin:
Other than the fact that I’m 38, I agree with everything you just said. Okay, so let’s go ugly, Jules, before people turn off their TVs right now. What, to you, was the ugliest part of the Paris Olympics?
Jules Boykoff:
Well, one ugly part that I just want to talk about because I think we really uncovered something important in our reporting here was around the water with the Seine. Now, first of all, you and I are both on the same page. Totally, let’s clean up the Seine. It hasn’t been swimmable for more than a hundred years. If you can make that for people in this city available, great. Wonderful. I think we both support that. Let’s do it. If the Olympics help make it a little bit faster, great.
But the fact of the matter is the Surfrider Foundation, this organization here in Paris that was doing a lot of testing of the water month by month as it got closer to the Olympics, their testing revealed that the water just wasn’t safe. They were testing for E. coli and Enterococci, so two bacteria, and they were finding that the tests were failing time and again. The tests finally passed in July 2024, the very same month that the Olympics began, but we found something really interesting when we started pressing a little bit further the spokesperson from the Surfrider Foundation, and that was this: that they’re only testing for two bacteria. They’re not testing for pesticides flowing through the river. They’re not testing for toxic effluents from metals. They’re not testing for pharmaceutical refuse. They’re just testing for these two bacteria. That blew my mind.
So when you hear about these swimmers getting sick and they’re saying, “Well, the water was fine. It didn’t have too much E. coli in it,” well what about if you take a little bit of E. coli and you mix it with a full stream of some random pharmaceutical refuse that comes flying through and they gobble that down? Obviously, it’s impossible to know, but it just blew my mind that this really wasn’t reported on aside from what we did in our reporting for The Nation. And it really was disconcerting, too, especially when you think about Paris organizers said this was going to be the greenest games ever. They were always, of course, looking out for the athletes. But I think they jeopardized athlete health by making them swim in that river to support the Olympic spectacle. I thought that was quite ugly.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, my ugly… I’m with you on that. My ugliest part, and I know you’re going to agree with me, is just being in a city with 12,500 ghosts, 12,500 people forcibly removed, really for the purposes of the Olympic games, even though sometimes they would obfuscate that with language. And then learning from one of the NGO workers who works with unhoused people and works with people who live in precarious housing that they were splitting up families, prioritizing mothers and children, leaving fathers behind, and about how she said this to me, and I looked it up and it’s true, the European Union has passed dictates against breaking up families when you have forcible sheltering of people, which is its own issue. But the EU said, “Well, look. If we’re going to do this, we’re not going to break up families.” And then here’s the IOC, Thomas Bach, Macron being like, “Well, actually by hook or by crook, we’re going to get people off the streets. We’re going to get people out of precarious housing.”
And it’s such an assault because 300,000 people in Paris live in temporary or precarious housing because of the prices of housing. It’s an incredible number with between six and 12,000 people living on the streets at one time. And that, of course, doesn’t include people living in squats, or what they call in Paris collectifs, and so many of them African migrants.
There’s an ugliness. It was like living amongst a human rights violation for the purposes of our collective entertainment. And when you allowed yourself to put on blinders, it was very possible to feel the narcotic of the athletes, the excitement, the competition, the beauty of sport. But then you take a step back from it and the sheer ugliness of what they did to the most vulnerable of the populations there was something to behold.
But meeting people like Paul Alauzy, who does that work, meeting as you did more than I did some of the unhoused people and migrants themselves and hearing their struggles, although I did get to hear some of them for sure at some of the rallies and press conferences and the like, I mean, you saw resilience. You saw strength. But you also had to take a step back and look at the reality that these folks are basically standing in front of bulldozers when the Olympics come to town. So that was my ugliness.
Jules Boykoff:
Yeah. Just adding one thing to that. In that ugliness, there was incredible beauty in the people that were fighting back for the rights of the people. And one thing I witnessed that I’ll never forget is a doctor named Bertrand Chatelaine.
And he was there and it was getting late and our shift was supposed to end with doing outreach, but all these young African migrants came out, mostly from Ivory Coast, and there were literally 40 people there who wanted to see the doctor. And he’s an 88-year-old man, and he just patiently went through, boom, boom, helping each one of these young men getting medications that they needed, figuring out what it was that was their malady. And we stayed till nearly midnight. We were supposed to end our shift at 10:00.
This guy is 88 years old and I thought, “Wow, this is actually the embodiment of the values that are in the Olympic Charter much more than a lot of the things that we’ve heard out of the mouth of Thomas Bach and his fellows in the International Olympic Committee. This is actually the spirit of the Olympics, and yet it’s shuffled into the darkness.” And it was just a privilege to be able to see that just even for a few hours. Five hours one night with him is something I’ll never forget.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, and to put a button on that, the story about athletes in the Olympic Village taking advantage of the fact that there’s free healthcare in the village to do all sorts of checkups and treatments that they otherwise cannot afford back in their home country, it makes you think that a lot of these athletes have far more in common with the migrants than they do with people like Thomas Bach and Emmanuel Macron and Tom Cruise.
All right, let’s spin this forward real quick, and then we’ll wrap it up, Jules. You and I have both been involved in for quite a few years in Los Angeles 2028. That’s where the next Olympics are going to be, of course, the next summer Olympics. So to you, Jules Boykoff, based upon what you saw and learned in Paris, what advice do you have for not just activists, but citizens in Los Angeles as 2028 approaches?
Jules Boykoff:
Well, this is a question that you and I asked a lot of the people that we were interviewing here, from activists to doctors to outreach workers to everyday people on the streets that we were talking with. And across the board, every one of them who is involved in advocacy or activism said to the Los Angeles City, “Folks, organize early and often and dig in your heels. And get ready to work with people who you might not normally work with, but it’s going to be crucial during that Olympic moment.” That’s something that you and I have seen in city after city, but it’s definitely something that every single person we talked to gave as advice to folks in LA.
And there’s a lot of spirit and zest in Los Angeles. You and I have both spent a lot of time down there. There’s NOlympics LA, the anti-Olympics group that’s done great organizing down there. They’re working with a lot of different groups, the LA Tenants Union, lots of other amazing groups that are down there. LA CAN, Los Angeles Community Action Network. You name it. Stop LAPD Spying. They have the infrastructure there to push back, and they have a lot of people in Hollywood that are not going to be Tom Cruise jumping off the top of a stadium at the closing ceremony, but are actually going to be asking big questions about Los Angeles. There’s been numerous celebrities, and I hope that they can get more celebrities on board to be outspoken about the downsides that you and I have been talking about tonight. So I think that would be my advice for Los Angeles.
Last point. I was really interested to see an elected official in LA, the LA controller, a guy named Kenneth Mejia, who posted on Twitter this really interesting graphic comparing Paris to Los Angeles. Because all too often, Paris and Los Angeles were placed in the same bucket. They were going for the Olympics at the same time. There were supposed to be these two democracies after a wave of anti-democratic hosts. But wow, the differences between Paris and Los Angeles are huge.
I know you have a lot to say about that, but Kenneth Mejia was pointing out the transportation system in LA is a nothing burger compared to here, where the metro system was amazing. The number of unhoused people living in the streets in Los Angeles is off the charts compared to what you saw here, even though it’s a significant issue here as well. And he laid it out. So I think following Kenneth Mejia’s lead, early and often, that’s the only way to deal with what’s coming to Los Angeles four years hence.
What about you though? What would you say to those activists?
Dave Zirin:
Start talking to the unions now about being part of the resistance, because that’s one of the things I do pull from the Paris experience, is good for the workers of France, the union workers in France, in that they were able to leverage the Olympics to get higher pay, benefits, beat back the reform of their pensions. People might remember the mass protests in 2023. They raised the slogan, no raise, no Olympics. I mean, all of that is beautiful and inspiring, and I’m definitely glad they’re going to have more coin in their pocket, but it also felt to me in Paris that it also meant separating the unions from the people who then the Olympics fell on their backs. Talking about the unhoused populations, the people in the outer suburbs, the people affected by the security state, et cetera.
I’d really like to see and hope to see in Los Angeles, where union density is far higher than your typical American city even if it’s not Paris, I would love to see them truly joined in 2028 and through the Olympics not just for their rights as workers, but for the rights of the people who are most vulnerable to the Olympic monolith.
Jules Boykoff:
Mm-hmm. I love that. Great point.
Dave Zirin:
Well, that’s all the time we have here. Jules, let me just say that doing this with you, the work, both planning these clips for The Real News Network and writing for The Nation was a true honor on my part. I appreciate you. I love the work you put in. Brilliant, sharp, cohesive, thoughtful, measured, and oh so important. So thank you so much, Jules, for being part of our Paris 2024 project. If you’re down, I look forward to doing it again in LA.
Jules Boykoff:
Hell yeah. We had a great time. We worked hard. And I feel the same way about you, Dave. It was just a real highlight of my life to do this. It was so fun. We worked hard. Met some amazing people. We learned a lot. And yeah, I hope people slow down and check out some of the videos and some of the writing that we did because we really did our very best work here. So thanks, Dave.
Dave Zirin:
Amen. Right back at you.
And I also want to give a shout-out right now to Maximilian Alvarez over at The Real News Network, Cam Granadino at The Real News Network, Dave Hebden at The Real News Network, and the whole team at TRNN who were able to produce these videos quickly, incredibly professionally. Terrific B-roll. That means footage while people were talking when we did interviews. Just top-notch work from The Real News Network. Just shout out to all of y’all.
And for all of you out there who followed up with us, who’ve been watching the clips, who’ve been reading the articles, much respect to you. You are appreciated. We are going to build a movement out of this, because from knowledge comes power. For everybody out there listening, please stay frosty. We are out of here. Peace.
Polls suggest that more Black men—up to 17-20%—will be voting for Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Are these polls overhyped? Or are Trump and the MAGA movement genuinely appealing to more Black male voters? Reporting from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, TRNN’s Taya Graham speaks with Black delegates about why they support Trump, and why they think other Black men will, too, in November.
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Post-Production: Stephen Janis
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, this is Taya Graham for The Real News Network and I’m here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the Republican National Convention. And I had a question, polls are saying that Black men are going to be voting more and more, for former President Donald Trump, and I wanted to know why. So I came to the Black Republican Mayor’s Association event to ask the source, why they are voting for Donald Trump and why they think more Black men will be doing the same.
Michael Austin:
Michael Austin, Kansas Republican Delegation.
Taya Graham:
Why are you representing the Republican Party?
Michael Austin:
I’m a guy that really likes to focus on facts and of course, just, is it easier to live your life, buy a house, run a business? And it’s clear that President Trump has done an amazing job for the African-American community, of course, for me and my family as well. And so I have no qualms about supporting him again this time.
Taya Graham:
Black voters have a tendency to vote Democrat, what would you say to them to sway them?
Michael Austin:
Well, I’d say Black Democrats or Black voters are just like any other American voters, they care about the prices at the pump, they care about the prices at checkout. And it’s clear that four years ago, prices were considerably cheaper than where they are now. So if you want it to be a little bit more affordable to live your life, not live paycheck to paycheck, then let’s actually vote for the guy who actually made that happen in our lifetime and that’s President Trump.
Taya Graham:
I’m going to ask you to comment on something that Michigan representative, John James said, and he said last night, Republican National Convention, he said, “I’m going to say something that’s going to make progressives mad. There is no racism in this country.” When you hear a statement like that, do you think that represents most Black Republican slots?
Michael Austin:
I don’t know about most Black Republican slots, but I think what he was speaking to is just that this is the land of opportunity. Jim Crow was 50, 60, 70 years ago, and by and large, where we end up in life is a real decision of our choices. Whether we’re willing to make that hard decision, make that hard work, and tirelessly work to see that the dreams that we have, and I think it goes to show, that while there are still bad actors out there, by and large, if you work hard, you can still achieve what you want to do.
Taya Graham:
In relation to the vote, we’ve been seeing polls that are saying that African-American men look like they’re really going to turn out for Trump. What are your thoughts on this? We saw that it could be as high as 20%, whereas it seems like African-American women are lagging behind.
Michael Austin:
I would agree with that, I think that’s exactly what’s happening. More African-American men are moving towards Conservatism or the Republican Party. And I think that’s on, one, because of Trump, but also two, the Democrat party has been demonizing men, whether you’re white, Black or red. They’ve been telling men that you shouldn’t be men, they’ve been telling that men should be women or that men should play in sports with girls or women, and I feel like it’s simply pushing them away. So I see it’s kind of a two-pronged effect, we have Trump here, that’s doing what he can to entice more Black Americans, whether you’re a man or a woman, and then you have the Democrats that only want to pick and choose who they want to be in their party.
Diante Johnson:
So my name is Diante Johnson, I’m the president of the Black Conservative Federation.
Taya Graham:
Let me just ask you, what drew you to the Republican Party?
Diante Johnson:
The policies, the principles, First Amendment, Second Amendment, Common Sense regulation, Free Enterprise, Limited Government, those are the policies that drew me to the party. But also, protecting the sanctity and dignity of life.
Taya Graham:
As I’m sure you know very well, most Black folks are Democrats. What would you say to them to bring them to your table?
Diante Johnson:
Well, I tell people to look at your situation, the situation that you’re having right now. If you’ve been voting Democratic for so long and you’re still in the same situation, it may be time to change. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Taya Graham:
The polls are showing that Black men might come out as high as 20% in support of former President Trump, seems like Black women are lagging behind a little bit though. Why do you think President Trump and his platform are appealing to Black men?
Diante Johnson:
Democratic Party has, for so long, pushed Black men aside in the homes, in the jobs, in the criminal justice system, they’ve never been a target. And so the Republican Party has started to appeal to them, because of the policies, because of what you’re seeing in the community, because of everything that you’re seeing. Even when it comes to the birthplace, saying that, “Oh, a man doesn’t have, it’s not his choice, it’s the woman’s choice, it’s her body, her choice.” The 1990 crime bills that Joe Biden did a then Kamala Harris’s tough on crime policies as well. Those are things that we’ve seen, those are things that the Black men have seen and they’re saying, “Listen, why am I supporting this party that has done this?”
Taya Graham:
On the convention floor last night, and I saw Michigan Representative, John James, say that, “I’m going to make a lot of progressives upset, but I’m going to say it again. There’s no racism in the United States.” How would you respond to that statement?
Diante Johnson:
So I would never say that there’s no racism in the United States, I would say that, unfortunately, there’s bad actors. Unfortunately there’s bad people, but I would say that there’s racism on both sides, but I wouldn’t say there’s no racism in the United States.
Steven Mullins:
My name is Stephen Mullins and I am part of the Connecticut Delegation to the Republican National Convention.
Taya Graham:
I want to know what brought you to the Republican Party, what policies inspired you?
Steven Mullins:
I have been active with the Republican Party since I was a child. I was politically inspired by President Reagan, as an elementary school student, and I’ve stuck with it. I believe in the conservative values that the Republican Party offers, socially, fiscally, I think it is the way to go.
Taya Graham:
When you say socially conservative, what do you mean?
Steven Mullins:
Socially conservative, I believe that when a male is born a male, he remains a male, I believe when a female is going a female, she remains a female. I am not going to be part of any type of delusionary thinking. I’ll respect people and how they feel, but I am not going to get to the point where I believe that it’s okay for a male who believes that he is a female to enter women’s spaces. Participate in women’s sports, go into women’s private spaces, locker rooms and bathrooms. I think it’s completely inappropriate and I think there’s certain gender roles that we have to fit into and that should not overlap.
Taya Graham:
When you say fiscally conservative, I’ve seen a couple Republican presidents run up that debt, so I’m kind of wondering about the fiscal conservative policy you’re talking about.
Steven Mullins:
You are right, and so far, I did not see that with President Trump, all right. We saw it with Reagan, we saw it with Bush, both Bushes, I have not seen it with President Trump, so that makes him different than other Republican presidents that we’ve had in the past. I do have my issues with him from time to time, but in general, he is the man that we need to have in Washington right now, as the head of state, as the commander in chief, as our leader, he is the only one. So far, he has completed the promises that he’s offered. We’ve heard presidents from both parties, confirm that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel and that the embassy of United States, should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It did not happen with either President Bush, it did not happen with President Obama. But in less than four years, President Trump fulfilled the promises that they did not make, by actually moving the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to the true capital of the state of Israel, Jerusalem.
Taya Graham:
I would guess from that statement, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that you support the United States to continuing sending arms to Israel for the Palestinian conflict.
Steven Mullins:
I believe that Israel is our best friend in that region and we should do everything that we can to support them and there should be a peaceful resolution. I believe in a ceasefire on both sides, all right. Some say, ceasefire, but I mean, ceasefire just for Israel, I believe a ceasefire for both sides.
Taya Graham:
I’ve seen polling as high as 20% that say African-American men are going to be voting for former President Trump, but it seems like Black women are lagging behind a little bit. Maybe you could share with me why you think Black men are being drawn to vote for former President Trump.
Steven Mullins:
I’ve spoken to so many Black men, who are secretly supporting President Trump. I’m like, “Come out of the closet, come on. Show what you believe in.” But it’s going to be a major surprise. As far as Black women’s concerned, Black women right now are the most loyal supporters to the Democratic Party, and I don’t know why that is. But my mother, because Senator Scott was talking about, we all love our mothers, my mother is a big time, not big time, but she’s a supporter of the Democratic Party. And I respect that, and that’s just all there is to it. She’s voted for me, but as far as others are concerned, the answer’s been, no. So it’s going to take time, it’s going to take time.
Kevin Fulton:
Kevin Fulton, F-U-L-T-O-N. I represent Houston, Texas, I’m a delegate.
Taya Graham:
I should have known from the hat. What drew you to the Republican Party?
Kevin Fulton:
I started out as a Democrat, which is what traditional Blacks start out with, just because of family and the community. What drew to me, was faith, I was disappointed in the Democratic Party no longer recognizing God in their platform. And then I became pro-life, and so I had to shift to a party that recognized pro-life. And the third major thing is, I came from a low-income area, and when you asked for help, Democrats told you, “Go get welfare.” Republicans talked about incentives, about how to start your business, how to grow a business, how to make money outside of the government, and that was what resonated with me.
Taya Graham:
What would you say to bring more Black voters to your table?
Kevin Fulton:
I would say, don’t listen to the rhetoric, do your research. Amber Rose spoke last night and I was shocked, but she basically said, she did the research just to prove her dad wrong, to show her dad that Trump was a bad person. During her research, she figured out that it is all not true, and so I would tell Blacks, don’t look at the rhetoric, look at the policies and the programs that are put in place by a Democratic Party and Republican Party and see which one betters our communities.
Taya Graham:
It seems like polling says 20% of African-American men are going to be voting for Trump, it seems like Black women are being a little slower to join the club. What would you say it is about former President Trump that is drawing Black men to him?
Kevin Fulton:
Economics. At the end of the day, Black men are the ones that’s impacted most by high unemployment, inflation, trying to take care of their jobs and open borders. So those types of things impact the Black community and a Black men specifically. So that’s why you see a huge shift in Black men moving towards Trump.
Taya Graham:
Do you believe closing the border would actually help African-American men get jobs?
Kevin Fulton:
Yes, because what happens is, increase in illegal immigration shows an increase in unemployment for Blacks and first-generation immigrants. Those two groups are hurt the most in the job market whenever there is open borders and there’s a flood of illegal immigration.
John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and now Trump. America is no stranger to attempted and successful political assassinations, but something feels different about this time. On July 13, former President Donald J. Trump survived an assassination attempt during a rally in Butler, PA, that left one bystander dead and two others seriously injured. The shooter, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, PA, is now dead. While Crooks was a registered Republican, and the FBI has yet to identify a motive, the Republican Party has wasted no time in pinning the assassination on Democrats and the left. In response, Democrats and Biden are putting up little defense, capitulating to the right-wing narrative and issuing vague pronouncements against “charged rhetoric” and “political violence.” TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez joins The Marc Steiner Show for a breakdown of how the political ground is shifting beneath our feet—and what it portends for the election.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.
Someone tried to assassinate and take out Donald Trump. There have been numerous assassinations and attempted assassinations in our country. I remember a lot of them individually when I was younger, what I felt when John F. Kennedy was gunned down, and when Martin Luther King was assassinated, and Robert Kennedy, different times. And while we’ve always had a divided nation, in many ways, something about this time seems different. The closest I can get to that feeling is the feeling I had when I was a civil rights worker in Cambridge, Maryland, Mississippi, and further south.
It was terrifying at times. It’s as if that spirit now dominates the entire country, and our divide seems to run deeper than ever. So let’s take a look at these assassinations and attempted assassinations, then and now, with my good friend and colleague, Real News editor, Max Alvarez joining me in studio. Max?
Maximillian Alvarez:
Man, brother, it’s wild to be speaking to you from a very different world than the one that we all inhabited just last week. But as always, it’s an honor and a pleasure to be with you, brother, and to be doing the work that needs to be done, and, yeah. I mean, I know that we are all reeling from the kind of political reality that we were thrust into this past weekend, when 20-year-old, Thomas Matthew Crooks, as you said, attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump with an AR, with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle. He opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania this Saturday, July 13th. He did not fatally wound the president, but he did kill one attendee, Corey Comperatore, and he critically wounded two other people who were attending the rally.
Now, I want to just really emphasize for folks listening that we are going to be doing everything we can in the coming days and weeks to get y’all the coverage that you need to know, how to act in this moment, right? We are here to use our journalism, our tools, our skills, our resources to get you the information you need to act, and we’re here to provide you with the context and perspectives that will motivate all of us to act with well-informed purpose, conviction, courage, and love, and that’s our real goal. And so right now, at this very moment, our incredible colleagues, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis are literally on the ground in Milwaukee, covering the Republican National Convention, where as we’re recording this on Monday afternoon, July 15th, Donald Trump just named JD Vance his vice presidential candidates. We’ve got Stephen and Taya on the ground, covering the RNC, covering this political scene as it is being reshaped in real time in the wake of Saturday’s failed assassination attempt. And so I say that to encourage folks to follow Stephen and Taya’s work, subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us on social media for up-to-date, for breaking updates on that coverage, which we’ll be publishing throughout the week.
But as we go further into this terrifying moment, myself, Marc, Stephen, Taya, our other incredible Real News colleagues, we’re going to be doing everything we can to get y’all the coverage, the perspective, the voices, the context that y’all need to navigate this moment and to not be paralyzed by fear and despair, but to be moved to action, which is ultimately our final goal and our real purpose for being here. And so with all that up front, I just wanted to clarify for folks that this is more of a shorter episode of The Marc Steiner Show, where Marc and I really wanted to kind of share some reflections after this historic weekend on the moment that we are in, the reality that we are in in this country, and to also, as we so often do on Marc’s incredible show, to give folks some deeper historical perspective here. And that’s what I was really, really looking forward to talking to you about, Marc, even though all of this is incredibly terrifying, depressing, unnerving. I couldn’t help think about what you were thinking about in this moment and what it must be like to experience all this, as someone who has witnessed many instances of political violence in this country in decades past, things that only feel like historical footnotes to my generation, but you lived through the attempted Reagan assassination, the MLK assassination, JFK. So I was wondering if I could turn the mic back around and start there and ask if you could just sort of, yeah, talk us through like A, what’s been going through your mind these past couple days as you’ve been witnessing what the rest of us have, but also, yeah, if you could compare this moment to other moments of …
Sorry, one second. To other moments of high-profile acts of political violence, especially in the United States itself. What was different from what we’re witnessing now compared to what you witnessed when you were a younger man? What was different about you? What was different about the country, and how does it compare to where we are now?
Marc Steiner:
I mean, the first thing I think about with all this is that we live in an incredibly violent country to start with. I mean, we’ve had Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, John Kennedy all assassinated, our presidents in the United States who’ve been taken out way before, I mean, and those were the 19th century other than Kennedy. And we saw Gerald Ford get almost taken out twice, and it’s not something new. George Wallace, on the right, was paralyzed, and so it’s not a shock. I mean, I remember really well where I was in each one of those times.
Not Garfield, McKinley, and Lincoln. I’m not that old, but …
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, you remember where you were when Lincoln got shot?
Marc Steiner:
I do. So let me tell you about it. But I remember very vividly when Kennedy was assassinated, and I had been expelled from public school and was up going to school in Massachusetts, and the guy who ran the school was an anti-Nazi resistance fighter in World War II, a German guy, Hans Maeder. And I remember one of the guys running down the hall, yelling, “Kennedy’s been killed, Kennedy’s been killed.” Then the bell rang, and everybody had to go up to the main house, and Hans shut the school down for 10 days, sent us all home, to contemplate what that meant after we all met together and talked about it.
I mean, we were all stunned and shocked, you know? I mean, I think the one that really hit me the most was when I was living in D.C. in 1968, and I had just started working for the Poor People’s Campaign, and I already worked for Liberation News Service, which I helped found, and it was when King was assassinated. I remember hearing wailing in the neighborhood, and then the entire city erupted. So this is not new, but what’s happening here, I think also, is that Trump’s rhetoric is really violent, and he’s pumping it up. Oh, Max, let’s talk a bit about that, I mean, because you were just talking about what he, in fact, was saying before this attempt on his life.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Maximillian Alvarez: Right. I mean, I just want to really encourage all of our listeners, viewers, readers to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, right? Yes, we are in an intense, in many ways, unprecedented moment. Like Marc said, political violence is not new in this country, but history never fully repeats itself, and we are fundamentally in a different era, a different age, a different time than we were back in 1968, and we’ll talk a little bit about that as we go on here.
But I think that people need to not be beaten into subservience and beaten out of critical thought at this moment, because obviously that’s what’s going to happen to a lot of folks, and it’s because this is such a fraught moment where everyone’s very worried about saying the wrong thing, feeling the wrong thing, or not even knowing how to interpret their own feelings about this, the vast, vast, vast majority of, I think, people in this country do not want to live in a country where political violence is normalized, but, of course, plenty of people in this country do, and a lot of them are part of the MAGA movement. That’s not to say that all Trump supporters are cut from that cloth. I know many Trump supporters who are just as horrified at the thought of political violence as anybody else. I’ve been texting with them all week. I mean, my own dad voted for Trump in 2016, and he’s not someone who’s champing at the bit for blood and not calling for that.
It’s a big country. There are a lot of people in it, and a lot of people do not want to see this. But, of course, Donald Trump himself has been cultivating this bloodlust and this thirst for violence for years. And at this moment when Trump himself is the victim of an attempted assassination, of course, everyone is concerned for his safety, concerned about what it says about the country that we came so close to another assassination of a former president, but yeah, I was very curious as I was hearing all the sort of media responses about … And even from Joe Biden’s presidential addresses this weekend, talking about how we need to turn the temperature down on the political rhetoric in this country and blaming this kind of violence on rhetoric from the Democratic side, folks from the Republican side saying that, “This is what happens when you call Donald Trump a fascist, when you say he’s a threat to democracy,” and so really, trying to kind of put the blame on the liberal left and the Democratic party.
But if you go and listen to the speech that Donald Trump was giving in Pennsylvania this weekend, before Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on Trump and the crowd, I mean, he was doing exactly the same thing that Trump always does. He was talking about, “Millions and millions of people in this country who don’t belong here.” He was talking about people flooding the country over the border, even said like from insane asylums, like just really continuing to ramp up this rhetoric that they “Have stolen our country.” They, “Have infested and invaded our country, and we need to steal it back.” He explicitly pointed out Joe Biden as the one, the worst president in American history who let all of these “Undocumented” or illegals into the country to overrun it. That was seconds before the gunman opened fire, and so it’s absurd to think that this rhetoric that people are saying needs to be tamped down is not, in large, coming from Donald Trump and his supporters himself.
And so there is a discussion to be had about civil discourse. I’m not so cynical as to think that we don’t all ourselves have some personal responsibility to bear for the level of discourse in this country, but I’m also not so naive as to believe that if we all just start treating each other a bit nicer, all of our problems are going to go away. They’re not. And Trump and his movement didn’t just come from nowhere, they grew out of, as we’ve covered for years here at The Real News, long, simmering resentments, feelings of loss, humiliation, rage, retribution. Trump knows how to tap into that.
He has tapped into it for years for his own political gain, and now suddenly, the violence is touching him and his supporters in the most immediate shocking way possible. We can’t just pretend as if this is all the Democrat’s fault or Trump himself has not played a major role, in that the Republicans will not continue to play a major role in fomenting the very division that they are now asking people to tamp down.
Marc Steiner:
I mean, I think that we’re in a very dangerous place, I think. I think that when I look at … As we said before, history doesn’t repeat itself, but in some ways, it mimics and you can also learn from what happened before. And I think that there are two points in history that deserve to be looked at in terms of what we face now, given the violence that’s occurring in this country and the violence those periods had as well. And I’m talking about the end of reconstruction in America, which unleashed 90 years of abject violence against the Black world in this country, when it was destroyed, when Black political power was growing, and it was literally destroyed, violently destroyed.
And you also have to look, I think in 1933 Germany, when a minority, right-wing party took over the country, and I think that, in some ways, we’re facing something as dangerous as that. Not the same, but as dangerous. And I was thinking about what Trump looked like after the attempted assassination, and the look on his face, and the blood on his ear, and what that is doing to excite the people around Trump who want to see him president. It is so hard because also, the left in the United States right now, at least electorally speaking, isn’t very strong, you know? So you’ve got these right-wing demagogue, who is not that bright but extremely shrewd, and has the right people around him, and a neoliberal president who is just fumbling the ball.
And I think we’re at a point where if the right does take over the United States, if this assassination attempt fuels the masses around Trump, we could be in for a really dangerous future. And, look, I’m not one of these guys who moans and cries about stuff like this and go, “Oh, woe was me.” I’m just looking at what’s happening in our country. I’m seeing the divide. I’m talking to some of my neighbors who are pro-Trump, and I guess think that we have to really be on our toes, that …
You cover, Max, for Real News. You do a lot of incredible coverage of growing union movements in this country. It takes that kind of organizing, that kind of work to stop the right from seizing power. That’s the place we find ourselves in now, and I think-
Maximillian Alvarez:
I think-
Marc Steiner:
Go ahead. Go ahead.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I just want to, yeah, underscore two parts about that, is one … This is why I think the work that we do at The Real News is so politically important, because what we try to do is get to the human faces, and voices, and stories behind the headlines, behind all the kind of social media avatars, and chatter, and political sloganeering. We try to show people to people, and we try to remind people that their neighbors, their co-workers, their fellow parishioners, their fellow community members are just as human as they are, and just as deserving of dignity, and security, and freedom as they are. And I think I will always have optimism in our fellow human beings, that that solidarity can always win out if we do the work to find each other on that level. And I use the example of some of the folks that we’ve gotten close to over the past year and a half by reporting on the tragic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in the last election and where, yeah, the majority of people in town are still in support of Donald Trump, including folks who I now call close friends because I’ve been in their homes, I’ve reported on their lives and the tragic circumstances that they’ve been thrust into ever since this train derailed in their backyard.
I don’t care who they voted for. It’s like if you run up to someone caught in a burning car, are you going to ask them who they voted for before you pull them out kind of thing?
Marc Steiner:
Right.
Maximillian Alvarez:
That’s what a great journalist, Steve Mellon on strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, that’s how he put it to me, and I thought that was a very apt comparison. But anyway, the reason I bring that up is that I was texting with people that I’ve interviewed in East Palestine about what’s been happening this weekend and about how we were feeling about it, and I think two things that came out of those exchanges is one, this moment is different compared to the ones that you referenced in the past, other high-profile instances of political violence, attempted assassinations, and successful assassinations of major figures, including current and former presidents, right? One thing that’s truly different about this is that we are not operating on a shared plane of reality here. And I don’t want to be romantic and say that we always were, but we are operating less on a shared plane of reality than I think we ever have been. And you could see that from the moment the shots rang out.
No one saw the same thing. It was like people have been conditioned by the echo chambers that they live in, the media that they watch on their TVs, on their phones, the people that they talk to, the preconceptions they have, just the questions, the reactions, the conspiracy theories that flowed immediately from this video circulating online. It was just so clear that we didn’t even have a shared base of reality to even talk about what we were going through, and that is an incredibly dangerous place to be. And what I was texting back and forth with one East Palestine resident was like, “Imagine if we hadn’t met in person. Imagine if we hadn’t connected on that plane of shared reality from the labor reporting I was doing, from just caring about you guys as a family, going through something awful, and getting to see that side of you.” If I hadn’t seen that side of them, if they hadn’t seen that side of me, the socialist nutjob coming from Baltimore, covered in tattoos and piercings, imagine what we would all be thinking of each other right now.
And the fact that we were saying like, “Look, I love you. I don’t want this to ruin our relationship, but what are you thinking about this?,” even just starting from that place gave me a lot of hope that we aren’t as far gone as it can feel right now, but that means we’ve got a lot of work to do to really reconnect with our fellow workers and to educate one another on who is really at fault for the things that are making our lives harder and who isn’t, and who’s exploiting our anger and fear for their own game, and who is deliberately trying to pit us against one another so that we don’t work together to find common solutions to our common problems? And frankly, as we’ve been very open and honest about here at The Real News Network, we do not believe that the political establishments and the people who literally benefit by separating the population into two categories, two parties liken, and convince us that we’re basically a separate species, there’s a sinister force that work there, that deliberately pushes us apart, deliberately makes us feel like we are not on a shared plane of reality, let alone, a shared plane of humanity. And, yeah, Trump has been very liable for that. He has been stoking that fire for years.
He is not the only one. That’s just the reality of the world that we’re living in. But the point is, is that, yeah, the more alien we appear to each other, the more we let politicians and pundits tell us what our fellow neighbors and countrymen and fellow workers are, instead of just talking to one another ourselves, the easier we are to divide, and conquer, and exploit, and to fight that … And, Marc, I want to toss this back to you to ask, if you could tell us some lessons that you’ve learned particularly about how you can bridge those divides through organizing, through common struggle, because I think that is a really, really critical point to make here. So in those moments of deep despair, when the country was reeling from these other assassinations and attempted assassinations, where did you find hope? Where did you find power and a way to respond in a way that felt meaningful and purposeful?
Marc Steiner:
It’s all very difficult. I mean, one of the things I was thinking about was years ago, when I was a community organizer in South Baltimore, and we organized a Tenants Union Group in a neighborhood that was deeply divided by race. There’s a street that runs down the middle of South Baltimore called Charles Street, goes way through town, and it divides the Black and white worlds. The Black world was Sharp Leadenhall, the white world was South Baltimore. Almost all the men worked in the same dry docks, the same shipyards, but lived in segregated worlds, and we organized them together in a Tenants Union, to fight the same slum landlords.
One of the things that happened though … And this is what I say, well, organizing can change a lot. Whether it’s union organizing, community organizing really does have an effect. That’s how you build a movement. We actually turned George Wallace precincts into McGovern precincts, door to door.
That’s what it takes, because people naturally will ally if you bring them together, if you help people find their commonality, and I think that’s what we … We are deeply divided the country at the moment. I’m not sure how we bridge that, given the present political situation. And it’s so different than what happened before. I mean, when King was assassinated, I mean, I will never forget it because I was living in D.C., and the rebellion erupted, but we were also organizing the Poor People’s campaign, and we were organizing people in Appalachia to join Resurrection City.
And it bridged these … I mean, I don’t know how to describe this, but it was like when you were organizing this, and I’ll never forget the night when a white guy in a Black and white group together, white guy stood up, and he said … He used the N-word, and he said, “If that’s what these N’s are marching for, I’m going to march with him.” And one of the panthers walked over to him, put his arm around him and said, “Yes, brother, we are marching together.” And after that, the guy stopped using the word, by the way.
But what I’m trying to point out here is that people, we can come together. It just takes real work to make that happen. And right now, we are faced with a real danger that has been building in this country for the last 50 years, which was a deeply organized right-wing that could seize power in America. That’s what we’re facing. That’s that picture of Trump with blood dripping on his face, with his determined look on his face being pulled away by the Secret Service. And I think we’re facing a really momentous moment, and I am not quite sure at this moment how we get out of it.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and I mean, that’s the task that’s at hand, right? I mean, you’ve got to fight. You can’t just roll over and let history run you over, right?
Marc Steiner:
No,
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I think that there’s a real lesson there in how we got here in the first place, right? I mean, I think since Trump came down that freakin’ golden escalator in 2015, right? It’s like so many people in our country and so much of our political culture has just been dominated by this nostalgic desire to “Return to normal,” and that’s what we heard through all the first Trump presidency, and it just seemed to compound. Like everything seemed to be getting worse. It became a catch-all for all the things that were changing.
All of our favorite celebrities were dying, like the political status quo, not just here in the United States, but in countries around the world was getting turned upside down, and COVID hit, and it just feels like the bad news and world historical changes have been nonstop. The world has continued to break record after record with heat and extreme weather and so on and so forth. And so I think Trump became this sort of symbol for a lot of people, not just a symbol of change for the people who supported him, but a symbol for the people who did not support him of this sort of change that they did not want, the change to their lives that they weren’t ready for and wanted to turn back the clock on, and that’s, of course, impossible. You can never turn back the clock, you can never “Return to normal,” and yet, that’s still the kind of hope that so many of us in this country have apparently had. And I think that that has made us uniquely and woefully ill-prepared to meet this moment right now because we have just been hoping that the “System” as such or the elite power brokers in the Democratic Party, or in the courts were just going to kind of take care of things for us, and we were going to be able to get back to normalcy/complacency, whatever that meant for us.
But as this nightmare cycle of news over the past few weeks and months from the Supreme Court rulings to Trump’s guilty verdict in May, now, that verdict and all other verdicts being thrown into question because of the Supreme Court rulings on presidential immunity. I mean, just today, as we’re recording, a Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the criminal case against him for retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Marc Steiner:
Yes.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Again, I say that to say that all these hopes that people had, that the system would sort of hold Trump accountable, and that he and his movement would just kind of quietly go away because of the wrongs that they had done are now, I think, really at a moment of rude awakening where they’re not only realizing that Trump is not going away, but after we all saw that picture you referenced of him, holding the fist up with blood on his face, everyone thought the same thing, which is that, “Holy shit, he’s going to win.” And what this is going to mean for his movement is going to be so galvanizing and potentially terrifying that it really instilled, I think, a lot of anxiety and fear in so many people rightly, and meanwhile, as if he were just this metaphor turned into flesh, like he is the literal physical embodiment of a necrotic democratic establishment that is just so manifestly unfit to take on Trump and Trumpism, yet refuses to relinquish its death grip on power. We are all watching in real time as Joe Biden and his campaign are crumbling before our eyes. And right now, senior Democrats are out there telling the press that they’ve “All resigned themselves to a second Trump presidency.” And so that’s fomenting a lot of resignation, a lot of despair, a lot of people just sort of accepting that we are powerless at this moment.
We’re not as organized as the people who are taking advantage of this moment, and that’s just the way things are. And the powers that be aren’t going to come and save us, but that’s not acceptable. That is simply unacceptable. There is too much at stake for us, for our children, for our planet, for our future to just roll over and give into fear and defeatism right now. Now is the time for bravery, and I think history is calling upon all of us to be brave and to instill bravery in others.
And that can look a lot of different ways, but the organizing piece is really crucial because that’s a kind of bravery that you’re referencing that we see every week here at The Real News, right? We see that bravery in exploited workers, banding together, building collective power, exercising their rights, and changing their circumstances. We see it in peace activists, and people of conscience around the world, organizing to try to build power and disrupt the war machine, or copwatchers, putting their bodies on the line to hold the police accountable. This is the kind of bravery that really pushes one to take that step out of just accepting the status quo and our place in it, and step into the fight to change the world for the better. And that’s where I really stress that folks, wherever you are, however you’re feeling, you’ve got to do something.
You’ve got to organize. You’ve got to seek out and find the places where you can come together with others and actually do the work of building power. Don’t just feel like you only have the options of voting, or screaming online, or maybe going to a protest. Again, all these things are important, but you have more power than that. You just have to build it.
You have to channel it. You have to exercise it and organize it collectively. And so what I would just say to folks out there listening, and this is the last thing I’ll say, and then, Marc, I’d love for you to close this out, is right now, you got to seek out and you got to find the places and institutions in your community where there is at least some infrastructure in place that allows people to gather and work together to address their shared concerns. That can be unions, could be community organizations, faith-based institutions, churches, sports leagues. I don’t care.
However, small, and decrepit, and in need of repair these institutions are, they’re better than nothing, and they are the sort of budding infrastructure that we need to come together and start getting ourselves and our neighbors organized and working together. And once you start, because you’re not going to just snap and suddenly have an organizing infrastructure to fight the rise of fascism or to provide mutual aid and support as things keep getting darker and more dangerous, you got to build it. You got to build that kind of organization. You got to exercise that muscle and practice building power. I mean, this is what our dearly departed sister and legendary labor organizer, Jane McAlevey was always saying.
I think people really got to take that to heart, because going towards the election and even beyond, you need power. You’ve got to build power. If you want power to bend to your will, you got to have some power to make them question their decisions. Right now, as atomized individuals screaming into the void, we have no power. And so if you want to address and stop those feelings of powerlessness, then you got to take that initiative and you got to find the places in your community where you and your community members, your neighbors, your coworkers, your family members, your friends can start doing that work because it’s not going to come from nowhere, it’s going to come from us and people like you.
Marc Steiner:
That’s absolutely right. I mean, I think that as we close out here, that the key is, I said earlier to it all, is organizing and pulling people together. This country is deeply divided, but is on a very thin line. And folks who are on one side can get to the other side pretty easily, but it takes organizing and work to make that happen. And I think that’s one of the key things that we’re trying to do here at The Real News, is also bringing those stories of people who are actually crossing that line and working together to make some changes, and to build a new world.
So it’s always a pleasure to sit here and talk with my dear friend and colleague, Max Alvarez, and keep listening to his stuff because he’s got the pulse on the workers of America here for the Real News, and that’s important, and we’re going to continue to look at this election, and look at where we’re going, and to do our best to cover it for you, and to get out there and fight for our future. So I’m going to wrap this up. And once again, Max, it’s always great to have a conversation with you, and I thank you so much for bringing my butt down here to do this today with you.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Thank you, brother. It’s an honor to be in the struggle with you.
Marc Steiner:
And I want to thank Cameron Granadino on the other side of the glass for running this program, and our audio editor, Alina Nehlich, who just makes us all sound incredible, and [inaudible 00:39:40] Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show and our others shows possible. So please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you want us to cover. Write to me at mss@therealnews.com. I’ll write to you immediately once I get your email. And once again, Max, always good to be with you on the air, always, and we’ll bring you more about this election and the struggles around this country and how we can win this fight together.
So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, take care, and contribute to The Real News.
On day one of the Republican National Convention, with tensions running extremely high following Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump, a coalition of progressive organizations moved forward with their plans to stage a protest march outside the RNC. In this on-the-ground report, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis take you to the heart of the action, speaking with protestors participating in the demonstration as well as devout Trump supporters in downtown Milwaukee, WI.
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Post-Production: Stephen Janis
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Kobi Guillory:
So we have these people in power. The only options that we have are people who represent a system that exploits and oppresses us. Everybody say, “That ain’t right.”
Crowd:
That ain’t right.
Speaker 2:
Welcome back, Kobi Guillory, with Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
Kobi Guillory:
The reason both parties are inflicting violence every day on millions of Black and Brown people, throwing them in prison for crimes they did not commit.
Speaker 3:
July 15, where will we be?
Crowd:
In sight and sound of the RNC!
Speaker 4:
Palestinian is not the problem. Trump is not the problem. Biden is not the problem. It’s you have a problem with God!
Crowd:
Whose city?
Our city!
Whose city?
Our city!
No justice, no peace!
Taya Graham:
Hello. This is Taya Graham for the Real News Network, here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and right behind me is a coalition to march on the RNC. They are marching for a variety of causes. It’s an umbrella group for progressive causes, including protection of LGBTQ rights, protection of reproductive health rights, as well as to end the war on Gaza. So please stay tuned for more real-time updates.
Crowd:
No justice, no peace!
No racist police!
Brother Jim:
Black Lives Matter, they are paid to travel the country and cause riots. Now, they haven’t caused too many riots in the last year or so. They’ve calmed down, but they burnt cities like Oregon and Minneapolis and other places around the country.
Taya Graham:
So why do you think they’re being paid to take such action?
Brother Jim:
Well, because they’re useful idiot stooges, like all communists want to use, and they find derelicts and a lot of homosexuals and sodomites and lesbians, and they pay them money to travel around and cause trouble.
Duane Schwingel:
I’m here to support President Trump. Oh, yeah, and a lot of them I’ve seen in different rallies. We hug and I say, “I’m anti-fascist too.” “Really?” “Yes, of course.” I’m Uncle Sam. I know history.
With the attempted assassination of former President Trump, the stakes of the RNC have shot sky-high. Fear, sadness, and indignation have now swept the mood of the convention. In spite of the volatile environment, March on the RNC (https://marchonrnc2024.org/) are going ahead with their planned protests. Whatever happens here in the coming days could very well come to define the rest of the election. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis report from the ground in Milwaukee for The Real News.
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Post-Production: Stephen Janis Additional post-production support: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and this is Stephen Janis for The Real News Network, and we are here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin covering the Republican National Convention right behind us. We’re going to be inside on the floor covering the conventions, speaking to delegates, and if possible, reaching out to the politicians who will be present. Of course, what was supposed to be a gathering to nominate President Trump and basking conservative policy ideas like Project 2025 has been turned completely on its head. That’s because yesterday, just a day before delegates arrived, a 20-year-old man named Thomas Matthews Crooks tried to assassinate Donald Trump. Stephen, tell us how this changes the dynamics here.
Stephen Janis:
I mean, I think what was supposed to be just a convention about conservatives, like I said, like you said, touting Project 2025, has actually become sort of a religious ceremony here. You just feel the fervor on the streets and then the people, they feel like their savior has survived what is a horrifying assassination attempt, but also there’s a new sense of energy about Donald Trump and it’s really not what we expect in terms of political convention, it almost seemed like a religious gathering on some, so it is a little different here.
And there’s also tension in the streets because people are very, very angry and they don’t really know who to point that anger towards, whether it be us, the media, we saw a very interesting sign, we’ll talk about that later, but really there’s a lot of anger and there’s a lot of tension, and so it’s very, very different. Not that it wouldn’t be here before, but it’s just been heightened.
Taya Graham:
And, Stephen, there’s not just anger directed towards the media. There’s been a lot of anger directed towards protesters as well.
Stephen Janis:
Very true.
Taya Graham:
So the Coalition to March on the RNC has affirmed that it will continue its plan to protest. There was also some pushback during this press conference when a reporter asked the head of the coalition if he would condemn the violence against former President Trump. We actually spoke to him about this after the press conference.
I was watching some of the comments from the press and someone seemed a bit antagonistic. I think it was, I’m not sure. I think it was a reporter from Politico who asked you about condemning the recent violence against President Trump. How did you perceive that question and can you share with us what your response was?
Omar Flores:
I perceive it as trying to attach violence to us that has nothing to do with us. What they’re trying to do is make us seem like we’re crazy, we’re unhinged as they always have. I mean, we’ve been very open with the media. We’ve been doing this specific organizing around the RNC for two years now. I mean, people have a very good idea of who we are and what we’re about and what we’re able to do in terms of being able to maintain a family-friendly march. And so I think it’s unfortunately just trying to draw lines to us that don’t exist.
Taya Graham:
But, Stephen, along with the protests, what will we be focusing on covering this historic week?
Stephen Janis:
We will be on the floor, hopefully. We have floor passes and our sort of goal is to be on the floor as much as possible and to cover the dynamics and to see how people react to Trump. I mean, really this is going to be unprecedented. I don’t think we can think of a place in history where a presidential candidate has survived an assassination attempt a day before the convention, so we’re going to be on the floor and also trying to talk to a lot of delegates and take the temperature for you, so you know how the delegates here, you know the kind of prime Republicans are reacting to this, and you know how it’s going to play out both in the election and further on in policy.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. And I would just say this, from the people we’ve spoken to already, I’ve spoken to a handful of delegates, we’ve spoken to Milwaukee residents, and what we have heard for those who are supporting the Republican Party, they are angry, they are deeply saddened, and they believe that if President Trump actually had been killed, that it would’ve been the beginning of civil war and they still think that’s possibly on the horizon. So this has stirred up very deep feeling among many Americans.
So, Stephen, I’m sure as people can see behind us here, the gates and the officers, security here is very tight. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what you’ve seen.
Stephen Janis:
Well, the entire downtown is like a perimeter. It’s like a security perimeter. You can’t go anywhere without these kind of passes to get through. There’s security, FBI, who knows what kind of people.
Taya Graham:
Secret Service.
Stephen Janis:
Basically, today we’re in a cop watchers utopia, as I said before.
Taya Graham:
Yes.
Stephen Janis:
So to all our cop watcher friends, you got to get down here with your cameras, but you can’t get in.
Taya Graham:
But you won’t be able to get in.
Stephen Janis:
So it’s really like downtown is like a no-go zone for anyone, so it’s going to be very interesting to see how that plays out, because we’re going to have to go through security every day to try to get to recording this.
Taya Graham:
Now, to try to end things if at all possible, on a somewhat lighter note, Stephen, when you were out for a walk scouting locations, you saw an interesting truck. Do you want to describe what you saw there?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, I was just walking the perimeter to try figure out our entry points, and I see this truck just parked there and says, “Fight against the liberal media,” or the leftist media, excuse me, “Leftist media.” And I felt like it was just there for me somehow, because I was the only one. I turned around and I look and I’m like-
Taya Graham:
There was no one else on the street.
Stephen Janis:
There was no one else one the street. And the guy was just parked there, I tried to approach him and he moved, and then he didn’t seem like he wanted to talk to me, but I couldn’t really see him because the windows were a little tinted. So it was kind of a welcome and I was like, “Thank you for inviting.” I’m not saying I’m part of the leftist media, but whatever.
Taya Graham:
I was going to say, we are independent media. We’ve seen a lot of our mainstream counterparts here, and we’re going to keep an eye on them as well. We’re going to bring you as much footage as possible. We feel that it’s basically our obligation to document everything. We know we are documenting a moment in history right now, and we’ll do our best to bring it to you unvarnished. My name is Taya Graham, this is Stephen Janis, and we’re reporting for The Real News Network. Thank you.
With the attempted assassination of former President Trump, the stakes of the RNC have shot sky-high. Fear, sadness, and indignation have now swept the mood of the convention. In spite of the volatile environment, March on the RNC (https://marchonrnc2024.org/) are going ahead with their planned protests. Whatever happens here in the coming days could very well come to define the rest of the election. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis report from the ground in Milwaukee for The Real News.
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Post-Production: Stephen Janis Additional post-production support: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and this is Stephen Janis for The Real News Network, and we are here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin covering the Republican National Convention right behind us. We’re going to be inside on the floor covering the conventions, speaking to delegates, and if possible, reaching out to the politicians who will be present. Of course, what was supposed to be a gathering to nominate President Trump and basking conservative policy ideas like Project 2025 has been turned completely on its head. That’s because yesterday, just a day before delegates arrived, a 20-year-old man named Thomas Matthews Crooks tried to assassinate Donald Trump. Stephen, tell us how this changes the dynamics here.
Stephen Janis:
I mean, I think what was supposed to be just a convention about conservatives, like I said, like you said, touting Project 2025, has actually become sort of a religious ceremony here. You just feel the fervor on the streets and then the people, they feel like their savior has survived what is a horrifying assassination attempt, but also there’s a new sense of energy about Donald Trump and it’s really not what we expect in terms of political convention, it almost seemed like a religious gathering on some, so it is a little different here.
And there’s also tension in the streets because people are very, very angry and they don’t really know who to point that anger towards, whether it be us, the media, we saw a very interesting sign, we’ll talk about that later, but really there’s a lot of anger and there’s a lot of tension, and so it’s very, very different. Not that it wouldn’t be here before, but it’s just been heightened.
Taya Graham:
And, Stephen, there’s not just anger directed towards the media. There’s been a lot of anger directed towards protesters as well.
Stephen Janis:
Very true.
Taya Graham:
So the Coalition to March on the RNC has affirmed that it will continue its plan to protest. There was also some pushback during this press conference when a reporter asked the head of the coalition if he would condemn the violence against former President Trump. We actually spoke to him about this after the press conference.
I was watching some of the comments from the press and someone seemed a bit antagonistic. I think it was, I’m not sure. I think it was a reporter from Politico who asked you about condemning the recent violence against President Trump. How did you perceive that question and can you share with us what your response was?
Omar Flores:
I perceive it as trying to attach violence to us that has nothing to do with us. What they’re trying to do is make us seem like we’re crazy, we’re unhinged as they always have. I mean, we’ve been very open with the media. We’ve been doing this specific organizing around the RNC for two years now. I mean, people have a very good idea of who we are and what we’re about and what we’re able to do in terms of being able to maintain a family-friendly march. And so I think it’s unfortunately just trying to draw lines to us that don’t exist.
Taya Graham:
But, Stephen, along with the protests, what will we be focusing on covering this historic week?
Stephen Janis:
We will be on the floor, hopefully. We have floor passes and our sort of goal is to be on the floor as much as possible and to cover the dynamics and to see how people react to Trump. I mean, really this is going to be unprecedented. I don’t think we can think of a place in history where a presidential candidate has survived an assassination attempt a day before the convention, so we’re going to be on the floor and also trying to talk to a lot of delegates and take the temperature for you, so you know how the delegates here, you know the kind of prime Republicans are reacting to this, and you know how it’s going to play out both in the election and further on in policy.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. And I would just say this, from the people we’ve spoken to already, I’ve spoken to a handful of delegates, we’ve spoken to Milwaukee residents, and what we have heard for those who are supporting the Republican Party, they are angry, they are deeply saddened, and they believe that if President Trump actually had been killed, that it would’ve been the beginning of civil war and they still think that’s possibly on the horizon. So this has stirred up very deep feeling among many Americans.
So, Stephen, I’m sure as people can see behind us here, the gates and the officers, security here is very tight. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what you’ve seen.
Stephen Janis:
Well, the entire downtown is like a perimeter. It’s like a security perimeter. You can’t go anywhere without these kind of passes to get through. There’s security, FBI, who knows what kind of people.
Taya Graham:
Secret Service.
Stephen Janis:
Basically, today we’re in a cop watchers utopia, as I said before.
Taya Graham:
Yes.
Stephen Janis:
So to all our cop watcher friends, you got to get down here with your cameras, but you can’t get in.
Taya Graham:
But you won’t be able to get in.
Stephen Janis:
So it’s really like downtown is like a no-go zone for anyone, so it’s going to be very interesting to see how that plays out, because we’re going to have to go through security every day to try to get to recording this.
Taya Graham:
Now, to try to end things if at all possible, on a somewhat lighter note, Stephen, when you were out for a walk scouting locations, you saw an interesting truck. Do you want to describe what you saw there?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, I was just walking the perimeter to try figure out our entry points, and I see this truck just parked there and says, “Fight against the liberal media,” or the leftist media, excuse me, “Leftist media.” And I felt like it was just there for me somehow, because I was the only one. I turned around and I look and I’m like-
Taya Graham:
There was no one else on the street.
Stephen Janis:
There was no one else one the street. And the guy was just parked there, I tried to approach him and he moved, and then he didn’t seem like he wanted to talk to me, but I couldn’t really see him because the windows were a little tinted. So it was kind of a welcome and I was like, “Thank you for inviting.” I’m not saying I’m part of the leftist media, but whatever.
Taya Graham:
I was going to say, we are independent media. We’ve seen a lot of our mainstream counterparts here, and we’re going to keep an eye on them as well. We’re going to bring you as much footage as possible. We feel that it’s basically our obligation to document everything. We know we are documenting a moment in history right now, and we’ll do our best to bring it to you unvarnished. My name is Taya Graham, this is Stephen Janis, and we’re reporting for The Real News Network. Thank you.
After more than 50 years, the Oakland A’s announced their departure from the city last year, leaving Oakland bereft of its sports teams after the flight of the Warriors in 2019 and the Raiders in 2020. To the dismay of fans, the A’s plan to temporarily relocate to a minor league stadium in Sacramento before permanently moving to Las Vegas in the 2028 season. Former A’s catcher Bruce Maxwell joins Edge of Sports to discuss the move, its impact on the local community and workers, and the trajectory of his own career and the place of the A’s in his life story.
Studio Production: David Hebden Post-Production: Taylor Hebden Audio Post-Production: David Hebden Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Welcome to Edge of Sports, the TV show only on The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin.
We are talking baseball right now with former Oakland A’s and current Mexican League catcher, Bruce Maxwell. If that name rings a bell, it might be because Maxwell was the first Major League Baseball player to take a knee during the National Anthem in protest of racist police violence.
We’ll be speaking to Maxwell about the Oakland A’s temporary move next year to a minor-league ballpark in Sacramento, and their 2028 move to Las Vegas. In other words, the death of baseball in Oakland. Let’s speak with him now.
Bruce Maxwell, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports TV.
Bruce Maxwell:
Hey, good to see you, Dave. I appreciate the invite.
Dave Zirin:
Oh man, there’s so much I want to talk to you about. But before we talk Oakland baseball, can you give my listeners and my viewers just a sense of where you are right now, and what your baseball life is like?
Bruce Maxwell:
Well, I’m currently in Monterrey, Mexico at Monterrey Nuevo León. I’m now coaching with the Toros de Tijuana. It’s another team in the Mexican League Baseball in the summer. Quick turnaround for me; I was just a player last week for a different team, and things didn’t work out so well. They didn’t see me in their future plan, so they sent me home.
And as I was headed home, the GM for this team who I know very well, he called me and offered me a coaching job. So now I’m here in Monterrey, preparing for Opening Day tonight against the Sultanes in Monterrey, and continuing my love for the game, man.
Dave Zirin:
Amazing. It’s certainly a love I share. No matter how much the people who are in charge of the game try to mess it up, somehow the game is still the game.
Bruce Maxwell:
Exactly, exactly.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. So before we talk about Oakland baseball, I did an intro where I spoke about your incredible history where you kneeled during the anthem in such a conservative sport that is baseball. I just wanted to give you the chance to speak on it. Why did you take that move? Why did you kneel during the anthem?
Bruce Maxwell:
When it comes to that, man, these things are very important. That’s a bigger-than-baseball stance that I took.
Growing up where I grew up in Alabama, being biracial, me and my sister being very athletic, we grew up in similar circumstances to those of which can’t have their voices be heard. The racial profiling, the unfair treatment because of skin color. And with my sister and I, we actually got bad things from both sides of our race: because we weren’t enough of one or we’re too much of the other.
So it was difficult, especially me being the male. It was difficult for me growing up and being the only Black player on my team, literally almost my whole life. I think my junior year of college, I had a freshman who was a young African-American kid. And then in pro ball, they’re very scattered.
Most of the guys, when you turn on the TV that you see that are darker-skinned or whatever, most of them are Latin guys. And so as the numbers have decreased since … hell, in the last 30, 40 years, the significant decrease is something that’s important.
But also in our country, a lot of people don’t understand because they’re not in areas or they’re not affected by it. And we live in a society where if it doesn’t bother your life, it doesn’t really matter.
And I think as athletes, no matter what sports you play, I feel like our job is to speak up for the ones who can’t speak, or can’t be heard because their platform and their influence is not big enough. We put athletes on a higher pedestal than the President of the United States in this country.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah.
Bruce Maxwell:
And as those influences, as those ballplayers, I feel like it’s our duty to also stand up for the regular people, the little people that we once were in life.
It’s much bigger than the game. It’s much bigger than my salary. It was much bigger than the hate that I received and the problems thereafter. But I still work in that space. I still tend to Latin and African-American ballplayers as young men, as ballplayers. I work with kids here in Mexico because I speak the language.
I have guys that I work with that are Dominican. I have a couple Cuban kids, then I have also African-Americans and other youth in the United States. So I still live in my truth. I still stand for what’s right, and it’s how my parents raised me.
No matter how difficult it may be or no matter the consequences, you have to have a strong sense of character. And even though you might be the only one standing for what’s right means a whole lot more than moving with the crowd.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, let’s talk about consequences. Because I’ve always been of the belief that you paid a price for it in terms of your career in Major League Baseball. Feel free to agree or disagree with that. Do you think that’s been one of the consequences?
Bruce Maxwell:
Yeah, I agree 100%. I definitely agree. Like you said, it’s a very conservative sport. And again, it’s kind of the whole reason I’m down here in Mexico playing. At the time, I was very, very solid with my analytics and my numbers defensively. I was a very solid catcher in the big leagues. And after that, it changed how people saw me.
It was no longer about my play; I could go out and play very well, and it really didn’t matter. And it happened with the Mets when I went back in 2020, 2021. I was playing well. I was doing well, but I just wasn’t getting the opportunities to really play. And they had no intentions of taking me to the big leagues or giving me a shot back in the big leagues. I was just kind of there as a just-in-case.
And therefore I was like, “All right, well, if I’m going to play, then I want to go somewhere where I actually play and I can contribute.” And so I just came back down here where I’m respected. I’ve played a whole lot, and I’ve got some championships down here to prove it.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. It is a damning comment on Major League Baseball, especially the way they bathe themselves in the memory of people like Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente, that they’ve treated you in such a way.
Bruce Maxwell:
Yeah.
Dave Zirin:
And I just wanted to say that.
Bruce Maxwell:
Yeah, it’s tough to see. Because you don’t see a whole lot of difference being made, outside of going to cities and giving out free stuff and maybe appearing a time or two or whatever. But the game is still the same. They still frown upon it, and the environment makes it tough for people of the minority to really speak their minds and stand up for what they actually truly believe in, because they’re in fear of consequences.
So it’s a tough world, man. But slowly, I feel like if you want to really make a change, you first have to put yourself in that environment of change, and change it from the ground up. And that’s what I’m trying to do.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. I’m going to put some church organ music behind you with that last answer. That was beautiful.
Yo, so I want to talk to you about the Oakland A’s, their move to Sacramento, and then their subsequent move that’s coming up in 2028 to Las Vegas. You’re the person I wanted to ask this: what was your impression when you played for the A’s of Oakland as a baseball town?
Bruce Maxwell:
It was incredible, the environment. I’m a big history buff when it comes to baseball. My dad’s favorite team was the Oakland A’s, and my dad’s from Indiana. It’s just with that team, it’s history. It’s one of the oldest organizations in baseball.
The players that have come through there, the winning environment, what they’ve done for the City of Oakland itself, it’s really given the community a staple in a sports team. And that’s something that you cannot allow to leave. You cannot allow that to move to another area.
Because now you’re turning Oakland into almost like a wasteland when it comes to sports. They lost the Warriors, the Raiders moved, this, that and the other. But I feel like the Oakland A’s have been more of a pillar of the community than either one of those teams.
It’s upsetting. And honestly, it’s bothersome to see that being allowed to happen. It’s like taking the Cubs out of Chicago. It’s like taking the Dodgers out of LA. It can’t happen. It can’t happen. So it’s devastating to see their moves, and the fact that they’re allowing it to happen because of greed, and because of the lack of stature when it comes to the City of Oakland.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. What does this say about John Fisher, the owner of the team? He inherited all the money from Gap clothing. That’s where his $3.3 billion come from; that’s his net worth. What does it say about John Fisher, that he’s so willing to remove the team from Oakland? When he clearly has the financial means to keep them there as long as he wants to?
Bruce Maxwell:
It just says that he’s selfish, and it’s about as clear as I can be with that. It’s the fact that the fans in the City of Oakland have seen him gouge our prospects and our players over the years. And then the Oakland A’s fans have still been loyal and stayed loyal while watching their very players be All-Stars and important players for other teams.
The fact that he has the financial means to move the team, but not the financial means to upgrade the stadium, to upgrade the locker rooms, the field itself, to put more money into the contracts of players, to keep fans coming and wanting to support the Oakland A’s. The fans took a stand, and I would too in that situation, especially again for such a historical team.
These people in Oakland, man: they grow up and teach their kids the love of the Oakland A’s. Even to this day, it’s a culture up there. It’s not just another team. And I think with John Fisher, he doesn’t care.
At the end of the day, he doesn’t care about the workers who’ve been working there for 40 years. He doesn’t care about the kids and the grandparents and the great-grandparents that have been coming to Oakland A’s games, that have had season tickets for 40 years. He doesn’t care about that. He wants new and shiny things, but he could easily have made those shiny things in Oakland. He just didn’t want to be there.
And for him to be able to move the team without batting an eye, it’s disappointing and it’s upsetting for the people of Oakland. But also for a lot of us that … I can’t speak for everybody else, but it saddens me. I played seven years with that organization, and the whole time it was history. You have Rickey Henderson, Dave Stewart, Vida Blue, all these guys coming in to spring training, working with the kids. So [inaudible 00:11:50] right? All of that is because of the Oakland A’s.
It’s not because, “Oh, they’re just big leaguers.” No, they spend a good chunk of their careers playing for this team, winning for this team. And it’s part of their lives. So to see it be uprooted to a new place for whatever the reason may be, it’s bothersome.
Dave Zirin:
I’m really glad you mentioned the stadium workers. Because as awful as it is to move the team, there have been some articles about how generations of people have worked for that team. And Fisher’s disregard for them is just another mark against him to me, as somebody who cares about the sport. I mean, clearly he does not.
Bruce Maxwell:
He doesn’t. I went back this off season. I was coaching kids with a couple of my former teammates in Palo Alto. And when I got there, I went to an A’s game within about a week, just go see my coaches and things. Because when I was there, the coaches are the same: minus Bob Melvin, but they’re the same.
And I walked up in the players area, and same security guards. They gave me a big old hug. They were like, “Great to see you. It’s been forever.”
Mind you, I haven’t been in the big leagues since 2018. I don’t remember their names, but 100% they remember me: the people that man the parking lot, the people that check you before you go into the locker room, the people on the field, the grounds crew. I spent most of my time talking to all those people, because those are the people that make the difference in our days every day.
And so for him to be able to uproot that team and put all of those people out of a job just willingly, it’s upsetting and it’s cruel. At the end of the day, it’s cruel.
Dave Zirin:
It is cruel. You know the area well. What are your opinions about the fact that until 2028, they’re going to be playing in a minor-league park in Sacramento? People watching in lawn chairs, God bless them.
Also, they’re not going to be known as the Sacramento A’s or the Oakland A’s. They’re taking the city’s name off of it, and just they’re going to go by the A’s: which to me just feels like a wretched scrawling on the history of Major League Baseball. But please, your thoughts.
Bruce Maxwell:
It is. It very much so is. Because without Oakland, there would be no A’s, period.
Dave Zirin:
Right.
Bruce Maxwell:
You can’t carry that name if you’re going to move the team. And so they’re going to move to Sacramento. Sacramento is … When it comes to big-league protocol, it’s not even close.
So instead of putting money into the stadium you already have that holds history with Rickey Henderson, Dave Stewart on the mountaintop, all these things, you’re going to go out and have to shell out even more money potentially to renovate that stadium to make it quote-unquote big-league protocol.
And you’re in Sacramento. It’s not a major-league park. Even when you renovate it, it’s not going to be a major-league park. So you’re basically downgrading your big-league team even more than it was already in Oakland.
Because I’ve heard from a lot of players over my years, they call the Oakland A’s were four-A, and everybody else is in the big leagues: because of the stadium, because of the locker rooms, because of the field, because of the dugouts, because they feel like they’re not playing in a big-league ballpark.
And so you’re more than willing to put in all this money to renovate Sacramento Stadium, and then go get a new one in Vegas. But you can’t put the same energy and effort into preserving the historic team in the very city that made it what it is today.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. This is a question that I think you are uniquely positioned to answer. We’ve already touched on it a little bit, but we’ve seen some players be public in their disgust with the move. And they’ve been punished.
One player sent to the minors, another player who is the sole All-Star on the team sent to the bench just because they wore little macrame bracelets in solidarity with a group that wants to keep the team in Oakland.
Why can’t baseball just allow some free thinking among players?
Bruce Maxwell:
Because-
Dave Zirin:
Why is that so terrible?
Bruce Maxwell:
Because there is no free thinking. Major League Baseball is always and will forever be a very controlled sport. We’re expendable. And the fact that we have a gigantic minor-league system; we have a draft every single year; it makes players expendable. So nobody really wants to share their true thoughts because their job’s on the line.
And when you play for organizations like Oakland, where they’re very nitpicky about what you say and how you say it, this, that, and the other, it’s very difficult for you to really get at people’s true thoughts about what’s going on.
You have a kid, Ruiz, who got sent down. And they gave him some things to work on for him to get back in the starting lineup. But he was hitting .430 when they sent him down in the big leagues after also setting the rookie record for stolen bases last year, and hitting about .280. All because of a bracelet.
I feel like when you play for a team, especially in the big leagues on a stage like that, it’s our job as players to engage and to stand with our community outside of the ballpark. It’s a very, very bad move.
Dave Zirin:
[inaudible 00:17:45]
Bruce Maxwell:
It makes Oakland look like a joke. It makes the city look like a joke, makes the whole organization as a whole be frowned upon. Because something as simple as that, wanting to stand for keeping the team in this very historical spot is subject to you losing your job.
It’s a pretty tough take, and I think it’s very immature. I think it’s very selfish. And that just goes to show how much John Fisher and our front office don’t care about the freedom of free thinking, and what our players actually really think and feel on that field.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. I got one more question for you, Bruce. But before I ask, is there anything else you’d like to say about the Oakland A’s? The move, your experience, anything else?
Bruce Maxwell:
I feel bad for the fans. I know I’m no longer in uniform, but I just want to say to them, I love all of you. I’ve had some of my best times and met some of my best friends in the seven years I was representing the Green and Gold.
I lost one of my dearest friends two years ago. She passed away. I met her in spring training; she used to talk to my mom, she used to talk to my father. And I’ve had some great meaningful experience and relationships come out of my time in Oakland. And I truly feel sorry for the city, because I know that this move has broken a lot of hearts. It’s broken a lot of spirits, when all people have ever done in that area has grow up and be A’s fans.
So from my heart to theirs, I love all of you. I feel for you. And everybody that’s ever put on that uniform is affected by this change.
Dave Zirin:
You know what? That’s where we need to end it. Bruce Maxwell, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports.
Bruce Maxwell:
Yeah. And always a pleasure talking to you.
Anncr.:
Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories, and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity Forever.
Gene Bruskin was born to a Jewish working-class family in South Philadelphia and has been a life-long social justice activist, union organizer, poet, and playwright. Since retiring from the labor movement, Gene wrote his first play in 2016, a musical comedy for and about work and workers called Pray For the Dead: A Musical Tale of Morgues, Moguls and Mutiny. In this mini-cast we talk to Bruskin about his life in the the labor movement, the role of art and imagination in revolutionary politics, and about Bruskin’s new musical, The Return of John Brown, which is premiering this month in Baltimore, Washington, DC, and the John Brown Raid Headquarters in Maryland. “In a staged reading of this new musical, John Brown, who in 1859 became the first person in the nation executed for treason, climbs out of his grave where he was hanged, into the present, only to be rearrested and threatened with another hanging.”
Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Gene Bruskin:
My name is Gene Bruskin and I am a retired union organizer, strategist. I spent 35 years in the labor movement. I retired at the end of 2012, and ended up in being thrown back into the labor movement anyway as a redeployed person. And I’ve spent a lot of time these last few years in particular working with Amazon workers around the country, helping to figure out how to support all these young workers that are taking on the biggest company in the world. But the other thing I’ve done with my retirement, which is really exciting for me, is I went back to an old hobby of mine that I had started before I got into the labor movement and I started writing musicals for workers. And right now, I’m producing my third, The Return of John Brown. But I’ve been doing that work since 2013, 2014, and it’s been very gratifying and very challenging.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right. Welcome everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership With In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network, produced by Jules Taylor, and made possible by the support of listeners like you. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. So, if you’re hungry for more worker and labor-focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network. And please support the work that we are doing here at Working People because we cannot keep going without y’all. Share our episodes with your coworkers, leave positive reviews of the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and become a paid monthly subscriber on Patreon for just five bucks a month if you want to support the show and unlock all the great bonus episodes that we publish exclusively for our patrons.
And also, please support the work that we are doing at The Real News Network by going to the realnews.com/donate, especially if you want to see more reporting from the frontlines of struggle around the US and around the world. My name is Maximilian Alvarez, and as you guys heard, we got a special guest, a brother, long time veteran of the labor movement, Gene Bruskin here on the pod today to talk about not only his life and work in the movement, but also, this great musical that Gene is getting ready to premiere, including here in Baltimore and in DC and elsewhere. It’s a musical called The Return of John Brown. And I wanted to have Gene on because, as you guys have probably noticed, things are pretty heavy on the podcast of late.
I mean, not that they haven’t been heavy in the past, but as I continue to go down this route of interviewing more working people living in sacrificed zones around the country, people who are in the direct path of destruction, whether that be at the hands of deregulated industry, government and military, and Department of Defense negligence, Wall Street greed, or people who are directly in the path of the worst and growing effects of manmade climate change. This is a really fucking big issue, pardon my French. And so, that’s why I’m continuing to cover it on this show, that’s why I am doing my next book on this subject, but we’ll talk about that more later.
But the point is that that’s all really heavy and important stuff, but also amidst all of this heavy stuff going on in the world, it’s important to remember that there is still art and beauty, and beauty in the struggle to be appreciated and savored. And it’s the kind of thing that makes life worth living. And I want us to also always make space for that, not only here on the show, not only at the Real News Network, but in our movement writ large. We need to feel joy, we need to express ourselves, we need to participate in the activities of creating beauty wherever we can because that’s what we’re fighting for. That’s why it’s so cool to have Gene on the show today.
And like I said, we’re going to talk a little more about Gene’s background in the labor movement, and we’re also going to talk about how all that work and organizing connects to his playwriting and his art. And I just wanted to set the table real quick before we turn things back over to Gene. We will link to the musical’s website, the website for The Return of John Brown in the show notes for this episode. But I just wanted to read from that website, just to give you guys a sense of what the musical is about.
So, on the website, it states, “In a staged reading of this new musical, John Brown, who in 1859 became the first person in the nation executed for treason, climbs out of his grave where he was hanged into the present only to be re-arrested and threatened with another hanging. As his trial unwinds the past and present merge as Brown’s inspiring story is told through humor, music, mystery, and drama depicting a feverishly-charged moment in history that reverberates in today’s political climate. As the plot twists, Brown’s escape plans lead to an unexpected alliance between white and black farmers hoping to save their land from the Smoke & Mirrors Pipeline company and its CEO King Louis. The playwright, gene Bruskin spent 45 years as a labor union organizer and has written three musicals for and about working class people since his retirement.”
“The musical tale connects yesterday’s battles to the need to challenge the enduring destructiveness of racism today.” “The first show will debut on April 26th in Baltimore, followed by a show on April 27th in Washington DC the next weekend on May 4th and 5th, the play will be featured at the Kennedy Farm, the Harpers Ferry, West Virginia area location where John Brown staged his famous anti-slavery raid.”
All right. So, Gene, let’s bring you back in here, man. I want us to of course talk about the play itself and what you are hoping to accomplish with it, and give folks a little more of a taste of what they’re going to see when they go check this musical out. But before we get there, let’s dig a little deeper into your backstory. So, we can’t go like a full hour here and I know you can’t sum up 40 years of life in the movement in 10 minutes. But I’m curious, just tell us a little more about yourself, your life in the movement, how you got into that work, and how you eventually found your way to writing musicals for and about working people.
Gene Bruskin:
Thanks, Max. It’s really a pleasure to be on your show and to have a chance to talk about this. I grew up as a working-class Jewish kid in South Philly. Although my father had been very political in the ’30s, he actually was a young member of the Communist Party. He got discouraged for a variety of reasons. He went fought in World War 2, and then he just had to make a living the rest of his life. Although, he was always reading and he was an intellectual, I just wanted to play basketball and that got me to college and all this stuff. So, I was very much a child of the ’60s. I was a jock who got politicized by all the stuff that was happening around me, fighting, resisting ultimately that I was going to be sent to Vietnam, which changed my life that in order to not go there and die and kill people.
And ironically, at that moment you could get a deferment if you were willing to teach in the New York City schools. It was considered worse than Vietnam.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Jesus.
Gene Bruskin:
I went to teach as a fourth-grade teacher with no training whatsoever in the South Bronx, and that was of course transformational for me. I had grown up in a working-class neighborhood, but I’d never seen that level of poverty and oppression. And so, that sort of factored into my life. And I ended up in Boston in the ’70s, trying to make a living, participating in the various anti-war and other things. And through some quirk of fate, hooked up with a friend of mine who like me, had musicals as part of his growing up in our house playing all the time. My father even drove us up in the station wagon to New York from Philly to see a musical and drove us back because we couldn’t stay in a hotel. But working-class people used to be able to go to Broadway, so it was sort of in my blood.
So, we did a couple very local-based, community-based shows that were political. One was about busing and one was about theft in America. And to get a job in order to help support this work, I got a job driving a school bus. Well, that was in the middle of 1977. That was in the middle of the intense busing fights in Boston, which were very similar in some ways to Alabama in terms of the violence and the attacks on, in this case, African-American children. And our job as bus drivers was to drive the kids from the black community into the white community and vice versa.
But when we picked up the black children and drove them into South Boston, we were violently attacked on a daily basis. And in the end, we drove in and out of that community surrounded by a police escort, and that went on for 10 years. So, during that period, the drivers organized. And ironically, all the sectors of the city, anybody that wanted a job was driving a bus. It didn’t matter whether you were pro-busing, anti-busing, you were pro-paycheck. And so, we were all there. They cut our pay, we went on strike. I went to jail. We won a contract, and we formed a very militant, multiracial community-based union for 10 years and won great contracts.
We had many strikes. Just by accident, I walked in there thinking I was going to do theater in between the runs, and I ended up the local president and chief steward at different times. And so, that launched my labor career, but for the moment, killed my theater career because you can’t do both on an intense level. And eventually, I got an offer to move to DC and work for the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, along with my good buddy Bill Fletcher. So, all of a sudden, I was in Washington DC. And eventually, I was Jesse Jackson’s labor deputy for a couple of years in the ’90s at the National Rainbow Coalition.
And I went on to just work for a variety of national unions on different kind of campaigns, the biggest of which was the Justice at Smithfield campaign, where we organized a 5,000-person local unit in rural South Carolina against Smithfield Foods. And it was one of the biggest wins, this was USCW in the South, in many years. And then, I ended up retiring, working for the American Federation of Teachers, helping them develop strategies to fight the charter industry. And then, since I retired, I ended up going back to my theater roots. I’d written three musicals, and in the meantime, I was also working with the railroad workers, DMWE with ATU over time. And eventually, these last few years, doing a lot of work with Amazon workers in a lot of different locations.
But my passion beyond the labor movement is figuring out how to make culture a part of the movement. Because if you try to imagine the Civil Rights movement in the United States succeeding if they weren’t allowed to sing, it’s hard to imagine… If you try to imagine the anti-apartheid movement in Africa winning without a note being sung, you can’t imagine it. And we had a vibrant political labor and other kind of culture coming into World War II in the ’20s and ’30s, but commercial television and the commercial movies just overwhelmed it, with a few exceptions. And so, I’ve been trying to make my small contribution to bring it back, and it’s been very well-received to the point that I’ve been able to do it without having a Broadway budget. And I’m back now with The Return of John Brown opening in Baltimore the 26th of April.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Man, so first I’m just going to say, that’s quite a career in the movement. That’s quite a life in the movement. So, we’re going to have to have you and maybe some of the folks from Boston on together to… I want to unpack that whole period and hear from you guys what it was like to work and organize in that moment. That’s just wild to hear. But before we go to The Return of John Brown, I have to ask as someone who, like you said, just kind of through chance encounter, luck and being in a certain place at a certain time, you got into this job and that kicked off a life of organizing and working within the labor movement.
Looking back now, as someone who spent all those decades in the movement, even if you didn’t intend to from the beginning, for my generation of folks who have just been really getting into that movement in recent years, I mean, I think a lot of left-leaning millennials and progressive millennials after Bernie Sanders’ 2016 run, a lot of those folks went into the labor movement, and a lot of them are working for unions. A lot of them are salts trying to unionize different facilities. That’s one way in which I think the Bernie phenomenon did have an aftereffect, and I’ve seen and heard it firsthand from a lot of folks. But we’re still kind of in the early stages of our lives in that movement. And so, I guess I was just curious to ask, as a veteran of that movement, what do you wish you had known back in the day or what would you say to younger folks getting into that movement now about how this is a life’s work and what you wish you had known when you were getting into it at the beginning?
Gene Bruskin:
Great question. When I got into the labor movement in the ’70s, it was sort of part of a resurgence of the left, and also, the working-class left. Going beyond the SDS days of the ’70s, a lot of those people came out and went to work somewhere. And so, when I started getting into the labor movement, it never occurred to me to go back and talk to the veterans who had been through the ’30s and the ’40s, and they were alive. But we sort of had this idea that what did they know? And we were going to form a new left-wing parties and all this stuff, and I just never asked, and that was a huge mistake. That was a huge mistake. And we sort of had to learn a lot of things over again. And over time, I became more and more a student of history and realized the incredible valuable lessons.
What’s really exciting to me now is that young people are coming to me and a lot of other veterans in the labor movement and inviting us in as mentors, as friends, to share our experiences, to back them in all kinds of different ways. And there’s an openness and an understanding that there’s a lot to learn, even though we don’t have all the answers, and if we did, things would’ve been very different. But we did learn a lot. And to me, I just encourage all the younger workers that I’ve had a chance to work with, to study that history, to talk to people who’ve lived it, and then to do your own thinking. And so, that combination is what we really need.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah. No, I think that’s so important and well-put. It’s something that we talk about a lot here at the Real News Network because I’m lucky enough to get to work with… We’re a very generationally-diverse crew. We’ve got folks like Mark Steiner who’s been in the Civil Rights movement, intersecting with the labor movement for 50 years. We had Eddie Conway, legendary Black Panther and founder of Rattling the Bars here. And now, his show after Brother Eddie’s passing is hosted by Mansa Musa who was locked up for 48 years. We have Chris Hedges and Dave Ziron. And so, getting those folks to talk more to our younger folks, and also vice versa, I think is one of the things that makes what we do at the Real News special.
And it’s also expanded to the broader field, like you were saying, taken in terms of the movement. That intergenerational dialogue is so critical, whether we’re talking about the labor movement, the prison abolition movement. Just having those direct linkages to the past and learning from the experiences and successes and failures of our movement ancestors is really important in the same way that, as always, it’s really important for the elders in the movement to welcome in the young people, and always approach each other with this spirit of openness like we all have something to learn from each other, like you said. That’s the secret sauce. That’s, I think, so critical and why it’s so cool that you and I are talking right now. So, let’s talk about how culture, like you said, plays into that. The role that you see culture and musicals and plays and art, why that’s so essential for our movement and how you’re approaching that with this new musical, The Return of John Brown.
Gene Bruskin:
Yeah, thanks. There’s a lot there. One thing I’ve noticed in Boston, we sort of started this impromptu song group called Red Basement Singers because there was a store called the Red Book, and we used to practice in the basement there. And we used to just go around the rallies. We’d get on the subway in Boston and sing Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh and things like that. And what I noticed is that when people are singing, they smile. It’s hard to be sad while you’re singing. And so, it just felt like that music and culture is a way to get people to feel and to be inspired and to enjoy the kind of things that they’re doing because the seriousness and difficulty of organizing, making 50 phone calls, getting beaten up by the police, whatever it is, it’s intense. But the joy, like you mentioned before, and the love, you can’t always feel it. But with the music, you can feel that.
When I retired at the end of 2012, I was trying to absorb thousands of different kinds of workers I had engaged with during my life. The meatpacking workers, the nurses, the nurses’ aides, and of course, the bus drivers, the laundry workers. And these are all these incredible people, most of whom don’t ever get noticed. Who’s responsible for this pork chop that’s on your table? Who cleaned the sheets that you’re lying in in the hospital? And so, I wanted to do culture that was for and about them. And so, just taking all the faces and the people and the situations that I had, I started constructing stories and started doing some historical research and then trying to figure out how to fill the seats with the same people who the play is about. And so, my first show was called Pray for the Dead: A Musical Tale of Morgues, Moguls and Mutinies. And it was a fantasy of an uprising in an unknown country led by morgue workers, who went on strike because a funeral home was going to close.
And what I did is knowing that if I set it up in a church or a theater and asked unions to bring members to a musical, people would’ve said, “What?” Because theater and musicals in this country are like operas to the average bus driver or waitress or whatever, because they’re too expensive. The $40, $50, $100, Hamilton, $1,000. And so, I arranged with the unions, mostly in the Maryland area,, to put this show on at the union halls. And it was great. Unfortunately, at the end of when… This was done as musical stage screenings, at the end of that time, Trump got elected and I couldn’t move it to the next level because everybody was in a panic.
My second musical was staged in Baltimore. It was called The Moment Was Now, and it was staged in a church in Baltimore in 2019, 2020. It was about reconstruction, and that’s a period of history which I was inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois to tell the true story of it and the story that linked the working-class movements of the National Labor Union with the women’s movements, the suffragette women’s right to vote movements, the Susan B. Anthonys of the world, with the freedom movements coming out of the Southern struggles and with the black workers that were organizing into unions at the time and center it in Baltimore.
And I just went to the Central Labor Council in Baltimore to the State Federation of the AFL to 1199 retirees, and the Baltimore Teachers Union, we filled the theater most nights with a musical that was a historical piece with poetic license. I took the actual words of a lot of these characters and made them into songs. So, for example, there’s a black worker organizing in the shipyards in Baltimore where Frederick Douglass escaped from where they were attacked by the Irish, driven out of the shipyards at one point. He gets invited to speak to a national meeting of the National Labor Union by William Silvers, the president, and he says, “You have to explain to them why they need the black workers.”
And that speech got on the front page of the New York Times the next day. Probably the last labor speech that was ever on the front page there. He sings a song, “Does your we include me?” With his actual words from his speech. Any rate, that was shut down in 2020 by COVID, our last performance was March 8th, 2020. There’s a tremendous film that was done of it, high quality that people have been watching since if anybody ever wanted to see it. Anyway, during COVID, I started on another play and that’s turned into The Return of John Brown. And that’s because I was thinking if there’s one white person, being white, Jewish, European American, who people know of who stood up against racism, and in this case slavery, besides Abe Lincoln, it’s probably John Brown.
So, I went back, did a lot of homework. I read Du Bois’ book on Brown. And what I decided is not to spend all the time talking about what John Brown did then, that’s the opening of the play, but I just decided to bring him into the present. So, after the sort of historical moment at the beginning of play when he’s hanged, he magically climbs out of the ground right where they hanged him in Charlestown, Virginia. And they re-arrest him and hang him again and put him on trial. And so, the story of race and history and all that comes out in the trial itself, and there’s a lot of comedy, they threaten to hang him again and he sings a song, “You can’t hang the same man twice.” And there’s a lot of comedy in it, there’s a lot of history, and there’s a lot of drama, we hope.
So, now we’re getting ready to try it out as a musical stage reading. We’ve got some great actors. It’s not fully staged with the scenery and all that. So, we’re taking it to the people we want them to come, it’s free. Then we want them to stay afterwards, discuss John Brown, discuss the play we’re doing, make suggestions, be part of the process, and help us move it to the next stage, literally, and put the page to the stage, maybe even in a Baltimore theater. As you mentioned, we have a website, www.thereturnofjohnbrown.com, you can get free tickets. It starts at the end of this month. And the last two performances in the beginning of May are at the actual location of the John Brown farm. It’s called the Kennedy Farm, in Sharpsburg, Maryland, right near Harpers Ferry where John Brown staged the raid. We’re going to be on the grounds, the backdrop to the stage is going to be the cabin, and there’ll be a live tour before the show.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Man, that’s so badass, and it makes me think of… I was with some brothers and sisters from the labor movement at the end of last year. We were all down in Matewan, West Virginia at the Museum of the West Virginia Mine Wars, and we saw some reenactments from the locals there, the famous Battle of Blair Mountain and stuff, walking on hallowed ground, thinking about that history and thinking about how it connected to us all being there. That’s so powerful that you guys are going to be doing that there on that ground. And for listeners, again, this is going to have to be a teaser for y’all so that you go and check out the musical itself because there’s so much here we could unpack, but we want y’all to go partake of it and let us know what you think.
But I guess just by way of a final teaser, and by way of a final question before I let you go, Gene, this of course is a tradition, a literary tradition of resurrecting key historical figures in contemporary times, right? I’m thinking of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s famous bringing Jesus back to what was then contemporary Russia, and how would society respond to Jesus’s teachings today? So, I was just curious, you started working on this amidst COVID, we know the George Floyd uprising happened the same year. So, I guess I just wanted to ask, why John Brown and why now? What you really feel folks should be thinking about, about that scenario that you’re painting of why this felt like such a profound artistic question to ask at this moment?
Gene Bruskin:
Yeah, thank you. And I’m just going to say quickly, because I have found that because of the failure of our public education system, even at the college level, many people don’t know who John Brown is and that his claim to fame was that, among a lot of other things he did, in 1859, he staged a raid with a group of black and white people on the armory in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia in an attempt to get guns and hand them out to enslaved people and begin an insurrection, and it didn’t work. He was hanged. He was captured and hanged. But at that moment, that story played on the front page of every newspaper in the country, and his final words were printed on the front pages. The South was terrified. The North’s conscience was pulsated. And John Brown said that the, “Slavery cannot be ended except by violence.” People thought that was questionable, but it turned out Abe Lincoln had came to the same conclusion, and 700,000 people died.
So, that story, when watching the Black Lives Matter movement happened and watching the difficulty from people have talking about race and racism, I wanted to do a show that shows the impact of racism and watch one of the protagonists in this show who changes is the racist white farmer who gets educated during this process about his own confusion when he’s losing his land to a pipeline company because he won’t talk to the black farmers. And John Brown intervenes, brings them together and that story unfolds. So, I have found that if you’re sitting in the audience and you got some of these attitudes, but you’re watching them play out on the stage, no one’s coming at you in your class or whatever. And you can sort of think about it.
And then, afterwards we sit around, you can talk about it. I think that that’s a way to sort of get to this. And so, I’m happy for all the audiences, but I’m happy for some white working-class people there who they didn’t like John Brown, but they’re curious. And so, I think this is the right moment right now. We have to learn our history and you can’t understand the present if you don’t understand the past.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. I want to thank our guest, Gene Bruskin. And as always, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. If you want to learn more about Gene’s new musical, The Return of John Brown, go to thereturnofjohnbrown.com or use the link in the show notes of this episode. And again, the first show is going to debut on April 26 here in Baltimore, followed by a show on April 27th in Washington DC, and the details you can find on the website. And then, the next weekend on May 4th and 5th, the play will be featured at the Kennedy Farm, the Harpers Ferry, West Virginia area location where John Brown staged his famous anti-slavery raid.
We’ll see y’all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you cannot wait that long, then go subscribe to our Patreon and check out the awesome bonus episodes that we’ve got there for all of our patrons. And of course, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter, so you never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.
Editor’s note: After this episode was recorded, Authentic Brands Group announced that Sports Illustrated would live on after Israel’s Minute Media acquired publishing rights for the magazine.
Layoffs, lawsuits, license revocations. The tragicomic spectacle unraveling at Sports Illustrated bears all the signs of a familiar tale: how hedge funds can take a functional, beloved brand and transform it into an anemic husk of its former self by mercilessly draining it for profit. Washington Post National Sports Culture and Politics Reporter Michael Lee joins Edge of Sports for a frank talk on the putrid effects of venture capital and hedge funds on sports media, Black Lives Matter in sports, and more.
Studio Production: David Hebden Post-Production: Taylor Hebden Audio Post-Production: David Hebden Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin: Welcome to Edge of Sports TV only on The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin. We are going to talk right now to Washington Post national sports culture and politics reporter Michael Lee about sports journalism, Black Lives Matter in sports, activism, and what it all means. Let’s talk to him right now, Michael Lee. Michael Lee, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports TV.
Michael Lee: Hey, thanks for having me.
Dave Zirin: All right, let’s put on our serious hats, if we can. It looks like the NFL might be buying a stake of ESPN. We know what’s happening with Sports Illustrated, which makes a lot of people around our age well up a little bit. The Athletic, where I know you used to work has taken over the New York Times sports page. Beyond the work of folks like yourself, is the era of a thriving independent sports media as we have known it, is it done? Are we past the point of having the kind of sports media that I think we so dearly need?
Michael Lee: As long as the money is shifting towards hedge fund guys and venture capitalists, yeah, that’s what’s happening. I think when you don’t have creatives in charge and having the vision of creatives, then all you’re going to do is just try to make a money-making operation that is doomed to fail. Primarily because for these creative industries, like journalism is… I mean, yes, we have a serious task of holding truth to power and trying to make sure that we uphold certain values and principles. We’re protected by the First Amendment and everything like that. But when people who are running it view it as leverage to make money as opposed to a means to serve a greater purpose to the people, you’re going to see the collapse, you’re going to see things fall, you’re going to see things ruined, mainly because you don’t have the vision. And that’s really what I look at whenever I see these things happen, where we have layoffs, we have buyouts, you have cuts, you lose talent. And you don’t just lose talent, but you lose your soul because a lot of times, the people who get cut are the veterans who’ve been there for years. They understand the systems. They understand the angles. They know all the anything. If you have a veteran basketball player, a football player, they can teach the young guys how to manipulate things and operate and maneuver more effectively. But if you cut those people out, you’re doing damage for the people who are coming up in their development. So I think that, yeah, as long as the people with money don’t have that vision and their whole purpose is to try to view this as a means to make money as opposed to a greater purpose in terms of educating people, informing people, and also just providing them an outlet for pleasure, you’re going to see situations like this only get worse. And I think that’s where we are now, because the money, and where the money is being shifted, the big money, the billionaires, when they start coming in and manipulating this and not seeing the vision from an artistic perspective, that’s where you see the failings.
Dave Zirin: Wow. I realize I spoke for you in my question, talking about Sports Illustrated. I know when I heard about what is basically its downfall, it moved me, thinking about what it meant to me coming up. But I don’t know if it had that same effect on you as a young person looking at that magazine and thinking, this is what I want to do. I was wondering if you could reflect on that for a moment.
Michael Lee: Absolutely. I mean, Sports Illustrated was the ideal. It was the model. So many great writers came through there. I know the inspiration for me to even get into sports journalism was Ralph Wiley. That was the guy that I just looked up to. One of the first books I read on my own outside of school, guys like him, Rick Reilly. There’s so many. Steve Rushin. So many great talented guys — I could go on all day. Jack McCallum. People who I read constantly and tried to take in what they did and try to create my own style based off of what I read. It was a model magazine. I would get copies every week, and I would devour it, and not just because I love sports, but because I love writing, and that’s what inspired me. So I don’t know where kids are going to find that inspiration the way I did. Obviously things have changed. You don’t have a physical paper or a physical magazine the way you did. You just scroll on your phone or whatever, on your computer, so it’s a different feel. But it’s something about, for me, going out to the mailbox, having something that was addressed to me, and feeling those pages and flipping those pages and reading that, and it was a great feeling. My kids, I don’t know where they’re going to get that kind of rush. Because it’s the same kind of rush I would get from music when I would have a CD or an album or something physical in my hand that really made it seem like a dream.
Dave Zirin: Well, just like you and I would read Ralph Wiley’s articles and see his name and think, ooh, that’s who I want to be.
Michael Lee: Yeah.
Dave Zirin: There’s no doubt in my mind that people read your work and see the name Michael Lee and say, ooh, that’s who I want to be.
Michael Lee: Yes. I got a little extra money for you.
Dave Zirin: But there’s a big but though. There’s big but — No, no, no. There’s a big but here. Don’t worry. What is your advice then to aspiring sports journalists? Is this still a profession worth pursuing? If a young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed person with talent came up to you and said, I want to be like Michael Lee, what do you say to them?
Michael Lee: Well, what do you want to be when you say you want to be like me or anybody else in this profession? Do you want to be somebody who does what he loves, or do you want to be somebody who wants to be famous? Do you want to be a celebrity in this, or do you want to be somebody who’s really trying to seek the truth or try to find inspiration and really try to pursue your passion? If you’re going to pursue your passion and you pursue what you love, everything else is going to fall into place. You’re going to face disappointment. You’re going to face cuts. You’re going to see a lot of your friends and colleagues get dismissed, and it’s going to be disheartening. But what is motivating you, and what is it that you really want out of this business? If you just think you’re going to go in there and just be on ESPN and become a Stephen A. Smith and just have a top-ranked show and make millions of dollars, that’s going to be hard. There’s only one guy that’s doing it right now like that. But if there’s something in it that you want out of this, if there’s something that you dream about doing. Like me, I knew my ceiling as a basketball player was high school. I wasn’t going to go beyond that. But I also knew I wanted to be around basketball one day. Then I wound up covering the NBA for 20 years, and covering three Olympics, and the multiple 13, 14 NBA finals, and however many All-Star games. And so I got a chance to be around basketball because it’s what I wanted to be around and what I love. And so if you feel like this is what you want to pursue, then don’t let anybody… Don’t let the nos keep you from pursuing your dream because you’re going to get a lot of nos. I tell this when I talk to college kids sometimes, the difficult thing in life is when you realize that nobody cares, really, about your feelings, and not everybody’s going to like you. And so when you get those things through your skull, what do you have left that you’re going to be willing to pursue and fight for? And if it’s yourself and if it’s your passion, then you’re going to find that worthwhile. It’s going to be a struggle, but everything’s a struggle. You’re not going to be able to walk right in and have your dream job right away. I remember covering high schools out of college and being frustrate, and wondering if I was ever going to get a breakthrough. But I look back and I appreciate those times. I appreciate that struggle because it made me more appreciative of when I actually was able to have those moments where I’m like, man, I can’t believe I’m doing what I always dreamed of doing.
Dave Zirin: Recently, a writer that we both know, Jeff Pearlman, was asked that question. You might’ve seen this on social media, and he gave a response that, I do have to say, felt like a response that was about five years old, where he said, be a Swiss army knife, become an expert on everything, and you’ll have no problem. And a lot of people pushed back and said what you said, frankly, which is these VCs are tearing these jobs apart. What does it matter if I can podcast, if I can write, if I can do TV? What does it matter if, at the end of the day, like you said, Michael, the people with the most institutional knowledge are usually the first people on the chopping block? I know this industry is in such flux, so it’s impossible to ask you to have a crystal ball or anything. But do you see, in the future, a way around this, so people like you and I can tell young sports writers that this is a life worth living as long as you’re not obsessed with that end goal but love the process?
Michael Lee: Yeah, I think a lot was lost in what Jeff was trying to say. I think he meant it in the most sincere, thoughtful way possible: make yourself indispensable. The one thing about, like I said earlier, is that no one’s really indispensable, and everybody’s replaceable, and we just have a chance to occupy positions for as long as somebody’s willing to employ us. And you have to view that through the level of everybody. Think about what we had just this past month. We had Bill Belichick, who people say is the greatest coach of all time, retire, and he was replaced a day later. They found his replacement a day later. It didn’t take a long to find somebody to fill those shoes. Nick Saban, the greatest college coach of all time, said, I’m leaving college football. They found his replacement within a day or two. So no matter how great you are, no matter what you do, you can always be replaced. They’ll always find somebody that’s willing to do your job. So what you have to do is really value the opportunities that you get and take advantage of it because they’ll always find somebody who’s willing to do what you do. They may find one person who’s willing to do three or four jobs that people have been doing. And that’s just the way it is. And so you got to understand your position. If somebody is writing a check and you’re salaried and you’re an employee, then you have to understand that you can easily be let go no matter what you’ve done or what your accomplishments are, no matter what your achievements are. They allow you to maintain that seat for a little bit longer. But just know that you can’t ever get complacent. You can’t ever sit back and think, well, I’ve made it. One of the greatest things, books, Jackie Robinson, he always said, “I never had it made.”
Dave Zirin: That’s right.
Michael Lee: And you could look at him and you could say, oh, what you did. You are a rookie of the year. You won World Series champion. You did all these great things. You broke the color barrier in baseball. But you can’t ever get to a place where you feel like, well, yeah, man, I’m finally here, and it’s just great. You got to know that you can always be replaced. You’re always expandable, so you got to take it and appreciate it. When I first started covering the NBA, it wasn’t a job that I was handed. I was filling in for somebody. And I’m not a big Eminem fan, so I’m not going to act like I am, but I played “Lose Yourself” like every day because I was really in that moment and I knew I couldn’t let it go. This is my shot. I had to go in there, and I had to have this desire to like, okay, they opened the door for me, but they messed up, because I’m coming in, and I’m ready to… I’m busting through the door. You’re not going to kick me back out now. And that’s the mentality that you have to have. You’re going to face disappointment. I faced disappointments throughout my entire career. And so there are just things you got to understand and you got to value. And you can’t really sit back and say, oh, man, it’s so tough, man. I don’t know if I can really fight through it. It is hard. It’s disappointing. And I’m speaking as somebody who’s really faced some hard times. But you got to also know that, when you get those opportunities and you have the chance to do something great, that you got to take advantage of it and know that it’s fleeting, just know that it’s fleeting, it’s not promised. Nothing is promised to you in this business as long as you’re relying on someone else to pay your salary.
Dave Zirin: Right. One more journalist question, if I could. You did an amazing job on, let’s call it the beat, of the Black Lives Matter movement in the world of sports. And sometimes I take a step back and I think, wow, Colin Kaepernick taking that knee for the first time was seven-and-a-half years ago.
Michael Lee: Amazing.
Dave Zirin: Amazing. Seven and a half years. That’s like the difference between 1960 and 1968. It can be a political lifetime. So that issue of athletes using sports as a platform to speak about racial inequity and police violence, has that era, is there a cap now on that era and it needs to be rebuilt? Or you have a mind of, well, it’s ongoing. It’s just more of a placid period right now? Because I know a lot of people who think, yeah, kids 18 right now were 10 when Kaep was doing his thing, something’s going to have to be rebuilt because that era has been effectively, I don’t want to say memory holed, but effectively put in the backseat. And I wanted to know your perspective. And then with the bigger question, when do you know when a story is over?
Michael Lee: Man, that’s a great question, because I’ve actually thought about that myself. I’ve wondered where is the activism in professional sports, and was that a moment that we just had, and we just got to just appreciate that we had it? Because I honestly don’t have the answer. And it is something that is floating through my mind. One thing that, when I think about what Kaepernick did, it was such a risk, and he lost his career. And you can even see up until last fall, he still wanted a shot back in the NFL that you knew was never going to happen. And I think that all you’ve seen since has been a lot of safe protests. There are moments where the NBA has allowed players to take a knee or they’ve allowed guys to put things on the back of their jersey during COVID. And I think that guys are finding safe spaces to say things that aren’t offensive that don’t really put them in a position where they can lose anything because there’s so much to gain. There’s so much money to be made now. The salaries have reached exponential levels that we probably didn’t think could happen. Ohtani got a $700 million deal. If you can reach that kind of money playing a sport, you might want to zip it up a little bit because they will get rid of you if you make everybody feel a little bit too uncomfortable. So I think that the money has silenced guys. And also knowing that what you can lose, guys are trying to figure out ways that they can maneuver without losing anything. And I think that’s where we are now. And there’s not issues that are really pushing them to speak out. Maybe there are, but I noticed that no one’s saying anything about any of these wars going on in the world. No one’s speaking out on anything on that behalf because there’s so much more to lose than there is to gain. And I think right now guys are just trying to get this money.
Dave Zirin: Yeah. It’s funny, I was talking earlier with former NBA player Tariq Abdul-Wahad, and he said something very similar as he’s attempting to find athletes to speak out for a ceasefire with regards to Israel and Gaza. So what you’re saying rings very true.
Michael Lee: Yeah, I think you’ve seen guys… You saw what happened to Kaepernick, he lost it all. And I don’t want to go to this extreme, but think about it like this. I know sometimes people say, why are there no more MLKs? Why are there no more Malcolm Xs? Why are there no more leaders of that caliber? Well, they were killed. And everyone saw what happened to them. So if that’s the case, if that’s the reward at the end, not everybody’s brave enough to say, I want to take that path. Just to bring it to the sports level, Kaepernick spoke out, and what he did was noble and admirable and everyone respected it. And obviously, he got respect for days for what he did, but he lost what most of the guys aren’t willing to sacrifice, which is their careers. And when you see him even saying, I want to play now, and I’m still capable of playing if you give me a chance, and everyone’s turning their head to him, it’s like, well, dang. What do I really want out of this life? Do I want to be an activist or do I want to be an athlete? And I think that if you’ve invested your whole life in being an athlete, and you’ve kind of gone down that path, and this is what you’ve made your whole life about, you’re not willing to give that up. And if you want to really try to do things when you’re done playing, maybe you will. But there’s so much at stake beyond just the money, but also your career, that I don’t think guys are willing to lose all that the way Kaepernick did.
Dave Zirin: And of course, got to mention that you’re wearing a Muhammad Ali sweatshirt right now.
Michael Lee: Yes, yes, yes.
Dave Zirin: And it’s one of those things where it’s been said by others that he was only truly embraced by this country once he lost the power of speech.
Michael Lee: Absolutely.
Dave Zirin: And this idea that they make you make that choice between being an athlete and an activist, when I think a lot of folks would have no problem, if they felt like the risk wasn’t there, of wearing both hats with comfort and confidence. Look, we’ve been talking about journalism in big picture, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up, before you go, a work of journalism that you did recently in December that was so good. And I have spread this around all over the place. You went to Mississippi, and you asked a very provocative question: If youth football is going down all over the country, largely because parents are becoming more educated about injuries and concussions, why is it still so prominent and even growing in Mississippi and Alabama? But you didn’t just think about it theoretically. You went down there and you spoke to folks to get answers. What did you come up with, and how did it change your own views and ideas about youth football?
Michael Lee: It was great. It was an altering experience on a lot of fronts, because I think you can just look at it and just say, oh, everyone, they’re in a poverty-stricken area. They’re poor. What else do they have to push them to achieve? And in Mississippi, that’s probably one of the places where it actually fits. There isn’t a lot to do in Mississippi. There aren’t a lot of things that are going to provide a positive outlet for kids down there. Such a unique place in the country where there aren’t a lot of big towns, there aren’t a lot of big cities, distractions and things to try to pull you away. There’s a country culture there. There’s a toughness there that’s instilled in these kids from a very young age. And so playing football is just a traditional thing. Your uncles played it, your father played it, everybody played it. So when it comes to be your turn, you got to do it. And so for me, the one thing that I came away with, though, that really struck me was that while we talk about poverty from a material perspective, what about poverty from a moral perspective? Which one would you value more? Would you want to be in a situation where you have all the money in the world but you’re not loved and supported? When I went down to Mississippi, I saw communities where people were living in trailers and living in really backwoods conditions, but what they had was the support of their loved ones. What they had was a constant connection to a community and to the people who love them. And so I came away with a sense that, yeah, while they may be lacking in some areas, they’re winning in other areas. I had a great conversation with one of the coaches for Starkville High, which is a school that I featured in the story. And he was like, there’s a pride in these homes. Even though you may look and say, yeah, these are poor places and they don’t have a lot, but inside that home, there’s a lot of pride. And so the kids that come out of there are going to embody what’s being taught inside that home. And he said, you can find a house on the highest hill, and you can find the biggest mansion on the highest hill, but I guarantee you, you won’t find more love in that house than you’ll find in these houses here. And so when you take a step back and try to figure out what’s really important, what’s valuable to you, what do you value, what means the most to you, is it having a paycheck that allows you to buy whatever you want, or is it having the love and support of people who are going to be there for you through whatever? And some people are fortunate enough to have it all, but not everybody does. But if you value one above the other and you’re getting that fulfillment and that support and that love from the people who you care about, then are you really lacking? And what are you really lacking for? And so I came away there with just a different perspective on a lot of different things, but one thing that I came away too is that football is something that we definitely knock because of the damage it can do to your head and your body, the long-term ramifications that it can have. But there also are people who are able to use football and not just to try to get to the NFL and become rich, but to get out of situations where they can get a college scholarship and get a job and provide for their families in a way that they may not have been in the past. So there’s so many ways you can look at it. And so that’s what I came away with this is like, it’s not as simple as saying don’t do it because you might get head trauma, because you might not get head trauma, and you might be able to provide for your family.
Dave Zirin: Well, you know what? That’s a very interesting perspective for folks to take in as we head into the Super Bowl hype season, for sure.
Michael Lee: Absolutely, yeah.
Dave Zirin: To put it mildly. Hey, Michael Lee, I really appreciate your time. Everybody should just Google “Michael Lee Washington Post” — Make sure you don’t put the word “senator” by mistake because that’s a very…
Michael Lee: Please don’t do that [laughs]!
Dave Zirin: …That’s a very different dude. So do “Michael Lee sports Washington Post”, and you’re going to get a treasure trove of articles, the likes of which will restore your faith in sports journalism. Michael, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports TV.
Michael Lee: Hey, thank you, Dave. It’s far too kind, man. I appreciate it, man. I need to take you on the road, man. You’re like Flavor Flav over here, man. ou got me all hyped.
Dave Zirin: Hey, you know what? If I could be Flavor Flav, that’s a life worth living. That’s all I’ve got to say. Get up, get up, get, get, get down. I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I’ll embarrass myself. But that’s okay. Thanks so much for joining us.
Michael Lee: Thank you for having me. It was great.
The Kansas City Chiefs’ victory parade last week turned from a scene of celebration to horror after a mass shooting killed one person and injured 22 others, including 11 children. While Democrats have rightfully taken aim at Missouri’s loose gun laws, there’s more to America’s gun violence epidemic than laws alone. From westward expansion to the US-Israeli bombardment of Gaza today, American gun culture is a product of settler colonialism and genocide. Edge of Sports host Dave Zirin explains in this edition of ‘Choice Words’.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Taylor Hebden Audio Post-Production: David Hebden Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin: Okay, look, it is an indictment of this country that there are a few things more American than a mass shooting at a Super Bowl parade. One person was killed and 21 more injured during the parade in Kansas City, Missouri, celebrating the 2024 Super Bowl champions, the Chiefs. Eight victims are in critical care as of this moment. Nine of those shot were children. The one confirmed death is Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a DJ for Kansas City Radio Station KKFI, who hosted a show called Taste of Tejano. It’s just horrific.
Now, afterwards, President Joe Biden said that the shooting “cuts deep in the American soul.” But that’s not quite right. This is the American soul. It is true as Democrats insist that we aid and abet these shootings legislatively. Since 2017, Missouri has allowed people to carry concealed and loaded firearms in public. No need for background check or permit. The state’s Governor, Mike Parson, who attended the parade and scurried away at the sounds of the gunshots, had recently signed a nullification law proclaiming that no federal gun control legislation would be adhered to in the state.
But this is bigger than the laws on the books. We are caught in this numbing cycle of tragedy because this country reveres the gun and it is impossible to separate our adoration of the gun from the glorification of how this country was founded, namely the westward expansion of the United States and the conquering of indigenous people.
As sociologist Orlando Patterson wrote, “The quintessential American myth is that of the cowboy. Central to that myth are the role of violence and the reverence for the gun. This violence is embraced and romanticized.” This is true, but it doesn’t take a sociologist to notice the brutal irony that this mass gun tragedy took place at the celebration of a Kansas City team adorned with a Native American mascot. Indigenous team names and mascots derive from celebrating the “savagery” of native people as if they were jaguars, lions, or wildcats. The names tacitly compliment the prowess of indigenous people as well as our own prowess in militarily defeating them. Seeing native people as war-like is more than just racist. It provides an unspoken justification for attempting to wipe them out. Native team names celebrate settler colonialism and there is no settler colonialism without the gun.
The US, unsurprisingly, is also both the world’s top gun manufacturer and weapons exporter. Billions of dollars of those weapons are central to another settler colonialist project, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The Super Bowl, with hundreds of millions watching around the world, acted as a weapon of mass distraction for Israel as it launched an attack on Rafah in the Gaza Strip, now the most densely populated part of the most densely populated area on earth.
Following the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Gaza City, more than one million Palestinians are crammed into refugee camps in and around Rafah and over 100 people were reported dead in Sunday’s military incursion. While Biden furrows his brow in disapproval of Israel’s “over the top actions”, the President nonetheless keeps sending guns and other weapons to the barbaric Netanyahu government. This is not about hostages. It’s about settlements. It’s about land. It’s about extending, as Netanyahu says, openly Israeli control from the river to the sea. We in the United States created the template for this kind of political morality. We exported the cowboy myth to the holy land, the cowboy myth of expunging the indigenous savages through a savagery that the indigenous people themselves could not replicate or perhaps even imagine. It’s the cowboy myth brought to you by Lockheed Martin instead of Paramount Pictures.
Look, the pain and trauma brought home to Kansas City on Wednesday is heartbreaking and enraging, and we lack the tools to confront it because we have politicians who make clear after every school shooting that dead kids are a price worth paying for freedom.
But it’s not really about freedom. It’s about fear. It’s a fear of not being armed to the hilt. It’s a fear that the violence their political forbearers glorified in building this country will be visited upon them by the others. It makes them gravitate to the gun like Linus to his blanket.
It also makes them gravitate to Trump, to the celebration of January 6th, to venerating a disturbed murderer like Kyle Rittenhouse and to fever dreams about race war, secession, and the shooting of migrants as they try to cross a border that we drew. Instead of reparations, today’s cowboys want a reckoning. Instead of restorative justice, they want to restore ethno nationalist supremacy. Instead of peace, we cannot even celebrate as a community in public without living in fear. That’s as true in Missouri as it is in the Middle East and it’s intolerable. Edge of Sports TV and The Real News Network, I’m Dave Zirin.
Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most, and we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe and donate to the Real News Network. Solidarity forever.
Most ultimate frisbee players don’t have to consider how an Israeli checkpoint might disrupt their plans for a game—but this is the reality of life in Palestine. The story of the small but vibrant subculture of Palestinian ultimate frisbee enthusiasts offers a glimpse into life under Israeli occupation that is too often unseen by the outside world. Edge of Sportshost Dave Zirin speaks with Daniel Bannoura, founder of ‘Ultimate Palestine‘.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Taylor Hebden Audio Post-Production: David Hebden Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Welcome to Edge of Sports, brought to you by the Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin. This week we are talking to a Palestinian scholar and activist, currently finishing his doctorate studies in theology at the University of Notre Dame. But we’re talking to him because he’s the founder of Ultimate Palestine, the Palestinian National Association for the World Flying Disc Federation. His name is Dan Bannoura. Let’s talk to him right now. Dan Bannoura, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports.
Daniel Bannoura:
Thanks, David. It’s good to be with you.
Dave Zirin:
I was hoping before we start speaking about what’s happening right now in Gaza, could you talk to us about your background and how you got into seeing that Ultimate Frisbee and Palestine were really two things that had to come together?
Daniel Bannoura:
Yeah, thanks for that, David. And really I’m very grateful for the chance to be hosted here to talk with you about this issue. I think it’s very important for people in the West to come and hear the Palestinian story, the Palestinian experience, the Palestinian narrative. It’s a narrative that has been largely ignored or even many in the West have been shielded from understanding the Palestinian perspective. For the most part, they receive a single narrative, a one-sided narrative. So I am very grateful for this opportunity to come here and speak with you. So briefly about myself. So my name is Daniel Bannoura. I am from the town of Bethlehem in the West Bank. I was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Bethlehem. By profession, I am a theologian. I’m not an athlete, I’m not a coach, but my profession is in theology.
I’m actually currently in the US working on my PhD in theology. I’m a PhD candidate studying the Quran, late antique history, Christian Muslim relations in the early Islamic period at the University of Notre Dame in the US. But I am from Palestine. I grew up in Bethlehem. My family is from a small town right next to Bethlehem called Beit Sahour. Family goes back generations as native local indigenous people of the land who called Palestine home and who have been living in Palestine for a long time.
Now with regards to Ultimate and the Ultimate Palestine story as an organization and how Ultimate came to be in Palestine, I picked up Ultimate at the University of Florida. I was doing my undergraduate studies at the University of Florida and there, just randomly, I got connected with some people who were playing some Ultimate Frisbee on Sunday afternoons and I joined them.
I used to play a lot of soccer growing up in the Middle East. And really around the world, soccer or football is the main sport. As soon as I played Ultimate Frisbee, quickly fell in love with the sport. There’s something very unique and special about that sport. It’s very friendly, it’s very active and you love the flow of the Frisbee, you love the movement on the field and just fell in love. And in many ways, just shifted my focus and my interests and my hobbies and really in many ways became obsessed with that sport. And so I finished my undergraduate studies at the University of Florida, I got myself a Frisbee and I went back to Palestine and I started playing with some friends and we had pick up practices and I introduced a sport to many of them.
There were some expats in the area, internationals who were living in Bethlehem, and they came to join us as well and we kept playing on and off. And then I went back to the US for a master’s degree at the University of Chicago. And I kept playing there and competing there locally in the Chicago area. And then when I came back to the US in 2013, we picked up practices again. And by the year 2014, we realized that hey, there’s maybe a need for us to mobilize and organize ourselves as not just random, friendly pickup practices or plays, but actually as an organization that is focusing on the development and the growth of Ultimate in Palestine and the hope was to create a truly Palestinian sport.
As the audience might know, Ultimate is an American sport. It was invented in the 70s in the US among high school and university campuses. And my desire was to move away from a more western dominant or American dominant discourse or practice of the sport and to make the sport truly Palestinian, truly a local sport. And there were some organizations that were functioning in the area that adopted, I think, a very problematic discourse that we’re using sport as a tool to bring peace by putting Palestinians and Israelis together in a very unhealthy and unsafe environment where they pretend to be friends and enjoy the sport in a way that would just have fun and get along.
And based on the false premise, that the reason for conflict is actually ignorance, that people do not know each other. And rather than actually trying to solve the issues and address the issues, their approach was to not talk politics and not talk about our differences, not talk about their realities, “Let’s just shut up and play.” Or in the American context, “Shut up and dribble,” or inherent for us, “Then shut up and pass the Frisbee.” “Pass the disc.” And then that was a very problematic discourse and we realized this is not really authentic to the Palestinian experience. It’s not even our story to tell. This is something that is imposed on us by a western American, what is called now the peace industry that focuses on peace as an industry rather than on peace, as an active peace that comes as a result of justice and equity. I’m happy to unpack that later.
But then the decision was like, “No, we’re not going to be part of this industry. We are going to create our own organization. We are going to be as Palestinians in charge of our own sports and we’re going to play as we want,” and have actually an authentically Palestinian sport. And so that led to the growth and the idea of Ultimate Palestine as an organization or as an association that represents Palestinians as they play Ultimate throughout Palestine. And we focus mainly in the West Bank, just by the consideration of my locale and the people around me and the leaders and the coaches in the West Bank area. So we began in Bethlehem and soon enough, we expanded to Ramallah, to a major city in the West Bank and established an Ultimate community there. And then slowly kept growing in different ways. We would be running practices at schools, at local middle schools and high schools. We would have showcasing activities at different athletic organizations.
We expanded to Hebron, we expanded to Jerusalem. But then all of that, I was still following and we as an organization, were following a very naive understanding of sports, which is that sports is for fun and sports is an escape and that’s it. So we just go to vent, we just go to release our energy and frustrations and we just go to hang out with friends and have fun.
But then as we were growing from just friends having fun into a structure, into some kind of organization that is doing something proactive, that is actually involved in the community, it quickly became apparent to us that sports and politics are inseparable. For example, whenever we want to go to Ramallah, this on the map, if you see the geography there, Bethlehem is in the middle, and then you have Jerusalem there, right on the north side of Bethlehem, and then Ramallah comes right after.
So if you, David, would come to the West Bank, if you would come to Palestine and you rent a car and you want to drive from Bethlehem to Ramallah and you would just go through Jerusalem and into Ramallah, that would take you 25 minutes, maximum 30 minutes, 35 minutes and you’re there. For me, as a Palestinian, you are on a tourist visa, you have that easy access and mobility to move and travel. Me, as a native person, who’s always known this as my home, I do not have the same rights and freedoms that you as a tourist have. And so the path for me to take is not to go straight up, which is the most logical path, to go straight up on the road. Because of the system that exists in the West Bank, which is a system of domination and control by an Israeli military, by foreign military that comes into your land and controls your life, it’s a system of a division and conquering of the Palestinians.
So the West Bank is divided into a structure of Bantustans or basically, these pockets of Palestinian property and life and organization. But then these pockets are controlled by the system of roads and a separation wall or what is called the “apartheid wall” that goes throughout the West Bank and snakes through the Palestinian territory. So for me, if I’m going to go from Bethlehem to Ramallah, which should take me half an hour, I would have to go on bypass roads, passing through checkpoints from Bethlehem, going northeast and then going back northwest towards Ramallah. That trip, which should have taken me half an hour if I went straight up, takes me an hour and a half. And why does it take me an hour and a half and sometimes takes me longer? If there’s a checkpoint that is blocked and so on and so forth, it would take me even longer. But I would have to pass through two different checkpoints at least, sometimes there will be more than two checkpoints, one checkpoint out of Bethlehem and then one checkpoint into Ramallah.
So that is a product of a political reality that I did not choose and this is not a reality that I voted for as a Palestinian. It’s actually a foreign government that I did not vote for, has dictated what kind of life I would have as a Palestinian. And it’s a life of a military occupation with walls, with roads, with checkpoints that impacts my life
Dave Zirin:
From what I’m getting from what you’re saying is that it is possible to get one hell of a view of the reality of what oppression means in the West Bank and Gaza by looking at it through the lens of Ultimate Frisbee.
Daniel Bannoura:
Going to Hebron in the south of Bethlehem, so the first time or the second time we went to Bethlehem, to Hebron, sorry, to lead these practices, we got pulled over by a flying checkpoint, a temporary checkpoint that popped up by Israeli soldiers. And we were stopped and we were delayed for so long and the players were waiting for us, just because of this immediate sudden checkpoint by the Israeli military. They were walking around the area and they blocked the movement of traffic. Jerusalem as well, as Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of the Palestinian State. I had some access to Jerusalem at some point, but then most coaches in the West Bank do not have access to Jerusalem, even though it is their capital. Even though Palestinian history and culture and religion, religious practices are centered in Jerusalem for Christians and for Muslims, but most of us do not have access. Sometimes we would have access, we would go and we would coach there.
There’s a club we used to work with in Jerusalem, but then we couldn’t sustain that because we did not have the access to Jerusalem. Again, that anyone else, if you’re not a Palestinian, even if you’re a tourist, on a tourist visa, you’d have access to. So the system of discrimination was very evident to us. And the system at large, for people who just wanted to understand the context, which we cannot really explain here well, this is a context of 76 years now of supremacy and control over the Palestinian people where Israel now controls the land, the sea, the air and the resources of the land. And the Palestinians are stuck under the military and civil control of Israel.
So Palestinians in the West Bank are under military control. Palestinians in east Jerusalem are under civil control, but they’re still not even citizens, they’re even residents. And you have Palestinian citizens of Israel who live under civil control, but also they are treated as second class citizens with very obvious discrimination in the laws as well. And there’s also the Gaza Strip, which has been under blockade for 17 years now.
Dave Zirin:
You’re making the great point. It’s like when does sports cease to be just sports? Oftentimes when it is performed under conditions of extreme oppression and I was hoping you could speak to that. Of course independently, or I should say, before the horrors that we’re seeing visited upon Gaza at the moment, people lived in conditions of great oppression. What role did sports play in Gaza before the recent bombings and killings that have been taking place in the region?
Daniel Bannoura:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And like I said, I’ve had the chance to go to Gaza in 2020 and since then, had such a wonderful experience working with these coaches in Gaza and also the players there, and it’s been such a remarkable experience for me. As a Palestinian who also, I’m one of the privileged ones. I have access, have mobility, I’m in the US, my family’s naturalized American citizens and so on, and I had more affluence and more power than they had. And it’s been such a heartbreaking experience for me, but also so joyous and wonderful. And David, I cannot think of a more wonderful, kind, generous people than the people of Gaza and they’re just remarkably kind and hospitable.
I was there for a three day training of Ultimate, an intensive three days, just working with them on Ultimate, and I’ve been floored by the generosity and the kindness. I’ve been hosted by them taking me everywhere.
I remember this experience, I went to the house of one of the coaches and had dinner with them at the house and we were just sitting down having tea and talking, and the father was… And he made this statement, and maybe it would sound better in Arabic, but basically he said, “Hey, we live in an anthill. This is not the prettiest place, but we are in love of our anthill. We love where we are. We love Gaza.” And this sense of pride and joy, living in a situation, in a place that is so hard, infrastructure is terrible. The UN in 2018 or so, said that by the year 2020, the Gaza Strip would be uninhabitable. There was no clean water in Gaza, no facilities, no solid infrastructure. But then this sense of joy and belonging and identity in that place, in the midst of poverty and anguish and trauma of war and blood and blood spill and so on, it’s just been incredible to see.
But despite all of that, they’re just full of joy, happy people and generous people. And that experience has had such a powerful impact on me personally, even as a Palestinian. So imagine the American or the average audience here listening to this, what it would be like for them to be in that context as people who have been oppressed for a very long time.
But now sports, and to answer the question directly here, from my experience with them, sports has been a very powerful tool for development and for raising leaders. And for also helping the kids of Gaza to process their oppression and the violence that they face and the trauma and to use sport as a way to build themselves up. So the work that the coaches have been doing there has been incredible. Just from my experience, seeing the work they’re doing and chatting with them and their involvement in the local community, through their clubs, where they coach through running different vocational and athletic summer camps for the youth there. And using sport, not just to have fun and not just to learn the skill of passing the disc or passing the ball, but also using sport as a tool for development to teach them social skills, communication skills, developmental skills. So not just sport as athleticism and skill, but actually sport as development, as growth, as discipleship, as training and so on.
Dave Zirin:
That’s amazing. That’s the spirit of the game that you’re talking about, and that’s why Ultimate, even compared to other sports has a poetry of liberation to it that perhaps other sports do not have.
Daniel Bannoura:
So David, this is the biggest thing that I am so passionate about, and actually if you ask me why I don’t play soccer anymore, I would tell you it’s because of this idea, this concept of the spirit of the game. Now, to explain what that is, usually in sports, the focus is on sportsmanship or on healthy conduct or honesty, but usually sportsmanship is maintained and controlled by referees, by a system of cameras and technologies. Now in soccer, you have the VAR system where you can review what happened. Was that a penalty? Was that an offside?
Of course, in the US, you see this strongly and for example, in the NFL with meticulous study of tape to see what actually happened. Now, Ultimate is perhaps the only sport in the world that does not need referees, and it’s based on this value that is called “Spirit of the Game,” that among many says, gives a responsibility of speaking the truth, of saying what happened, on the players and not on an outside observer or coach or leader or referee.
So everyone becomes a referee. Everyone now has a responsibility to speak truth and to advocate for what’s right. And now, if you compare this for example to other sports, you see this a lot in soccer, other sports, they fake injuries, they pretend that they were pushed. And you see the videos of premier athletes, the role models in the world who are fake and trying to deceive the ref to issue a yellow card or a red card or a foul and so on and so forth, or a penalty.
So Ultima says like, “No, we’re going to create an environment. We’re going to foster a culture of honesty.” So what that looks like practically on the field is that if a foul is being committed, I can safe out. So if someone basically slaps my arm trying to reach for the disc and that movement, that action impeded my ability to play well, I could shout, I could say “Foul” and check this out, David… And then everyone who heard me has a responsibility to stop the game, stop playing and echo my voice. So I said “Foul.” So just make sure that everyone else can hear what was said. Everyone is going to have to echo “Foul, foul, foul.” And that’s when the game stops.
This is super unique. This doesn’t happen in any other sport. Basically what is happening there is someone was injured, something was done to a person that really impeded their ability to play the best as they can. And therefore it’s everyone’s responsibility to fix that error, to make sure that this is going to be done well. So spirit of their game and this rule of self-officiation… Of course, it requires people to know the rules of Ultimate, obviously, but then gives that sense of giving agency to the players to speak up and to pursue their truth for the sake of justice.
Dave Zirin:
Oh, Dan, that’s so beautiful, man, the way you put that. But now that idea of what Ultimate can be to the people of the West Bank and Gaza has run right into the wall of this war on Gaza and the West Bank, which is taking place all around us. What effect has that had on your work and these young people who have taken up the sport?
Daniel Bannoura:
The war broke out on October 7th. And like I said, Gazens, just my friends in Gaza, just wonderful, incredible, full of life, full of energy and joy and also very broken people. And so when the war broke out, I was just devastated and I was acting more as a Palestinian. I was not acting as a coach or as the head of Ultimate Palestine or as someone functioning within an organization, I was like, “Hey, this has actually hit me first and hit me as well.” And for two weeks, I was just in shock of what’s happening and just the numbers, the death toll in Gaza and the destruction was just traumatizing for me. And I was messaging my friends. It’s like, “Hey, how are you doing?” And they were like, “Yeah, we don’t know what’s going to happen. Keep us in your prayers,” and so on.
And then the war intensifies in Gaza and you lose contact with them. We don’t really know what was happening to them and was super hard for us. For me, personally and also as Palestinians, to see that your people are being bombed and being killed and there’s nothing you can do about it and this is outside of your control. And this has been enabled by a system of oppression that led some Palestinians to violence, but then functioning within a system that thinks that violence has a redemptive value and then violence is a solution.
And the only solution to Gaza is to bomb Gaza once again. And not just to bomb Gaza, but also to commit a genocide as we’re seeing now unfolding, being televised to us, mass destruction of properties, of lives. And 27,000 people have been killed. What is 12,000 children have been killed as well, and just heartbreaking reality. But before even these numbers racked up, first response is like we’re in shock and then talking with the friends and so on. And then eventually we got the news that one of our coaches, Maha, her brother was killed. Another coach, his dad was killed. Another coach, his two cousins were killed. And now it’s like, okay, well this is not just a Palestinian issue now this is actually impacting Ultimate Palestine as an association.
And then eventually the news came to us that one of our coaches, Hamed Shakar, a wonderful human being, kind and funny and just full of life, was also killed. And this is when we realized we cannot stay quiet. We have to speak. And like I said earlier, I’m not just a coach, I’m an advocate. I’m an ally. My job as a coach is to make sure that my players are healthy, my players are doing well, that I’m providing a safe environment for them. And right now, there’s no safe environment for them. They’re being affected by it.
And so we, as Ultimate Palestine, we released a statement I co-authored with one of our organizers, and we released a statement to the Ultimate community. “Hey, this is not a political issue that is far removed from you. This is actually a human issue that is affecting human rights, but it’s also affecting athletes and is affecting Ultimate Frisbee players. And actually also led to the death of one of our coaches, Hammed Shakar.” And again, and I tried to describe that earlier, how actually politics plays a very concrete negative role in our experience, in mobility, in access to facilities and access to top level sports. But now, politics is actually killing our players and coaches. And when we’re talking about 10,000 children killed in Gaza, we’re talking about 10,000 potential athletes that were killed in Gaza or 10,000 athletes already have been killed in Gaza.
So again, I’m an advocate, being a coach means I’m going to advocate for my players. And then that’s when we have to step up. Now here being in the US, we have a partnership in the US registered as a nonprofit for Ultimate Palestine. And we just mobilized ourselves and said, “We have to speak up and we have to do some things.” So we’ll release some statements. And since then we just received an incredible support from many athletes, clubs, organizations in the US that saw the statement and shared the statement on their Instagram and also released statements for ceasefire. And our hope, our desire was, “Hey, this is happening to athletes.” We remember that the IOC, the International Olympic Committee and also WFDF, the world’s Flying Disc Federation, have issued statements previously when Russia invaded Ukraine. And they made very long and detailed statements saying, “Hey, we do not support this war. We’re going to sanction the Russian Federation from competition at the Olympics, and we’re going to sanction Russian players from any competition.”
And even WFDF, so just to back up, so Ultimate Palestine is recognized as a full member of WFDF. WFDF is the World Flying Disc Federation. So it’s basically the governing body of all flying disc sports, including Ultimate Frisbee. So we are full members of WFDF, the World Federation. And our appeal was like, “Hey, since WFDF has already made its entry into politics by making a statement against the Russian War, it makes sense then that they would want to do something for Palestine.”
What’s the difference between Ukrainians and Palestinians? Nothing. All of us are human. And there’s a political reality, geopolitics between Russia and NATO and so on, but that’s complicated. But they took a principled ethical position to advocate for justice and to reject this war on Ukraine.
So it’s like, “Hey, Russia occupied parts of Ukraine, militarily, we are occupied. Russia is killing Ukrainians, we are being killed right now. Not only that, we know that at least one coach has been killed. We know that many coaches have suffered, who lost family members. We don’t know what happened to our players because everyone is now displaced in Gaza and they lost communication and they don’t have phones or internet. We don’t even know. We probably lost some players who have been playing Ultimate Frisbee. Hey, WFDF, governing body of Ultimate maybe should release a statement asking for a ceasefire. Maybe you want to advocate for your players that you represent.”
So we pushed for that and many clubs and organizations were tagging WFDF on Instagram, were sending emails to them. But then radio silence, there was no response. Eventually, with more pressure that was put on WFDF, WFDF decided to release this very, and they made it very explicit, so people can look this up, WFDF statement on Gaza and Israel and so on, and they released this very explicitly short statement saying that they mourn the loss of life in what is happening in Palestine. And didn’t even say Palestine. I think they said in the Middle East, a very broad, generic language.
Dave Zirin:
It’s a shocking double standard. Do you think their inability to come out stronger for a ceasefire goes against the very ethos of the sport?
Daniel Bannoura:
Yeah, that’s a really great question, David. And to be fair, many Ultimate communities have come out very strongly and who are saying, “Hey, the sport tells us that we need to advocate for Palestine right now.” And I described to you previously about spirit of the game. It is a tool for justice. It’s a tool to stop the game. “Okay, we have to stop now. We have to talk about a foul that has been committed.” And what we’re saying, “A foul is being committed in Gaza right now. We have to stop the game.” One of the requirements of spirit of the game is to make sure that the field is safe so that the players can play without projectiles coming at them or the fence falling over. That’s literally what is happening in Gaza. Fences, buildings are coming down, rockets and airstrikes are falling down on them.
We have to stop the game. We have to make sure that the field is clear and the players can play safely. And so for many athletes, it was very obvious. Yeah, of course, Ultimate, this is what we do as coaches, and it’s been, I said this earlier, but it’s been such an incredible outpouring of support and it clicked for many coaches and for many teams. And you have so many clubs and organizations who have released very strong statements and they’re drawing on the spirit of Ultimate, on the sport to make that very easy connection, connecting sports to politics.
It makes sense to make that jump, but then you wonder the guardians of spirit of the game, those who say that they advocate for players cannot make that statement. So there’s something here that is very wrong and very problematic. And that’s why you ask, “Okay, well, if you say that you are the guardian of the sport, if you say that you care for the players, why aren’t you doing this?” We are going to have to say, obviously there is a double standard. Obviously Palestinians do not really matter in how people in the West think about Palestine.
Dave Zirin:
There’s no other reason that makes sense about what are the foreign policy dictates of the West, more specifically the United States and how they reflect themselves even at the level of Ultimate Frisbee and basic human justice. I mean, it’s enraging. Well, Dan, you’ve been so generous with your time. I just have one more question for you, which is how can people support your work? How can people support Ultimate Palestine?
Daniel Bannoura:
Yeah, thanks for that, David. First, thank you for giving me the chance to speak and share this. Obviously, this means a lot. This is very important and this means a lot to me. And again, I’m coming to this as an advocate and someone who’s pursuing, not a political resolution through Ultimate, but actually want to learn how to use Ultimate as a tool for transformation, but also in the larger sense. And this is something that you have dealt with to understand the interconnectedness of connectedness of sports and politics. And I think it’s obvious that they go hand in hand here. And I think my hope for people, before I can specifically address how they can support Ultimate Palestine, is for themselves to realize that they have to do the work, they have to educate themselves. They have to understand that sports is not an escape. Sports is a social activity that happens within a social political reality that impact the lives and the psyche and the emotions and the thoughts of people.
And this idea that sports is merely for entertainment, “Shut up and dribble. Don’t share your thoughts. I don’t want to hear it from you. Just play. Just pass the ball,” is not acceptable. So that’s the baseline. You have to do the work, you have to understand this. You have to move beyond this very consumerist, entertainment-focused attitude towards sports into a more critical and analytical way of thinking about it. And accordingly, you act or do not act. Many people do not act. This is complicated. This is far away from me.
No, we need to understand that you are complicit, that your silence is complicity, especially if you’re an American. Your government is paying for this. It is your government. It is the US government. It is the White House. It is the Congress that is funneling weapons to serve its own military industry complex, to serve its own national interests, to bomb Palestinians and to kill athletes in Gaza.
You are part of that issue. You’re complicit. When you’re being silent. You’re saying, “I don’t mind my tax dollars being used to kill people and I’m okay with it.” And so silence is complicity and therefore you have to do something. If you do not want people to die, if you consider yourself a good person, then you need to speak up. So that is, in the general sense of how do you respond to the war, I think that’s what people need to do. Now when it comes to Ultimate Palestine, people can follow us on Instagram, see the work we’re doing @ULTIMATEPALESTINE. We also are registered in the US as a nonprofit. It’s called Ultimate Palestine Partnership, and people can help and donate.
Now, we are launching a campaign to raise money to our athletes and coaches in Gaza. So if people want to be part of that, they can find our information on our website and on our Instagram, and people can buy some of our merch like Frisbees and jerseys and so on that are also available on our website on ultimatepalestine.com
So there’s plenty of work that people can do, and I hope that people would feel motivated to do that work, especially right now when this genocide is being committed in front of our eyes in Gaza.
Dave Zirin:
If we could get everybody for whom flying discs are part of their lives to throw a Frisbee at the White House at the same time, we could get a ceasefire. If people took the ethos of what you are doing and what the sport has done historically to heart, then we could get a ceasefire.
Daniel Bannoura, thank you so much for your work.
Daniel Bannoura:
Thanks, David. It’s good to talk with you, and I’m very grateful for this chance. Thank you.
In a startling 44% increase from the previous year, an estimated $23 billion will be spent on sports betting on Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs. Just a generation ago, gambling was regarded as an intolerable pollutant on the integrity of sports that could never be permitted in professional leagues. Now, the legal sports betting industry has become the lifeblood of the sports world and a huge moneymaker. But with so many major figures in the sports world now openly, and probably also covertly, invested in sports betting—how long can this go on until the integrity of professional sports is compromised?Edge of Sports host Dave Zirin takes aim at the zombie gambling industry cannibalizing fans and the game itself in this edition of “Choice Words.”
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Taylor Hebden Audio Post-Production: David Hebden Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin: Welcome to Edge of Sports TV, only on The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin. I have some choice words for you about the shameless collision of the Super Bowl and gambling. Let’s go.
Okay. Look, the number is so staggering. It might as well be a ransom demand of Dr. Evil. 23 billion dollars is going to be spent on legal gambling during this year’s Super Bowl. That is a 44% jump from last year’s number of 16 billion. The official word from the deliriously happy gambling industry is that 67.8 million people, 26% of all American adults are expected to bet, and that number is almost certainly far higher as the idea that young people aren’t also betting through online apps with the help of older friends or parents is either willfully naive or flagrantly obscured. These trends aren’t going anywhere. Gambling analyst Chris Grove, said to Forbes Magazine, there’s a good chance that every Super Bowl for the next 10 or so years will be the most bet Super Bowl, thanks to the underlying growth of regulated sports betting in the US. They’re so proud.
This proliferation of betting pushed relentlessly during broadcasts by our most famous A-list celebrities, not to mention by the broadcasters and journalists covering the game is accountable for this shocking jump in revenue. Gambling is no longer either an illegal sideline of the sports world or an ancillary but legal arm run by casinos and offshore betting accounts. It is the sports world. It is the very economic blood that flows through the corpus, keeping it upright and functioning like a zombie out for our brains. Super Bowl ads are no longer dominated by products we create like cars or even beer. It’s companies picking the meat off our bones. Gambling has become a regressive tax placed upon the addictions of the consumer and creating the idea that the only way to fully enjoy the experience is if you have some skin in the game.
Now, fittingly, of course, this year’s Super Bowl is in the gambling capital of the world, Las Vegas. Tell a person in 1990 that the Super Bowl would be in Sin City. They would’ve insisted upon a drug test, because for most of sports history, Vegas was radioactive. Any connection to gambling it was believed would sully the one thing that sports brings to the entertainment table that no other cultural product can bring, an undetermined outcome. The fear was always that if the audience started looking at sports as if it was sports entertainment like pro wrestling, the audience would head for the exits. It is why examples had to be made of shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose. All-time baseball greats kept out of the Hall of Fame. It was to remind the players and the fans that gambling has no legal place in the sports world. Meanwhile, in the intervening years, Pete Rose has spent more time in Las Vegas than Wayne Newton with a lucrative hustle signing baseballs and telling stories, and the sports world now quietly sees him as more profit than pariah.
The supremacy of gambling in sports means that Pete Rose is no longer a warning sign to athletes. He’s a harbinger. Leagues certainly crack down on players and referees who are caught online gambling. But obviously it’s impossible to track every bet when done through third, fourth, or fifth parties. It strains credulity that the athletes, executives, coaches, and refs who make up the sports world, some of the most competitive people on Earth aren’t making bets while Roger Goodell, the NFL Commissioner and the assorted complicit leaders of the sports world, look the other way. The supremacy of gambling has eroded the trust people have in the sports themselves, which is why people are thinking that the Taylor Swift Super Bowl is some sort of NFL master plan, liberal psyop or grand design of the betting concerns. Then there is the reality that the NFL and other sports leagues are now parties to what is becoming an epidemic of addiction.
Gambling, according to the American Psychiatric Association, affects the functioning of the brain leading to “substantial distress or impairment.’ This problem in high schools where the still developing brain is particularly vulnerable is both severe and under discussed. People would be shocked to know the amount of ways underage people are able to get into these apps and fall into debt before they even have a job. It is true that at the end of these gambling ads featuring these A-list actors telling you how much fun it is to bet on the games, there’s the equivalent of a surgeon general warning at the end of the fund, telling people to call 1-800-GAMBLER if they have a problem. To say that this is the fine print is actually an insult to fine print. You practically need a magnifying glass to spot it, and it makes the surgeon general warnings on cigarettes look severe.
This is the sports world acting like the venture capitalists who are now gobbling up teams from the old family companies. They’re out for blood no matter the social cost and without even a pretense of what’s once called social responsibility. They are the new athletic vultures in a time of war and social decay. It is not surprising that people are looking for escape, but this is an anti-worker escape, leaving people destitute and financially disabled now in need of even more help than society is willing to provide. You play, you pay. This is the underbelly of Las Vegas where the house always wins and it is the underbelly of the Super Bowl. The collision of the two once unthinkable is now merely more corporate synergy. For the Real News Network, I’m Dave Zirin.
Super Bowl LVII in 2023 was the most-watched US telecast in history, and with well over 100 million people expected to tune in on Feb. 11, Super Bowl Sunday will provide one of the biggest platforms on Earth for pro-Israel groups to attempt to justify Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza. The Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism, which is owned by Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots, has purchased a $7 million TV ad spot on Super Bowl Sunday to “Stop Jewish Hate.” Kraft’s ties to Israel run deep, from hefty donations to AIPAC to a long history of business deals in the country. Edge of Sports host Dave Zirin takes aim at the influence of Zionism in professional sports in this special edition of “Choice Words.”
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Transcript
Dave Zirin: Welcome to Edge of Sports, brought to you by The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin, and I have some choice words about New England Patriots owner, Bob Kraft, and a $7 million Super Bowl ad that I am not looking forward to seeing.
Okay, look, New England Patriots’ 82-year-old owner, Robert Kraft, writes seven-digit checks to the right-wing Israeli lobbying machine AIPAC. But his ties to Israel run far deeper than the occasional donation. The multi-billionaire married his late wife, Myra, in Israel in 1963 when Kraft, then just 22, was older than the nation itself. Together, Myra and Robert set up numerous business, athletic, and charitable ties to Israel, a record of which is proudly proclaimed on the Kraft company website.
In particular, the Kraft Group boasts of its Touchdown in Israel program, where NFL players are given free, highly organized vacations to see the Holy Land and come back to spread the word about the only democracy in the Middle East. Kraft also attends fundraisers for the Israeli defense forces who currently, in an open view of the world, are committing war crimes in Gaza.
Now, as Israel wages war against the civilians of Gaza, Kraft is again flexing his financial and political muscles in order to defend the indefensible. His Foundation of Combat Antisemitism, or FCAS, will be spending an estimated $7 million to buy a Super Bowl ad titled “Stop Jewish Hate” that will be seen by well over 100 million people.
Under Kraft’s direction, the ad’s goal is to create a propaganda campaign to counter the reports and images from Gaza that young people are consuming on social media. Without a sense of irony or the horrors happening on the ground, Kraft says he is giving $100 million of his own money to the Foundation Against Antisemitism because hate leads to violence — Just not violence against Palestinians, apparently.
Let’s be clear. What Kraft is doing politically and what he’ll be using the Super Bowl as a platform to do is dangerous. He appears to think that any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. For Kraft, it is Jews like myself, rabbis, and Holocaust survivors calling for a ceasefire and a free Palestine that are part of the problem. And Kraft seems to think that opposition to Israel, the IDF, and the AIPAC agenda is antisemitism.
There is a Red Sea of distance, as I’ve written, between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Antisemitism is the pernicious hatred of a beautiful religion and culture that has been with us for over 5,000 years. Anti-Zionism means opposing a once negligible 125-year-old colonial project in the Middle East.
Zionism was a minor strain in Jewish life until the Holocaust, where, in a state of unspeakable trauma, Zionism rose triumphant after World War II with a new state built on the backs and land of the Palestinian people, a new outpost of what columnist Bari Weiss, with shameless racism, calls the West, albeit located in the Middle East. Now, for Kraft and Bari Weiss, building a highly militarized nuclear state built on stolen land is the only true hedge against another Holocaust.
Cementing this idea that to be anti-Zionist means that you are anti-Semitic has also been the lifelong project of Israel’s corrupt prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu attempts to shame anyone on the left who dares criticize Israel as crypto antisemites. Even the rabbis calling for a free Palestine are not free from this slander.
But right-wing Christian nationalists, with their belief in a Jewish state existing alongside their conviction that we’re all going to hell, are welcome in Netanyahu’s Israel and Kraft’s coalition.
And the greatest foghorn of this evangelical, right-wing, love Israel hate the Jews perspective is, of course, Donald Trump. And let’s talk about Robert Kraft and his relationship with Donald Trump.
You see, Kraft, while speaking of being troubled by events like the Charlottesville Nazi march and the right-wing massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, counts Donald Trump as a close friend, and even donated $1 million to his 2016 presidential inauguration.
To be clear, one who provides cover for the most powerful and public antisemite in the history of US politics should never be taken seriously on how we can best fight antisemitism. And no one who funds AIPAC and the IDF and opposes a ceasefire amid the carnage should be allowed a commercial platform at the Super Bowl.
But given that the big game is always an orgy of militarism, blind patriotism, and big budget commercials that lie through their teeth, perhaps that ad could not be more appropriate. We can do better than Kraft’s perspective on how to fight antisemitism. Morally, we don’t have a choice.
For The Real News Network and Edge of Sports, I’m Dave Zirin.
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The world of professional sports is particularly guilty of silence and complicity in the face of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. One man, former NBA player Tariq Abdul-Wahad, has distinguished himself as a rare voice speaking out in support of a ceasefire and the rights of Palestinian people. Tariq Abdul-Wahad joins Dave Zirin to discuss his support for Palestine and the responsibilities of his fellow athletes in this moment.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Welcome to Edge of Sports TV, brought to you by The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin. We are going to speak to former NBA player Tariq Abdul-Wahad, who has done what few in the US sports community have done and that’s come out publicly for a ceasefire in Palestine and to free the people of Gaza. Let’s go to him right now.
All right, so Tariq, just from the start, how did you come to publicly support a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
Well, Dave, this is a no-brainer. I mean, historically for me it’s a little bit different. Being from France. Growing up, France has always taken a stance to protect the Palestinian people. So we always understood this relationship between the state of Israel and the Palestinians as an occupation situation. Do you understand? In Europe, we don’t see it… It’s closer to us. So we kind of grew up with it, understanding that Palestinians lost the war, but they were still many injustices still going on. So my relationship with this conflict is not the lens with which I’m looking at. It is way more European than it is American. We understand what the situation is. Israel in this case is an occupying force, so we understand that wars are going to happen in the world, but there are still laws and rules and when you start to carpet bomb children and women, I don’t care who Hamas is, I don’t care where they are, what’s wrong is wrong.
Dave Zirin:
Now, did you come to these ideas by growing up in France, by growing up in Europe, or was this a political awakening for you later in life?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
Well, it’s a combination of things. I graduated from San Jose State University. And athletes at San Jose State thanks to Dr. Edwards have always been to some extent politically active. So it’s kind of the tradition when Tommy Smith every year comes back to the campus and talk to the student athletes, you don’t miss those speeches. You make sure you attend. And so it’s really a combination of the area where I lived, where I went to school, being an athlete and being politically active was almost the norm. It’s not an exception. It’s kind of what you are expected to do.
Dave Zirin:
Dr. Harry Edwards, of course, a former guest on this show, as was Dr. John Carlos. It’s amazing to hear that historical continuity because people forget that in ’68 they had an internationalist outlook. They were against apartheid in occupation all over the world. It wasn’t just for the United States that they raised their fist. Actually, it’s very heartening to hear you standing in that internationalist tradition.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
Well, the Speed city. Yes. That’s the name of the track team back then.
Dave Zirin:
Speed City.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
Yeah, Speed City. Yeah. That’s what they used to call San Jose. Speed City, because these guys, not only they were fast on the track, but they were also very fast with their brains. I mean, these are trailblazers. These people are our leaders technically. Every athlete in America should read Dr. Edward’s book, should read the history of Tommy Smith and John Carlos. We should know this. This is part of American sports heritage as much as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, all these people played a role.
Dave Zirin:
Look, you played in the league for years. You know NBA players. You’re standing for a ceasefire. Can you see other players signing on to such a statement? I mean, the horrors are just every day, but we also know that athletes can be fearful or live with some tunnel vision. But do you think we have the chance to break through and get some brave fellow superstars to sign on to something that calls for a ceasefire?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
I sure hope so. I mean, I sure hope so. This is not, listen, this is a no-brainer. This one is obvious. I don’t know what to tell you, Dave. I have children. I have three kids. We’re bordering on insanity at this point. Because first of all, it’s very hard to function as a regular human being on your day to day when you know that America is basically funding this madness. And then you also have to put the things in true perspective, whether you’re an athlete or not, sports are not important in such situations. So if you’re an athlete and you play sports and people listen to what you have to say, the least you can do as a part of the human race is to say something. Is to say something. So yeah, hope and pray that athletes across the board, not just basketball players, not just athletes in the NBA, but athletes across the board, anybody who has a platform, should use it to say something.
Dave Zirin:
And the number one block to them saying something right now, the number one block for their not being a thousand Tariq Abdul-Wahads standing up to make a statement right now, what do you think that block is? Money?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
It’s money. They’re afraid. They’re probably afraid that it’s going to hurt their bottom line.
Dave Zirin:
We can’t live that way though. There’s too much crisis right now.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
Well, yeah, you and I, we understand that, but that’s why we still have to be active. We still have to reach out. We have to teach them. A lot of them too though, they don’t really understand what’s going on. They don’t understand the scope and the gravity of the situation, even though I’m sure a lot of them do. But sometimes it takes organizing in the background. It takes courage. It takes a few to step out and then a few more to join. And then if there’s more of a coalition and there’s a group of athletes who can come out and stand, they will definitely stand stronger.
Dave Zirin:
Right. I totally agree with you about that. Without organization, fear will flourish, but organization is a great hedge against fear because people feel a sense of their own power. What’s it been like for you since you spoke out? I mean, you’ve been very active on social media. I mean actually it’s harrowing to go to your page because you’re very, very astute about listing the various horrors that have been taking place. What has that been like for you?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
Well, I mean, my page was starting to get some momentum and then I got shadow-banned, I think. So that’s the first thing. So they’re going to limit your reach. But for me, it’s nothing. I’m no one. I’m just another voice. I don’t think I’m more important than the next man or than the next lady or the next child. Just got to say what you see. I’m a retired player, so obviously I don’t feel the same pressure as someone who is playing. I don’t have these economic pressures, but I honestly believe from the bottom of my heart that I am on the right side of history on this one. It’s clear.
Dave Zirin:
Right. I mean, have you heard from people in France… Because it’s been interesting, like you said in France, there is a culture of standing for Palestinian liberation, but there’s also been a crackdown in France on protesters, on people trying to speak out.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
Absolutely, they have. But remember the French president… I’m not supporting him in any way, but I’m just saying. He called for a ceasefire weeks ago. So even he realized that this was too much, but France now yields very little power. So France is not the country it used to be. It lost a lot of its influence in Western Africa. It lost a lot of its influence to Russia and China. So it’s not the voice that it used to be on the international stage. And locally, they are fighting against Muslims and minorities. I mean, France is not… Even though Macron home called for a ceasefire before the US even pronounced… Any American politician even pronounced the word. France is still at its core also a racist country. Let’s not get it twisted.
Dave Zirin:
What do you say to say your kids or to somebody you’re mentoring who says to you, “I’ve been told that the United States is the land of the free, the home of the brave, a place where justice reigns.” And yet we’re underwriting this brutal total war on a civilian population. How do we square those two ideas?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
Well, that’s the question that this country has been asking itself since its inception. Yes, it’s cool. It’s the land of the free. You and I are free to talk about it. We’re free to discuss it. We are free to debate it, but the strength of freedom is not in the opportunities we have to voice our opinion. It has to go further than this, and this is why the political system in this country is becoming flawed. I don’t know if you’ve noticed. It’s becoming more and more… What’s the word I’m looking for in English?
Dave Zirin:
I think broken.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
It’s become more and more obtuse. Yeah. The choices are less. And so it is a free country in a sense, but we cannot forget that in this country, money rules. Money rules and influence rule. And this is why it’s going to be… I mean, what’s happening right now, it’s actually going to be very interesting because a lot of people who did not participate as much as they should have in the political process in this country are now going to be very active. And I’m going to give you a very simple example. There are a few states that are going to be swing states in this election in the presidential coming up, in which many Muslim Americans and Arab American live. And I guarantee you that Joe Biden is not going to get these votes. I know this for a fact. These votes are gone. So either he can replace the votes or these votes are going to be his undoing. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Dave Zirin:
Yes.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
Pennsylvania and Michigan, we’re talking about difference less than 10,000 votes, 20,000 votes in some cases.
Dave Zirin:
Look, you’ve been so generous with your time. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you just two more questions if I could. First, I want to give you the chance to put a message out there for all the athletes who want to say something, who want to speak out, but are fearful for a whole host of reasons. What do you have to say to them?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
Grab your courage. I mean, you are extraordinary people. These athletes, you guys and ladies are extraordinary. You are the 0.1%. And if you think that this is wrong, you should speak out whether you’re going to pay the price or not. I’m going to be honest. This is one of those where you might have to sacrifice something, but something must be said. And as exceptional as you are, you only… And I’m talking to these athletes. As exceptional as you are, you are only as exceptional as your moral fiber.
Dave Zirin:
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you go without pointing out to our audience, in case they’re not big international basketball fans, that you were an absolute pioneer in coming here from France and succeeding as you did. France is on the leading edge of the world right now when it comes to basketball. And I’m in DC where we watch Bilal Coulibaly. I mean, I ask you, how has France made this leap to becoming this kind of basketball powerhouse? And do you ever feel this sense of pride that you laid this groundwork for the basketball culture in the country?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
No. It’s cool because you are part of something special, obviously. But it’s also a reminder of history. Let’s not get it twisted. The reason why France has top-notch athletes is because these athletes come from African countries or their parents immigrated, their grandparents immigrated, and they were born in France. The younger guys who were born in France and raised in France and whatnot. But without the African and Caribbean diaspora, French sport would be run-of-the-mill. The reason why it’s exceptional is because of its relationship with Africa and its relationship with the Caribbeans. Relationship, right?
Dave Zirin:
I was going to say, so no colonialism, no basketball success is one of the things you’re saying?
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
It’s a weird statement, but it’s very accurate as well.
Dave Zirin:
Like so many things in our upside down era, weird but true. Tariq Abdul-Wahad, it’s been such a gift to be able to speak to you. Thank you so much for joining us on Edge of Sports TV.
Tariq Abdul-Wahad:
No problem, Dave. Have a good one. Stay safe out there.
