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Do Maryland's Political Leaders Serve Maryland? Post-Gubernatorial Debate Town Hall · The Real News Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: So we're here at the Real News Network studio in Baltimore,
0:03
Speaker 1: and I am really grateful to be sitting here with
0:06
Speaker 1: an incredible panel of folks who are going to help
0:10
Speaker 1: us think through and respond to the Maryland gubernatorial debate
0:15
Speaker 1: that we watched yesterday, October 6th, between Democratic incumbent Governor
0:22
Speaker 1: Wes Moore and Republican candidate Dan Cox. Um, so, you know,
0:27
Speaker 1: a lot of us watched that debate either live or afterwards.
0:31
Speaker 2: Uh, there was a lot to be furious about.
0:34
Speaker 1: Um, there was a lot, uh, to think about in
0:37
Speaker 1: terms of like, okay, these are the candidates we have
0:40
Speaker 1: on offer, but also these are the things that our
0:42
Speaker 1: political parties think are important to us. And so I
0:45
Speaker 1: think like a big way that we're going to address
0:48
Speaker 1: tonight's discussion is by talking about the, the, you know,
0:53
Speaker 1: issues and voices and perspectives that were not represented on
0:57
Speaker 1: that debate stage last night and that are just not
0:59
Speaker 1: represented in the dominant politics that is, you know, like
1:05
Speaker 1: determining all of our lives, right?
1:07
Speaker 2: And so I could not be more excited to.
1:09
Speaker 1: Be here at the Real News Studio to talk about
1:12
Speaker 1: these things with all of you and with our three panelists.
1:17
Speaker 1: Please give it up from my farthest end over to me.
1:21
Speaker 1: We've got the great Charlie Carter. political strategist and executive
1:24
Speaker 1: director of Step Up Maryland.
1:26
Speaker 2: Give it up for Charlie.
1:29
Speaker 1: We've got Davon Love in the middle, director of public
1:32
Speaker 1: policy at Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle.
1:35
Speaker 2: Give it up for Davon.
1:37
Speaker 1: And thank you to Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle for
1:39
Speaker 1: co-hosting this great and important event with us. And last
1:43
Speaker 1: but not least, we have to my right, Andy Ellis,
1:46
Speaker 1: Green Party candidate for Maryland governor. Give it up for Andy, everybody. Okay,
1:55
Speaker 1: so here's how I kind of want to start things off, gang.
1:59
Speaker 1: So like we said, we all watched the debate. I
2:03
Speaker 1: want to just sort of kind of go to the
2:06
Speaker 1: tape for a second and remind us that the debate
2:09
Speaker 1: opened up with 60-second statements from each candidate, Cox and Moore, right?
2:15
Speaker 1: And in Cox's statement, the message, like the narrative that
2:20
Speaker 1: he's selling is pretty clear. Property taxes, rents, and electric
2:24
Speaker 1: bills are too high. We're paying more, but getting less,
2:27
Speaker 1: is a direct quote. Maryland is the second worst economy
2:30
Speaker 1: in the nation. This is all because of dangerous spending, mismanagement,
2:34
Speaker 1: and absentee governor, Wes Moore.
2:38
Speaker 2: And his pitch boiled.
2:39
Speaker 1: Down to, we need to lower our car registration fees immediately,
2:43
Speaker 1: cut taxes, cut the fees, control spending, and bring back
2:46
Speaker 1: affordable energy and housing for all.
2:49
Speaker 2: Now more on the other side.
2:52
Speaker 1: Was doing what I think we're going to see Democrats
2:54
Speaker 1: do for the next two years, which is tie everything
2:58
Speaker 1: to Trump. Tie it like an anvil over their neck,
3:01
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what he did. Like, this guy loves Trump.
3:05
Speaker 1: Dan Cox says he supports 100% Donald Trump's agenda. While
3:09
Speaker 1: they're focused on the wealthy elites, I'm focused on working families.
3:13
Speaker 1: And Moore touted his record, saying that Maryland has had
3:18
Speaker 1: among the fastest drops in violent crime anywhere in the
3:20
Speaker 1: United States ever. Teacher vacancy rate in Maryland is down 60%.
3:25
Speaker 1: Math and reading scores are at a five-year high.
3:27
Speaker 2: Yada, yada, yada.
3:28
Speaker 1: So that is how they open their statements to us
3:32
Speaker 1: to ask for our votes. That is how our political
3:35
Speaker 1: discourse shaped the whole discussion of last night. So I
3:40
Speaker 1: want to ask you three, starting with Charlie and working
3:43
Speaker 1: back down here, what are we not talking about in
3:51
Speaker 1: the way that that whole framing of the debate limits us.
3:59
Speaker 3: Well, thank you for having me here tonight.
4:03
Speaker 4: I have to say, after watching that debate, I wondered
4:06
Speaker 4: whether either candidate had been in the state of Maryland
4:10
Speaker 4: for the last nine months. Because I've been here for
4:15
Speaker 4: 20 years, a little over 20 years, and I'm seeing
4:19
Speaker 4: more activism in the community now than I ever have
4:23
Speaker 4: previously at a higher rate. People who've never been involved
4:26
Speaker 4: before are involved. Protests sprouting up all over the state.
4:34
Speaker 4: And I didn't hear anybody really addressing those issues. None
4:41
Speaker 4: of them really addressed the real concerns that people have
4:48
Speaker 4: over data centers. really talked about the amount of money
4:53
Speaker 4: that's been taken out of education that's concerning people and
4:57
Speaker 4: people's just ability to afford things. Cox touched on utility
5:04
Speaker 4: bill rates, but then he didn't really give any information
5:09
Speaker 4: about what he would do about them. And I think
5:11
Speaker 4: the things that I'm seeing people really upset about now
5:15
Speaker 4: is about the skyrocketing utility bills, the data centers and
5:21
Speaker 4: what they're gonna do to our communities and people's.
5:23
Speaker 3: Home values, and.
5:26
Speaker 4: Then revenues to continue to invest in education and in
5:33
Speaker 4: other programs that help our community.
5:38
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would say that the debate yesterday really highlights
5:42
Speaker 5: the limitations of the two-party system. You know, I think
5:47
Speaker 5: most people's assessment of the debate is that it wasn't
5:50
Speaker 5: quite substantive. And I think what is clear, like the
5:55
Speaker 5: purpose of a debate is to provide the audience with
5:58
Speaker 5: an opportunity to see a rigorous test of people's policy positions.
6:03
Speaker 5: And so part of the challenge with a two-party system
6:06
Speaker 5: is that there are certain perspectives that are not going
6:09
Speaker 5: to be present in the conversation that would be helpful
6:12
Speaker 5: to the general public to get a sense of as
6:14
Speaker 5: to what is actually at the heart of the policy
6:16
Speaker 5: agenda of each of the candidates and their respective parties.
6:20
Speaker 5: And so just as a couple of examples, and I
6:23
Speaker 5: start as a revolutionary Pan-African nationalist, I'm very clear that
6:26
Speaker 5: black folks are a captured elector of the Democratic Party.
6:29
Speaker 5: So that is the posture where I start in terms
6:32
Speaker 5: of analyzing the discourse between the two parties. And so
6:36
Speaker 5: then evidence of that, that I'll just give to start with,
6:40
Speaker 5: is even the conversation about juvenile justice, where what the
6:47
Speaker 5: Democrats won't do is the Democrats will not talk about
6:52
Speaker 5: the ways that the system of the criminal justice system
6:55
Speaker 5: is weaponizing against the humanity of people of African descent,
6:58
Speaker 5: and that the calls for stricter juvenile justice laws is
7:03
Speaker 5: not about accountability. It's about continuing to be complicit in
7:08
Speaker 5: an attack on the humanity of black people, particularly black youth.
7:12
Speaker 5: And it would have been helpful to have someone like
7:17
Speaker 5: Andy on the stage to be able to press the
7:19
Speaker 5: Democratic Party to go further than what I describe as
7:23
Speaker 5: tough on crime light, which is what the Democratic Party
7:26
Speaker 5: essentially is. And so as a result of not having
7:31
Speaker 5: that kind of perspective, a person that is fiercely defending
7:34
Speaker 5: the fact that we have a system that automatically charges
7:37
Speaker 5: youth as adults, and 80% of them black, which means
7:40
Speaker 5: you have kids spend 180 days in adult prison. That
7:44
Speaker 5: is something that folks in our community care about, but
7:49
Speaker 5: in the two-party system, in the duopoly, we're not gonna
7:53
Speaker 5: hear a defense of the humanity of people of African descent.
7:56
Speaker 5: So again, I just think the debate yesterday was an example,
7:59
Speaker 5: and we can give more examples as we have had
8:01
Speaker 5: this discussion, but just as a preliminary thought, Just an
8:05
Speaker 5: example of what we don't get because of the duopoly
8:09
Speaker 5: and the limitations, particularly as black folks, being this captured
8:13
Speaker 5: electorate of the Democratic Party.
8:16
Speaker 6: Yeah, my name is Andy Ellis. I'm the Green Party
8:19
Speaker 6: candidate for governor. I've spent the last four years traveling
8:22
Speaker 6: across the state. And we've been to fairs, festivals. We've
8:25
Speaker 6: been to library meetings. We've been to church meetings. We've
8:27
Speaker 6: been to protests. We've been to hearings. We've been to
8:30
Speaker 6: all sorts of places. And we've talked to a lot
8:32
Speaker 6: of people. A lot of people are really frustrated with
8:35
Speaker 6: the way that things are working right now. They don't
8:37
Speaker 6: think that the government is working for them. They think
8:39
Speaker 6: that the politicians are serving their donors, their national narratives,
8:44
Speaker 6: and their party bosses. They don't think that they're listening
8:46
Speaker 6: to people. And they don't think that they hear the
8:49
Speaker 6: real pain that people in Maryland are feeling across the state.
8:52
Speaker 7: And I think the.
8:53
Speaker 6: Debate operated in that fiction where the politicians don't hear
8:58
Speaker 6: that type of thing. And I think both of them
9:01
Speaker 6: acted as if we existed in a world where their
9:04
Speaker 6: two-party system still had hold on the imagination of most people,
9:08
Speaker 6: and most people still believe that that system actually works.
9:11
Speaker 7: I think more and more.
9:13
Speaker 6: People have decided and agreed that that system doesn't work
9:15
Speaker 6: because they've seen year after year after year of politicians
9:18
Speaker 6: promising them to do things in debates like that and
9:21
Speaker 6: not actually doing them. The UMBC poll came out yesterday,
9:25
Speaker 6: right before the debate, and it showed a couple of things. One,
9:28
Speaker 6: it showed that Wes Moore and Dan Cox are at
9:31
Speaker 6: the lowest points they've been at in the polls since
9:33
Speaker 6: they both won the 2022 primary. People know who both
9:37
Speaker 6: of them are, they know what their record is, and
9:38
Speaker 6: they don't like either of them. Dan Cox had 24% support.
9:42
Speaker 7: In that poll.
9:43
Speaker 6: That's the lowest that I can ever remember a major
9:46
Speaker 6: party candidate having. And if Wes Moore weren't running against
9:49
Speaker 6: Dan Cox, he may be in trouble in this election.
9:52
Speaker 6: But because he is running against Dan Cox, who was
9:54
Speaker 6: a mega aligned, sort of mediocre, non, you know, politician,
10:01
Speaker 6: Westmore is going to probably win this election. And he's
10:04
Speaker 6: probably going to win it by double digits. But the
10:06
Speaker 6: other thing the poll showed yesterday was that 25% of
10:09
Speaker 6: people don't want either party. And like 80% of people
10:13
Speaker 6: don't trust either party. And I think that creates a
10:15
Speaker 6: real opening for us to do something different than what
10:18
Speaker 6: we've been doing up until this point. We have an
10:21
Speaker 6: election where there's a 99% chance that Wes Moore is
10:24
Speaker 6: going to get reelected. And all Dan Cox is trying
10:27
Speaker 6: to do is get out of the 20s so that
10:29
Speaker 6: he doesn't get embarrassed. Dan Cox has sort of functionally
10:32
Speaker 6: turned the Republican Party in the state of Maryland into
10:34
Speaker 6: about as ineffective as the Republican Party is in Baltimore City.
10:38
Speaker 6: or in Prince George's County, or in Montgomery County. And
10:41
Speaker 6: I think that that creates an opening to take the
10:44
Speaker 6: anger that people have and the grassroots uprising that people
10:47
Speaker 6: are having that Charlie is talking about in order to
10:49
Speaker 6: build a new kind of politics that is about grassroots
10:52
Speaker 6: governing power and not about the same old two-party system.
10:55
Speaker 6: And I think the debate was a perfect proof of that.
10:59
Speaker 1: Well, and like, to kind of really bring that point
11:03
Speaker 1: to light, right? Like, one of the questions... that was
11:07
Speaker 1: directed to Cox was literally, do you support or oppose
11:12
Speaker 1: the federal eligibility changes for programs like SNAP or food
11:16
Speaker 1: stamps and Medicaid? The bar is so damn low that
11:23
Speaker 1: the question is, do you support kicking all these millions
11:26
Speaker 1: of people off SNAP and Medicaid and everyone who's going
11:30
Speaker 1: hungry or going homeless because of it? Are you shitting me?
11:35
Speaker 1: That's the level of question? Are you for or against this?
11:39
Speaker 1: So I don't care what these people say to a
11:42
Speaker 1: question like that. I don't care about their bullshit responses
11:45
Speaker 1: to a bullshit question. But there is a very non-bullshit
11:49
Speaker 1: problem here that Marylanders and people around the country are
11:53
Speaker 1: going through.
11:54
Speaker 2: So I wanted to talk about that more.
11:57
Speaker 1: They did not address enough what the effect of these
12:01
Speaker 1: cuts and these costs of living are on Marylanders, what
12:07
Speaker 1: would you say about that if you were on that
12:09
Speaker 1: debate stage?
12:11
Speaker 5: Well, something that I want to say to the point
12:13
Speaker 5: that you raised about just how cookie cutter, right, the
12:16
Speaker 5: questions and the debate is, it's important for the general
12:19
Speaker 5: public to be clear that there's an emergence of a
12:23
Speaker 5: consultant class, a political consultant class that exists within both
12:27
Speaker 5: major parties that profiteer off of the fact that every
12:31
Speaker 5: two years there are major election cycles where people are
12:33
Speaker 5: making a lot of money. And if you think about
12:36
Speaker 5: the corporate core of both parties, right, where they have
12:41
Speaker 5: a business model that is reliant on keeping folks within
12:45
Speaker 5: the confines.
12:46
Speaker 2: Of the duopoly.
12:47
Speaker 5: Well, what I think what we're seeing, though, is that,
12:50
Speaker 5: to Andy's point, is that there is record levels of
12:53
Speaker 5: dissatisfaction with both political parties. So even the question that
12:58
Speaker 5: you identified that was posed to Dan Cox, is a
13:02
Speaker 5: very typical question as it relates to your traditional Republican
13:05
Speaker 5: Democratic Party discourse, you know, social safety net and entitlements versus,
13:11
Speaker 5: you know, trickle down economics and austerity, right? So these
13:16
Speaker 5: are very traditional, the kind of traditional polls of the
13:20
Speaker 5: Democratic and Republican Party discourse. And the challenge is, is
13:24
Speaker 5: that we're at a place now where I think more people,
13:26
Speaker 5: this is a Charlie's point about the increase in activism
13:30
Speaker 5: that exists. that people are just more informed, right? And
13:33
Speaker 5: people now are demanding more of these candidates. But unfortunately,
13:40
Speaker 5: what happens, and I think this is really important for
13:42
Speaker 5: people to be clear about, is that the emergence of
13:47
Speaker 5: the political consultant class, in many respects, it's really on
13:53
Speaker 5: its last leg, right? That if folks in the broader
13:58
Speaker 5: community continue to push then it's going to force the
14:02
Speaker 5: development of an emergence of different political formations. And so
14:06
Speaker 5: I think that's really important for us to continue to
14:09
Speaker 5: say to the general public that it's not futile.
14:13
Speaker 7: Right.
14:13
Speaker 5: And I think that's part of the concern that I
14:16
Speaker 5: would have is that people would see the kind of
14:19
Speaker 5: the lack of substance in that engagement and completely disengage from.
14:23
Speaker 2: The political landscape as opposed to staying on the battlefield.
14:26
Speaker 4: Yeah.
14:27
Speaker 6: And I would say both Westmore and Dan Cox have
14:30
Speaker 6: a class privilege that does not make them have to
14:32
Speaker 6: experience this type of thing. And, you know, for me,
14:36
Speaker 6: I've experienced it very directly. Last June, I was laid
14:38
Speaker 6: off from a company that I had worked for for
14:40
Speaker 6: 15 years.
14:42
Speaker 7: No, no notice.
14:43
Speaker 6: Just sort of one day I got a call and
14:45
Speaker 6: they sent a box for my laptop and said, it's
14:47
Speaker 6: been nice knowing you. I didn't talk about that for
14:49
Speaker 6: a long time on the campaign trail because I was embarrassed.
14:52
Speaker 4: Right.
14:52
Speaker 7: Like I shouldn't be embarrassed. It wasn't my fault.
14:55
Speaker 6: It was global capital and private equity and a company
14:57
Speaker 6: that didn't care about people.
14:59
Speaker 7: But I was embarrassed.
15:00
Speaker 6: But when I started talking about it when I was
15:02
Speaker 6: on the campaign trail, I realized how many Marylanders are
15:05
Speaker 6: going through something like this, how many Marylanders have lost
15:07
Speaker 6: a job at the federal level or a corporation that
15:09
Speaker 6: they worked at for a long time, how hard it
15:12
Speaker 6: is for them to find new work, how ineffective state
15:15
Speaker 6: services are, how low unemployment is because it hasn't been
15:18
Speaker 6: adjusted by the Maryland General Assembly since the Obama era,
15:21
Speaker 6: how bad the other services are in the state. And
15:25
Speaker 6: as I started to talk about it, I went from
15:27
Speaker 6: shame to solidarity on this because I was starting to
15:29
Speaker 6: understand that so many people are struggling in a way
15:32
Speaker 6: that the politicians don't understand right now. And if the
15:35
Speaker 6: politicians can't wrap their head around the way that people
15:38
Speaker 6: are struggling and get beyond this cookie-cutter consultant class conversation
15:42
Speaker 6: that Davon is talking about, they're going to face a
15:44
Speaker 6: kind of uprising that they've never faced before. And we
15:47
Speaker 6: are going to see this political system change. The question is,
15:51
Speaker 6: is it going to change in favor of the people,
15:54
Speaker 6: or is it going to change in favor of the
15:57
Speaker 6: Trump fascists who are trying to push their.
16:00
Speaker 7: Corporate rule on all of us?
16:01
Speaker 6: And I think the key question that we have to
16:03
Speaker 6: ask in our politics in this election and over the
16:06
Speaker 6: next decade is which way that change goes. For me,
16:09
Speaker 6: I hope it goes for the people, but I'm worried
16:11
Speaker 6: that it's not going to. I think the only hopes
16:14
Speaker 6: that we have are to use every forum we have
16:16
Speaker 6: in order to fight back against it, in order to
16:18
Speaker 6: fight for the people who have been left behind, even
16:21
Speaker 6: though Wes Moore says he doesn't want to leave anybody behind.
16:24
Speaker 7: A lot of Marylanders have been left behind.
16:26
Speaker 6: And I think we've got to fight for those folks,
16:27
Speaker 6: and I think we have to create a political reality
16:29
Speaker 6: that allows them to have the power to make the
16:32
Speaker 6: changes they need to their communities and their lives so
16:35
Speaker 6: that we can get different outcomes. Because if we don't,
16:37
Speaker 6: I'm pretty sure Trump and his fascists are going to
16:39
Speaker 6: do their form of that and none of us.
16:41
Speaker 7: Are going to like that.
16:46
Speaker 4: I agree with both what Davon and Andy have said.
16:51
Speaker 3: I think.
16:54
Speaker 4: The missed opportunity in that debate was the opportunity to
16:57
Speaker 4: talk about big ideas, new ideas, something something bold. What
17:03
Speaker 4: we saw, as everybody has said, is two parties and
17:09
Speaker 4: two candidates who could stay relatively safe within their two respective,
17:17
Speaker 4: the bandwidth within their two respective parties. No one had
17:21
Speaker 4: to challenge, no one was challenged. They could just say,
17:24
Speaker 4: here's my position. I'm for lower taxes. And the other
17:32
Speaker 4: one person can say, and I'm against Trump. And yet
17:36
Speaker 4: all of the other issues just completely went undiscussed. And
17:41
Speaker 4: I think that's the importance for having third party and
17:46
Speaker 4: minor candidates in these debates, because oftentimes they are coming
17:53
Speaker 4: from a perspective where they are offering a big idea
17:56
Speaker 4: that is why they're not part of one of the
17:59
Speaker 4: other two parties. So I think it was a really
18:02
Speaker 4: missed opportunity for voters to hear about big ideas, which
18:08
Speaker 4: is what they are seeking, right? Like more the people
18:13
Speaker 4: who are changing parties and I'm hearing it regularly about
18:20
Speaker 4: the number of people, I'm shocked, honestly, I've been a
18:22
Speaker 4: lifelong Democrat and I'm shocked with a number of people
18:25
Speaker 4: who are saying they are shifting from being a Democrat
18:30
Speaker 4: in the state of Maryland where they can't vote in
18:32
Speaker 4: primaries to being independent because they just don't see.
18:39
Speaker 3: What they believe.
18:40
Speaker 4: They don't feel like it's being heard, what they want
18:43
Speaker 4: is being heard, or that it's being represented in the
18:46
Speaker 4: party here in Maryland.
18:50
Speaker 3: And just as a.
18:52
Speaker 4: Funny aside, when I first met Andy, we argued about,
18:56
Speaker 4: this is going back years, we argued about whether or
19:01
Speaker 4: not there could be a successful third party in the
19:05
Speaker 4: state of Maryland. And I was adamant, although I was
19:09
Speaker 4: charged at that time with starting the Working Families Party
19:12
Speaker 4: of Maryland, I was like, it's just too easy to
19:15
Speaker 4: take over the Democratic Party because they have no vision
19:18
Speaker 4: and they're not inspiring to people. And what we saw
19:21
Speaker 4: on that debate stage was really a lack of vision
19:25
Speaker 4: and inspiration.
19:27
Speaker 3: And that was really from what.
19:31
Speaker 4: Wes Moore is one of the most popular Democrats in
19:33
Speaker 4: the country right now, and yet he had this perfect
19:36
Speaker 4: opportunity to talk about something that inspired people, that gave
19:41
Speaker 4: people hope, and he just talked about the same you
19:45
Speaker 4: know very vanilla policies that he's been talking about and
19:51
Speaker 4: oh you know i'm better than trump and um without
19:56
Speaker 4: really talking about you know what we could be doing.
20:01
Speaker 1: Yeah it's like i hear a lot of talking but
20:03
Speaker 1: the words don't mean shit And it's just like they
20:07
Speaker 1: never just address the thing that you're begging them to
20:12
Speaker 1: address because you're living it. And it's just such a
20:17
Speaker 1: bizarre spectacle that.
20:20
Speaker 2: We just keep being subjected to.
20:22
Speaker 1: And I have a kind of follow-up when it comes
20:26
Speaker 1: to the way that that comes through in their language
20:28
Speaker 1: and the responses they give. But before we move on
20:32
Speaker 1: from the question of the costs of living, straw poll.
20:39
Speaker 1: What's hitting your pocketbook these days? The cost of gas
20:44
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. Rent keeps going up.
20:48
Speaker 2: What else?
20:49
Speaker 1: What else are people struggling with when it comes to
20:51
Speaker 1: paying for the cost of living?
20:54
Speaker 2: Everything. Everything is the main answer. Any others?
21:00
Speaker 1: Food.
21:01
Speaker 3: Food?
21:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
21:03
Speaker 1: It's like, we're all working harder and our wages are
21:06
Speaker 1: staying the same while everything's getting more expensive.
21:09
Speaker 2: What the hell?
21:10
Speaker 1: That doesn't feel like a, you know, the American dream that,
21:15
Speaker 1: you know, we ostensibly, you know, we're raised to.
21:18
Speaker 2: Believe in, right? And can I get an example? Please.
21:22
Speaker 5: An example I think is really important is on the
21:24
Speaker 5: conversation around public safety, right, that I alluded to in
21:27
Speaker 5: the beginning. You know, If we're clear about the nature
21:31
Speaker 5: of the way that the law enforcement establishment has interacted
21:34
Speaker 5: with black people, the law enforcement establishment being the Fraternal
21:37
Speaker 5: Order of Police, the Maryland State's Attorneys Association, the Association
21:41
Speaker 5: of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs, these are entities that have
21:44
Speaker 5: advocated for the tough-on-crime policies that are responsible for mass incarceration.
21:50
Speaker 5: And in some context, Democrats will talk about pushing back
21:54
Speaker 5: against that, kind of in a very cosmetic way. One
21:57
Speaker 5: of the things that we're seeing is we're seeing Sinclair
22:00
Speaker 5: Broadcasting and Executive Chairman David Smith, who owns the Baltimore Sun,
22:06
Speaker 5: we are seeing those media outlets being used as a
22:11
Speaker 5: communications arm for the law enforcement establishment.
22:14
Speaker 2: And the real material.
22:15
Speaker 5: Impact of that, because Baltimore has experienced one of the
22:18
Speaker 5: most precipitous declines in homicides and non-fatal shootings of any
22:21
Speaker 5: city in the United States. And I think there's a
22:25
Speaker 5: large community consensus that it's been the unprecedented investment in
22:30
Speaker 5: black-led grassroots organizations that have been the cause of that
22:34
Speaker 5: precipitous decline. It's important, if Democrats are serious about this issue,
22:40
Speaker 5: it's important for them to talk about being in opposition
22:44
Speaker 5: to a force that wants to undermine and to diminish
22:47
Speaker 5: those black-led grassroots organizations. But I don't hear the governor
22:51
Speaker 5: or the Democratic Party coming to the defense of those
22:55
Speaker 5: organizations that are being attacked. And it is my, I
22:59
Speaker 5: suspect what that is, is because Democrats still want to
23:03
Speaker 5: maintain a level of proximity to the law enforcement establishment,
23:08
Speaker 5: which means that talking about the declines in violence as
23:12
Speaker 5: being based in the community being supported in doing so,
23:16
Speaker 5: undermines the law enforcement establishment and the Democratic Party doesn't
23:19
Speaker 5: want to offend, right, the law enforcement establishment. So I
23:23
Speaker 5: just wanted to lay out, like, that's a concrete example
23:25
Speaker 5: of something that Folks have talked about, in the community,
23:30
Speaker 5: in public discourse, people have talked about that. But the
23:33
Speaker 5: fact that that is not what Wes Moore is saying,
23:37
Speaker 5: that is an important part of what is happening in Baltimore,
23:42
Speaker 5: says something about the limitations of the Democratic Party as
23:46
Speaker 5: a vehicle for our political interests.
23:48
Speaker 7: And can I add to that?
23:49
Speaker 6: So I think one of the interesting things about the
23:51
Speaker 6: way that that question got answered is Dan Cox got
23:54
Speaker 6: closer in some ways. Dan Cox said we need to
23:57
Speaker 6: invest in rec centers, we need to invest in community organizations,
24:00
Speaker 6: we need to invest in churches. Now, he went on
24:02
Speaker 6: to say a bunch of other stuff that was not
24:05
Speaker 6: the right answer, but he was getting closer to making
24:08
Speaker 6: the argument about investing in the grassroots than Wes Moore was.
24:11
Speaker 6: which I thought was really interesting. It means he's been listening,
24:14
Speaker 6: I think, to some folks who are trying to tell
24:16
Speaker 6: him some of those things. But he is not the
24:18
Speaker 6: right messenger, and the Republican Party is not the right
24:21
Speaker 6: messenger for this stuff, because they then turn around and
24:24
Speaker 6: talk about predator children and soft-on-crime laws and things like that.
24:28
Speaker 6: So they're getting part of this message, but they're not
24:31
Speaker 6: getting the rest of this message. And I thought it
24:32
Speaker 6: was really interesting that Cox talked about that, and Moore
24:35
Speaker 6: did not, right? And it was a really interesting juxtaposition
24:39
Speaker 6: to me. that Cox was the one who was talking
24:42
Speaker 6: about investing in the grassroots community organizations as a means
24:47
Speaker 6: of addressing crime and addressing public safety. Now, the rest
24:51
Speaker 6: of his package doesn't work, but he was the one
24:53
Speaker 6: that got there, and Moore didn't say, yes, and Moore
24:55
Speaker 6: could have even said, yes, I've done that. That's why
24:58
Speaker 6: we passed this initiative that gave a little bit of
25:00
Speaker 6: money to some of these organizations, but he didn't say that.
25:03
Speaker 5: He even said that the talking point of his administration
25:06
Speaker 5: is giving record investments to law enforcement, to your point.
25:10
Speaker 1: Well, and, like, the law enforcement question really centered around ICE, right? And,
25:18
Speaker 1: you know, it's close to home, of course.
25:20
Speaker 2: It's happening in our backyards, in our neighborhoods.
25:23
Speaker 1: We just published a report I did from Frederick right
25:28
Speaker 1: in front of the house where those ICE agents drove
25:31
Speaker 1: onto private property, beat peaceful protesters, terrorized the whole family,
25:35
Speaker 1: and didn't even take anybody. You know, all that terror
25:38
Speaker 1: for what? You know, it's happening all... I've been in
25:41
Speaker 1: front of the Hagerstown warehouse.
25:43
Speaker 2: I used to work in warehouses like that.
25:44
Speaker 1: They're not built for human beings to work in most times,
25:48
Speaker 1: let alone house them and incarcerate them.
25:52
Speaker 2: So, like, they talked about ICE a bit, right?
25:55
Speaker 1: But, like, to your guys' point, the answers were very revealing.
26:03
Speaker 2: For what they said and, more importantly, what they didn't say, right? But, like, the.
26:09
Speaker 1: Question that I thought was really well put, shout out
26:12
Speaker 1: to Tracy Wilkins from NBC Washington. I thought she and
26:15
Speaker 1: Pamela Wood from The Banner asked really great questions, even
26:18
Speaker 1: if they got really crappy answers most of the time.
26:21
Speaker 1: But Tracy Wilkins was asking about, asking Wes Moore if
26:28
Speaker 1: it was like a mistake to ban ICE detention partnerships
26:31
Speaker 1: or a mistake to how he's handled ICE and the
26:36
Speaker 1: cooperation question of local law enforcement. And his answer was,
26:44
Speaker 1: if you're going after the worst of the worst and
26:46
Speaker 1: violent offenders, I will work with you. But when you're
26:51
Speaker 1: going after people like Pastor Fuentes in the Eastern Shore,
26:54
Speaker 1: who has been here for decades and leads a congregation
26:56
Speaker 1: in the Eastern Shore and ICE detains him, then no
26:59
Speaker 1: local law enforcement will and I will not allow them
27:02
Speaker 1: to be deputized to do that type of work. So,
27:06
Speaker 1: you know, that was something.
27:07
Speaker 2: But then.
27:08
Speaker 1: you know, Tracy Wilkins Preston about, you know, like if
27:12
Speaker 1: there's going to be detention, should detention be happening in
27:14
Speaker 1: Maryland where people can have access to family and access
27:17
Speaker 1: to their counsel?
27:19
Speaker 2: Or are you going to do anything to stop.
27:21
Speaker 1: These Gestapo motherfuckers disappearing our neighbors and sending them to
27:25
Speaker 1: Louisiana or some third country? And his answer was, you know,
27:29
Speaker 1: boiled down to, so I think there has to be
27:31
Speaker 1: a reconsideration about the way that ICE is moving inside
27:35
Speaker 1: of our communities all throughout the state of Maryland.
27:38
Speaker 2: What the fuck does that mean? That's my question. What
27:42
Speaker 2: does that actually mean?
27:44
Speaker 1: As a citizen of Maryland, as a Latino, as someone
27:47
Speaker 1: with family members that feel very threatened right.
27:50
Speaker 2: Now, what do I do with that?
27:52
Speaker 6: I think what it means is there was some political
27:54
Speaker 6: pressure on him this year in order to move against
27:58
Speaker 6: ICE that there wasn't last year. Last year, when the
28:01
Speaker 6: 287G bill came up, It got killed in the Maryland
28:03
Speaker 6: General Assembly at the request of Governor Moore. There was
28:06
Speaker 6: some political pressure on it this year, and so he moved,
28:10
Speaker 6: and he responded to political pressure like he always does.
28:13
Speaker 6: But I don't think that his heart is in it
28:15
Speaker 6: because he sat up on a stage with Mark Wayne
28:17
Speaker 6: Mullen when Mark Wayne Mullen took over the head of
28:19
Speaker 6: the DHS and was all chummy with him, talking about
28:22
Speaker 6: how we need to have this bipartisan cooperation in order
28:24
Speaker 6: to do this the right way. And I think that
28:27
Speaker 6: it goes back to the place that Wes Moore likes
28:30
Speaker 6: the police.
28:31
Speaker 7: He likes to give police resources.
28:33
Speaker 6: He likes to be able to talk about how he's
28:35
Speaker 6: tough on crime and then say, but we're not tough
28:38
Speaker 6: on all crime. I like the framing of tough on
28:41
Speaker 6: crime light. And I think he is tough on immigration light.
28:45
Speaker 6: And I think he is responding to political pressure and
28:47
Speaker 6: trying to do everything he can to protect his political career.
28:51
Speaker 6: And I'm not sure that he's trying to do much
28:52
Speaker 6: to protect Marylanders because, again, Last year, there was a
28:56
Speaker 6: bill in front of the General Assembly that would have
28:59
Speaker 6: banned 287. It wasn't just last year. It's been there
29:01
Speaker 6: for years and years and years, and it's gotten killed
29:03
Speaker 6: every year. Wes Moore, Bill Ferguson have killed it.
29:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, great.
29:09
Speaker 6: They came around this year on it, but there's a
29:11
Speaker 6: lot of families who got broken up, and there's a
29:13
Speaker 6: lot of people who got detained and deported that didn't
29:16
Speaker 6: need to be because they didn't have the political courage
29:18
Speaker 6: to do the right thing without the amount of political
29:20
Speaker 6: pressure on them in order to get them to do
29:23
Speaker 6: the smallest thing they could.
29:24
Speaker 7: 287G is great, yeah.
29:26
Speaker 6: Let's address that, but that is not. The root of
29:31
Speaker 6: the problem is that we have a immigration policy at
29:34
Speaker 6: the national level that has been broken for decades because
29:37
Speaker 6: both parties refused to give it up as a political
29:39
Speaker 6: cut to use against the other ones and refused to
29:42
Speaker 6: figure out a way to deal with the millions of
29:44
Speaker 6: people who are already here without threatening to deport them
29:49
Speaker 6: or threatening to detain them. And it is one of
29:51
Speaker 6: the biggest failures of the two-party system at the federal
29:54
Speaker 6: level that we have allowed this to get to the
29:56
Speaker 6: point where both parties can use immigrant communities as tokens
30:00
Speaker 6: and as chips in their political campaigns in order to
30:04
Speaker 6: try to maintain their power without doing anything to the
30:06
Speaker 6: very real effects on people's families, on people's communities, and
30:10
Speaker 6: people's lives that happen from them being unable to figure
30:13
Speaker 6: out a solution to the problem.
30:16
Speaker 5: You know, the Democratic Party, I would say over the
30:18
Speaker 5: last 10 to 15 years, maybe even longer, has been
30:22
Speaker 5: shifting in terms of the constituencies that it sees itself
30:25
Speaker 5: as being responsive to. that there was a point in
30:28
Speaker 5: time where the black community was a really important base
30:32
Speaker 5: of support that the Democratic Party in many respects would placate,
30:36
Speaker 5: but at least put in the effort to invest in
30:38
Speaker 5: getting black folks to be a strong base of the
30:40
Speaker 5: Democratic Party. What has happened, and I think this has
30:43
Speaker 5: accelerated after the election of Donald Trump the first time,
30:46
Speaker 5: is a shift and a focus on suburban voters in
30:50
Speaker 5: the place of focusing on the black community because issues
30:55
Speaker 5: that fundamentally impact our community. And I would even add
31:00
Speaker 5: other folks of color, particularly immigrant communities, that the moving
31:04
Speaker 5: away from focusing on those core constituencies has created a
31:09
Speaker 5: dynamic where they're talking to that suburban audience, avoiding things
31:15
Speaker 5: that might inflame or might cause some consternation of that audience.
31:21
Speaker 5: And so in the context of this conversation, particularly about ICE,
31:23
Speaker 5: And I will put it in the larger conversation about
31:25
Speaker 5: the ways that criminal justice is weaponized against those of color.
31:28
Speaker 5: What what we're seeing, Trump was not unclear and the
31:33
Speaker 5: Republicans are not unclear about the fact that the language of,
31:39
Speaker 5: you know, these are violent criminals.
31:41
Speaker 8: Right.
31:41
Speaker 5: These are these are, you know, Mexican rapists like these
31:45
Speaker 5: are the very same tropes. that are part of the
31:48
Speaker 5: collective American consciousness, that are weaponized to criminalize black people
31:52
Speaker 5: being deployed against immigrant communities. And the limitation of the
31:56
Speaker 5: Democratic Party, and particularly in the person of Wes Moore
31:59
Speaker 5: as governor of the state, is that the unwillingness to
32:03
Speaker 5: be direct and say that. The unwillingness to say that
32:07
Speaker 5: the attack against immigrant communities is consistent with the racialized
32:12
Speaker 5: criminalization of people of African descent that it's been weaponized
32:15
Speaker 5: to undermine our humanity and undermine the humanity of immigrant communities.
32:20
Speaker 5: The unwillingness to say that is about the fact that
32:23
Speaker 5: they're trying to appeal to a constituency that, if we're honest,
32:28
Speaker 5: is scared of black folks. They're scared of folks in
32:31
Speaker 5: immigrant communities. And instead of actually addressing that directly, that
32:38
Speaker 5: he's gesturing to it. He's giving an individual story that's
32:42
Speaker 5: heart-wrenching and wants people to be brought in.
32:44
Speaker 2: But won't talk about the.
32:46
Speaker 5: Overarching structure of racism and white supremacy that animates the
32:50
Speaker 5: attacks that ICE has been tasked with on behalf of
32:54
Speaker 5: Trump and the MAGA movement. And so again, it's just
32:56
Speaker 5: one of those things that the answer indicates to me,
32:59
Speaker 5: the inability of the Democratic Party as to be a
33:03
Speaker 5: vehicle for the interest of black and immigrant communities.
33:07
Speaker 1: Well, and like, I love the way you put that,
33:10
Speaker 1: like the unwillingness to be direct is probably one of
33:18
Speaker 1: the most popular political complaints we all have. It's like,
33:22
Speaker 1: just tell me straight. Stop bullshitting me. Just give me
33:27
Speaker 1: a straight answer. And that's what I really took away
33:32
Speaker 1: from the debate. And frankly, most debates I ever watch
33:35
Speaker 1: in this country is like it's a theater. It's not
33:39
Speaker 1: a real debate. It's a performance. And it's a performance
33:44
Speaker 1: in not answering our most basic questions and finding a
33:50
Speaker 1: whole class of consultants, like we mentioned earlier, to help
33:54
Speaker 1: you bastardize language so that you can get around saying
33:59
Speaker 1: what people just want you to say. And there are
34:03
Speaker 1: examples that were just baffling to me.
34:07
Speaker 2: I thought it was wild.
34:11
Speaker 1: That even though, as you said, Andy, like, you know,
34:14
Speaker 1: all signs point to Moore kind of winning this handedly, right? But, like,
34:18
Speaker 1: he opened himself up to a few big right hooks
34:21
Speaker 1: from Dan Cox and the Republicans that is like, well,
34:24
Speaker 1: if you weren't so shitty, you wouldn't be such a
34:27
Speaker 1: juicy target for that point, you know? Like, when he
34:31
Speaker 1: wouldn't just say, I'm not going to run for president
34:33
Speaker 1: and leave you guys in two years. He wouldn't just say, like,
34:37
Speaker 1: will you commit to Maryland for four years? And instead
34:40
Speaker 1: he said, Yeah, like he wouldn't say it. And the
34:45
Speaker 1: way that when Cox got him for it, and it
34:49
Speaker 1: was a real deserved blow, you know, Moore responded this way.
34:53
Speaker 1: Dan Cox seems to be more concerned about my future
34:56
Speaker 1: than he is about the future of the people of Maryland.
35:00
Speaker 1: It's like, you piece of shit. Like, don't use us
35:03
Speaker 1: to shield yourself from this thing. You know what I'm saying? Like,
35:06
Speaker 1: so that's, That's an example of how it's being done
35:09
Speaker 1: on the right. And here's an example of how it's
35:10
Speaker 1: being done on the left.
35:12
Speaker 2: Here's an example of how Cox was doing it, right?
35:14
Speaker 1: When, again, Pamela Wood from the Banner asked a really
35:16
Speaker 1: great question, which is, hey, you seem to be all
35:19
Speaker 1: in for Trump like everyone else in the Republican Party.
35:22
Speaker 1: How are Marylanders going to know that, like, you're actually
35:24
Speaker 1: here to serve us and not just your nut job,
35:27
Speaker 1: you know, like daddy in the White House?
35:29
Speaker 2: And what he said is, well, absolutely. Direct quote.
35:33
Speaker 1: I am a Marylander first and last, and I'm an
35:36
Speaker 1: American first and last.
35:39
Speaker 2: What? That's not how words work.
35:42
Speaker 1: That's literally saying nothing, and then just moving on as
35:45
Speaker 1: if he's answered the question.
35:47
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about that.
35:49
Speaker 1: How do we reclaim a politics of just being real
35:52
Speaker 1: and just talking about the real shit and not violating
35:58
Speaker 1: that basic trust that we all feel has been violated
36:01
Speaker 1: so many times by so.
36:02
Speaker 2: Many people in the media and in the political world?
36:06
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'll start with that. So part of the problem
36:08
Speaker 6: is the way the debates work right now. So in 1992,
36:13
Speaker 6: Ross Perot got on the debate stage, and he was weird,
36:16
Speaker 6: and he had his tarts, and he had all of
36:17
Speaker 6: that stuff. But he appealed to a lot of people
36:19
Speaker 6: because he was speaking truth that seemed to matter to them.
36:22
Speaker 6: And he got in that debate, and he had a
36:23
Speaker 6: real impact. He went up in the polls. He probably
36:27
Speaker 6: cost George Bush that election by most accounts. He got
36:30
Speaker 6: 15% or so at the end of the day. It
36:32
Speaker 6: was real significant third-party independent political work. After that, the
36:37
Speaker 6: two parties and the media corporations decided that they were
36:40
Speaker 6: never going to allow that to happen again. So they
36:42
Speaker 6: created a commission on presidential debates that locked down on
36:46
Speaker 6: the ability to hear independent voices on the debate stage. Well,
36:49
Speaker 6: they got all the media networks to buy in with them.
36:52
Speaker 6: They pushed the League of Women Voters out, who had
36:54
Speaker 6: been sponsoring debates for years. And then they went to
36:57
Speaker 6: PBS at the national level and said, PBS, if you
37:00
Speaker 6: ever want to host one of our debates, you need
37:02
Speaker 6: to start adopting these rules, too. So PBS started adopting
37:05
Speaker 6: those rules and then they started pushing those rules down
37:08
Speaker 6: to their local stations like Maryland Public Television. So stations
37:11
Speaker 6: like Maryland Public Television now have a standard for who
37:14
Speaker 6: gets to be in statewide debates to say you have
37:16
Speaker 6: to have 10% in polls in order to be in,
37:19
Speaker 6: a third party candidate has to have 10% in the
37:21
Speaker 6: polls in order to be.
37:22
Speaker 7: Included in a debate.
37:25
Speaker 6: So they've had this standard for a while. No third-party
37:28
Speaker 6: candidate for governor or senator has gotten more than 3%
37:31
Speaker 6: in the state of Maryland since Reconstruction. So they are
37:34
Speaker 6: setting the rules in a way they know is going
37:36
Speaker 6: to exclude people. They have another set of rules that
37:39
Speaker 6: are really arbitrary and really suspect that are things like
37:42
Speaker 6: you have to have substantial fundraising, and many people need
37:44
Speaker 6: to show up when you come to an event, and
37:47
Speaker 6: you need to have a lot of media coverage. And
37:49
Speaker 6: they don't quantify those in the same way they quantify
37:52
Speaker 6: the 10% on the pollings. So in this year's debate,
37:56
Speaker 6: by the time they sent out the invitations, there was
37:58
Speaker 6: one poll that had come out and it did not
38:00
Speaker 6: include myself and Kathy White. But they said because we
38:02
Speaker 6: weren't included in that poll and we didn't get 10%
38:05
Speaker 6: in that poll, we wouldn't be invited to the debate.
38:08
Speaker 6: I used the Maryland Public Information Act request in order
38:11
Speaker 6: to get some of their discussion about their other debates.
38:14
Speaker 6: In the spring, they invited all nine Republican candidates to
38:18
Speaker 6: the debate stage, even though they didn't have polls for them.
38:21
Speaker 6: And this included folks like Douglas Larcombe, a guy who
38:24
Speaker 6: had raised no money and got less than a percent
38:26
Speaker 6: in the election. And the most notable thing that Douglas
38:29
Speaker 6: Larcombe has ever been done is get charged with like
38:32
Speaker 6: 30 criminal charges a month after they put him on
38:35
Speaker 6: the stage.
38:35
Speaker 7: Things like stalking.
38:36
Speaker 6: Real winner they put up on their stage during that
38:39
Speaker 6: Republican primary debate. So I asked them questions about this.
38:42
Speaker 2: Why?
38:42
Speaker 6: In the Republican debate, they were willing to open the
38:44
Speaker 6: doors for other people, but in this debate, they were not.
38:47
Speaker 7: They did not answer the question. They stonewalled, they stonewalled,
38:50
Speaker 7: they stonewalled.
38:50
Speaker 6: Well, one of the other things that came up in
38:53
Speaker 6: this Public Information Act request was a conversation that they
38:57
Speaker 6: had to a press release that I sent out in
38:59
Speaker 6: a bill that Davon and I were working on, where
39:01
Speaker 6: they spent the whole day in email freaking out because
39:05
Speaker 6: I sent out a press release that said if I
39:07
Speaker 6: was the governor, I would double their budget. They were like,
39:09
Speaker 6: if the governor finds out that this happened and thinks
39:12
Speaker 6: that we put Andy up to this, then the governor.
39:16
Speaker 7: Will cut our budget.
39:18
Speaker 6: So they all started scrambling to make calls to the
39:20
Speaker 6: people in the General Assembly and to the governor in
39:23
Speaker 6: order to make sure that the governor didn't think that
39:26
Speaker 6: Maryland Public Television called me and told me to put
39:29
Speaker 6: out a press release. It's so nonsensical that when I
39:31
Speaker 6: say it out loud, it just doesn't make sense. But
39:33
Speaker 6: they were so worried about it because a third of
39:35
Speaker 6: their budget comes from the General Assembly and from the governor.
39:38
Speaker 6: And they know that they, if they put, imagine how
39:42
Speaker 6: freaked out they would be, how freaked out they would
39:45
Speaker 6: think the governor was if they extended an invitation to
39:47
Speaker 6: me to be in the debate, if they were that
39:49
Speaker 6: freaked out about me suggesting a doubling of their budget.
39:52
Speaker 6: And I say all of this to say that there
39:53
Speaker 6: has been a concerted effort by the two parties and
39:55
Speaker 6: the media corporations, including PBS, in order to make sure
39:58
Speaker 6: that the kind of directness that we saw in 1992
40:01
Speaker 6: when Ross Perot was on the stage never exists again.
40:05
Speaker 6: Because they know that if people hear options other than
40:08
Speaker 6: the two parties, they will listen to options other than
40:11
Speaker 6: the two parties. They will vote for options other than
40:13
Speaker 6: the two parties. So they have sanitized the discourse. They've
40:17
Speaker 6: excluded most of the voices that would challenge them and
40:21
Speaker 6: be direct. And they have done it so that they
40:23
Speaker 6: can protect their power. And we see where it is.
40:26
Speaker 6: We see where it is 30 years later. It is
40:28
Speaker 6: a terrible debate. Most people don't watch debates anymore because
40:32
Speaker 6: they are consultants giving scripted ideas back and forth. They're
40:37
Speaker 6: not engagement of ideas. They're not engagement of arguments. And
40:40
Speaker 6: they're not reflecting of what the people want. So the
40:42
Speaker 6: reason we get a debate like this is because they
40:44
Speaker 6: made sure that we get a debate like this and
40:47
Speaker 6: not have a conversation like this.
40:50
Speaker 2: And what I'll add, because, you know, so there's the
40:53
Speaker 2: kind of.
40:56
Speaker 5: Front end structural dynamics that Andy is describing that impacts
41:00
Speaker 5: the political landscape. But if you go further upstream, you know,
41:05
Speaker 5: Hubert Harry Harrison, his book Negro in the Nation, he
41:07
Speaker 5: was a scholar during the New Negro Movement. And he
41:11
Speaker 5: was talking about the structure, the relationship that black people
41:13
Speaker 5: had to the structure of the society. And he argued
41:16
Speaker 5: that black people prior to the Civil War, our relationship
41:19
Speaker 5: to this society, chattel slavery enforced by brute force. And
41:24
Speaker 5: then after the Civil War, wage slavery enforced by starvation,
41:30
Speaker 5: that our community is able to be starved into political submission.
41:35
Speaker 5: And that's an important framing because part of the conversation
41:39
Speaker 5: about the way, particularly that black folks enter the political landscape,
41:44
Speaker 5: and you'll hear this conversation about pragmatism or what's practical.
41:48
Speaker 2: People who run for office.
41:50
Speaker 5: And I'm sure this is true anywhere for anybody, but
41:54
Speaker 5: black folks who run for office are They know what
41:57
Speaker 5: fundraisers to go to. They know what corporations to be
42:00
Speaker 5: in relationship with. They know what major figures to be
42:05
Speaker 5: connected to, what media companies to be affiliated with. And
42:08
Speaker 5: so what ends up happening is that by the time
42:10
Speaker 5: many of these folks appear on our ballot, they've already
42:13
Speaker 5: been curated for us. We're picking from who the corporate
42:17
Speaker 5: sector decides are viable candidates for our community. And that's
42:21
Speaker 5: an important point. Because then when we see, you know,
42:25
Speaker 5: like a Westmore on the stage and we talk about
42:27
Speaker 5: the limitations of his performance, in many respects, it's not
42:31
Speaker 5: just about him as an individual. It's about the political
42:35
Speaker 5: landscape that says that the only way for us to
42:38
Speaker 5: be viable in politics is to engage in politics in
42:42
Speaker 5: the way that a Westmore engages in politics.
42:45
Speaker 1: Right.
42:46
Speaker 5: And unfortunately, so much of what we see around us
42:49
Speaker 5: affirms that as true. when we think about those that
42:52
Speaker 5: get to elected office. So I wanted to put that
42:56
Speaker 5: framing there because some of the work is about the
43:00
Speaker 5: importance and emphasizing the importance of independent black electoral infrastructure
43:06
Speaker 5: that can actually engage in the kind of political warfare
43:10
Speaker 5: such that we can put people into office as opposed
43:13
Speaker 5: to hoping the people selected for us do what we
43:16
Speaker 5: want them to do. And one thing I'll add to
43:19
Speaker 5: that is because even Like LBS's political theory of change.
43:23
Speaker 5: I'm clear that all of these elected officials, even the
43:27
Speaker 5: ones I like, even the ones that I have good
43:29
Speaker 5: relationships with, I am clear that they don't work for
43:33
Speaker 5: us because we're not how they got there. So the
43:37
Speaker 5: best way for us to impact the political landscape is to, again,
43:41
Speaker 5: engage in the kind of political warfare necessary in order
43:44
Speaker 5: to make them do things they may not otherwise do.
43:47
Speaker 5: And a good example of that is Andy kind of
43:49
Speaker 5: ran down the policy record on immigration, right? Where Westmoreland,
43:54
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party, they were made to do that, right?
43:57
Speaker 5: They didn't want to do that. In fact, one of
43:59
Speaker 5: the things that the governor did was after the legislature
44:04
Speaker 5: passed the ban on the 287G program early in session,
44:09
Speaker 5: he actually issued a memo publicly to law enforcement to
44:13
Speaker 5: say to law enforcement, Basically, I don't want you to
44:16
Speaker 5: think that we don't want you to collaborate with federal officials.
44:19
Speaker 2: Right. A way of trying to have it both ways.
44:22
Speaker 4: Right.
44:22
Speaker 5: And again, because we're told that that's what it takes
44:25
Speaker 5: to be in position. And so I think we just
44:28
Speaker 5: have to be clear that we have to approach politics.
44:31
Speaker 5: We have to approach politics with the thinking of we
44:34
Speaker 5: need independent power that can engage in political warfare so
44:38
Speaker 5: that given the current landscape, we can make these folks
44:41
Speaker 5: do we need them to do. with the understanding that
44:43
Speaker 5: we need to do the parallel work of building political
44:46
Speaker 5: infrastructure outside of the two-party system so that at one point,
44:50
Speaker 5: and hopefully in the near future, we can produce our
44:52
Speaker 5: own candidates for office.
44:54
Speaker 3: There's a lot to unpack there.
44:57
Speaker 4: I think to what Davon said, yeah, there's a lot
45:01
Speaker 4: of truth in that candidates are groomed to Well, one
45:10
Speaker 4: thing I can say is the very first thing you
45:12
Speaker 4: learn as a candidate is how not to answer the
45:14
Speaker 4: questions that are asked of you. And that would be,
45:17
Speaker 4: as someone who spent 20 years identifying, training, and electing candidates,
45:26
Speaker 4: the very first thing that I tell people to do
45:27
Speaker 4: is you answer the question that you want to answer.
45:30
Speaker 4: You don't answer the question that's been asked of you.
45:34
Speaker 3: And I think we saw.
45:35
Speaker 1: As an interviewer, can I just say, like, damn you
45:38
Speaker 1: for being so good at your job. Because that's one
45:41
Speaker 1: of the things that makes it so frustrating to interview politicians.
45:44
Speaker 2: But anyway, so you- No, no, absolutely.
45:47
Speaker 4: And it's funny because as a voter, I look at
45:51
Speaker 4: that and I get so frustrated because I'm like, that
45:54
Speaker 4: was an easy answer. I think that people have gotten,
45:58
Speaker 4: candidates now have gotten so, it's so ingrained in them
46:04
Speaker 4: to- answer the question that they want to answer, that
46:10
Speaker 4: they miss the opportunity to really connect with voters and
46:15
Speaker 4: to really be authentic and to give actual answers that
46:22
Speaker 4: would actually get them more votes.
46:25
Speaker 3: And I think that we saw that in the debate yesterday.
46:29
Speaker 4: I think that there were a couple of times when
46:32
Speaker 4: Wes Moore really could have just given an honest answer
46:37
Speaker 4: and it would have connected more with voters than the answers.
46:42
Speaker 3: That he gave.
46:44
Speaker 4: The second thing that I want to say is, in
46:51
Speaker 4: direct response to what Davon says, is it is very
46:53
Speaker 4: much true that when people are coming through, when candidates
46:58
Speaker 4: are moving up through the ranks, that there is a,
47:01
Speaker 4: you have to raise money.
47:02
Speaker 3: And who has the most money? are corporations, right?
47:08
Speaker 4: And LLCs, those are the ones who are writing the
47:10
Speaker 4: big checks. Those are the ones when it costs a
47:13
Speaker 4: million dollars to run for office that the people, it's
47:17
Speaker 4: a lot of $ 5, 000 checks, right? Imagine if you were
47:22
Speaker 4: only talking about $ 50 checks. It's exponentially more people that
47:26
Speaker 4: you have to get in. So they are working, they
47:32
Speaker 4: are in rooms with the people who want to hear
47:36
Speaker 4: the pablum answers. They are working, they are in the
47:40
Speaker 4: rooms with people where they can't be committal to issues,
47:47
Speaker 4: where they are saying, and we saw this recently in
47:50
Speaker 4: Prince George's County, where, you know, AIPAC was saying jump,
47:56
Speaker 4: and you had candidates who were saying how high. AIPAC
48:00
Speaker 4: being the American Israel Political Action Committee. So I think
48:07
Speaker 4: that there's a lot of truth in that, but there
48:11
Speaker 4: is a role for voters. I don't want, I'm not
48:14
Speaker 4: willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I
48:17
Speaker 4: think in this state of Maryland, we have seen where people,
48:21
Speaker 4: where voters have gotten and communities have gotten engaged and
48:25
Speaker 4: they have gotten in and elected people and it's made
48:29
Speaker 4: a significant difference to the outcomes of their lives. And
48:35
Speaker 4: I will say in 2014, we changed 35% of the
48:40
Speaker 4: state legislature. We elected new people, people that we trained,
48:45
Speaker 4: people that were grassroots elected, that people who, you know,
48:51
Speaker 4: they were raised their money from the grassroots. And immediately
48:57
Speaker 4: when they came in, we got re-enfranchisement of ex-felons. We
49:01
Speaker 4: got a raising of the minimum wage. We got earned
49:04
Speaker 4: sick leave. We got automatic voter registration and same-day voter registration.
49:10
Speaker 4: All happening within a four-year period of being able to
49:14
Speaker 4: change that, of being able to change just 35% of
49:16
Speaker 4: the state legislature. A lot of those people are now
49:22
Speaker 4: in leadership positions. Are their positions the same? No, they've
49:27
Speaker 4: kind of migrated to the middle, but I want to
49:30
Speaker 4: point out that it is possible to do that both
49:34
Speaker 4: within the two-party system, but it's I think the Green
49:43
Speaker 4: Party and the emergence of the Democratic Socialists and these
49:48
Speaker 4: other progressive movements are really changing what is going to
49:53
Speaker 4: happen inside the two-party system.
49:55
Speaker 5: And if I can add, I think that's a really
49:58
Speaker 5: important point. One of the problems with our political culture
50:02
Speaker 5: is that we focus too much on the executive branch.
50:06
Speaker 5: Like if we're clear about the science of how our
50:09
Speaker 5: government is structured, it is really the legislature that is
50:13
Speaker 5: really at the seat that produces policy.
50:15
Speaker 2: Right. And that wields power over the other two branches.
50:19
Speaker 5: And so I think it's and so I think and
50:20
Speaker 5: what's important about that in terms of a strategic value
50:24
Speaker 5: to our community is that we can do more to
50:27
Speaker 5: a delegate or a state senator or a city council
50:30
Speaker 5: person than we can somebody that's elected statewide. So I
50:34
Speaker 5: just wanted to add, like, I think that's an extremely
50:36
Speaker 5: important point that we use the ability to impact those
50:40
Speaker 5: that are elected locally and have a strategy for engaging
50:43
Speaker 5: the legislature as really the greatest opportunity for black people
50:48
Speaker 5: to exercise true kind of independent black political power. It
50:52
Speaker 5: has to happen through the legislature. Not that the other
50:54
Speaker 5: stuff isn't important, but I think the media culture overemphasizes
50:58
Speaker 5: the executive branch.
50:59
Speaker 2: If I could.
51:00
Speaker 1: Well, we gotta, like, so there's... we're running up on
51:04
Speaker 1: time only in the sense of like halftime, right? Like
51:07
Speaker 1: I do want to let the community in here in,
51:10
Speaker 1: in a minute, but I, so I think we will
51:13
Speaker 1: have more time to dig into this, but we are
51:15
Speaker 1: sort of rounding the final turn in, in this first
51:18
Speaker 1: half of the program. But I wanted to sort of
51:20
Speaker 1: build on that and hopefully give you guys a container
51:22
Speaker 1: to respond.
51:23
Speaker 4: Right.
51:24
Speaker 1: But like the, the, you know, thing that I think
51:26
Speaker 1: we should be addressing here and I want to give
51:30
Speaker 1: everyone a chance to is like, you know, what are,
51:33
Speaker 1: those core issues that like you know that it shouldn't
51:37
Speaker 1: just be about like these are the issues that a
51:41
Speaker 1: savvy politician should talk about if they want to win
51:43
Speaker 1: no election but like what are the issues that like
51:46
Speaker 1: savvy regular working people should make politics about so that
51:51
Speaker 1: we win a better world and a better future.
51:54
Speaker 6: So the three issues that we're focused on right now
51:57
Speaker 6: are banning the data centers, building an economy that works
52:00
Speaker 6: for the people and not the corporations, and moving past
52:04
Speaker 6: the two-party system and the corruption of the two-party system.
52:07
Speaker 6: And I think a bunch of people probably saw Shorty outside.
52:09
Speaker 6: He gave me his book, and it's all about how
52:12
Speaker 6: he sees corruption working in the state of Maryland. People
52:15
Speaker 6: should check it out. People should talk to him. I
52:17
Speaker 6: think that our position on this is that the system,
52:19
Speaker 6: the two-party system, is fundamentally corrupt because the amount of
52:22
Speaker 6: political power that goes into it determines the outcomes, determines
52:26
Speaker 6: who gets to run for office, and determines whose issues
52:29
Speaker 6: get heard. So the reason that we have chosen the
52:31
Speaker 6: three issues that we have chosen is not because they're
52:33
Speaker 6: the only three issues that matter, but they're the three
52:36
Speaker 6: issues that we think we can use this election to
52:38
Speaker 6: most effectively put pressure on as we go into the
52:41
Speaker 6: General Assembly. The data center question is a place where
52:44
Speaker 6: a popular uprising has come around and has allowed people
52:48
Speaker 6: who never got active before to meet in a church basement,
52:52
Speaker 6: to meet in a library, to meet in their community,
52:54
Speaker 6: and to tell the biggest tech corporations in the world
52:56
Speaker 6: and their corrupt politicians that they don't want this plan,
52:59
Speaker 6: that they want something different. and that they want to
53:01
Speaker 6: keep these things out of their community. The corruption is
53:04
Speaker 6: in getting, is these corporations getting these county governments and
53:08
Speaker 6: city governments to sign non-disclosure agreements so that they can
53:11
Speaker 6: plan outside of the people, because they know from other
53:14
Speaker 6: places that if the people know what they're doing, they're
53:16
Speaker 6: going to shut it down. The data center thing is
53:19
Speaker 6: the thing that gives me the most hope about the
53:22
Speaker 6: possibility of change. And it is not, and it is
53:25
Speaker 6: one of the things that gives me the most hope
53:26
Speaker 6: about it. It is not just one part of the state.
53:28
Speaker 6: It is not just one political party. It's from Landover
53:32
Speaker 6: to Lesby and Southern Maryland to Frederick to, you know,
53:36
Speaker 6: to places in Baltimore County to places in Baltimore City.
53:39
Speaker 7: It's black and white. It's Democrat. It's Republican. It's Independent.
53:42
Speaker 6: It's libertarian, it's DSA, people are all rising up and
53:46
Speaker 6: understanding that they can have the grassroots governing power in
53:49
Speaker 6: order to make their local government do what they want
53:51
Speaker 6: instead of what the corrupt tech corporations want. And so
53:54
Speaker 6: I think there's a lot that inspires me about that.
53:56
Speaker 6: And to Davon's point, the reason we focus on that is, yes,
54:00
Speaker 6: it's a politically volatile issue right now, but we think
54:02
Speaker 6: that this election And doing well as the governor in
54:06
Speaker 6: this election sends a signal to the General Assembly that
54:09
Speaker 6: people are willing to vote outside of the two-party system
54:12
Speaker 6: because they're so angry about this issue the corruption of government,
54:15
Speaker 6: and the demand for a better political system. And we
54:18
Speaker 6: think that energy that we build now goes in to
54:21
Speaker 6: the General Assembly session, where we are going to push
54:24
Speaker 6: bills in order to ban that, in order to expand
54:26
Speaker 6: the way the politics work, and to control the money
54:31
Speaker 6: and power. We were in Annapolis this weekend at a
54:33
Speaker 6: rally to call for a ban on the data centers.
54:36
Speaker 6: And it included people from Landover. It included people from
54:39
Speaker 6: Southern Maryland. It included people from Frederick. It was a
54:41
Speaker 6: wide array of Marylanders who have started to understand the
54:44
Speaker 6: grassroots governing power that they can have, not dictated by
54:47
Speaker 6: the two parties, not dictated by the corporations. And that
54:50
Speaker 6: is the kind of energy that I think we can
54:52
Speaker 6: build on with this election. So part of the reason
54:54
Speaker 6: that we focus on those issues is because we think
54:56
Speaker 6: it sends a very clear signal to the people in
54:59
Speaker 6: Annapolis that people are mad about this, people are willing
55:02
Speaker 6: to vote on this, and people are willing to break
55:04
Speaker 6: out of the trap and the tradition of the two-party
55:06
Speaker 6: system in order to say that they want something different.
55:09
Speaker 6: that we can go into those hearing rooms in Annapolis
55:11
Speaker 6: and say, you better vote the right way on this,
55:13
Speaker 6: or we're going to build energy to make sure that
55:15
Speaker 6: you don't win four years from now, and we're going
55:17
Speaker 6: to build energy to make sure that your friends in
55:19
Speaker 6: Baltimore City lose their seats two years from now if
55:22
Speaker 6: they don't get this right. So I agree 100% that
55:25
Speaker 6: the strategy needs to be on the legislative session, and
55:27
Speaker 6: we are using the attention and focus of a governor's race,
55:31
Speaker 6: which is a high-profile race which gets to do things
55:33
Speaker 6: like this, in order to bring an agenda forward that
55:37
Speaker 6: we think we can actually win on and change outcomes
55:40
Speaker 6: on in Annapolis in this legislative session because we think
55:43
Speaker 6: it is absolutely important that the people claim the power
55:45
Speaker 6: that they have, use it to change outcomes, and get
55:48
Speaker 6: better results for their communities. Choices are great. But choices
55:52
Speaker 6: without changing outcomes doesn't solve any of the problems that
55:55
Speaker 6: any of us are facing today. And that is why
55:57
Speaker 6: we are strategically focused on those issues so that we
56:00
Speaker 6: can help make those changes in the General Assembly.
56:04
Speaker 5: You know, I think one of the central challenges with
56:09
Speaker 5: the kind of American political system, in particular the community's
56:13
Speaker 5: relationship to politics, is the kind of unspoken and sometimes
56:18
Speaker 5: even spoken conventional wisdom that in order to be viable
56:23
Speaker 5: in politics, you have to moderate. You can't espouse political
56:28
Speaker 5: perspectives that go beyond the political mainstream. And part of,
56:33
Speaker 5: I think, people's frustration with politics is that if that's
56:37
Speaker 5: what it takes to be viable in politics, nobody wants it.
56:42
Speaker 5: One of the things that I'm most proud of, LBS
56:44
Speaker 5: was founded in 2010, so we're 16 years in. And
56:48
Speaker 5: we've had some pretty substantive impact on the community.
56:53
Speaker 2: Right.
56:53
Speaker 5: That, you know, when I was when I when we
56:55
Speaker 5: first started, when I was a lot younger, folks used
56:57
Speaker 5: to say to me out of love, they would say,
57:00
Speaker 5: you know, Davon, you're not going to be able to
57:01
Speaker 5: talk all that black stuff and be able to get
57:03
Speaker 5: stuff done.
57:04
Speaker 7: Right.
57:04
Speaker 5: And what I'm most proud of is that we have
57:07
Speaker 5: maintained our worldview and perspective. But that perspective has actually
57:12
Speaker 5: made us effective at moving policy that is helpful to
57:15
Speaker 5: our community. And so I think a part of what's
57:18
Speaker 5: important for people, I think something that will energize people
57:22
Speaker 5: and get people to want to engage in politics is
57:24
Speaker 5: to demonstrate to people that that notion that moderating is
57:30
Speaker 5: the pragmatic approach to politics is not the only road.
57:34
Speaker 5: That there are other ways, there are other approaches and
57:37
Speaker 5: methodologies to engage in politics that can be effective. That
57:40
Speaker 5: it's not reliant on having to be succumbed to the
57:44
Speaker 5: political institutions and the political status quo. And I'm grateful
57:49
Speaker 5: for the Real News and partnering with us and hosting
57:52
Speaker 5: this conversation because I know that as a person who's
57:55
Speaker 5: very active and local in state politics, I'm sure there
57:59
Speaker 5: are going to be some people that say, Davon, how
58:01
Speaker 5: are you speaking against this really popular Westmore Democratic governor?
58:06
Speaker 5: And there's some people that would perceive me even saying
58:09
Speaker 5: the things I'm saying as something that would undermine the
58:12
Speaker 5: ability for LBS to be effective in passing our policy agenda.
58:16
Speaker 5: What I want folks that are watching this to know
58:18
Speaker 5: is that in fact, it is the independence that LBS
58:21
Speaker 5: is able to demonstrate that enhances our viability, because it
58:25
Speaker 5: demonstrates that we're not beholden to the political establishment. I
58:29
Speaker 5: was actually kicked off, I was elected to the 41st
58:32
Speaker 5: Legislative District's Democratic Party State Central Committee in 2022. I
58:37
Speaker 5: was put off of the State Central Committee because I
58:40
Speaker 5: talked about the strategy of using Andy's candidacy for governor
58:47
Speaker 5: as a nominee for the Green Party as leverage to
58:50
Speaker 5: bring the Democratic Party further left, right? And so I
58:53
Speaker 5: was put off the state chancellor committee. But see, the
58:55
Speaker 5: beautiful thing about that is, is that that didn't diminish
58:59
Speaker 5: the ability to be impactful. It actually enhanced it because
59:02
Speaker 5: it demonstrates the contradiction of the Democratic Party's stated commitment
59:07
Speaker 5: to black people, but when a black person stands up
59:09
Speaker 5: and is independent, they try to punish them. So I
59:12
Speaker 5: think it's really important, again, in terms of an important
59:16
Speaker 5: issue that energizes people. People need to see that you
59:20
Speaker 5: can espouse a radical politics, have a strong base of
59:23
Speaker 5: community support, and actually be able to move policies that
59:28
Speaker 5: positively impact our community And I think that will bring
59:31
Speaker 5: more people into the political conversation in ways that I
59:35
Speaker 5: think people would feel better about the ability to impact
59:38
Speaker 5: the landscape.
59:39
Speaker 3: I agree with what you said.
59:43
Speaker 4: I think the question, the original question, was about issues
59:48
Speaker 4: that people are concerned about. I think Andy tapped into
59:53
Speaker 4: some of them. In the years I've been in Maryland,
59:56
Speaker 4: I've never seen.
1:00:00
Speaker 4: I have spent a lot of time in Prince George's
1:00:03
Speaker 4: County trying to get people energized and to come out
1:00:08
Speaker 4: and mobilize on issues that were of concern to that community.
1:00:14
Speaker 4: And it was really like pulling teeth in order to
1:00:19
Speaker 4: get that done. But I have seen communities come together
1:00:23
Speaker 4: around data centers that have never really been engaged before.
1:00:28
Speaker 4: And I think the interesting thing is that whether you're
1:00:31
Speaker 4: talking about the Eastern Shore, whether you're talking about the D.C. suburbs,
1:00:34
Speaker 4: whether you're talking about Western Maryland, the concern.
1:00:37
Speaker 3: Is the same.
1:00:39
Speaker 4: And the heat, the anger at what they perceive as
1:00:45
Speaker 4: politicians not listening is.
1:00:49
Speaker 3: Pretty up there.
1:00:51
Speaker 4: So I think that that is one issue that we
1:00:53
Speaker 4: definitely have to pay attention to. I think very closely
1:00:58
Speaker 4: related to that are utility bills. Even before the conversation
1:01:02
Speaker 4: with data centers really kind of sprang to the forefront,
1:01:07
Speaker 4: people got clobbered last winter in January when out of
1:01:14
Speaker 4: the blue there was a rate hike and then temperatures
1:01:17
Speaker 4: plummeted to below zero. There are still people who are
1:01:21
Speaker 4: digging themselves out of those bills and the damage that
1:01:26
Speaker 4: it did to their households as we are about to
1:01:31
Speaker 4: embark on another winter, right? And they're saying that this
1:01:35
Speaker 4: winter could be even colder than last winter, and utility prices,
1:01:40
Speaker 4: both electricity and gas, have skyrocketed.
1:01:46
Speaker 3: I think that that is an issue.
1:01:47
Speaker 4: I really would have liked to see the candidates talk
1:01:50
Speaker 4: about that. You know, let's talk about what the impact
1:01:54
Speaker 4: of the war in Iraq has on, or in Iran
1:01:59
Speaker 4: has on us here domestically in the state of Maryland.
1:02:04
Speaker 4: And what can we do about that? What can we
1:02:08
Speaker 4: do about BGE putting in rate hikes? And then at
1:02:12
Speaker 4: the same time that they are making record profits, neither
1:02:18
Speaker 4: candidate is talking about that, but that is something that
1:02:20
Speaker 4: people really want to understand. I think housing is a
1:02:25
Speaker 4: big issue. We still have young people who are living
1:02:30
Speaker 4: in their parents' basements and wanting to buy, wanting to
1:02:35
Speaker 4: move out, people who want to move up, but the
1:02:37
Speaker 4: cost of housing is really skyrocketing. People who are renters,
1:02:42
Speaker 4: we have a very old rental housing stock. What is
1:02:47
Speaker 4: this governor doing and what does the wannabe governor do
1:02:52
Speaker 4: Dan Cox, nobody talked about housing and the impact of
1:02:56
Speaker 4: housing in communities, particularly communities in the D.C. suburbs and
1:03:02
Speaker 4: in Baltimore City. But it is a growing problem in
1:03:05
Speaker 4: Howard County and in Western Maryland as well.
1:03:08
Speaker 3: You know, affordable housing tops.
1:03:13
Speaker 4: Over the last two years since the pandemic, the state
1:03:16
Speaker 4: has had to cut its funding for the Blueprint program.
1:03:20
Speaker 4: that was supposed to increase the state's investment in education
1:03:23
Speaker 4: at a time when we saw scores falling off and
1:03:28
Speaker 4: record truancy rates. Nobody's talking about what are we gonna do.
1:03:35
Speaker 4: To his credit, years ago we had a millionaire's tax
1:03:40
Speaker 4: in Maryland. We had an actually progressive revenue. And in
1:03:43
Speaker 4: that time, we've not seen many Democrats in the legislature
1:03:48
Speaker 4: proposing progressive revenue. Like let's go after people, the millionaires
1:03:52
Speaker 4: are getting big tax cuts. They got big tax cuts
1:03:55
Speaker 4: in 2016. They're getting another big tax cut that's been
1:03:58
Speaker 4: proposed in this latest Trump administration. That's money that's going into,
1:04:11
Speaker 4: it's not being taxed at the federal level. Why is
1:04:12
Speaker 4: the state not there with a big catcher's mitt to
1:04:15
Speaker 4: go get that money?
1:04:16
Speaker 3: And bring it back to the state.
1:04:18
Speaker 4: So I think that those are issues that people are
1:04:21
Speaker 4: concerned about. I don't think middle class people wanna see
1:04:25
Speaker 4: their taxes go up, but there are a lot of people,
1:04:27
Speaker 4: middle class people aren't getting a tax cut at the
1:04:29
Speaker 4: federal level, right? There are a lot of people with
1:04:32
Speaker 4: deep pockets who are getting that tax cut and it
1:04:36
Speaker 4: can go to funding instead of having the governor talk
1:04:40
Speaker 4: about the cuts that he's making in order to balance
1:04:43
Speaker 4: the budget and being really proud of balancing the budget.
1:04:47
Speaker 4: That budget is being balanced on the backs of working people,
1:04:50
Speaker 4: the very working families that he said that he was
1:04:53
Speaker 4: fighting for. So let's go get some money. Let's go
1:04:57
Speaker 4: get some money from that top 1% and give some
1:05:01
Speaker 4: relief to working families.
1:05:05
Speaker 1: So I want to finish with a lightning, what do
1:05:10
Speaker 1: we do about this round, right?
1:05:12
Speaker 2: We try to end every.
1:05:14
Speaker 1: production that we do at The Real News with information
1:05:17
Speaker 1: for people who are watching, you know, about what they
1:05:20
Speaker 1: can do to change the outcome of the story, what
1:05:23
Speaker 1: they can do to take this information and do something
1:05:26
Speaker 1: with it.
1:05:27
Speaker 2: Right.
1:05:27
Speaker 1: And, you know, of course, you know, we have our
1:05:30
Speaker 1: elections and these national elections hanging over our head in just.
1:05:35
Speaker 2: A few weeks.
1:05:36
Speaker 1: And so, you know, like it is not my job
1:05:38
Speaker 1: as a journalist to tell anyone how to vote. And
1:05:41
Speaker 1: in fact, as the co-executive director and EIC of a nonprofit,
1:05:46
Speaker 1: it is something I cannot do and shouldn't do. But
1:05:51
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that I stop being concerned for everyone
1:05:55
Speaker 1: in this room or everyone watching who is still maybe
1:05:59
Speaker 1: hearing us and saying, that's great, but how do I vote?
1:06:02
Speaker 2: What do I do?
1:06:03
Speaker 1: How do I move through the world that we're in
1:06:07
Speaker 1: towards the world that I want?
1:06:09
Speaker 2: Without making shit worse.
1:06:11
Speaker 1: I think just on that level, what is your final
1:06:14
Speaker 1: pitch to folks here and folks watching before we turn
1:06:18
Speaker 1: it over to Q & A?
1:06:20
Speaker 4: I think that it's a shame that the MPT debate
1:06:26
Speaker 4: is right now going to be the only debate. And
1:06:30
Speaker 4: I think that that should be unacceptable to voters. I
1:06:34
Speaker 4: think that voters should demand that there are ample, many
1:06:41
Speaker 4: opportunities to hear the candidates debate each other. That is
1:06:44
Speaker 4: something that they can't ignore. And so I think that
1:06:49
Speaker 4: showing up to the, there's a debate being held at Coppin,
1:06:52
Speaker 4: showing up to the one at Coppin. I think going
1:06:56
Speaker 4: on talk radio and raising this as an issue on
1:07:02
Speaker 4: talk radio about why are there not more debates being
1:07:06
Speaker 4: held in the community.
1:07:08
Speaker 3: I think demanding it.
1:07:09
Speaker 4: Where you get to ask questions, because I didn't get
1:07:12
Speaker 4: to say this earlier, but I was really just appalled
1:07:15
Speaker 4: at the questions that were asked. I don't think that
1:07:18
Speaker 4: they were reflective of the concerns of people in the
1:07:22
Speaker 4: state of Maryland. I think the questions that were asked
1:07:25
Speaker 4: in that debate were reflective of the literary class, like
1:07:33
Speaker 4: the political reporters they had their own questions that I
1:07:37
Speaker 4: think they, in fact, are also detached from what's going
1:07:41
Speaker 4: on in the state. I think that demanding, people demanding
1:07:45
Speaker 4: that the candidates show up and answer their questions is
1:07:49
Speaker 4: one way that you can.
1:07:51
Speaker 3: Have an impact in this election.
1:07:54
Speaker 4: I do think it's important, voting is important, regardless of
1:08:03
Speaker 4: who it is that you're voting for, it's important that we, one,
1:08:07
Speaker 4: take back the Congress, that Congress changes hands, let me
1:08:14
Speaker 4: put it that way, that we don't have the same
1:08:16
Speaker 4: people who are in office now continuing that. So I
1:08:21
Speaker 4: think that those are the two things I would leave
1:08:22
Speaker 4: people with is show up and vote. Make sure you
1:08:25
Speaker 4: vote in congressional elections this year and demand that the
1:08:31
Speaker 4: gubernatorial candidates show up and demand that people expand the
1:08:36
Speaker 4: stage so that you can actually have a meaningful conversation
1:08:40
Speaker 4: that it's not just him, you know, he, him versus,
1:08:44
Speaker 4: you know, he said, she said that, which is what
1:08:48
Speaker 4: I felt like this debate was.
1:08:50
Speaker 2: So I would say three things.
1:08:52
Speaker 5: The first is, is that our community needs to be
1:08:55
Speaker 5: exposed to a version of civics that isn't like the
1:08:58
Speaker 5: after-school special version. And what I mean by that is
1:09:02
Speaker 5: that we're often told, like, vote, you know, going out
1:09:05
Speaker 5: to vote participating, that's our civic duty. You know, even
1:09:08
Speaker 5: folks will say our ancestors died for the right to vote,
1:09:10
Speaker 5: which is true. But it's important for us to understand
1:09:13
Speaker 5: that if we're going to be engaged in civics, that
1:09:15
Speaker 5: we need to engage it. I'm talking specifically to black
1:09:18
Speaker 5: folks from the perspective of engaging in political warfare against
1:09:21
Speaker 5: this system that wants to continue to maintain this system
1:09:23
Speaker 5: of white supremacy. And so we need to understand the
1:09:27
Speaker 5: machinery of government so that we can effectively wage that
1:09:30
Speaker 5: political war. And LBS offers civics trainings every year. So
1:09:33
Speaker 5: that's the first. The second thing that I'll say is
1:09:37
Speaker 5: that it's important that we are more granular about and
1:09:42
Speaker 5: understanding the opportunities that Maryland has to influence the political landscape.
1:09:47
Speaker 5: And I'll give one example. It is likely that the
1:09:51
Speaker 5: Democrats are going to take back the House of Representatives.
1:09:55
Speaker 5: The person who is likely to take the gavel as
1:09:58
Speaker 5: the chair of the Judiciary Committee is Jamie Raskin. Jamie
1:10:02
Speaker 5: Raskin is a congressman here in the state of Maryland. Well,
1:10:06
Speaker 5: one of the things that's been a longstanding project is H.R.
1:10:10
Speaker 1: 40.
1:10:11
Speaker 2: Right.
1:10:11
Speaker 5: The bill that would commission a study on how on reparations.
1:10:16
Speaker 5: So Maryland actually has an opportunity to to use our
1:10:20
Speaker 5: pressure to to essentially get Congressman Raskin to commit to
1:10:25
Speaker 5: moving H.R.
1:10:26
Speaker 2: 40 out of his committee.
1:10:28
Speaker 8: Right.
1:10:28
Speaker 2: And it is not unusual.
1:10:31
Speaker 5: In a situation like Congressman Raskin is in where they
1:10:34
Speaker 5: actually are already talking about what kinds of bills are
1:10:37
Speaker 5: going to come out of the committee. So this is
1:10:39
Speaker 5: a really opportune time for, just as an example, for
1:10:43
Speaker 5: the public to go to Congressman Raskin because he's going
1:10:47
Speaker 5: to win his election. I don't even know if he
1:10:49
Speaker 5: has a Republican opponent in November. But this is the
1:10:52
Speaker 5: time for us to demand to say, okay, are you
1:10:55
Speaker 5: going to make sure H.R. 40 moves out of the committee?
1:10:59
Speaker 5: So those are the kinds of opportunities that I think
1:11:01
Speaker 5: is important. You know, it is likely or is possible
1:11:05
Speaker 5: that maybe Chris Van Hollen becomes the Senate majority leader, right?
1:11:09
Speaker 5: Particularly if the Democrats take back the Senate. And so again,
1:11:12
Speaker 5: using the opportunity, he is a US Senator in Maryland.
1:11:16
Speaker 5: We have an opportunity to dictate the policy agenda as Marylanders.
1:11:20
Speaker 5: So we need to, so that's the second thing is
1:11:22
Speaker 5: use the opportunity of folks that are elected here to
1:11:25
Speaker 5: move our agenda. And then the last thing that I'll
1:11:27
Speaker 5: say and I know Andy is going to say this,
1:11:30
Speaker 5: but it's important for me to say this, is that
1:11:33
Speaker 5: it is important for people that's already going to vote
1:11:36
Speaker 5: for Westmore, you should do it. I'm not going to
1:11:38
Speaker 5: discourage people that are already committed, tried and true Democrats
1:11:41
Speaker 5: want to vote for Westmore. Those of you that are
1:11:44
Speaker 5: interested in a politics where we have more options, it
1:11:49
Speaker 5: is important for you to vote for Andy. And the
1:11:52
Speaker 5: reason that it's important for you to vote for Andy,
1:11:54
Speaker 5: as a person who's worked on political campaigns, You know,
1:11:58
Speaker 5: there's software that you get, there's a van, right, where
1:12:01
Speaker 5: you're able to get information about voters and demographic information.
1:12:06
Speaker 5: So campaign study, right, changes in the electorate. So as
1:12:11
Speaker 5: Andy said, there hasn't been a third-party candidate to get
1:12:14
Speaker 5: more than 3% since Reconstruction. So something like 4%, 5%,
1:12:19
Speaker 5: 6% is something that will bring attention.
1:12:27
Speaker 2: Right.
1:12:27
Speaker 5: Or will come to the attention of Democratic Party establishment elites. Well,
1:12:32
Speaker 5: they will have to say for their own electoral viability,
1:12:35
Speaker 5: not just out of like some altruistic. Oh, these people
1:12:38
Speaker 5: want something more out of their own electoral viability. They
1:12:42
Speaker 5: will have to take note of that. And that will
1:12:45
Speaker 5: impact some of the policies that they put on that platform.
1:12:48
Speaker 5: As Charlie mentioned earlier, there have been some more progressive
1:12:52
Speaker 5: folks that have been elected to the legislature.
1:12:54
Speaker 7: Right.
1:12:55
Speaker 5: That came simultaneously when there were Green Party candidates for
1:12:59
Speaker 5: mayor and Green Party candidates for delegate and for state senator.
1:13:04
Speaker 5: So this came in the context of that third party pressure,
1:13:08
Speaker 5: where you had Democrats being pulled further to the left.
1:13:11
Speaker 5: And so this is how we get policies that repeal
1:13:15
Speaker 5: the Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights, policies that created
1:13:19
Speaker 5: the Community Repair and Reinvestment Fund to put resources in
1:13:22
Speaker 5: the communities impacted by the war on drugs. So I
1:13:24
Speaker 5: say all to say that the practical reason is that
1:13:27
Speaker 5: Andy will tell you we've talked and he's not going
1:13:29
Speaker 5: to become governor.
1:13:30
Speaker 4: Right.
1:13:31
Speaker 5: But the reason to vote for him is to send
1:13:34
Speaker 5: the message to the party that we want something more
1:13:37
Speaker 5: than what is given to us. And what's beautiful about
1:13:40
Speaker 5: the situation we're in now is we're not in a situation.
1:13:43
Speaker 2: Where we're at risk of electing a Republican.
1:13:47
Speaker 1: Right.
1:13:47
Speaker 5: There's literally Dan Cox is not going to win. So
1:13:50
Speaker 5: all the excuses that people make about why it's so
1:13:53
Speaker 5: important to vote for Democrats is not a concern for
1:13:55
Speaker 5: this election. So if you're a person that wants more
1:13:58
Speaker 5: choices in your political landscape, then voting for Andy, voting
1:14:01
Speaker 5: for the Green Party helps to send that message and
1:14:05
Speaker 5: create more viability politically for more options.
1:14:10
Speaker 2: All right.
1:14:11
Speaker 6: So the first thing I'm going to say is if
1:14:12
Speaker 6: you like what Davon said and you agree with him,
1:14:15
Speaker 6: talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors, talk to
1:14:17
Speaker 6: your coworkers. the people are not dumb, the people are
1:14:20
Speaker 6: not slow, but the people in the consultant class want
1:14:24
Speaker 6: to frame politics that way. They want to frame it
1:14:27
Speaker 6: as if every single voter is stupid and is only
1:14:30
Speaker 6: going to listen to 30 second sound bites and has
1:14:33
Speaker 6: a short attention span and can't comprehend an argument that
1:14:36
Speaker 6: is strategic other than an argument about who is going
1:14:38
Speaker 6: to win. Your friends and neighbors and coworkers are not stupid.
1:14:42
Speaker 6: They can understand complex arguments about strategy. And I think
1:14:46
Speaker 6: what Davon was laying out there is an easy actually
1:14:49
Speaker 6: to explain argument. I actually think most people can understand that.
1:14:52
Speaker 6: Dan Cox is not going to win. Wes Moore is
1:14:55
Speaker 6: going to win. And a vote for us that sends
1:14:57
Speaker 6: a symbolic signal to people that says that people are
1:15:00
Speaker 6: ready for a change on these issues will be heard.
1:15:04
Speaker 6: The politicians and the consultants will tell you they won't
1:15:07
Speaker 6: hear it, but they will tell you that because they
1:15:08
Speaker 6: will hear it. They will tell you that if you
1:15:11
Speaker 6: don't win, it doesn't matter, but that's because they don't
1:15:13
Speaker 6: want to have to change what they're doing based on
1:15:15
Speaker 6: how people vote, if people vote outside of the two-party system.
1:15:18
Speaker 6: But they know. They know exactly what the threshold is.
1:15:22
Speaker 6: They know that at 3.2%, we would have the best
1:15:24
Speaker 6: performance since Reconstruction. They know at 4%, it would send
1:15:28
Speaker 6: a shockwave through people in Annapolis. So the first thing
1:15:31
Speaker 6: is talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors, have
1:15:33
Speaker 6: reasonable and intelligent conversations with them because we're all reasonable
1:15:37
Speaker 6: and intelligent people.
1:15:38
Speaker 7: The second thing is vote for us. You know, I
1:15:40
Speaker 7: got to say that. Vote for me.
1:15:41
Speaker 6: Vote for Andy Ellis and Owen Silverman Andrews, Green Party
1:15:45
Speaker 6: candidates for governor and lieutenant governor on November 3 or
1:15:48
Speaker 6: early voting or however you vote.
1:15:50
Speaker 7: The number of votes we get will matter.
1:15:52
Speaker 6: At 1%, we keep the ability for the Green Party
1:15:55
Speaker 6: to stay on the ballot for the Baltimore City elections
1:15:58
Speaker 6: in 2028. So even if we don't get that historic number,
1:16:01
Speaker 6: But if we get 1%, we still have the opportunity
1:16:04
Speaker 6: to be on the ballot in 2028 so that we
1:16:06
Speaker 6: can run candidates, maybe some folks here in this room
1:16:09
Speaker 6: or some folks that you know, here in Baltimore City
1:16:11
Speaker 6: against the Democrats and Republicans, I guess, here in Baltimore City.
1:16:16
Speaker 6: The third thing I would say is pick one of
1:16:17
Speaker 6: the issues that you think is important that we are
1:16:19
Speaker 6: working on or that LBS is working on or that
1:16:22
Speaker 6: Charlie is working on and go and show up Annapolis
1:16:26
Speaker 6: and exert that grassroots governing power that we all know
1:16:29
Speaker 6: we have in order to get the General Assembly to
1:16:32
Speaker 6: do something they don't want to do right now. In
1:16:34
Speaker 6: order to push them to an outcome like passing the
1:16:37
Speaker 6: law enforcement officer bill of rights, like banning the data centers,
1:16:40
Speaker 6: like taxing the wealthy on their wealth and making sure
1:16:43
Speaker 6: that it's not having cuts that affect the working class
1:16:46
Speaker 6: and the middle class, making sure that they're not cutting
1:16:48
Speaker 6: money out of our schools. Let's go get some of
1:16:50
Speaker 6: those wins after we set that historic number in November
1:16:55
Speaker 6: so that we can show that the power is transferable.
1:16:57
Speaker 6: It's not just a vanity project. It's not just for history.
1:17:00
Speaker 6: It's about building the kind of community governing power that
1:17:03
Speaker 6: we need in order to get the outcomes that we
1:17:04
Speaker 6: want for our communities. Because if we don't, nobody else
1:17:07
Speaker 6: is going to do it for us.
1:17:09
Speaker 2: Let's give it up for our panel, everybody. Charlie Carter,
1:17:12
Speaker 2: Andy Ellis, Davon Love. Awesome. Yeah, thank you guys so much.
1:17:19
Speaker 2: That was great. Now let's open it up to what
1:17:24
Speaker 2: y'all think.
1:17:26
Speaker 1: Yes, please remember we do need y'all to speak into
1:17:29
Speaker 1: the microphone so everyone can hear you. So we have
1:17:32
Speaker 1: a microphone right there. Thank you so much for carrying
1:17:36
Speaker 1: it over there.
1:17:36
Speaker 9: First, I'm going to just say thank you. Thank you, Davion,
1:17:39
Speaker 9: for letting me know about this, right? So I guess
1:17:42
Speaker 9: my question is this. You know, Frederick Douglass said power
1:17:45
Speaker 9: concedes to nothing, but power never has and never will.
1:17:47
Speaker 4: Right.
1:17:48
Speaker 9: You know, I'm pissed off in terms of that. First
1:17:51
Speaker 9: of all, in third grade, they told me no person,
1:17:54
Speaker 9: no party was beyond law. So I don't want to
1:17:58
Speaker 9: hear the bullshit when they say we ain't got enough
1:18:01
Speaker 9: Democrats in office to stop Donald Trump from.
1:18:04
Speaker 2: What he's doing.
1:18:05
Speaker 4: Right.
1:18:06
Speaker 9: You know, secondly, then, you know, we have a president
1:18:11
Speaker 9: that's illegal. I mean, the man got 34 felonies, right?
1:18:16
Speaker 9: And we allowed him to be president. So I'm saying,
1:18:19
Speaker 9: you know, in one sense, it's just a game, right?
1:18:23
Speaker 2: That everybody is against the people, and we have to
1:18:27
Speaker 2: choose who we think.
1:18:29
Speaker 9: It's going to protect us when all of them are
1:18:31
Speaker 9: showing that they're against us, right? So, you know, so
1:18:35
Speaker 9: I guess my point is this, is that I would
1:18:38
Speaker 9: like to hear people talking about firing up the people
1:18:41
Speaker 9: and saying that, you know, when they talk about the
1:18:43
Speaker 9: Declaration of Independence, even if they didn't have us in mind,
1:18:47
Speaker 9: they says that any time the government does not work
1:18:49
Speaker 9: for the interests of the people The people have a
1:18:52
Speaker 9: duty and obligation to overthrow the government to establish government
1:18:56
Speaker 9: is gonna work for them so I'm saying do we
1:18:59
Speaker 9: just sit back and If we can't stop down Trump
1:19:04
Speaker 9: after the election, then.
1:19:05
Speaker 2: What do we do? I So I'll say a couple
1:19:10
Speaker 2: of things.
1:19:12
Speaker 5: The first is that Trump is going to not be
1:19:18
Speaker 5: in office in two years. And it's important for us
1:19:22
Speaker 5: to think now about what our 2028 strategy is going
1:19:27
Speaker 5: to be. And I think too often what happens is
1:19:29
Speaker 5: we think about it in 2028. So I would say
1:19:33
Speaker 5: the first thing is that we need to think, especially
1:19:35
Speaker 5: in an environment where the Democrats take control of the House,
1:19:39
Speaker 5: and if they also take control of the Senate. And
1:19:42
Speaker 5: I say that because Democrats, because black folks are a
1:19:46
Speaker 5: captured electorate, we have some leverage. We have some leverage
1:19:49
Speaker 5: in terms of what they do. And so I would
1:19:51
Speaker 5: say it's important for us to dictate to the Democratic Party,
1:19:56
Speaker 5: particularly those in leadership in Congress, we need to dictate
1:19:59
Speaker 5: to them what an acceptable agenda is. And we need
1:20:03
Speaker 5: to put the most radical agenda in front of them,
1:20:05
Speaker 5: knowing that they're not going.
1:20:06
Speaker 2: To do it.
1:20:07
Speaker 5: But what it does is that it helps mobilize the
1:20:10
Speaker 5: general public to recognize the ineptitudes. Because I think what
1:20:13
Speaker 5: happens sometimes is that Democrats will pick a handful of
1:20:16
Speaker 5: things that they've done good. And so they use those
1:20:19
Speaker 5: handful of good things to justify all the other ineptitudes.
1:20:22
Speaker 5: So I think we have to put a robust agenda
1:20:25
Speaker 5: in front of those that are going to take leadership.
1:20:28
Speaker 5: And we need to do that in advance as opposed
1:20:30
Speaker 5: to when the election happens. The second thing I would
1:20:33
Speaker 5: say is that we need to take advantage of local
1:20:37
Speaker 5: opportunities to exercise that leverage. One example that I'll give
1:20:42
Speaker 5: in Baltimore County. So Baltimore County has a seven-member county
1:20:48
Speaker 5: council and currently only has one black person to serve
1:20:53
Speaker 5: on the county council. Now, Baltimore County did some work
1:20:57
Speaker 5: last year and the last couple of years, ratify an
1:21:00
Speaker 5: expansion of their county council. Well, now there's going to
1:21:03
Speaker 5: be nine members instead of seven. which will expand the
1:21:06
Speaker 5: capacity for black folks to be represented on the County council.
1:21:11
Speaker 5: Now the challenge when they, cause they wanted to expand
1:21:13
Speaker 5: it to 11, right. But, and they also wanted to
1:21:16
Speaker 5: ensure that there were four majority non-white districts as opposed
1:21:20
Speaker 5: to just three. Now what ultimately passed was a map
1:21:23
Speaker 5: that had three majority non-white districts as opposed to four.
1:21:27
Speaker 5: And the reason is because on the current seven member council,
1:21:31
Speaker 5: there are four Democrats and three Republicans who, And in
1:21:34
Speaker 5: order to change the composition of the county council, you
1:21:37
Speaker 5: need five, you need a super majority. So in Baltimore County,
1:21:43
Speaker 5: they're likely gonna elect a black county executive, so that'll
1:21:46
Speaker 5: be a first. But what I argue is that the
1:21:48
Speaker 5: most important thing is that if folks in Baltimore County
1:21:52
Speaker 5: can elect six Democratic council people instead of five, and
1:21:59
Speaker 5: many of those nominees, those Democratic nominees for county council
1:22:03
Speaker 5: are black folks, right? They actually just did an event
1:22:06
Speaker 5: this past weekend where the Divine Nine did an event, right,
1:22:09
Speaker 5: where they featured those black folks that are running for.
1:22:12
Speaker 5: So if we get six folks in the county council
1:22:15
Speaker 5: in Baltimore County, that is a level of electoral power
1:22:18
Speaker 5: where black people can have leverage in Baltimore County in
1:22:21
Speaker 5: a way that black folks have not had leverage in
1:22:24
Speaker 5: Baltimore County. And my disappointment, and I don't even know
1:22:27
Speaker 5: if I would say disappointment, that the Democratic Party is
1:22:30
Speaker 5: focusing more on getting this 80 congressional map drawn, right?
1:22:35
Speaker 5: As opposed to focusing on something like in Baltimore County,
1:22:37
Speaker 5: where you can actually make a difference and actually shoring
1:22:40
Speaker 5: up like black electoral power in Baltimore County. But it
1:22:44
Speaker 5: seems that the Democrats are more concerned with the national
1:22:48
Speaker 5: fight in terms of symbolically fighting Trump because one additional
1:22:52
Speaker 5: congressional seat, as opposed to thinking about what are the
1:22:55
Speaker 5: things that the party can do to enhance black local
1:22:58
Speaker 5: elected power. And so I would say that looking for opportunities,
1:23:02
Speaker 5: Andy mentioned data centers. This past primary election, there are
1:23:06
Speaker 5: a bunch of folks that were ousted from their seat
1:23:08
Speaker 5: because of the position on data centers. I don't imagine
1:23:10
Speaker 5: that's going to go away. So again, just looking for
1:23:13
Speaker 5: local opportunities to exercise some of that power that can
1:23:16
Speaker 5: build up and hopefully give us the leverage to be
1:23:18
Speaker 5: more impactful on the national scale.
1:23:21
Speaker 4: Thank you, Davon, because I think that was excellent, especially
1:23:24
Speaker 4: about putting the aggressive agenda on the on.
1:23:29
Speaker 3: The table. We have seen.
1:23:35
Speaker 4: When Donald Trump came in, we saw just how fast
1:23:39
Speaker 4: he was able to pass some really stuff we thought
1:23:43
Speaker 4: was crazy. I mean, when they started talking about Project 2025,
1:23:49
Speaker 4: most people thought they'll never be able to get this through.
1:23:53
Speaker 3: And look at all the things.
1:23:55
Speaker 4: It's something like 70% of it has been implemented in
1:23:58
Speaker 4: a year and a half. So nobody can say we
1:24:02
Speaker 4: can't do big things really fast. But we can't unless
1:24:06
Speaker 4: we stay engaged. And we need some big ideas to
1:24:11
Speaker 4: put up there. We've also been able to see Zoram
1:24:14
Speaker 4: Mamdani pass some really big things in New York City.
1:24:20
Speaker 4: things that nobody in New York, I'm from New York,
1:24:23
Speaker 4: nobody in New York ever.
1:24:24
Speaker 3: Thought that he'd be able to get past.
1:24:29
Speaker 4: We need those big, bold ideas on the table, but
1:24:33
Speaker 4: here's the most important thing. Over the last 30 years,
1:24:39
Speaker 4: and this particularly happens in the black community, as we
1:24:42
Speaker 4: have been trained to show up on election day to vote,
1:24:49
Speaker 4: and then go home and go back to our lives.
1:24:53
Speaker 4: That the people we elect, they're gonna take care of us.
1:24:58
Speaker 4: They're gonna be the ones who are, we're gonna get
1:25:01
Speaker 4: it done for you, right? But let me ask you
1:25:05
Speaker 4: this question. If you had a boss that showed up
1:25:08
Speaker 4: once every four years, how good would you be at
1:25:11
Speaker 4: your job?
1:25:14
Speaker 3: What would you be doing.
1:25:15
Speaker 4: For the three years in time nine months before you
1:25:20
Speaker 4: knew they were coming back, you'd do whatever the hell
1:25:23
Speaker 4: you wanted to do. And that's what we, we are
1:25:27
Speaker 4: the boss when we elect people to office, whether it's
1:25:30
Speaker 4: to local, whether it's to state, whether it's the federal,
1:25:34
Speaker 4: we are the boss, we're the employee.
1:25:36
Speaker 3: But if we go.
1:25:37
Speaker 4: Home, if we go show up on election day or
1:25:40
Speaker 4: a couple of months before election day, and we tune
1:25:42
Speaker 4: in and then we show up and we cast our
1:25:44
Speaker 4: ballot and then we go back to our lives and
1:25:48
Speaker 4: you know, watching, you know, daytime dramas and, you know,
1:25:53
Speaker 4: love is blind, you know. And we don't think about
1:25:58
Speaker 4: it again until the next four years. Those politicians that
1:26:04
Speaker 4: we elected, no matter how good they are, no matter who,
1:26:08
Speaker 4: where they came from, are going to do what the
1:26:10
Speaker 4: hell they want to do for those three years and
1:26:13
Speaker 4: nine months and then until they come back around again, right?
1:26:17
Speaker 4: So we have to stay on top of it. We
1:26:20
Speaker 4: have to check in. We have to tune in. That
1:26:23
Speaker 4: means when there's a town hall, we got to show up.
1:26:27
Speaker 4: We got to show up and tune in to figure
1:26:30
Speaker 4: out how they're voting and what they're voting for and
1:26:33
Speaker 4: whether they're representing us.
1:26:35
Speaker 3: We can't just go back to sleep.
1:26:37
Speaker 4: And that is going to be really hard for people
1:26:40
Speaker 4: who are stringing together two or three jobs.
1:26:44
Speaker 3: But if we want.
1:26:46
Speaker 4: those big bold ideas to come through, they have to
1:26:51
Speaker 4: know that we're watching. And they have to know that
1:26:55
Speaker 4: we're keeping score. We have to show up to stuff.
1:26:58
Speaker 4: And I think that's the most important thing that we
1:26:59
Speaker 4: can do to try to get control of politics again.
1:27:07
Speaker 6: Yeah, and so I will answer this to take it
1:27:10
Speaker 6: back to the 2024 election. So before the 2024 election,
1:27:14
Speaker 6: Davon and I were both on the Charter Commission, and
1:27:17
Speaker 6: this is the commission that Baltimore City has where we
1:27:21
Speaker 6: look at the charter, and every 10 years the citizens
1:27:23
Speaker 6: shall gather and make recommendations to the city council. The
1:27:26
Speaker 6: city council is not going to do any of those recommendations.
1:27:28
Speaker 6: But one of the things that Davon and I saw
1:27:30
Speaker 6: coming during that was David Smith of Sinclair Broadcasting's question
1:27:34
Speaker 6: that would have slashed the Baltimore City Council in half.
1:27:39
Speaker 6: And we decided one day in Annapolis in January or something,
1:27:42
Speaker 6: we kind of just decided we were going to beat it.
1:27:45
Speaker 6: And we decided we were going to beat it because
1:27:46
Speaker 6: we wanted to develop the muscle of democracy in order
1:27:49
Speaker 6: to show that we could fight back and we weren't
1:27:51
Speaker 6: dependent on the Democratic Party in order to get the
1:27:53
Speaker 6: wins that we wanted. Democratic Party at that time was saying, well,
1:27:57
Speaker 6: we got to make sure that it doesn't get on
1:27:58
Speaker 6: the ballot. We got to sue to get it off
1:28:00
Speaker 6: because we can never beat one of these things. It's
1:28:03
Speaker 6: as sure that a charter amendment is going to pass
1:28:05
Speaker 6: that it is that a Democrat is going to get elected.
1:28:08
Speaker 6: And we decided that it was important to show that
1:28:10
Speaker 6: that was not actually the truth and that the people
1:28:13
Speaker 6: could come together, put together the kind of organization that
1:28:15
Speaker 6: was necessary, and beat the local evil billionaire. Well, he's
1:28:20
Speaker 6: not really a billionaire, but a hundred millionaire, the local
1:28:24
Speaker 6: rich man who wants to run our government who's a
1:28:27
Speaker 6: friend of Trump. And we organized with labor, we organized
1:28:31
Speaker 6: with faith groups, we organized with Democrats, and we organized
1:28:35
Speaker 6: the media in order to be able to actually beat
1:28:37
Speaker 6: that question. And we beat it because we were able
1:28:40
Speaker 6: believed it was possible and we believed it was necessary.
1:28:43
Speaker 7: And I think what.
1:28:44
Speaker 6: I'm using that to say is that one of the
1:28:47
Speaker 6: things that Trump has shown us is that we don't
1:28:49
Speaker 6: have the grassroots governing power in most of our communities
1:28:52
Speaker 6: to protect ourselves from a fascist in Washington, D.C., and
1:28:56
Speaker 6: if we rely on the Democratic Party to do it,
1:28:59
Speaker 6: we can see that they're not going to be able
1:29:01
Speaker 6: to do it. They don't have the capability, they don't
1:29:03
Speaker 6: have the will, and they don't have the structure. So
1:29:05
Speaker 6: we have to start developing the kind of power and
1:29:07
Speaker 6: the kind of use of democracy that allows us to
1:29:10
Speaker 6: get the outcomes that we need regardless of what they're
1:29:13
Speaker 6: going to do. Once we start developing that power, they'll
1:29:16
Speaker 6: come along in some ways. With question H, by the end,
1:29:19
Speaker 6: all of the Democrats wanted to jump on question H
1:29:21
Speaker 6: because they realized it was going to win. And they
1:29:23
Speaker 6: wanted to be able to say that they were going
1:29:24
Speaker 6: to claim a win. But they jumped on board because
1:29:27
Speaker 6: we believed it could happen and did the organizing with
1:29:30
Speaker 6: the community in order to make sure that it was
1:29:32
Speaker 6: going to get defeated.
1:29:33
Speaker 7: Yeah, we needed them.
1:29:33
Speaker 6: It was useful to have their resources. It was useful
1:29:36
Speaker 6: to have their money. It was useful to have their
1:29:37
Speaker 6: door knocking. But they didn't do it because they wanted
1:29:40
Speaker 6: to do it. They did it because we believed that
1:29:43
Speaker 6: the impossible was possible. We made sure that it happened.
1:29:46
Speaker 6: We did the organizing and we flexed and built those
1:29:49
Speaker 6: muscles of democracy to get one win that was useful
1:29:53
Speaker 6: in 2024. And I think those victories are hints of
1:29:55
Speaker 6: the future. And I think if we can look and
1:29:57
Speaker 6: see how that works, we can think about how to
1:30:00
Speaker 6: apply that model in other places.
1:30:04
Speaker 2: Well, and, you know, if I could hop in here
1:30:07
Speaker 2: as well, right?
1:30:08
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what, you know, we talk about
1:30:11
Speaker 1: so much at The Real News and in, like, the
1:30:13
Speaker 1: reporting that I do with working people when it comes to, like,
1:30:17
Speaker 1: unionizing your workplace, right? It's like a union at a
1:30:21
Speaker 1: Starbucks isn't going to change the world, right? But you
1:30:24
Speaker 1: are going to be much more capable of changing the
1:30:26
Speaker 1: world after you unionize your Starbucks, right, with your co-workers, right?
1:30:31
Speaker 1: The struggle changes you and makes you more capable of
1:30:34
Speaker 1: making change thereafter, right? And so I think there is
1:30:40
Speaker 1: something to be said about building that muscle wherever we can,
1:30:43
Speaker 1: however we can. But I really want to kind of
1:30:45
Speaker 1: bring that back to your question because we got some
1:30:48
Speaker 1: muscles that need building for whatever is coming. And we
1:30:52
Speaker 1: don't know full well what's coming, but what we know
1:30:54
Speaker 1: is something is coming, right? You think the guy who's
1:30:57
Speaker 1: using our taxpayer dollars to pay for political campaign ads
1:31:02
Speaker 1: that I have to fucking watch on football is going
1:31:04
Speaker 1: to just accept the results if he loses in a month?
1:31:07
Speaker 2: Of course he's not.
1:31:09
Speaker 1: Do you think he was just going to go away
1:31:11
Speaker 1: when he got the conviction in court? Of course he wasn't.
1:31:18
Speaker 1: That's the one thing you know about him. He's not
1:31:20
Speaker 1: going to just say, ah, shucks.
1:31:23
Speaker 2: I lost. You beat me.
1:31:25
Speaker 1: You bested old Trump. I'm going to go away off stage.
1:31:28
Speaker 1: You're never going to hear from me again. That's the
1:31:30
Speaker 1: one thing you know is not going to happen. So
1:31:33
Speaker 1: what muscles are you building to prepare for whatever does?
1:31:37
Speaker 1: And so that's in the spirit that I wanted to
1:31:39
Speaker 1: offer just some of my thoughts. Again, it's not my
1:31:41
Speaker 1: job to tell anyone how to vote, but like, I
1:31:45
Speaker 1: can tell you go vote because it's.
1:31:47
Speaker 2: Your, it's your right. It's your duty.
1:31:49
Speaker 1: Like I, like it's part of the muscle of civic act,
1:31:52
Speaker 1: like engagement that needs to be built, but it's not
1:31:55
Speaker 1: the only one. And when it comes to like what
1:31:58
Speaker 1: exactly we're fighting for, I think that's the one thing
1:32:01
Speaker 1: I wanted to say is like, I used to love
1:32:05
Speaker 1: being a pundit and going down to DC and being
1:32:09
Speaker 1: on these like new shows where they would just put
1:32:11
Speaker 1: me with some Democratic, you know, talking head or a
1:32:16
Speaker 1: Republican candidate for this office.
1:32:19
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, I'm going to eat this
1:32:20
Speaker 2: fool alive.
1:32:21
Speaker 1: Like, you know, like it was so easy to just
1:32:24
Speaker 1: destroy them on camera with arguments that weren't tied to
1:32:28
Speaker 1: everything you guys have been saying. It's just like, well,
1:32:30
Speaker 1: it's easy to beat you in a debate because I'm
1:32:32
Speaker 1: not trying to please some party. I'm just talking about
1:32:35
Speaker 1: the real shit that we're all dealing with. There's actual
1:32:38
Speaker 1: real power in just saying the truth plainly. And, you know,
1:32:42
Speaker 1: Mother Jones, the famous labor organizer, said that I will
1:32:45
Speaker 1: tell the truth wherever I please. And I like I
1:32:48
Speaker 1: keep thinking about that line and keep repeating it to
1:32:51
Speaker 1: folks because I think we need some of that moxie
1:32:53
Speaker 1: and we need some of that. We need to take
1:32:55
Speaker 1: it further, not just to tell the truth wherever we please,
1:32:58
Speaker 1: but to go say the truth wherever we can and
1:33:01
Speaker 1: like create a sort of indomitable light that can't, you know,
1:33:07
Speaker 1: like be denied, you know, like that. we leave these
1:33:11
Speaker 1: fools no more darkness to keep hiding in. And we
1:33:15
Speaker 1: do it by speaking the truth plainly and loudly, meeting
1:33:18
Speaker 1: each other on shared planes of reality and humanity and
1:33:22
Speaker 1: stop letting the goddamn pundits and the internet and everything
1:33:25
Speaker 1: else divide us and move us away from each other, right?
1:33:29
Speaker 1: I think like we gotta get back to the basics.
1:33:32
Speaker 1: That's why I brought up the breaking points thing. I
1:33:34
Speaker 1: don't give a shit about any party at this point.
1:33:38
Speaker 1: I'm concerned about our species. I'm concerned about life on
1:33:41
Speaker 1: this planet. So if you're asking if we're on the
1:33:46
Speaker 1: left or the right, we don't think in those terms anymore,
1:33:49
Speaker 1: but if you ask all of us in this room,
1:33:52
Speaker 1: Are you on the side over here that's for life
1:33:55
Speaker 1: and a future worth living in and not war? I'm
1:33:59
Speaker 1: sure we'd all be standing on that side, whether or
1:34:01
Speaker 1: not we call ourselves left, you know. So that doesn't
1:34:04
Speaker 1: need to matter right now. What matters is do you
1:34:06
Speaker 1: want to let these sociopaths win? Are we going to
1:34:10
Speaker 1: give them our children's future? Are we going to give
1:34:14
Speaker 1: up all those things that our ancestors fought for, like democracy,
1:34:19
Speaker 1: like the right to vote, like the belief that this
1:34:21
Speaker 1: country could be something better? Are we just going to
1:34:24
Speaker 1: give it over to these fucking nut jobs?
1:34:26
Speaker 2: Of course not.
1:34:28
Speaker 1: And I think we just got to really dig in
1:34:31
Speaker 1: deep and say, you're not taking that from us. Those
1:34:34
Speaker 1: lessons that we learned in elementary school you were talking about,
1:34:37
Speaker 1: they were good lessons. We were taught to despise and
1:34:42
Speaker 1: fight against what we're seeing right now. So we should
1:34:45
Speaker 1: despise it and we should fight against it.
1:34:47
Speaker 2: All right, I'll shut up. So get out of the sofa.
1:34:49
Speaker 8: Sorry, just had a quick question for Andy. And this
1:34:56
Speaker 8: is not meant to be a loaded question in any capacity,
1:34:58
Speaker 8: but what is your opinion of Jill Stein and what
1:35:00
Speaker 8: she brings to the Green Party in America?
1:35:04
Speaker 2: Sure.
1:35:04
Speaker 6: This is the question I get all the time. So
1:35:06
Speaker 6: I appreciate the work that Jill Stein has done to
1:35:08
Speaker 6: help build the Green Party. She has secured Green Party
1:35:11
Speaker 6: ballot lines and ballot access across the country over the
1:35:15
Speaker 6: last 12 years or so, and she has done so
1:35:17
Speaker 6: a great sacrifice to herself. Jill Stein could have been
1:35:20
Speaker 6: a happily retired doctor herself. who sat in her home
1:35:25
Speaker 6: in Massachusetts, did local activism, played in her band, and
1:35:30
Speaker 6: tended her garden. And everybody would love her because she
1:35:33
Speaker 6: was the kind of local politics that we like. She
1:35:35
Speaker 6: chose a different path, and she chose that path because
1:35:39
Speaker 6: she thought that it was necessary. She thought that what
1:35:41
Speaker 6: Ralph Nader had started to do with the Green Party
1:35:44
Speaker 6: was important, and she realized that somebody else needed to
1:35:47
Speaker 6: pick up the baton and keep going on it. And
1:35:50
Speaker 6: I hope that Jill Stein is not our next presidential nominee.
1:35:53
Speaker 6: And I don't say that with any disrespect toward Jill.
1:35:55
Speaker 6: But I would like to see somebody new come up
1:35:58
Speaker 6: and represent a new era of the Green Party that
1:36:00
Speaker 6: is focused on building black and brown and working power
1:36:04
Speaker 6: in deep blue cities and deep blue states. Because I
1:36:07
Speaker 6: think that if we start to do that, we can
1:36:09
Speaker 6: start to see real change. I think if we focus
1:36:11
Speaker 6: more on Baltimore than we focus on Pennsylvania, or we
1:36:14
Speaker 6: focus more on Prince George's County than we do on
1:36:17
Speaker 6: Michigan or something like that, I think we can start
1:36:19
Speaker 6: to build the kind of alternative that those places need.
1:36:22
Speaker 7: And the last thing I'll say about this.
1:36:24
Speaker 6: Is that alternative that is the People's Party on the
1:36:26
Speaker 6: left does not have to be the Green Party. But
1:36:29
Speaker 6: the Green Party is the one that has the ballot
1:36:31
Speaker 6: line in Maryland right now, and it is the one
1:36:33
Speaker 6: that has the structural capacity.
1:36:34
Speaker 7: To nominate candidates and to allow people to get on there.
1:36:37
Speaker 7: If it is the Ujima.
1:36:38
Speaker 6: People's Progress Party, if it's a workers' party, if it's
1:36:40
Speaker 6: an amalgamation that we haven't seen or a formation that
1:36:42
Speaker 6: we haven't seen yet, excellent. We need something that is
1:36:45
Speaker 6: willing to fight against the capitalist system and the two-party system,
1:36:48
Speaker 6: and I think Jill Stein has helped the Green Party
1:36:51
Speaker 6: to stay alive in order to do that. I know
1:36:53
Speaker 6: a lot of people dislike Jill Stein, and I know
1:36:56
Speaker 6: a lot of people disagree with her choice to run
1:36:58
Speaker 6: for president in the way that she's run her campaign
1:37:00
Speaker 6: over the years. I don't think there's a ton of
1:37:02
Speaker 6: people who disagree with the platform that she advanced. There's some,
1:37:06
Speaker 6: but they're not the ones who are making that argument.
1:37:08
Speaker 6: But they disagree with the strategy, and they don't like
1:37:11
Speaker 6: her as a person. I hear those concerns. I appreciate
1:37:14
Speaker 6: the work that she's done. I appreciate the sacrifice that
1:37:17
Speaker 6: she's made. And like I say, I hope somebody else
1:37:19
Speaker 6: is the next nominee.
1:37:21
Speaker 7: My name is Al.
1:37:23
Speaker 10: He made a point when he started talking about the unions.
1:37:26
Speaker 10: And the reason why I believe he made the point,
1:37:28
Speaker 10: because I think that's like the hidden weapon that a
1:37:31
Speaker 10: lot of people are not paying attention to. I mean,
1:37:33
Speaker 10: even across the country itself, because at the end of
1:37:35
Speaker 10: the day, all these data centers are mostly being built
1:37:37
Speaker 10: by who? And there is a strong stance for a
1:37:42
Speaker 10: lot of people within unions that you do not cross
1:37:43
Speaker 10: picket lines or protest. So the fact that Baltimore is
1:37:49
Speaker 10: already dealing with the issue with the fact that too
1:37:51
Speaker 10: many people in Baltimore City do not know about privatized
1:37:54
Speaker 10: organized building trades. They know about AFSCME, they know about CEU,
1:37:58
Speaker 10: all the other ones, but are not familiar with JTC
1:38:01
Speaker 10: or any other trade unions.
1:38:03
Speaker 2: Altogether, IBW, whatever. That's a disadvantage.
1:38:08
Speaker 10: And then it's also a further disadvantage because that weapon
1:38:10
Speaker 10: itself is unclear. And I think that if people would
1:38:15
Speaker 10: just execute on that when they're being prompted to do so,
1:38:19
Speaker 10: then they would see exactly what that is for. What
1:38:24
Speaker 10: was happening in Baltimore County, like Dave was talking about,
1:38:27
Speaker 10: I went to the D9 thing, literally talking about what
1:38:30
Speaker 10: I'm talking about now, not in any real detail, because
1:38:32
Speaker 10: I don't trust them either. But at the same time,
1:38:36
Speaker 10: I mentioned the fact that even if it comes to
1:38:38
Speaker 10: job creation, you know what I mean, a lot of
1:38:40
Speaker 10: us don't know about it. And the thing about it
1:38:43
Speaker 10: is that even across the country right now for unions,
1:38:45
Speaker 10: the interest in unions is spiking, literally because it's just
1:38:50
Speaker 10: they get paid more.
1:38:52
Speaker 7: You know what I mean?
1:38:53
Speaker 10: So you have something that's not going to be too
1:38:56
Speaker 10: hard to convince people to want to get into once
1:38:58
Speaker 10: you just only just tell them about it. And then
1:39:01
Speaker 10: in doing so, also talk about the fact that there's
1:39:03
Speaker 10: a far disproportionate gap as it pertains to non-white or black,
1:39:11
Speaker 10: very specifically black, that now when we're talking about Baltimore
1:39:15
Speaker 10: County and Baltimore City and we're talking about the fact
1:39:17
Speaker 10: that they legislated for, you know, Easter 40, and Woodlawn, Rhinestown,
1:39:22
Speaker 10: Milford Mill, Loughran, that now you also have the encroachment
1:39:26
Speaker 10: of Baltimore City, that along with you wanting to get
1:39:30
Speaker 10: a job into the unions and now discover how unions work,
1:39:34
Speaker 10: while at the same time also working on the same
1:39:35
Speaker 10: data centers that you're not really with because I'm not
1:39:38
Speaker 10: with putting that in Woodlawn. There are a lot of
1:39:41
Speaker 10: people who are not working in data centers, mainly us,
1:39:45
Speaker 10: literally because they're not with the whole Woodlawn thing. They
1:39:48
Speaker 10: have maintained it and have dealt with the whole contradiction
1:39:51
Speaker 10: of it, the fact that they've been in Frederick working
1:39:54
Speaker 10: and they need the money.
1:39:56
Speaker 2: So utility itself, it is what it is.
1:39:58
Speaker 10: But they're very stern about the fact that they're not
1:40:00
Speaker 10: going to take the job in Woodlawn.
1:40:02
Speaker 2: But it's not only Woodlawn.
1:40:04
Speaker 10: So I think that we're missing the point that you
1:40:07
Speaker 10: have literally an organized element, no matter how disruptive and
1:40:10
Speaker 10: not as functional as it could be, that already within
1:40:13
Speaker 10: itself in existence, that if you would just listen, and
1:40:16
Speaker 10: actually get involved in it, that you will literally reveal
1:40:20
Speaker 10: a very serious weapon that already exists.
1:40:24
Speaker 1: I thought that was a great comment. I was going
1:40:26
Speaker 1: to say, can we get another one as well? So
1:40:29
Speaker 1: then the panel will respond to a couple of these points.
1:40:31
Speaker 2: But thank you.
1:40:32
Speaker 7: That was great.
1:40:36
Speaker 8: Hi.
1:40:39
Speaker 11: My thing goes to existential questions. Haven't heard anything about genocide.
1:40:52
Speaker 11: Haven't heard anything about the 60th anniversary of the founding
1:40:55
Speaker 11: of the Black Panther Party. But the little pieces of
1:40:59
Speaker 11: history that I've learned coming across my decades of life
1:41:06
Speaker 11: are little things like the birthday of Fannie Lou Hamer,
1:41:11
Speaker 11: which was just a day or two ago. And as
1:41:14
Speaker 11: you guys were talking, I could hear somebody saying in
1:41:17
Speaker 11: my ear, truth crushed to earth shall rise again. I
1:41:21
Speaker 11: could hear somebody else saying to me, the secret of
1:41:24
Speaker 11: life is to have no fear. And if we don't
1:41:30
Speaker 11: have clean water, soil and air, we will cease to exist.
1:41:38
Speaker 11: And if we don't prosecute people who are guilty of murder,
1:41:45
Speaker 11: Nuremberg will have taught us nothing. So I just wanted
1:41:50
Speaker 11: to just hit a couple of dots. And as we're
1:41:56
Speaker 11: going through our day, we think about these things, but
1:42:00
Speaker 11: it just passes. And that's all I have to say.
1:42:08
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I want to take both of these a
1:42:11
Speaker 6: little bit and then let the other panel do it.
1:42:14
Speaker 6: I was at the Towson Planning Commission meeting about the
1:42:18
Speaker 6: data centers back in August or early September. And many
1:42:23
Speaker 6: of the white IBEW folks walked through the protest. And
1:42:27
Speaker 6: my speech that day was like, we got to work
1:42:30
Speaker 6: with IBEW folks. We have to make sure that we're
1:42:33
Speaker 6: not treating them as enemies and that we're treating them
1:42:35
Speaker 6: as comrades in this struggle.
1:42:37
Speaker 2: Now, what?
1:42:39
Speaker 7: You were on a work site that day?
1:42:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
1:42:45
Speaker 6: But so we got in and, you know, and we
1:42:47
Speaker 6: get inside and the planning commission is going down and
1:42:50
Speaker 6: I'm standing in the back with most of the IBEW folks.
1:42:53
Speaker 6: Planning commission is going down their recommendations and they're going
1:42:56
Speaker 6: down their recommendations and they're like, okay, project labor agreements.
1:42:59
Speaker 6: They're like, we do not want project labor agreements for
1:43:02
Speaker 6: these data centers because we don't have them for other stuff.
1:43:06
Speaker 6: And we don't think we need to have them for
1:43:08
Speaker 6: the data centers. And I noticed at the point that
1:43:11
Speaker 6: a lot of the IBEW folks that were in the
1:43:13
Speaker 6: back of the room kind of gasped at that, right?
1:43:15
Speaker 7: Because they were like, well, we have politically.
1:43:18
Speaker 6: Aligned ourselves with the county in this regard in order
1:43:21
Speaker 6: to hopefully get union jobs out of this, right? And
1:43:25
Speaker 6: the county was quick to dismiss that. And I think
1:43:29
Speaker 6: that when we're talking about data centers and when we're
1:43:31
Speaker 6: talking about labor, we have to talk about something beyond
1:43:34
Speaker 6: just saying no to the data centers and talk about
1:43:36
Speaker 6: what we do want to build.
1:43:38
Speaker 7: What do we want to build.
1:43:39
Speaker 6: That electrical workers and trade unionists can build and feel
1:43:42
Speaker 6: comfortable building? What does it look like to build the
1:43:45
Speaker 6: green infrastructure that we need and to train people in
1:43:48
Speaker 6: Baltimore City Schools and Baltimore County Schools in order to
1:43:50
Speaker 6: build that infrastructure?
1:43:51
Speaker 2: Because once we.
1:43:52
Speaker 6: Start building that, we can address the clean water, the
1:43:55
Speaker 6: clean air, and the clean land. And we don't have
1:43:57
Speaker 6: to allow the only construction to be something that is
1:44:00
Speaker 6: destructive to people, that is surveilling people, and that is
1:44:03
Speaker 6: supporting genocide. And I think we need to have that
1:44:06
Speaker 6: positive future focus on this about, well, it is what
1:44:09
Speaker 6: we want. And we need to have these conversations with
1:44:11
Speaker 6: people who are building this stuff to say, what is
1:44:13
Speaker 6: it you would like to build? And how do we
1:44:16
Speaker 6: get the resources for that? And how do we change
1:44:18
Speaker 6: the political climate so that is possible to build with
1:44:20
Speaker 6: the ease with which We build surveillance and data centers.
1:44:23
Speaker 6: So I think that that's the one thing I'll say there.
1:44:25
Speaker 6: And I'd love to talk with you more about this,
1:44:27
Speaker 6: because I know you've been at some of the hearings
1:44:28
Speaker 6: and things like that, talking on some of this stuff too.
1:44:32
Speaker 6: Second thing I want to say is in relation to genocide.
1:44:36
Speaker 6: I think one of the most foundational points in the
1:44:39
Speaker 6: last couple of years that has caused people to break
1:44:42
Speaker 6: away from the two-party system who previously believed in it
1:44:45
Speaker 6: was watching how quickly everybody accepted support of genocide in
1:44:49
Speaker 6: Gaza and how quickly both parties fell over themselves in
1:44:53
Speaker 6: order to crush the student movements, in order to crush
1:44:56
Speaker 6: everybody who was standing up and rising up.
1:44:58
Speaker 7: Our platform is very clear.
1:45:00
Speaker 6: On this, and we wish we had gotten a chance
1:45:02
Speaker 6: to be on the debate stage last night to talk
1:45:04
Speaker 6: about it, because we think it's an important question, but
1:45:06
Speaker 6: when it's just Democrats and Republicans on the stage, they're
1:45:08
Speaker 6: not gonna ask about it. The state of Maryland is
1:45:11
Speaker 6: currently invested in genocide in Israel in a couple of ways.
1:45:14
Speaker 6: They are supporting the Maryland Israel Development Corporation, they have
1:45:18
Speaker 6: an executive order that prevents people from being able to
1:45:21
Speaker 6: boycott the state of Israel if they wanna be a
1:45:23
Speaker 6: state worker, and there's a whole bunch of weapons going
1:45:26
Speaker 6: through the Port of Baltimore that don't need to go
1:45:28
Speaker 6: through the Port of Baltimore. Now, the governor can't actually
1:45:31
Speaker 6: stop those weapons going through the port of Baltimore, but
1:45:34
Speaker 6: they can sure as hell make it a lot harder.
1:45:36
Speaker 6: And the fact that our governor hasn't even thought about
1:45:38
Speaker 6: doing that, because a couple days after October 7th, he
1:45:41
Speaker 6: stood in front of some sort of meshed together Israel-American
1:45:44
Speaker 6: flag and said, Israel has a right to exist, and
1:45:48
Speaker 6: Israel has a right to defend itself, shows us exactly where.
1:45:51
Speaker 7: He's aligned on these questions.
1:45:53
Speaker 6: The tides have turned a little bit on it politically,
1:45:55
Speaker 6: and so he's turned a little bit on it politically,
1:45:57
Speaker 6: but We have seen him being willing to extend a
1:46:01
Speaker 6: commitment to genocide because it's in his political interest, and
1:46:05
Speaker 6: that is the dominant narrative of both parties. The last
1:46:07
Speaker 6: thing I will say about Fannie Lou Hamer is that
1:46:10
Speaker 6: Fannie Lou Hamer was, you know, everybody talks about how
1:46:13
Speaker 6: Fannie Lou Hamer, she went to the convention, she did
1:46:16
Speaker 6: this and that. What they never talk about is when
1:46:17
Speaker 6: they got home from the convention, they went and they
1:46:20
Speaker 6: ran as independents against the Democrats at the time because
1:46:23
Speaker 6: they realized that the power that they had was to
1:46:26
Speaker 6: play the game of in and out. And that is
1:46:29
Speaker 6: where the power for folks have had. There's a guy
1:46:31
Speaker 6: named Haynes Walton Jr. who writes a book called Black
1:46:34
Speaker 6: Political Parties, and he's tracing the way that black political
1:46:37
Speaker 6: parties throughout the South used the power of being in
1:46:41
Speaker 6: or out of the dominant party at the time in
1:46:43
Speaker 6: order to get concessions for black folks, in order to
1:46:45
Speaker 6: get voting rights, in order to get programs that addressed housing,
1:46:48
Speaker 6: in order to get programs that addressed education, and in
1:46:51
Speaker 6: order to get programs that addressed poverty. And he talks
1:46:54
Speaker 6: even about James Clyburn, who we all know currently is
1:46:58
Speaker 6: a Democratic leader, who started in the United Citizens Party
1:47:02
Speaker 6: organizing black folks in order to challenge the Democratic Party
1:47:05
Speaker 6: of South Carolina in order to start nominating and electing
1:47:08
Speaker 6: black folks. And so they ran outside of the two-party
1:47:11
Speaker 6: system in 1970. And they nominated, they elected the first
1:47:14
Speaker 6: three black folks to the South Carolina legislature since Reconstruction
1:47:18
Speaker 6: because they knew the power of playing that game of
1:47:21
Speaker 6: in or out of the dominant party at the time.
1:47:23
Speaker 6: And they knew the power of using the threat to
1:47:27
Speaker 6: take electoral seats away from the dominant political power in
1:47:30
Speaker 6: order to get their demands met. So those two questions,
1:47:35
Speaker 6: I think I'm trying to weave them together in that
1:47:38
Speaker 6: answer there, but I think they're both really good questions,
1:47:41
Speaker 6: and I think they both speak to the urgency of
1:47:43
Speaker 6: the moment and the way that we need to think
1:47:44
Speaker 6: about the strategy that we use going forward.
1:47:47
Speaker 3: Hey, P.
1:47:51
Speaker 2: Shaw.
1:47:51
Speaker 12: Thank you for the session today. A question I have,
1:47:54
Speaker 12: so listening to the debate last night, what was your
1:47:58
Speaker 12: perspective on Wes Moore's response to the reparations question, and
1:48:01
Speaker 12: what wasn't addressed in that response and in the discussion?
1:48:06
Speaker 5: So that's part of the problem with the two party
1:48:09
Speaker 5: system is that we didn't actually get a substantive conversation
1:48:14
Speaker 5: about both the reparations bill itself. That was a controversy
1:48:18
Speaker 5: in Maryland and the issue of reparations.
1:48:20
Speaker 2: In general.
1:48:21
Speaker 5: And what's disappointing about that is that there have been
1:48:24
Speaker 5: polls that have been done that say that amongst the
1:48:26
Speaker 5: black community in Maryland, about 80% of black folks in
1:48:29
Speaker 5: Maryland support reparations. Now, conversely, it says about 20% of
1:48:35
Speaker 5: white folks support reparations. And so to me, the way
1:48:40
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party, again, has, and particularly the governor himself,
1:48:44
Speaker 5: dealt with the issue of reparations, I think dealt with
1:48:47
Speaker 5: it from the vantage point of prioritizing the views, the perspectives,
1:48:52
Speaker 5: the interests of, you know, white folks, right, and the
1:48:55
Speaker 5: white population in this state over black people, which is,
1:48:58
Speaker 5: and a part of what is a challenge with that
1:49:01
Speaker 5: is that, again, you know, Maryland is 30% black. So
1:49:04
Speaker 5: Maryland has sufficient black electoral representation to advocate for a
1:49:09
Speaker 5: strong reparations package. But unfortunately, the governor, in my assessment,
1:49:14
Speaker 5: assessing the national political landscape, especially given the undertones and
1:49:20
Speaker 5: not so much undertones in terms of the national aspirations,
1:49:23
Speaker 5: is using it as a frame of reference in terms
1:49:25
Speaker 5: of how to deal with it.
1:49:26
Speaker 2: I think the danger with the way he answered the question.
1:49:30
Speaker 5: When he talked about his culture of repairing, he talked
1:49:32
Speaker 5: about investing in HBCUs and home ownership, that those things
1:49:37
Speaker 5: might be, those things are good policy. Those things are
1:49:40
Speaker 5: not reparations. Reparations is about investing in black people's capacity
1:49:44
Speaker 5: to practice sovereignty and self-determination. The reparations emerges from a
1:49:49
Speaker 5: revolutionary pan-African nationalist worldview. So whether we're talking about Queen
1:49:53
Speaker 5: Mother Moore, Universal Negro Improvement Association, Black Panther Party for Self-Defense,
1:49:57
Speaker 5: Republic of New Africa, right? These are, you know, Organization
1:50:00
Speaker 5: Afro-American Unity, These are the progenitors of the worldview of
1:50:05
Speaker 5: which reparations emerges.
1:50:07
Speaker 2: And so Westmore's answer.
1:50:10
Speaker 5: It conflates mainstream liberal Democratic Party policy with revolutionary demands
1:50:17
Speaker 5: on the state, which is what reparations is in its
1:50:20
Speaker 5: proper context. And so the two-party system in that debate
1:50:24
Speaker 5: did a disservice to the issue of reparations and a
1:50:26
Speaker 5: substantive conversation about it.
1:50:29
Speaker 6: And I will say, so reparations is an issue that
1:50:32
Speaker 6: the Green Party has had at the core of our
1:50:34
Speaker 6: platform for 25 years. And so when the bill came
1:50:37
Speaker 6: up in Maryland last year about reparations, we were excited.
1:50:41
Speaker 6: We were excited to see a commission that was willing
1:50:43
Speaker 6: to study it. We also knew that we had a
1:50:46
Speaker 6: pretty good idea that Governor Moore was going to veto it.
1:50:49
Speaker 6: I think Davon and I probably had a decent idea
1:50:51
Speaker 6: that he was going to veto it before many of
1:50:53
Speaker 6: the people who were sponsoring the bill did. And, you know,
1:50:56
Speaker 6: we had put together a policy that I think is
1:51:00
Speaker 6: really good on this, and I encourage people to check
1:51:02
Speaker 6: it out, gogreen2026. com front slash reparations. It is built with
1:51:06
Speaker 6: people who have been fighting for different forms of reparation
1:51:09
Speaker 6: in the state of Maryland. for years, and it talks
1:51:12
Speaker 6: about cash payments, but it talks about community investment.
1:51:15
Speaker 7: It talks about land. It talks about burial places.
1:51:18
Speaker 6: It talks about a lot of the different things that
1:51:20
Speaker 6: people have been fighting for who have been in the struggle.
1:51:22
Speaker 6: And if we had had the opportunity to be in
1:51:24
Speaker 6: that debate last night when the two of them were
1:51:27
Speaker 6: not talking about it, we would have talked about it.
1:51:30
Speaker 6: And I think that is what is lost by allowing
1:51:33
Speaker 6: only two parties to be on the stage, because the
1:51:35
Speaker 6: Republicans are only going to say that's a bad idea
1:51:38
Speaker 6: and tell bad jokes. and the Democrats are going to
1:51:41
Speaker 6: do whatever they can to avoid the conversation of reparations
1:51:44
Speaker 6: and to conflate it with unionization, procurement, and poverty alleviation, right?
1:51:52
Speaker 6: And those are separate things, and having a third perspective
1:51:55
Speaker 6: on the debate that was very much pro-reparations and based
1:51:58
Speaker 6: in a party platform that has developed it over 25
1:52:01
Speaker 6: years and based in Maryland policy that is developed from
1:52:04
Speaker 6: people who have been working on it for years and
1:52:06
Speaker 6: years would have fundamentally changed the nature of the debate
1:52:09
Speaker 6: and fundamentally changed the nature of the answers that people
1:52:11
Speaker 6: got as they were watching it. It would have been
1:52:16
Speaker 6: more educational. It would have simply given people a better
1:52:19
Speaker 6: perspective that they didn't have otherwise. But what we saw
1:52:21
Speaker 6: last night was the sort of same thing you could
1:52:25
Speaker 6: see on CNN or any of those other sort of
1:52:28
Speaker 6: talking head type of shows where they have two people
1:52:31
Speaker 6: squaring off And their sides are clear, their sides are ossified,
1:52:34
Speaker 6: but they're not actually speaking to what people want or
1:52:36
Speaker 6: what the question is. And not being there last night,
1:52:40
Speaker 6: that was a huge opportunity lost, I think, for the
1:52:42
Speaker 6: people of Maryland to hear a real perspective about the
1:52:45
Speaker 6: way that reparations could work here and the way that
1:52:47
Speaker 6: both parties avoid that question.
1:52:50
Speaker 4: I agree with Andy. I think I was really disappointed
1:52:55
Speaker 4: in both answers. I wasn't surprised by Dan Cox's response
1:53:00
Speaker 4: to the question of reparations. But I was surprised by
1:53:07
Speaker 4: Wes Moore's response and really disappointed in, as Davon said,
1:53:18
Speaker 4: his conflation of just policies that have already been out
1:53:25
Speaker 4: there with this bold idea of reparations that he just
1:53:31
Speaker 4: wasn't willing to touch it. And I agree with Andy
1:53:33
Speaker 4: that having another person on the stage to do that,
1:53:38
Speaker 4: to bring.
1:53:39
Speaker 3: That up, would be important.
1:53:42
Speaker 4: But the thing that I want to really talk about, though,
1:53:49
Speaker 4: is that this issue, why it's important to have sort
1:53:55
Speaker 4: of independent political power on the outside, when there is
1:54:01
Speaker 4: a Democrat in office, you know, Maryland considers itself a
1:54:04
Speaker 4: blue state and the legislature is, you know, has veto
1:54:08
Speaker 4: proof majorities.
1:54:09
Speaker 3: Um, in both the house and the Senate.
1:54:12
Speaker 4: But when there is a Democrat in office, the legislature
1:54:16
Speaker 4: never quite steps up to being as bold as it
1:54:21
Speaker 4: can be. It doesn't want to leave the, the, um, executive,
1:54:26
Speaker 4: it doesn't want to lead the executive.
1:54:29
Speaker 3: Um, And so I would say.
1:54:33
Speaker 4: That having independent political power outside of the two parties,
1:54:39
Speaker 4: because Democrats themselves are not going to kind of overshadow
1:54:45
Speaker 4: the governor on this issue.
1:54:48
Speaker 3: But we need the independent.
1:54:50
Speaker 4: Power in order to push the party to do more
1:54:55
Speaker 4: and to push the executive to do more. and we've
1:55:01
Speaker 4: seen that happen, but it really is about, it's going
1:55:06
Speaker 4: to happen from the grassroots. It has to be people
1:55:09
Speaker 4: who think that these are important issues, standing up, showing up,
1:55:14
Speaker 4: taking a trip to Annapolis, showing up when the governor
1:55:18
Speaker 4: or any other leader, because I don't want to, although
1:55:22
Speaker 4: we have been focused on the governor because of the debate,
1:55:27
Speaker 4: here in Baltimore, we should not forget that we have
1:55:33
Speaker 4: the Senate president is a senator from Baltimore City, that
1:55:40
Speaker 4: we should also be putting pressure on Senator Ferguson as
1:55:46
Speaker 4: well to make sure that we can push some of
1:55:49
Speaker 4: the bold ideas forward.
1:55:52
Speaker 1: So this has been really, really great, gang, and We
1:55:56
Speaker 1: do need to wrap up in a minute. But I
1:55:59
Speaker 1: did want to, before asking you to join me in
1:56:03
Speaker 1: thanking our great panelists, I did want to offer one
1:56:08
Speaker 1: quick response to both of y'all's really important questions, which
1:56:12
Speaker 1: to me are very much connected, about the unions, about
1:56:16
Speaker 1: Gaza and all the awful things happening. Because as editor-in-chief,
1:56:20
Speaker 1: it's my job to be looking at all these things
1:56:22
Speaker 1: at once and be trying to make sure that we
1:56:24
Speaker 1: report on them. And that's what we've done. I mean,
1:56:28
Speaker 1: today's October 7th. It's been three years since this full-on
1:56:34
Speaker 1: genocide that we've all been watching has happened, and we've
1:56:37
Speaker 1: never stopped reporting on it. We keep publishing documentary reports
1:56:42
Speaker 1: from Gaza. We keep publishing interviews with doctors returning from Gaza.
1:56:46
Speaker 1: We keep talking with members of the Jewish world speaking
1:56:49
Speaker 1: out against Zionism and all this awful stuff.
1:56:53
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking.
1:56:54
Speaker 1: About that today of all days, of course, because as
1:56:59
Speaker 1: a kid growing up, I didn't envision that my adult
1:57:03
Speaker 1: job would be staring at images of children being slaughtered
1:57:08
Speaker 1: with support from my country and my tax dollars. And
1:57:12
Speaker 1: not only that, but that my job would be to
1:57:14
Speaker 1: make sure that the cameras stay on it, that we
1:57:18
Speaker 1: still never stop filming the carnage and the truth until
1:57:24
Speaker 1: it stops. That is all of our goals in some way.
1:57:30
Speaker 1: You keep your eyes open. You keep the camera rolling.
1:57:34
Speaker 1: You keep the light lit. If our comrades and brothers
1:57:39
Speaker 1: and sisters in Gaza, all the journalists that we have lost,
1:57:43
Speaker 1: all the truth-tellers who told us what was happening with
1:57:46
Speaker 1: their phones, if they could keep their eyes open until
1:57:50
Speaker 1: the very end, so can we.
1:57:52
Speaker 2: We owe them that much, but we owe it to
1:57:54
Speaker 2: much more than them. We owe it to all of
1:57:56
Speaker 2: each other, to our children.
1:57:58
Speaker 1: And that's where the labor question always comes into it
1:58:02
Speaker 1: for me. There's so much important stuff there, but unions
1:58:07
Speaker 1: aren't perfect either. A lot of people don't know about
1:58:09
Speaker 1: the unions because we have less than 10% union density
1:58:11
Speaker 1: in this country. Like most people have never worked in
1:58:13
Speaker 1: a union job. And if they have a lot of
1:58:15
Speaker 1: people's unions suck and like, we gotta be able to
1:58:18
Speaker 1: deal with that. We gotta have a cleaning house mentality
1:58:21
Speaker 1: about everything. Like enough is enough. Charlie, you made the
1:58:24
Speaker 1: great point is like, we have been letting Too many
1:58:27
Speaker 1: people off the hook by just giving over the stewardship
1:58:32
Speaker 1: of our society to these technocrats or these elites or
1:58:37
Speaker 1: these con men who sell us on fancy promises. And
1:58:43
Speaker 1: that has led us to corrupt unions, corrupt political parties,
1:58:48
Speaker 1: exploding inequality.
1:58:50
Speaker 2: These people don't deserve the keys to society. So we
1:58:53
Speaker 2: got to take them back.
1:58:55
Speaker 1: And we got to have that mentality that we're not
1:58:58
Speaker 1: waiting on anyone to fix them. We got to start
1:59:00
Speaker 1: rolling up our sleeves and doing it together. So thank
1:59:05
Speaker 1: you guys for rolling up your sleeves and joining us
1:59:08
Speaker 1: and doing that today. Please join me in thanking our
1:59:11
Speaker 1: incredible panelists for sharing their amazing thoughts with us tonight.
1:59:15
Speaker 2: And thank you so much to Andy Ellis. Thank you
1:59:18
Speaker 2: to Charlie Carter. Thank you to Davon Love.
1:59:20
Speaker 1: Thank you to our incredible crew that made all of
1:59:24
Speaker 1: this possible.
1:59:25
Speaker 2: Thank you to Cam. Thank you to Dave. Thank you
1:59:26
Speaker 2: to Kayla.
1:59:27
Speaker 1: Can you guys give them a round of applause for
1:59:28
Speaker 1: making the production happen?