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The Problem with Liberalism in Alabama · Mechonomist Podcast

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think the one thing that I've always said was the biggest barrier to anything
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: going on in the South was not racism,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: not classism,
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: not misogyny,
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: not anything like that.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest barrier to things going on in the South is provinciality.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem with liberalism in the South is that it passes for radicalism.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: If people are working on reproductive rights or racial discrimination or rights for
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: LGBTQ people,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: it's seen as a radical act,
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: an act of transgression or an act of resistance.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: To a degree, it is because it is a conservative state.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is that these politics are very mainstream across not only the United States,
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: but also all of the West.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really, from a larger geographical perspective, it's not really that radical.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that when people from the South who are doing this type of liberal
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: work go to outside of the South,
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: they're sort of met with a great deal of sympathy and like,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: man,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: you're doing God's work by doing that kind of work in the South,
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: so on and so forth.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: it's not really taken seriously.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's more like, well, you're doing the same.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're kind of cute.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's cute.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like this kind of work is cute that you're doing it in the South.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not really taken seriously.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: When we do stuff in the South, nobody comes.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody attends our events, our speeches, anything like that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: But when we go outside the South, we get fairly large crowds, 30 to 50 people.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we never get the, the narratives,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: that oh you're doing god's work in the south we get the narrative that oh this is
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: really innovative stuff and it's really hard to get traction in the south we don't
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: get media attention um and people just really don't know what we're doing or don't
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: if they do know what we're doing they don't really understand it um i think people
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: in the south think we're kind of cute
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when we go outside the South, we're taken seriously.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're in the South, we're kind of not taken seriously.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you're not doing liberal reform stuff, it's not really a serious work in the South.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: The fact of the matter is,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: is that the liberal reform work sort of nibbles at the corners because that's what
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: liberal reform does.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It nibbles at the corners.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it's supposed to do.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: If we want real transformation in the South,
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: we have to have a real radical politics that starts with an economic analysis of
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: what is going on in the South.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the big thing that's going on in the South is that we don't own the wealth.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think part of the reason why this doesn't get traction is because both
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Democrat and conservative politicians are on board with our economic model,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: which is
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: natural resource extraction and cheap labor,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: which is why you don't see Democrats lining up to support union drives in different
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: places and why you see Republicans actively working against it,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: because they know where their money comes from.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Their money comes from the auto manufacturers.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Their money comes from the timber companies.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And to really get out of radical politics, those institutions and those people are the ones who control
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: the state of things in Alabama.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And while ending discrimination is important,
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: LGBTQ rights is important,
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: what is more important is owning the wealth.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you own the wealth, people can't take your rights away, right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's non-discrimination ordinances that are passed in cities for LGBTQ people.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can't discriminate in housing, you can't discriminate in jobs, so on and so forth.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know how you can not
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: be discriminated against in housing, own the housing, own the businesses, that sort of stuff.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we need a shift away from liberalism in the South, a big shift away from liberalism in the South.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: At least some people to shift away from liberalism in the South and especially in
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Alabama and start paying attention to the sort of foundational aspects of Southern
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: society
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: that are often taken for granted and have been this way for generations and
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: generations and generations back past,
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: past the end of slavery,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: past the Civil War,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: to the very beginnings of when,
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: the South was colonized by Europeans.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we need this radical politics and we need to recognize that, you know,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is important to raise money if you have a liberal organizations from outside the
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: South and get support outside the South and get that.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: But we also need to recognize that a lot of those institutions and people that are
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: donating money are donating it out of sympathy and because they think it's kind of
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: cute that people are doing this type of work instead of a real belief in a strategy
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: to transform the South.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we do have a strategy to transform the South and we are implementing it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's difficult, but it is working.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So pay attention to what we're doing and study.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to say this,
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: but our institutions of higher education are not doing a good enough job of
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: training the leaders of the future to have the analysis that they need to be able
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: to really understand what's happening.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: There is training in critical race theory.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: There is training in feminist theory and people sort of
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: get to that point, but it's still just a version of liberalism.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's not the radical training like I got at Berkeley,
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: which made us look at the very foundations of state capital and society and why
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: these things work the way that they do.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to be increasingly important as climate change ramps up,
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: as we have more wars,
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: to start looking at the foundations of
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: american and alabama society and start thinking about if these things actually work
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: and we need to look at other places that are similar to alabama not look at new
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: york city not look at san francisco but look at places like mexico who has a
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: similar economy to alabama and see what the type of stuff that they're doing to
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: help their people survive and thrive in a changing world so anyway
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: we need to look at what other people are doing across the globe and try to
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: implement some of those types of projects here,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: which is what we've been doing for the past five years with the Educational and
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Economic Resource Organizing Network,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: which is now six or seven organizations across the South trying to build basically
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: a new society.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: But getting the attention on it and getting the resources to be able to do it is a constant struggle.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: because people just don't pay attention and don't think it's important because
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: they're wrapped up in a,
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: what is essentially a mainstream liberal approach to politics,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: which nibbles at the corners.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's what liberal reform does.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: It nibbles at the corners.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: We need radical change and we need to focus on the type of work that we've been
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: doing for years to achieve that radical change.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk to y'all next time.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Peace y'all.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Rian.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Rian.