Latest / Pod Save America / High Crimes and Piss-demeanors

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High Crimes and Piss-demeanors · Pod Save America

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• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Hey, everybody.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pond Save America. I'm John Lovett.
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: It's a crossover. It's happening. So we have a lot
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: to get to today, but we wanted to start with this.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: New York Times broke a story today. We're recording this
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: on Friday, reporting that Elon Musk's drug use has been
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: far more intense than the occasional use previously reported. Here's
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: what the Times said, and I quote, Musk told people
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: He took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, and he traveled with
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: a photo of the box and people who have seen it. Also,
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: the Times went further into the bladder issue, saying that
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: Musk publicly endorsed Mr. Trump in July. Around that time, Mr.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: Musk told people that his ketamine use was causing bladder issues,
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: according to people familiar with the conversations. You know, Dan,
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: you think you can trust somebody. You think you can
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: show them your box of pills and tell them about
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: the fact that the ketamine you're taking has led to incontinence.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: And then they go and tell fucking Megan Toohey. What
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: happened to the bro code, Dan? Have we reached the age.
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: In our life where bro code now includes incontinence? Do
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: not reveal my bladder issues to the world.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, I think that's where we're at. I think
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: that's where we're at. Yeah.
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: First.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: First it's like, you know, yeah, it's just different things.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: Everyone knows what we're saying.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: Everyone knows what we're talking about. Everyone knows what we're
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: talking about. So Trump gave a press conference with Elon
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: standing by his side, where Trump talked about the end
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: of Musk's time as a special government employee, talked about
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: the future of Doge. Peter Doocy asked them about the
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: time story and it didn't go great.
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: The president mentioned that you had to deal with all
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: the slings and arrows during your time at Doge. There's
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: this New York Times— Some of the people, you know,
• 3:32
  Speaker 5: some of the media organizations in this room are the slingers.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Well, so, there is a New York Times report today
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: that accuses you.
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: Of blurring the line between— for false reporting on the Russiagate.
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: Is it the same organization?
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I gotta check my Pulitzer counter.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: I think it is.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: I think the judge just ruled against New York Times
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: for their lies about the Russiagate hoax and that they
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: might have to give back that Pulitzer Prize. That New
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: York Times? Let's move on.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: So he's not mad at all.
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: That's why he's laughing.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: They're the slingers. So he's pretty upset about the story. Dan,
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: what was your reaction to this?
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: I have some questions here. First, if you were to
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: apply for a White House internship, before you can walk
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: into the building, you have to take a drug test.
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: Safe to assume Elon Musk did not take that drug test?
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: I guess not. Although the story also says that he
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: would presumably have had to have been drug tested because
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: at SpaceX, you have to be drug free. And apparently
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: he knew when the testing was going to be. He
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: got a little heads up. That's what the story found.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: So who knows? Yeah, I mean, I was drug tested
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: when I had to work. I got drug tested when
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: I worked with Dan at the White House and passed
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: it by the skin of my teeth.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: But I got through.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: I got through.
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: Tommy also made the point to me this morning that
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: if we were a different party with a different media ecosystem,
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: we would use Elon Musk's rampant ketamine use to the
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: point of bladder failure as an argument to undo all
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: the doge quits that they would be? They're illegitimate for
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: that reason, right? It's the inverse of the absurd Biden-Autopen argument.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I think whether or not we could use
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: it as an argument to reverse them, I do think
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: it's worth pointing out that this is somebody Trump empowered
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: to make incredibly sensitive, important decisions about government funding, who
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: personally led an effort that unceremoniously ended foreign aid programs,
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: ended healthcare programs, like genuinely threw people's lives into chaos,
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: may have cost people lives, food assistance around the world.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: And he's got a box of pills. Listen, when you're
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: at the point where you got a box, a loose
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: box of 20 pills, that's too many pills. That's too
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: many pills. Unless you're very sick.
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: It's also funny to read the story because it's clearly
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: written with the editing help of the defamation attorneys for
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: the New York times. Cause at one point they're like,
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: we can essentially, they say, I'm paraphrasing it. We cannot
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: verify that he was doing these drugs while working at
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: the white house, but there were all these examples that
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: we're going to list in great detail about when he
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: seemed high as fuck while working in the white house.
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: And they really, the story is really buttoned up because, uh,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: they have both a photo of the box of pills
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: and the box of pills as described by people. Uh,
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Imagine getting close enough to Elon Musk that you're able
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: to take a picture of the bills, but not so
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: close as you are unwilling to send it to the
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: New York Times. That would make you, I mean, I
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: understand why he's upset. It must be pretty disconcerting, must
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: be unmooring beyond the ketamine to discover that all these
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: people that have gotten pretty close to you are talking
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: to reporters about this. We should also note that if
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: you're listening to this, Elon Musk does seem to have
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: a black eye, which adds to the kind of sense
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: that things are off the rails. He was also asked
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: about that.
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: I wanted to ask quickly, Mr. Musk, is your eye okay?
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: What happened to your eye? I know this was a
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: bruise there.
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: Well, I wasn't anywhere near France. What does that mean?
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: I didn't notice.
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  Speaker 3: First lady of France. I didn't notice.
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: Did you understand?
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: How broken-brained are you? I understood what he was referencing
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  Speaker 3: when he said France. Did you understand it, or did
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  Speaker 3: you need somebody to remind you?
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: I needed the reminder, and then I was mad at
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: myself for not connecting the dots.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so for all those, that is a reference to
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: the fact that there was a video of Emmanuel Macron
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: getting pushed in the face by Brigitte, and then realizing
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: that he's exposed because the door to the plane is open.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: That's the joke that Elon is making there. I'm glad
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: we'll have a little break from getting to talk about
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk, I hope. But man, what a deeply unserious
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: and broken person to have been given so much power
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: by this president. And it's so strange to see Donald
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: Trump in that setting trying to be protective of Elon Musk,
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: who he sees struggling standing next to him. There's a
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: kind of odd generosity that Trump is giving. I didn't
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: even notice the black guy.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: Well, I think that also speaks to Trump's narcissism where
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: it's like, yeah, he meets with a guy who has
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: a giant bruise on his face and he's so busy
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: thinking about himself and his own personal grievances. He doesn't
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: even notice that. But I do have to ask you
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: as a noted comedian, what's your analysis of the Bridget
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: McCone joke? Like, is it a good joke?
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: No, it's a bad joke, Dan. It's a bad joke.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: It's because it doesn't actually make sense. The fact that
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: somebody else had something happen to their face in France,
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: nobody would, the structure doesn't make sense, because even in
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: the internal logic of the joke, well, I wasn't in France,
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: so is the joke, I guess on some level the
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: joke would be, don't worry, Brigitte didn't get me, right?
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: But really he's just saying, hey, somebody else got hit
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: in the face recently. Isn't that funny? That's somebody else
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: that got hit in the face. That's why the joke
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: didn't work and it needed to be explained by the reporter. Well,
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: I like the reporter being like, I don't understand.
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: Good for the reporter for asking the follow-up question.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what do you mean?
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: But also, let's not just gloss over the fact that
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: Elon Musk asked his 502 punch him in the face.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: What was the reason for that?
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if that's true. I don't like, maybe that's what
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: happened or maybe in some sort of a haze, he
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: walked into the, to a closet door.
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: That seems more likely to me.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: I just like, man, when you're at the, and again,
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: we've also done our deformation training here at Crooked Media.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: So I can't speak to this specific circumstance and I
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: am not speaking to this specific circumstance, but we've all
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: had people in our lives. When you're at the phase
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: of your, on your substance journey, where you're showing up
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: with random bruises, right? That's not like, It's not a
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: good moment.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: When you're slipping in your own pee. Right, right.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah. When you're like, yeah, waking up next to the toilet,
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: unexplained bruise. Unexplained bruise, Dan, figured prominently in Real Housewives
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: of Salt Lake City.
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: I'm not caught up.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: There's a long storyline there. about a bruise and its origins,
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: and someone claiming to not remember where it came from,
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: then somebody saying they won't say where it came from.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Like years, years of dishonesty about the origins of a
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: punch bruise. So a lot to think about there. But
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Trump did talk about Doge and the Big Beautiful Bill.
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: If it doesn't get approved, you'll have a 68% tax increase.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: You're gonna go up 68%.
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: That's a number that nobody's ever heard of before.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Uh, so, uh, that's not an, that's a, it's cause
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: it's not real.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: That's not right.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Uh, I don't know what the 68%.
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: I think it's 68% of Americans.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: Oh, 68% of Americans.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: I think I'm, I'm spitballing here. I think that's right.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: So this is their only move, I guess, right. To say, uh,
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: if Republicans in the Senate don't send this back to
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: the house, uh, in a way that, uh, comports with
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: what some of these right-wingers in the house are demanding
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: taxes will go up. So that's, so that's the cudgel,
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: but clearly like they have a big problem.
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Like that getting it from the House was only the
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: first step. And actually now we're in. And even that
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: was very difficult and required a bunch of people casting
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: a vote in part because they know it's not the
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: final vote.
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: They know that they could just go along with this
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: and they'd have another bite at the apple. But but Dan,
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: do you have a sense of how stuck this is
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: in the Senate?
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: I think it's probably not as stuck as we would hope.
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: The point Trump's making here is they have to pass
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: this bill. They have to pass it for two reasons.
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: He mentions this later in the press conferences. One, at
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: the end of the year, taxes will go up on
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: some percentage of Americans, at some percentage that's not 68%.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: But also, the debt ceiling will expire and America will
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: default on its debt at some point late this summer.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: So something has to pass. And that usually forces Congress
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: to act in some way, shape, or form. It gets
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: very tricky... with every single change the Senate makes. You know,
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: I think Mike Johnson went over to the Senate and
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: met with the Senate leadership and told them how, or
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: maybe the whole Republican Senate caucus to tell them how
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: challenging this was and try to get them not to
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: make huge changes. They still have a math problem because
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: you have Rand Paul and Ron Johnson who are against
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: increasing the deficit and you can't do this bill and
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: not increase the deficit. And then you have some other
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: people who have other, like Susan Collins, who have other concerns.
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: They can lose three votes. But, like, Are they really
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: going to reject Trump's bill and allow us to default
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: and have taxes go up? That seems unlikely. We'll probably
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: get very close to the wire is my guess.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: Yes. But there's other directions this could go. One would
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: be to get this through having lost Paul and Johnson.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: You are going to move like to get this through
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: the House. Johnson had to wrangle the moderates. to vote
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: for cuts that are unpopular and wrangle the right-wingers and
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: the Freedom Caucus types for voting for a huge increase
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: to the deficit without having enough cuts to government spending.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: The bill that will come out of the Senate will
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: not be a better bill for those Freedom Caucus members, right?
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: That's sort of hard to imagine. So even getting them
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: this far was difficult. If the bill becomes more moderate, right,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: maybe Johnson can count on those members, but he could
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: be losing some of his Freedom Caucus members. He already
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: lost two the first round, right? So he's basically, as
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: long as no more fucking octogenarian Democrats fucking die, he still,
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: he needs to keep everybody together. And so you could imagine, right,
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: a scenario where it maybe can get out of the Senate.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: It it can die in the House, then all of
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: a sudden there's a scramble. And then there's the question
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: of whether or not there's something that would have to
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: pass with Democratic votes, right?
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, I don't think you're going to get
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: a single Democratic vote for it. I mean, if I
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: was advising the Democrats right now, what I would tell
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: the Democrats to do is to have a position that is,
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: we would extend the tax cuts for everyone making less
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: than $ 500, 000. If you just want to pick the number
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: that was used in 2012, when the Bush tax cuts
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: were extended, to say that and that the taxes would
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: go up on everyone else. And we would do that tomorrow.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: We'd extend the debt ceiling for however much you'd like.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: We'd even come up with some set of cuts that
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: we are okay with that are not Medicaid cuts, whatever
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: those would be. Right now, this is an intra-party fight. Eventually,
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: this is about whether Democrats want to raise taxes on
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: everyone else. We need a position that is not that
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: and is actually more popular than what the Republicans have.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: I just think at the end of the day, the
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: stakes are so high and– The Freedom Caucus has already
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: backed off all of their principles, right? They think that
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: the deficit is the end of the world. Like they
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: would love more aggressive Medicaid cuts. They would love to
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: kick more people off of food stamps and to theoretically
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: lower the deficit. But that's not real. But they're already
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: agreeing to a $ 5 trillion deficit increase.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really extraordinary that there is this option sitting
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: on the table for them, which is to just do
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: an extension. And by the way, They could do an extension,
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: maybe there's two in the weeds. They could do an
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: extension for all the tax cuts for people making below $ 500, 000.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: They could do that and do some of their kind
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: of estate tax issues, some of their more kind of
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: like specific tax changes while not allowing, while allowing the
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: tax rates for corporations and for wealthy people to go up.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: It would dramatically changed the cost of the bill, it
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: would be far more popular. But it's just pure greed.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: They simply cannot, they are doing this to cut those,
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: like that's the purpose of all of this. So it
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: feels like it's the one thing. And even Trump understands that.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: He can't, he like, he keeps floating it because he
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: understands the politics sort of like from a gut level.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: And then every time he floats it, he's like, ah,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: Johnson tells me they won't go for it, right? Like
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Johnson won't even entertain the idea.
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they would rather, you remember in the 2012 Republican
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: primary and they asked people of, would you raise $ 1
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: of taxes or would you be willing to raise $ 1?
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: Now I can't remember what it was, but they basically
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: asked the Republicans, would they be willing to raise taxes
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: $ 1 or cut spending by $ 10? And they said they
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: would not raise taxes at all. And that, and that,
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: that is the principle. Like they said, the Republicans have
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: a principle that maybe Trump does not share at least publicly.
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: Cause I mean, If Trump really wanted them to cut taxes,
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: he could actually try. All he does is he sends
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: a truth and then backs off in two seconds. It's
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: really the only thing he backs off on. I guess
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: it's his tax version of taco. But they are not
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: going to let taxes go up. They would rather explode
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: the deficit. The thing they want to do is cut taxes.
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: But the icing on the sundae is to also kick
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: a bunch of people off their health care and their
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: food stamps. That's the joy that comes with it.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's creating some tough politics for people like
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Joni Ernst in Iowa. She was getting some flack about
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: this at a town hall in Iowa. Let's roll the.
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: Clip.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Tough comment from Jodi. Tough. It's true. We are all
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: going to die. In the long run, we are all dead.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: But that was in response to questions about Medicaid cuts
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: and cuts to SNAP, which is help food aid, that
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: it could lead people to die. And she didn't like
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: the question very much, gave a pretty flip answer. I
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: do appreciate that answer more than just lying about it
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: and saying that they're not cutting Medicaid and they're not
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: cutting SNAP.
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: I guess if you want points for honesty... Yes. What
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: she said would, if fact checkers are people who still exist,
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: she would not get any Pinocchios for that statement. We
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: all will die eventually. That is a fact.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I will say the bill is not aging well.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: The longer they're out there defending it, the longer this
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: conversation goes on, the longer this debate goes on, the
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: longer there's stories about the battle to cut Medicaid and
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: cut taxes for the wealthy. I think the more... Joni
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Ernst is not somebody I think that Trump can easily lose,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: but the harder it will be to get a bill
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: that looks like this or mostly looks like this through
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: the Senate and back to the House for them to
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: pass it.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: I guess I'd say I think there's a chance that
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: Democrats can make the bill so politically toxic that Republicans
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: will have to trim back some of the cuts. They
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: can make them maybe get some of the food stamp
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: cuts back, maybe make the Medicare cuts worse, maybe get
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: the funding for Planned Parenthood back, or take the provision
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: that defunds Planned Parenthood out of the bill. There are
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: some things you can do around the margins. But really
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: what we're trying to do here, we can't stop the
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: bill from passing. We don't have the votes to do that.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: And I'm operating the assumption that they have to pass something.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: Our goal is to make sure that every person in
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: this country knows how bad a thing they just passed.
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: We're recording this on Friday. It's only been a few
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: hours since the Joni Ernst clip made the rounds on
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: the internet. This would be, in a different media environment,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: different world, a gigantic story. This is the whole thing.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: Republican Senator does not care that Bill she's about to
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: vote for will kill people. Earlier this week, Elon Musk...
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: said that– criticized the bill because it exploded the deficit
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: and undid the work of Doge. Those are two different
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: arguments against the bill, both of which could be used
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: with a very aggressive strategic communications operation to really undermine
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: the bill and increase the political pressure and use it
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: as an opportunity to raise awareness on what's happening. Because
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: there was this Navigator poll that Favs and I talked
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: about a couple weeks ago which showed that only 25%
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: of people were closely following the Medicaid cuts. Most people
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: had no idea they were happening. And so here you
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: have Elon Musk, one of the famous people in the world,
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: Trump's buddy, like Kato Kaelin, as John called him on this,
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: with a very outdated reference on our most recent podcast,
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: criticizing Trump's signature legislative initiative. And the Democratic Party and
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: everyone trying to fight this bill should make sure every
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: single person knows about it. Because Elon Musk saying the
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: bill is bad will be very persuasive with a segment
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: of people. And it makes it look worse for Republicans.
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: And the hope is today that Democrats did not leap
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: at the Musk opportunity. I hope they leap at the
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: Joni Ernst opportunity to really put real political pressure on Republicans.
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: We have not done that to date.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: Dan, if a Democrat leaps at an opportunity in the woods,
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: but nobody hears it, does it make a sound?
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is ultimately the question of, like, there
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: is a very good piece in the bulwark about how
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: Democrats did not do a lot with the must piece.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: And it went through all the people who did not
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: tweet about it. And it's like, are we really like
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: two Chuck Schumer tweets away from like mass public opinion change? No,
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: when I say Democrats, I don't– yes, every Democratic member
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: of Congress should do something. But I also sort of
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: mean like we're talking about it right now, which is
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: part of the point. But every person who is in
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: the sort of Democratic media world, all the influencers out there,
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: people with TikTok accounts making content about this, sharing content
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: about this, like average everyday people putting the Elon Musk
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: clip in their group chat with their Musk fanboy– cousin
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: who disagrees with Trump on a lot of things. Like
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: there are opportunities here and we all should be jumping
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: at them.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. There's something, there's like this deeper challenge,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: which is like, it's, I hear what you're saying. Cause it's,
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: it's like, no, it's not really about like, does Schumer
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: do a tweet or is enough politicians tweeting about it?
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: It's like as a, as like a, an organization, an
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: organization used loosely.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: Yes, quite loosely.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: As throngs of human beings collectively, generally, ideally having the
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: same outcome of defeating Donald Trump and his allies. There
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: is this, this deeper problem where a lot of democratic
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: discourse online is about how to win. And a lot
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: of Republican discourse is just about winning. Like we have
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Fox news on in this, in our office all the time. We,
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: we look, we like to, we like to hear from
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: a range of people, you know, we like to hear,
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: I like to get all the views before I make
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: my decisions. They have a lot of content about making
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: fun of Democrats for endlessly talking about how to win men, right?
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: But when they're trying to win back women, they're not
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: having people on to debate the Republican problem with women.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: They're talking about immigrants attacking women in the streets. And
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: so like, there's just this sort of, it's almost as
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: if there's this like kind of sense on the right
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: that how you help your side is by helping your side,
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: And on our side, we really all put on our
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: white gloves and like kind of have a kind of
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: sophisticated debate about the future of the democratic party, but
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: not a lot of, by the way, this applies to
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: me too. We're doing it right now, but it's like, uh,
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: we're much more interested in this sort of meta conversation
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: than actually like the daily grind of actually performing the
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: outrage at what Republicans are saying and doing.
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: It like, we're not as good at faking it as
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: Republicans are. Um, that was just one part of the problem.
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: There's also, two levels to this, right? Fox is doing, like,
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: I guess I'd say, Republicans understand the value of injecting
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: as much politically persuasive content in the ecosystem as possible.
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: They also understand that outrage is the fuel for the algorithms,
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: and so they do that and they do it very well.
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: I mean, there is, and Fox is the core of this. Like,
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: we think of Fox as this cable news network that
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: is basically just giving suker to 72-year-olds angry people, but
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: when in reality it's the, it's like the bat signal
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: for the whole ecosystem about what matters. And those clips
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: matter a lot on social, they're clipped and sent everywhere.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: But the Republicans also have these same conversations like on
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: the daily wire on Ben Shapiro show, Steve Bannon has
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: a lot of that. Um, but we are, we are
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: missing a lot of the forces who are just pumping
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: out content to the masses. We're never going to have
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: a cable network and you really, it's not an investment
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: I would make right now, But we do need more–
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: and you see that with some of the content creators,
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: but we need more of them doing more. Yeah. Honestly,
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: we could do more too, right? We think all the time, like,
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: why isn't this a bigger story? We have a big platform.
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: What can we also do to make sure it's a
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: bigger story? Which I think is sort of why the
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: Joni Ernst thing is– why we're doing a sort of
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: special topper today for a Sunday episode. Part of it
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: is to be able to talk about the Joni Ernst
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: thing so more people will know about it.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, I had my little
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: moment in the barrel over the weekend because John and
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: I went on Jon Stewart's pod and we talked about Biden, obviously.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: And in it, I talked about the conflict of wanting
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: to be honest about Biden's age's liability and then also
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: being worried that talking about it would hurt Biden's chances
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: when he is the nominee because right-wing media would take
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: it out of context. And as I'm saying, I'm like,
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: I'm going to see this. I'm going to see this again.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: And then what happened is exactly what you're saying, which
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: is I think Fox News clipped it.
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: And they said they and they put some unfair headline
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: on it. You know, Obama cover up that kind of thing.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: And and and once that went out there, everybody started
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: doing it. Everybody started picking it up because like, oh,
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: here's a little chum in the water. This is a
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: thing we could this is something to follow. And and,
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: you know, and yet here I am, Dan, I made it.
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: You made it through. It was fun watching you in
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: Slack discover this was a thing because you had famously
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: and very self-righteously taken Twitter off your phone. Discovering, finding
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: out this was a thing and then going to Twitter
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: on your desktop and discovering that you were the main
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: character of Twitter that day was enjoyable.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: I really did like it. Yeah, it's a little, it
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: does have, has Justine landed yet energy?
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Where I like open up my computer like, oh shit. Whoa.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: And of course, what do I do? I ignore it,
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: I ignore it, I ignore it. And then I fucking
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: tweet at Meghan McCain. For whatever reason, that's the one
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: that got me. The final straw. All right, Dan, thanks
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: for hopping on. We will be right back with my
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: conversation with labor historian Eric Loomis. We had a great
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: conversation about labor strikes in history. And there are a lot,
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: I wanted to talk to him because I've just been
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: really interested in all the different ways a diverse disparate,
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: often contentious movement, democratic movement can have success. And one
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: place to learn about that are the times in which
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: strikes have led to changes and when they haven't. And
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: it was a great, fascinating, and very useful conversation about organizing,
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: about what works, about what doesn't work, about lessons. And
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: you'll hear that after the break.
• 28:02
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• 30:17
  Speaker 4: And we're back.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: With me today is Eric Loomis, a professor of history
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: at the University of Rhode Island. He wrote a book
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: called The History of America in Ten Strikes. I read
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: it because I was really interested in moments when movements
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: were able to galvanize public support, not just to make
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: changes in a company or an industry, but to make
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: broader political change. And as we think about this fight
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: against Trump, as we watch this rising authoritarian movement, the
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: answer has to be some kind of mass mobilization, a
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: democratic movement big enough to meet this right-wing one. And
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: throughout history, labor has been central to that. And there've
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: been moments when we've seen organizing succeed and we've had
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: moments when organizing failed. And I was just interested to
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: learn about what lessons we can draw. And the book
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: was really helpful to do that. And this conversation was
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: really helpful to think about that, about getting public support,
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: the balance between radicalism and pragmatism, the ways in which
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: violence can harm a movement, and how much it matters
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: when you have political leaders who are supportive of organizing
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: and labor movements and when they're hostile to them. So
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of lessons, I think, for us right now,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: which is why I was so eager to talk to
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: Eric Loomis about it. And it was a great conversation,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: runs the gamut from a pageant of striking workers in
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: which many were jealous that they didn't get the parts
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: they wanted, all the way through Reagan's decimation of the
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: air traffic controllers unions and the lessons we can draw
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: from that. But all in all, a really great conversation.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: Eric Loomis, thank you so much for being here. I
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: want to start with the general strike of 1919. which
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: I thought was an interesting moment where you saw basically
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: an intersection of the radicalism of some parts of the
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: labor movement and people who did not view themselves as radical,
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: did not view themselves as political, were not part of
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, which was
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: seen as more socialist and communist, but members of the AFL.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: And over the course of several days, basically shut the
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: city of Seattle down. And so maybe you could just
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: start by telling us a little bit about what led
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: to that moment.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: So in the early 20th century, American workers engaged in
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: strikes of all kinds. Some of them were radical. Some
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: of them were not radical. A lot of the biggest
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: issues were around politics, right? For union members, for workers,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: are we engaged in some sort of radicalism or do
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: we really believe in an American capitalist system that maybe
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: needs some adjustment, but is something that we can generally
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: work with? And there's very few, quote, general strikes in
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: American history for a number of different reasons where workers
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: from across multiple industries, across a city, never really across
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: the nation, have come together to, say, shut down a
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: particular city for a given time. And Seattle in 1919
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: is one of the most important and interesting ones. And,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: you know, one of the fascinating things about this strike
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: and about the other limited general strikes is how rarely
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: they've actually come out of self-proclaimed radicals, whether it's the IWW,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: the Communist Party, etc., And that was the case in
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: 1919 as well. It really just started with longshoremen strike.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: Shipyard workers had gone two years without a pay raise.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: You had 35,000 workers walk away from their job. They
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: thought they were going to get a raise after the
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: end of World War I. It didn't happen, et cetera,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: et cetera. They go on strike. A couple of weeks pass.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Pressure's really growing on the workers. For the Seattle labor
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: movement and the labor movement more generally, they really see
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: this as an attempt to roll back gains that the
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: labor movement had won during World War I. And so
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: the general strike of Seattle begins with the Metal Trades Council,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: which were just traditional... American Federation of Labor, non-radical unions,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: because they just felt like they all had to come
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: out in order to support these workers, because an attack
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: on these longshoremen workers, that was an attack on everybody.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: And over the next few days, they basically shut the
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: city down, but also engaged, and this is an important thing,
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: I think, throughout the way we talk about these things
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: in terms of the relevance for today. They engaged in
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: a social movement unionism, where they made sure they were
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: able to feed the people. where they made sure hospitals
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: were staffed, where people were having fun, where it wasn't,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: you know, essential workers may still be working because the
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: city has, the people of the city has to continue
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: to be able to live there and support that strike.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: And it's able to succeed more or less until national
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: labor leadership, scared of the potential radical implications, shut it down.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: And in fact, that becomes a disaster. Seattle labor movement
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: falls apart in the aftermath. But that's one of those
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: moments in which you do see unions come together across
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: ideological lines to support a larger principle of unions surviving,
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: of workers having dignity, and of trying to move a
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: fight forward in which all of us can come together
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: to make a positive change.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: It was interesting to me that it was motivated in
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: part just by inflation, right? By definition, if you're going
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: to have a general strike, it is not going to
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: be led by a fringe. It's going to have to
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: be led by the great majority. And those are less
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: ideological participants. They want a wage increase. They want good conditions.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: They want to be treated fairly. To the point you
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: made about public support for it, it was interesting throughout
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: the book. It was one of the themes I want
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: to talk to you about, about When labor organizers have
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: sought to rally the public to their side and when
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: they've alienated the public and when disruption is the order
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: of the day to demonstrate your power versus when disruption
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: alienates the people whose backing you need and thereby costing
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: you the politicians. Maybe you could just talk a little
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: bit about that.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: OK, first of all, to your first point, you're absolutely right.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, I often get people emailing me and stuff
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: and say, oh, you know, what do we need to
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: do to get the general strike? And, you know, there's
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: a lot of sort of fantasies in the political world,
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: I think, of what I would call politics without politics, right?
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Where like people come together in some way without the
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: messiness and dirtiness of organizing and the complexities of dealing
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: with real people and just like good things are going
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: to happen. And it's like the general strike requires like
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: the workers that you hate to also be part of
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: the strike. It requires Trump voters to be part of
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: the strike. It requires your racist uncle on Thanksgiving that
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: you can't stand to also be part of the strike, right?
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: It's going to be messy. And I think that's really
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: a really, really critical point to not romanticize the strike
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: or romanticize labor or romanticize change, but rather to understand
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: what it really takes to create that change. And that
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: leads to your second point about the public. I think
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: a lot of people would like to think, I mean,
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: there's a kind of a of a messaging around the
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: labor movement today inside the labor movement that I don't
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: think is very helpful. And basically it is the kind
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: of quote that gets thrown around a lot is the
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: strike gets the goods. Like if we just go on strike,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: it always works and only the union can sell us out,
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: you know, from our power going on strike. But historically
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: that is not the case and nor is it today.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Strikes could be an amazing political tool or they could
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: be a complete disaster. And it depends in no small
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: part on that issue of public support. General strikes are
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: actually technically illegal in the United States now. It's part
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. So it would be
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: really hard to actually have a general strike take place
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: in this country because it would be an illegal act.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: That doesn't mean it can't happen, but it would be illegal.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: But you have to have public support in some way
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: or another. And when unions have had broader public support,
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: when they've engaged in a kind of unionism that builds
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: support through the community to understand that what's happening here
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: is that we're going on strike and inconveniencing you, in
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: many cases, for the benefit of us all, versus we're
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: doing that for the very small benefit of our personal
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: desires and needs, it leads to two very different kinds
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: of outcomes.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so let's talk about two different versions of this.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: Maybe this is a good way to do this. So
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: let's talk about the 1937 Flint sit-down strike. And then
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: I want to talk about the air traffic controller strike, which,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: by the way, I totally did not understand that. I
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: had an image in my mind of what happened that
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: was so simple and wrong. So I think people will
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: be interested in that. But let's talk about the 1937
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: Flint sit-down strike. There's a line from a leader in
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: the UAW who says, I'm convinced that the police lost
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: not only that night's battle, but the whole Flint war
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: by providing us with the finest audience we had ever had.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: It served to nudge thousands of Flint workers off dead
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: center and into an open commitment to the UAW. So
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: can you talk about what led to that moment?
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: The famous story, and some of your listeners may be
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: familiar with this, is that in the beginning of 1937,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: a auto workers in Flint, Michigan took over one of
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: the plants for General Motors and sat inside and refused
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: to leave to force GM to come to an agreement
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: with this brand new union they were forming called the
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: United Auto Workers to bring unions into the auto industry
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: for the first time. And workers were scared, right? I mean, like,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: because GM basically controls Flint. That was common in the
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: auto industry. Ford controls the town of Dearborn, for example.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: And that meant controlling the police forces. And so, you know,
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: this small sort of vanguard, I guess, of workers decides
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: to sit in in this one factory. They're able to
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: do so. And the idea is in part that, you know,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: if you're going to get if the workers just go
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: out on strike, they'll be able to the GM will
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: be able to bring in replacement workers. This makes that impossible.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: So they're sitting down on the job. And there's been
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: kind of a myth that forms around this in a
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: sense that part of the strategy was GM would not
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: have wanted the cops to destroy their own facility. But
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: in fact, GM was fine with the cops destroying their
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: own facility. They want to do anything to keep that
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: union from forming. So you have men inside, and then
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: you have their wives, sisters, daughters, mothers on the outside
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: in what was called a ladies' auxiliary, providing support services
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: and giving talks, you know, making sure food got to
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: these guys, etc. And this begins to build a kind
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: of community solidarity where people are coming out in support
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: of the workers. And then one night, GM, you know,
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: tries to get the cops to come in and tear
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: it up. And GM, you know, the workers inside start
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: throwing stuff at the cops and the cops retreat. And
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: this happens in front of everybody. And, you know, there
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: was a lot of outrage. But the critical thing that
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: they did actually came the previous year. And this is
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: an important point in terms of thinking about the relationships
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: between unions and politics. The most important thing that workers
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: require to win strikes is to neutralize what tends to
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: be a frequent corporate political alliance where the state supports
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: the corporation in whatever is going to happen to bust
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: that union. And workers in Michigan had elected a guy
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: named Frank Murphy, to be the governor. And Murphy had
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: campaigned on never using state forces against the unions. And
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: so GM is calling out Murphy to send in the
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: National Guard. And Murphy, who's a very nervous guy, basically
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: has an anxiety attack over this and disappears for a
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: day or two.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Cool.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: And then comes out and says, no, I'm going to
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: stand up. We're not going to do that. And when
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: Murphy refuses to send in the National Guard, General Motors
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: gives up. And they signed a one-page document that is
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: the first contract in auto worker history.
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: I deeply empathize with somebody who panics for 48 hours
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: before finding the courage to do the right thing. I
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: think that that's a cool vibe and an energy that
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: I appreciate. So it's interesting because it reminded me all
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: those years later when the SEIU is organizing janitors in
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: Los Angeles and you have a similar public outcry when
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: the police are unleashed on a group of striking janitors
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: in Century City, which is not far from where we're
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: recording this, as they're kind of wealthy tenants who don't
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: have any stake. They don't win or lose if the
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: landlord pays the janitors more, but they certainly don't like
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: looking out the window at their fancy offices and seeing
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: people being assaulted. And it led to the mayor, Tom Bradley,
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: for whom our awful airport is partially named, to side
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: with the workers.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: The reality is people don't necessarily care what happens to
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: workers very much. I mean, I think that's– if they
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: don't see it, they don't necessarily think about it. But
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: they do often care if they see it. I mean,
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: basically you have janitors who were kind of at the
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: forefront of a lot of the terrible work. situations that
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: are now incredibly common, in this case, subcontracting, where basically
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: the owners of these gigantic downtown office buildings were ending
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: their direct employment of janitors and instead using subcontractors to
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: bring in the janitors for much lower wages. And SEIU,
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: Service Employees International Union, which today is one of the
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: largest unions in the country, in part by organizing this
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: kind of worker, is able to bring a lot of
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: these workers together. A lot of them had escaped places
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: like El Salvador and Honduras. So they're like fleeing right-wing
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: paramilitary violence. And so they're not really that scared of
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: the LA cops in comparison to what they had dealt with,
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: with say, you know, US supported militias in El Salvador.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: One day, right, the cops just start, this is I
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: think in 1990, the cops just start beating them in
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: the streets. And, you know, like one woman who's pregnant, miscarriages.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's, it's, it's ugly. And as you point out,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: you know, if you're a company that's renting a floor
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: in an office tower, all you care about is that
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: the garbage cans are emptied and the bathroom's clean. Like
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: you don't care about anything else. And all of a
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: sudden these, these people are watching like Salvadorans get beaten
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: by the LAPD on the streets. And they're like, what
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: on earth is going on here? And it was a
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: huge mistake by the, well, by the LAPD and by the, the,
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: the corporate leaders. And it leads to a big victory
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: that spreads across the country. And, sort of brings a
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: lot of janitors and other low-wage service workers into SEIU
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: and makes it the powerful force in American labor unionism
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: and American progressive politics that it is today.
• 45:28
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• 46:49
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about the air traffic controllers under Reagan. The
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: air traffic controller union at the time, which no longer exists,
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: it's a different union now, it endorsed Ronald Reagan. What
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: I thought when I saw that is, well, you know,
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: this election we just went through, we had the Teamsters
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: head speaking at the Republican National Committee. So it felt resonant.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: Take us from the Air Traffic Controllers Union endorsing Ronald
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: Reagan to within a span of a few years being
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: destroyed by Ronald Reagan.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: In the 70s, planes crashed all the time.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: Of course, this may be.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Happening now with Trump and the gutting of air traffic control.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: So this may become more relevant again. But Air traffic
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: controllers did not have the technologies that they have now.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're basically like dots in the sky on
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: a radar screen and trying to get them to not
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: run into each other. And it was very stressful. And
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: the way the FAA worked is that most of the
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: leadership were old officers, often from the Vietnam War. And
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: a lot of their everyday traffic controllers were rank-and-file guys
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: from the Vietnam War. And their bosses basically treated them
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: like they were enlisted men, telling them what to do,
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: yelling at them, just adding to the stress. And this
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: was not appreciated by a bunch of ex-Vietnam vets who
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: were pretty angry anyway about their experience in the war
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: and everything else that was going on in the 1970s.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: So they formed this union. It gets quite a bit
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: of publicity, and it's a very radical militant union in
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: certain senses, not politically radical, but radical when it comes
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: to direct action. So they spent the 70s slowing down
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: the airlines, engaging in what we call work to rule,
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: which is like following the terms of the contract in
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: a very specific way, which like.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: Malicious compliance is what we would call it now, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: But they were politically conservative men by and large, right?
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, we know that there was a lot of
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: sexism and racism toward women and workers of color there.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: It's a bunch of politically conservative white men who have
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: a very strong militant culture. Bring in the Carter administration.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: And Jimmy Carter was terrible on labor issues. I began
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: the period of Democrats really turning away from the labor movement.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: Reagan actually did not have an extreme anti-labor record as
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: governor of California. He had signed bills for, you know, say,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: expanded collective bargaining rights for.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: Public sector employees. He had led a union. Hadn't he
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: led a union? He was.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: He himself had been the head of the screen actors.
• 49:17
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: So from the traffic controllers. they sort of see, well,
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Carter's terrible. We actually like a lot of the tough
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: talk that Reagan gives about foreign policy. So let's endorse him.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: And then they had planned for a long time to
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: go on strike in 1981. But, you know, then you
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: look at the things they were wanting on their strike.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: There was no sense of solidarity with other workers there.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: Let's put it that way. They didn't care what the
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: flight attendants thought they didn't care what the pilots thought
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: or the machinists uh they were out for themselves and
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: some of the things they were demanding were free flights
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: to europe which is not exactly going to give you
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: that solidarity and notice well that in the 70s uh
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: you know it was a terrible time for private sector
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: workers you had the recession after 73 and the oil
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: crisis And so you had a scenario in which wages
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: for private sector workers and union rights were declining, and
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: government workers were winning these great contracts, and they were rising.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: And so there was a lot of anger among kind
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: of a general public that fed into this larger anti-government
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: backlash about greedy public sector workers. And the air traffic
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: controllers kind of summarized that. So they go on strike
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: against Reagan. And Reagan, even though he had appreciated their support,
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: was like, this is an attack on me. It was
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: technically illegal. And so he fires them all. It's the
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: greatest disaster in the history of organized labor.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: And I do think there's like there is a lesson there, right,
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: that they thought they had this power because of the
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: important role they played in infrastructure. But the lack of
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: public support gave Reagan the space to fire them all,
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: blame them for the ensuing chaos that happened that they
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: slowly sort of came back from. And I mean, the
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: union stops existing, right?
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: The union that follows is a completely different organization.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the AFL-CIO had begged PAC co-leadership to not
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: do this. They knew what Reagan stood for. Reagan did
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: not respond well to people trying to bully him. And
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: they didn't care. And this is when I think we
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: have to push back a little bit on some of
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: the rhetoric that's very popular on the left today when
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: we talk about unions, because it's It's ideology. It's not
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: really rooted in fact sometimes. And some of this is
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: the more democratic a union is and militant it is,
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: the more successful it will be. Just empirically, that is
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: not the case, right? PACO was a very militant union,
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: a democratic union that had overthrown its own leadership for
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: not being militant enough. And they need a strike. that
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: is an unmitigated disaster, and that then emboldens the entire
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: private sector to realize that they can act toward their
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: unions like Reagan acted toward the air traffic controllers, and
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: they start doing the same thing, and the 80s become
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: a catastrophic decade for the labor movement. Strikes basically go from,
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: you know, in the 70s, really tremendously common, huge strikes
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: the whole decade, to almost nothing by the end of
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: the 80s through the 90s and really through the 2000s
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: as well unions are scared to strike you got to
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: be smart about these things this isn't something to romanticize
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: it's a strategy that's a very intense strategy that can
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: work and can be transformative but can also be utterly
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: disastrous and and i think honest discussions of the labor
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: movement and honest discussions of striking are really necessary on
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: a broader left today that frankly too often romanticizes things
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: and reverts to talking points rather than deal with the
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: messiness of Americans and their various and often contradictory politics
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: that do not lead to wide-scale class solidarity in this country.
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: Can you talk about one of the examples in the
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: book of a more effective way example of organizing and
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: striking when the action was effective, both in galvanizing the
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: public and in getting concessions?
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think a great example is the United
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Farm Workers boycott of grapes in the 60s and 70s, right?
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is an epic, legendary struggle that really
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: is from a very small set of workers. I mean,
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: these are pretty disempowered, Mostly Mexican-American, but at that point
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: still a lot of Filipinos as well out in California
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: who were picking grapes and asparagus and lettuce and other
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: crops in really awful, terrible conditions. People are dying of
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: heat stroke, pesticide poisoning, all kinds of other terrible things. And,
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: you know, there's some pretty serious organizing going on out there,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: going back to the legendary organizer Saul Alinsky, who sends
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: some of his people out there, a guy named Fred Ross.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Ross brings in a couple of local people named Cesar
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: Chavez and Dolores Huerta. And they eventually start leading a
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: different kind of a movement, a workers-oriented movement that eventually
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: becomes the United Farm Workers, beginning in 1965, gauging a
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: nationwide boycott against table grapes. because the grape growers were
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: so anti-union. This sort of galvanizes liberals across the country.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: It becomes a national movement. People volunteer for this, and
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: they live in, like, UFW houses in various cities around
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: the country, working, flyering, getting people to support the movement,
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: getting stores to not buy these grapes. And it becomes
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: a national movement that eventually leads to some pretty major
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: victories for the farm workers and really solidifies Chavez and
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Huerta as legends of American organizing and American progressivism. They
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: were able to take a really small group of workers
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: and make it a national cause by building on a
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: kind of a broader sense of solidarity that existed at
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: that time where people in New York or LA or
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: where I live in Providence saw these workers out in
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: California that they barely knew existed and learned about their conditions.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: And people were horrified about this. And it leads to
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: enormous changes in the law in the state of California,
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: leads to this big time social movement, leads to a
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: lot of major victories for these workers. So, I mean,
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: that's one good example from the not too distant past.
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: Is it just as simple as their demands were reasonable,
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: their conditions were terrible? Or was there something about the
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: ask of Americans who obviously were not directly impacted? What exactly,
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: to drill down, made it catch such attention?
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: It was the appeal to a broader sense of justice
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: that was a big part of American life in the
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: 1960s and 70s. You know, that this was a way
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: in which everyday people, I mean, think about it today, right? Like,
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of people out there who,
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: no doubt listeners of this podcast, who really don't know
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: what to do right now, right? I mean, they're flummoxed,
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: they're flustered, they're horrified, they're angry, but their anger other
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: than like, you know, got to make sure we win
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: the House in 26 and try to find somebody else.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: They don't know what to do necessarily. And that's been
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: kind of a theme, I think, since the election. Well,
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: part of what the UFW boycott does is give people
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: something to do. It gives them a way that they
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: can become invested in a movement by handing out flyers, by,
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: if nothing more, by taking the flyer and then saying,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to support buying these table grapes. I'm
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: going to boycott a store that is selling these grapes.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: I'm going to engage in me. I'm going to engage
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: in a solidarity action. That might slightly inconvenience me because,
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know, my kid likes grapes and I like
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: this store or whatever. But I'm going to put pressure
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: using my consumer power to live by this boycott that
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: then means that I am actively helping these workers out
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: in California who I've never seen because I've never been
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: to Fresno. And I'm going to use my little bit
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: of power to do something to help these workers. So
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: I think it's not just like, I mean, look, like
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: workers are in horrible conditions today, too. pandemic and the
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: meatpacking workers who are dying of COVID on the job
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: because they're considered essential workers are an example of that.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: And we didn't necessarily have actions to support them per se.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: But there are ways to build bigger public support by
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: doing the work of organizing in a broader general public
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: to have an ask of people to do something concrete
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: to help supportive labor rights or immigrant riots, or the
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: other horrible things that are happening to this country today,
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: there are ways that we can learn from the past
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: to engage people to do real actions. They're not going
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: to dominate their lives, but to do something concrete that
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: leads to a bigger, broader set of social changes. What
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: we need for that, though, is the organizing capacity and
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: the leadership to make that happen. And that's not easy
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: to do. That's the kind of infrastructure that has to
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: take place. in the organizing world first to be able
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: to engage people who are not going to come out
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: to a million meetings, but get them to do something.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: Part of what the organizing has to do, it's not
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: just that it gave people a concrete step that they
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: could take. It was also an action with a specific goal.
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: We're not boycotting these grapes forever. We're not doing this
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: to raise awareness. We are taking a specific action for
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: a length of time to exact some kind of a change,
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: a specific action. define change. And that requires organizers who
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: understand that balance, right, between not being so complacent or
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: establishment oriented as to not demand enough, which you talk
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: about in the book a fair amount, but also to
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: not be so ahead of where the public is that
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: either your demands are seen as impossible or don't get
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: the support of the public to try to make sure
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: you get that result.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really outstanding point. I mean, I think
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: that so often in our World our liberal left progressive worlds,
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: how we want to define these terms today, we've often lost,
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: I think, the first core tenet of organizing, which you
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: have to meet people where they're at, not where you're at.
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: And so if you're asked, is the revolution like people
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: are not going to be there for that because they
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: don't know what you're talking about.
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: That the idea and you saw this a little bit
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: with like, I mean, you know, say Occupy Wall Street.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: Which is now quite 15 years ago and was a
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: really important moment in rebuilding progressive capacity to do anything
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: at all after the long. 90s and 2000s where like
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: people just weren't really on the streets and it's a
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: very important moment but you know look i mean when
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: it becomes about just occupying the space for a long
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: long time people are not going to really see that
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: connection right and that begins to sort of people start
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: cleaving off of that at that at that moment in
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: time and i think you see this in a lot
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: of other cases today where organizers end up having kind
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: of maximalist demands that are not don't seem realistic right
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: the organizers themselves have to have discipline. And the United
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: Farm Workers, let me tell you something about the UFW.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: You as a volunteer, you didn't have autonomy over your life.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: You couldn't choose when or how to engage. If you
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: were working for Chavez, he was the boss and you
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: knew it. And going against that meant you were out.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: Discipline actually matters. And like today, I feel like we are,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: and then this includes much of the labor movement, all
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: these like super hyper-powered individualists, that do not submit to
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: group discipline. And that actually is really critical to making change.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: It's kind of against the way a lot of us
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: feel today. But you actually do have to have discipline.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: And some of that discipline is we have to have,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: we have to decide first what our concrete goals are.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: We have to decide how we're going to get there,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: how to stay on messaging, and how to get people
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: to then support those goals. And when we win those goals,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: then we declare victory and move on to a next
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: stage of organizing. We're not really at a lot of
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: those points today. And I think this is part of
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: the larger problem in figuring out how to collectively respond
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: to Trump.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back with more of this conversation after
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: this break. Pod Save America is brought to you by Blinds.com.
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  Speaker 3: See blinds.com for details. It's funny that people are reaching
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: out to you to ask about a general strike because
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: you see it floated all the time and people are like, oh,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: we need a general strike. And it's, well, like, how
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: do we get there, right? What are the steps to
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: building up the capacity and the kind of collective sense
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: of imagination that such a thing could, you know, like,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: before you can have it, people have to start to
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: believe it's something that's realistic. That requires a lot of
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: organizing along the way. One thing that struck me too,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: is you have this big strike in 1919, uh, led
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: by people that had served in world war one. There's a, uh,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: a general strike that shuts down Oakland in 1946. There's
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: this series of strikes you were talking about with Vietnam
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: veterans returning home. Uh, something does happen, uh, In this country,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: when people are returning home from a war and then
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: don't feel like they're getting what they deserve or what
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: they feel they're owed by the country, and they have
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: a sense of discipline and camaraderie with the people that
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: they're working with, there's a series of strikes. There's one
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: in Connecticut. They start cascading across the country. They end
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: up in Oakland in 1946. Can you talk about the
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: Oakland general strike?
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And so... In some ways, the Oakland strike
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: is a little bit like the Seattle strike, you know,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: coming out of a union movement that was not actually
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: that radical, right? And by 1946, understand that the union
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: movement is now split into two groups. There's the American
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: Federation of Labor, which represents the older forms of unions
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: that tend to begin to be more politically conservative. And
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: then the CIO, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, that includes
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: the auto workers and the steel workers and the rubber
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: workers and a lot of communist-led unions, and had really
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: embraced that radicalism and mass organizing. But ironically, the Oakland
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: General Strike, like in Seattle, came out of these fairly
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: conservative AFL unions. And this was very much about what
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: did almost everybody have in common in 1946. They had
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: not spent any money in 20 years, right? You had
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: the Great Depression. You had World War II. And of course,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: nobody's making any money during the Depression. And in the war,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: people are making money, but they can't spend the money
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: because there's nothing to spend it on. And by 1946,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: you have a lot of pent-up demand, and these people
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: want pay raises. They want big-time pay raises to get
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: the pay they deserve for the work they've done to
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: win the war. And not surprisingly, the business class doesn't
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: want to do that. And so this is a situation
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: where it starts among women, actually, department store workers, and
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: they shut down the city for three days until, lo
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: and behold, the Teamsters, led by a corrupt leader named
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: Dave Beck, uh, pulls their union out. And that was
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: in some ways kind of devastating because at that moment,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: the CIO unions were about to join the strike, but
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: it's another one of these situations where they like, they
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: shut the place down for three days and it's like
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: a giant party in the street. You know, the bars are, uh,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: the bars can't sell alcohol, but they can, uh, but
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: they put their jukeboxes out on the street. People are
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: like literally dancing in the street. And it's this kind
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: of joyful moment of workers expressing this power, um, They
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: don't necessarily win the strike or some of the political aims,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: but these kind of things do lead to the massive
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: pay raises and benefit raises that workers in post-war America
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: got that turned American working class into being barely able
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: to feed themselves to being able to buy a home
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: and a new car and maybe send their kids to
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: college and the kinds of hallmarks of, I think, what's
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: become called the middle class, but in still large parts
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: is a working class, that is a more prosperous working class.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: And so like the, the strike is not in itself
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: necessarily successful, but it lays the groundwork for employers over
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: the next 25 years to giving really gargantuan pay and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: benefit raises to the American working class that significantly improved
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: the lives of American workers. And I think that's also
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: an important point that's worth making is that while for
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: a lot of people, it's a kind of a radical,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: you know, being involved in the labor movement, it's a
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: kind of a radical thing. Um, with the idea of
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: socialist aims and whatever, and that's cool. I mean, I
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: support a lot of that too, but having grown up
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: pretty poor, having more money in the bank is a
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: revolutionary act.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: We're in this political moment where you have a lot
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: of kind of Republicans saying, oh, we need, I think
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: it was the white house spokesperson yesterday. You see, we see,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: we need fewer LGBTQ graduates from Harvard and more plumbers
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: and more kind of people that work with their hands.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: And there's this sort of, I don't know, nostalgia for
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: the factory because those are the real jobs for the men, right?
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: Those are real jobs with dignity for men. But it
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: almost seems to me that it kind of gets it
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: backwards that the reason we associate those jobs with dignity
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: and that American spirit is because people fought to make
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: them well compensated. And because they were well compensated, they
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: had a kind of prestige and a respect for Right.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: And that that that there's nothing inherently more dignified about
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: that job than a service job. It's just that unions
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: successfully organized those places when these people were forming memories
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: about like a Rockwell style America.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I mean, just from the work perspective,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: we know absolutely that there's nothing inherently better about a
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: factory job than working at McDonald's or working as a
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: home health care worker.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: The jobs that actually exist today, as opposed to factory
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: jobs that are not coming back, even if all the
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: tariffs happen and, you know, all the production comes back
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: to the U.S., it's going to be automated, right? There's
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: maybe a few workers in there, but we're not talking
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: about 1950 anymore, where you've got 25,000 people working in
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: the same factory. That is never happening again. But I
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: do think that there is a tremendous amount of instability
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: in the workplace today, Um, there's been a huge amounts
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: of attacks on organized labor, open attacks from Republicans and
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: indifference from too many democratic leaders. Joe Biden being a
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: very important exception to that, very pro union guy. Um,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: and one of his strongest things that did not really
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: pay off politically, unfortunately with union workers, which is a
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: whole other set of conversations, but, um, People are going
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: to react to nostalgia, right? People are going to react
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: to a feeling that things were better in the past.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: The truth barely matters. We have to deal with the
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: reality that people do not feel comfortable. and stable in
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: their work lives. The rise of AI is only going
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: to make this worse. And we actually really have to
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: get ahead of figuring out what does the future of
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: work look like? And people value work. Work is one
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: of these things that all societies throughout history have had
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: work in certain kinds of ways before. as central to
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: their societies, often connected to gender norms. And this is
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: something we're going to have to figure out. We can't
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: just tell people that they're wrong. We have to, once again,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: organize them where they're at to try to get them
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: to a place that is less nostalgic and more useful
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: and more organized to moving toward a politics that actually
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: makes sense in the 21st century to make work-life better
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: for everybody. And we're not very close to that yet.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's worth talking about the Joe Biden example because
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: you wrote this in 2018. And in the next two years,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: we elect Joe Biden. He is the most pro-union president
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: in our lifetimes. And then Donald Trump, who promised to
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: be a pro-worker president, but ultimately deregulates and cuts taxes
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: for the wealthy, makes gains not just with white people,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: but makes gains with Black voters and Hispanic voters, especially men,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: and makes a kind of broad gains in ways that
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: seem to suggest that Joe Biden's kind of pro-union position
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: didn't get him anything. And I'm just wondering, we don't know,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: you know, it'll take time to figure out what happened here, obviously,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: but I'm just wondering what your first reaction.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: Was to that.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: You can make the case that Joe Biden, in terms
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: of actual support for unions, was more supportive of unions
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: than FDR or Harry Truman. who actually, in truth, had
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: very mixed records in terms of actually supporting what unions
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: were doing and using the government to actively support unions.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: And you're right, it didn't matter. My main thought is
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: that contemporary liberals think policy matters more than it does,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: and they don't put enough emphasis on communication and, frankly, propaganda.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: So you see the signs up from the infrastructure bill
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: on our highways and everything. And rather than have a
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: big picture of Joe Biden up there saying, I did
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: this for you, it's thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. Well,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: that's not helping Joe Biden at all, right? Like we,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: on the liberal side, we have a kind of belief
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: that good policy and like, oh, let's like raise the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: earned income tax credit is somehow going to connect with
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: everyday people who feel insecure in their society and they
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: don't really pay attention. And those are the actual voters
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: you have to win. I think the lesson is you
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: have to message what you're doing. You have to tell
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: the workers and make it convincing to them that you
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: are the one who is going to change their lives.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: And it's funny, if you go back to the 30s
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: and you like watch movies. or art, or anything else,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: the level of propaganda that FDR is pulling off would
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: be shocking. I mean, it is just, and you can
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: see why people who hated FDR really hated him, because
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: he's engaging in activities that we would find so radically
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: over the top in terms of promoting himself, that it
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: honestly makes Trump look like a piker when it comes
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: to propaganda. It's really, it's really remarkable.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: That's what will, you know, honestly, that's what some Trump
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: defenders say, that like this, we're not doing anything that
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: you wouldn't have applauded and haven't spent a century applauding
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: when FDR did it. I wonder how much of this
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: too is just Joe Biden's taking the right steps for labor,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: but it's just incomprehensible. Like we'll never get to do
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: the double blind experiment where we have a president who's
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: doing what Joe Biden's doing, but isn't slowly losing the
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: ability to fucking talk as we head into the most
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: consequential election. Speaking of being too college educated, there was
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: a story in the book that it just, it reminded
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: me of social media. which is the Patterson Strike Pageant.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: Which just was very sweet. And I thought it was like,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: and that I felt like, oh, that could be a
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: movie in and of itself. Can you just tell people
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: what happened when Strikers in Patterson, New Jersey decided to
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: put on a show?
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: So it's 1913 and you have a lot of militant
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: workers out there. I mean, a lot of people who
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: are immigrating from Eastern and Southern Europe, hey, bring over
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: ideas of radicalism with them, particularly Jewish immigrants who are
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: fleeing persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe. And a lot
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: of them had already committed to socialism. And so they're
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: bringing these ideas into the American labor movement and really
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: energizing it and turning it into a modern movement. And,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: you know, the American Federation of Labor is like real
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: scared of immigrants. It's a real problem for them. They're
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: very anti-immigrant. Since the AFL is not organizing these apparel
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: workers working in these textile plants in Lawrence, Mass., at
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: Fall River, New Bedford, Patterson, New Jersey, the IWW, the
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: Industrial Workers of the World, are going in and doing it.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: And the IWW is like, we romanticize the heck out
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: of them because they're really good at culture making and
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: images and doing cool, dramatic stuff. They're not actually very
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: good at organizing, to be totally honest with And so
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: they have a lot of like wealthy supporters in the arts.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: They have these conversations and like, let's put on a
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: big play to like show the people what the conditions
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: are really like in New Jersey. And so they rent
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: out like, you know, the big hall in New York
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: City and they have this pageant. Let's get the workers
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: on the stage and let's show them what's up. And,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: you know, we'll do these songs and dances and have
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: these dramatic scenes. And so you have this play that's
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: supposed to raise money and all these cultural people come
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: out or like, yeah, you know, we're going to do
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: this in solidarity. But the functionality is, is it does
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: two things. It pulls people from the picket lines. And
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: then it divides the workers themselves between those who are
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: like chosen to be on the play and those who
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: are not. And those who are not are obviously like.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: Why are I chosen to be on the play? They
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: didn't get to be in the fucking play. Yeah. They're like,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: this sucks. No, I know exactly. They were hurt.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: People's feelings are these.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: I just think it's like these kind of gruff workers
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: are just not getting their part. They're going running up
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: to the board to see that they're not in the
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: fucking play. Yeah.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: They're really upset. And so it actually helps destroy the strike.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: Like there's this idea of like, let's put on this
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: cultural thing, destroys the strike and the strikers totally lose.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: And it actually ends the IWW's attempt to organize in
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: Eastern factories by and large, because they figured out they
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: don't really know how to do it. It's kind of
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: a funny story in some ways, but it's an example
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: of how, just because you have like your finger on
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: the pulse of American culture and and you are really
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: good at producing, leftist culture does not mean it's actually
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: good for the workers. And I think that's something we
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: always have to keep in mind. When we're trying to
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: engage in an action of solidarity, it's not about us.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: It's about the workers. Too often, I think, in this
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: extremist individualist age in which we live in, acts that
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: we claim to be solidarity acts are so often really
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: just about making ourselves feel good. And it needs to
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: come from The workers themselves and the solidarity is us
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: doing what we can to assist the workers, not sort
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: of imposing ideas upon them.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: So I think we should wrap up by just talking
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: about where we're at now. Only 6% of private sector
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: workers are currently in a labor union. I thought this
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: was a stunning fact that more than half are located
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: in just a half a dozen states in the Northeast, right?
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: Which means whole parts of the country are just not
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: unionized at all. We've also just been through an election
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: where we lost. We lost to an anti-union, anti-labor president
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: who is right now trying to stack the NLRB and
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: undermine labor at every turn. But at the same time,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: we've seen kind of revived efforts to organize. We've seen,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: I think, organizers trying to figure out how to organize
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: people that work in offices, organize the media. We're sitting
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: here in the auspices of Crooked Media. We got the
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: Crooked Media Union on the ones and twos. If I
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: did anything wrong, they'd have dumped out. If I went
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: too pro-management in this interview, it would be shut off.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: It wouldn't continue. They're laughing too much. But it's hard
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: not to feel what you're feeling. One thing I take
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: away from the book is just when corporations have unleashed
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: violence against organizers, it has blown back against them. When
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: unions have had violent elements, even just acting on their own,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: it has destroyed solidarity with people that aren't in the union.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: And the reason I bring that up is you start
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: to see this kind of this desire to find someone
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: to fix it, whether it's a politician or whether it's
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: people kind of praising someone like Luigi Mangione. And it
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: just feels like we're not at a moment where people
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: want to or feel motivated to participate in broad protest
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: or broad actions. You see some rising protests in the
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: last couple of months, but nothing that compares to what
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: happened in 2017. And more broadly, what you see is
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: protests not as a mean to exact any specific outcome,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: but simply to raise awareness, right? Protests to highlight a topic,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: express discontent, voice concerns. but not the kind of organized
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: movements that are designed to exact specific policy outcomes. And
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: so when I think about the long road we have
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: to a moment where millions of people might have to
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: take to the streets because they're trying to protect us
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: from a further descent of authoritarianism, I feel like we're
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: so far away from that. And I just wonder what
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: you see as either glimmers of hope or places where
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: you would like to see greater organizing to start rebuilding
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: that muscle.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, I certainly agree with you in
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: Much of what you said. I mean, it confounds me
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: that in a post 2024 election, the kind of giving
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: up by seemingly by large parts of the of social
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: media or the Democratic Party. I mean, if you look
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: back to, say, the the protest against the Muslim ban
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: in 2017, I mean, it was tremendously effective. Right. I mean,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: people came out and they occupy those airports and it
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: forced Trump on his heels and it gave it gave
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: courage to judges to push back on Trump. And like,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: I feel like there's an attitude up here. Maybe we
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: learn our history wrong. Maybe this is a problem in that, like.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: People seem to think, well, we tried this one time
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: and it didn't work, so I don't know. And it's
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: like the civil rights movement, it was not just a
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: march on Washington and then everybody just sort of said, oh, okay,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: like Martin Luther King is correct. Like, it didn't happen
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: that way. It was decades of hard work of people dying, right?
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: The Women's March, the anti-Muslim ban action, these were hugely
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: effective actions. And it disturbs me that people have kind
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: of like lost that. But there is a glimmer of
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: hope out there, which is that never in American history,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: including at the peak of union power in the 40s
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: and in the 50s, have unions polled as strongly as
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: they do today. Americans kind of love unions today, at
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: least in theory. It doesn't mean they're part of one,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: because we know 10% of American workers are members of unions,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: 6% of private sector workers, as you said. So very
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: few people are actually part of unions, but they poll
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: tremendously well. Like, unions are actually quite popular. The problem
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: is the total capture of the union process, the union
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: election and contract process by corporate America. Joe Biden typically
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: attempted to do something about this. And that was the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: PRO Act, which had a lot of support in the Senate,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: but not all Democrats support it. And you're not going
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: to get it through without getting rid of the filibuster anyway.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: But that would have taken away a lot of the
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: power that corporations have to bust unions and to stop
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: elections from happening and to be forced them to sign
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: contracts and these sorts of things. So we're at a
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: moment in which there's a lot of people who are
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: looking for something, right? And they're looking for a movement
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: that can mobilize them and get them to do something,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: because I think people do feel unmoored and lost. And
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: so people see unions as maybe the kind of thing
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: that could happen. And like the Starbucks union campaign is
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: an example of how this can kind of mushroom up.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: Or the teacher strike wave in 2018 was another case
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: which went from deep blue LA to deep red West
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: Virginia and Oklahoma that transcended politics and mobilized teachers around
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: the country. But it's hard to take that kind of
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: like vague, I really hope, somebody will organize me and
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: get your actual union, right? And that's because companies can
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: do so much to stop a union election from happening,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: engage in intensive anti-union meetings and put tons of propaganda
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: on workers that makes them scared. And then even if
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: the workers win that election, the company can delay and
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: delay and delay into signing a first contract, which is
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: why you still don't have any contracts at Starbucks. And
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: this leads to one final point, which is that Democrats
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: actually have to be pro-union. And I would be remiss
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: here in not talking about how disgusted I am by
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: Colorado Governor Jared Polis right now, who the Colorado legislature
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: passed a law that would repeal their right to work statute,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: which came out of the horrible Taft-Hartley Act in 1947
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: that is called right to work. But what it really
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: does is allow workers to leech off the unions without
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: becoming members and is used as an anti-union tool in
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: Republican states. Colorado has moved significantly to the left in
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: its politics. They have a Democratic legislature that passes a
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: bill to repeal this, which should be the peak demand
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: of any Democrats in purplish states. And Jared Polis vetoes
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: it because he doesn't believe in unions. And frankly, if
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: you don't believe in union rights and you don't believe
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: in the power of unions to transform the American people,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: then I don't think you're a I think you should
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: be read out of the Democratic Party, because to me,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: it's just as big of a moral crime as being
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: a Democrat and saying, I don't support gay marriage, or
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: being a Democrat and say, I think abortion should be banned,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: which would be red lines for a lot of Democrats.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: But being anti-union is not a red line for too
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: many Democrats. And so we need a better Democratic Party
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: as well to show the American working class that this
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: is the party of the worker, And you need to
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: rejoin the party and become the kind of Democrats, working
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: class Democrats that we have in this country from the
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: 1930s through the 1970s.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: Well, gauntlet thrown for Governor Jared Polis. We'll have to
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: ask him on to respond to it. And it's interesting
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: because you do strike this note in the book, which
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: is both the importance of making sure the Democratic Party,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: pushing the Democratic Party to represent unions effectively, but also
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: to acknowledge that we have a two-party system. And we
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: have to fight to make the Democratic Party as pro-labor
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: as possible. But to me, the lessons I take from
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: the book are, one, the balance between radical action with
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: sort of pragmatic goals and aims and understanding that most
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: people have material, personal, financial needs and necessities that will
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: motivate their participation. Two, the importance of pro-labor government as
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: the difference maker, often. Three, that nobody is more powerful
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: than the forces in the economy that they're not in
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: control of, right? That unions were not able to stem
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: the tide when you have something like NAFTA and you
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: have jobs going overseas. But four, this importance of having
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: the public behind you, that the air traffic controllers spent
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: their goodwill long before they struck or having violent elements
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: inside of your union will alienate the kind of middle-class,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: less involved participants that you need to succeed. And to me,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: those were four of the lessons that I took for
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: what we need to be doing now. And I really
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: appreciated the book. It was a really helpful history. I
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: also just, as I was reading it, realizing how much
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: of what we learn growing up and just sort of
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: what is considered history just does not cover labor history
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: and economic history in what we study as kids. And
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: I just, it's a good, it's an example to me
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: of where you do have kind of propaganda in ways
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: you just don't normally even understand it. Yeah.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, thank you for summarizing the
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: points of the book so effectively. I mean, I hope
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: those are the takeaways. And let me, I guess, close
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: with an example. The March on Washington in 1963 was
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: Everybody knows it for the I Have a Dream speech.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: And of course, that's been corrupted by Republican distortions of
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: what Martin Luther King was saying. But what is forgotten about,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: even by liberals and in the way we teach this
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: in K through 12, often at the college level, and
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: is part of our general understanding of society, is the
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: actual name for it is the March on Washington for
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: Jobs and Freedom. And economic demands were as central to
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: the civil rights movement as desegregation. as central to the
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: civil rights movement as legislation, as central to the civil
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: rights movement as equality in schools, but they get dropped
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: from the overall memory of the civil rights movement because
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: economic demands are are, in many cases, more challenging to
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: established power than even demands for civil rights. I mean,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: the idea for the March on Washington came out of A.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: Philip Randolph's World War II-level movement, and he was the
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: head of the Brotherhood of Sleepy Car Porters Union. He
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: speaks at the March on Washington in 1963. Walter Ruther
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: and the United Auto Workers pay for most of the
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: March on Washington. And the March on Washington had economic
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: demands that included a $ 2 an hour minimum wage, which
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: in the contemporary economy of 2025 is something like $ 18
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: or $ 19 an hour. So they're pushing for widespread minimum
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: wage legislation as well. All of that is totally erased
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: from our memory of civil rights, not only on the right,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: but in liberal world as well. And we need to
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: think about why that is. Why do we, even when
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: we do teach other justice movements, And on the left,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: we do do that more. We teach women's rights. We
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: teach gay rights. We teach civil rights. This is very important.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: These are big advances in the way we teach history.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: Why are we leaving labor out of that? And that's
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: a question we all need to think about.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: Eric Loomis, thank you so much for your time. It
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 3: was really good talking to you about this. The book
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: is The History of America in 10 Strikes. I recommend
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: everybody check it out. Thanks so much.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: Hey, thank you for having me.
• 1:27:57
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  Speaker 3: show thank you to professor eric loomis thank you all
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  Speaker 3: for listening we'll be back in your feeds on tuesday.
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