Latest / Breaking The Meta / Joseph Perez-Caputo "Don't Trust Me. Make Me Earn It."
Transcript
- Breaking The Meta: Hello everyone and welcome to Breaking the Meadow. name is Mike Winson. Today we are sitting down with Joseph Perez Caputo, who is running for Connecticut's fourth district, U.S. House of Representatives. Thank you so much for being here, Joseph. How are you doing today? Joseph Perez-Caputo: Very good, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Breaking The Meta: Absolutely, So to start off, ⁓ would mind giving us a little background on who you are and why you decided to run ⁓ for Congress in the first place? Joseph Perez-Caputo: Absolutely. So I'm Joseph Perez Caputo. I was born Joseph Perez, then I became Joseph Caputo at six months old. Shortly before my father died, I asked if I could merge the names. I still need to legally follow through with that. This is the name I've been going by for six or so years now, seven or so years now. ⁓ I grew up... Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Joseph Perez-Caputo: in Stanford, Connecticut until about six years old, moved to kind of the Waterbury, Nogatuck area, graduated from Nogatuck Valley Community College, then went to University of Bridgeport, moved back to Stanford around 22 years old, lived there until right after I got the shot for the pandemic, moved to New York City, lived in Queens for a few years, and now I'm back in Stanford. ⁓ inspired by all the other renegades out there, Zora Mamdani and Cata Bugazzella and even Dixie Fox for a little while there. ⁓ And I just want to come back to my district, provide some good, run to represent the people. And I'm of Sicilian and Boricua heritage, very anti-colonial and our district has. Being so close to New York, a lot of New York problems and Connecticut problems. So we have that tri-state area feel, which means a lot of the locals are kind of written out of history, written out of economic decision. And I think we need a revolutionary and a rebel and a poor man to actually sit in Congress and represent the working folk who know what it means to save that down to the $20, $10 mark. ⁓ So that's why I'm running and that's a little bit about me. Breaking The Meta: Awesome. So you mentioned that your area, because it's so close to New York, has New York problems and Connecticut problems. So that being said, ⁓ what are the problems that your district, when you're going around and talking to people in your district, what are the things they're talking to you about? They're telling you that they need help with? Joseph Perez-Caputo: Affordability. Affordability every step of the way. that's multiple brackets of socioeconomic status. That's not just the working class. That's even beginning lawyers and dentists and doctors who came from nothing, worked hard, now have a touch of money, but realize they're not billionaires and they kind of can't afford to live here. So a lot of people are moving, but the industry is here. So you have a rise in commuters. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Mmm. Joseph Perez-Caputo: So a lot of what you would hear coming out of New York with affordability, we're dealing with the same thing. We're dealing with BlackRock and BlackSpire, whatever, Blackstone, whatever they're, they say it's not them, but it's their subsidiary. Private money buying residential properties. We're dealing with, I think right now an apartment in my hometown of Stanford, Connecticut is maybe $200 more than in Queens. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Joseph Perez-Caputo: Right. So it's it's and that affordability crisis is everywhere. It's in Orlando, it's in Atlanta, it's in San Francisco. ⁓ But in our area, the social services don't necessarily match the neighboring states. ⁓ Not that local politicians haven't tried. Right. You know, people get pushback. ⁓ But. Breaking The Meta: Wow. Joseph Perez-Caputo: things only cost more, especially since the pandemic. We don't have the same agrarian backdrop we used to because now our area has been more industrialized in the last 30, 40 years. ⁓ We have more unaffordable apartments. They call it affordable housing, but everything has luxury on the name. And it's a dorm room, right? If you've lived in a dorm, know architecturally, you don't need to be a really, really smart builder to know, hey. ⁓ Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Joseph Perez-Caputo: So our area really deals with affordability. A lot of my constituents are also very angry with both political parties. They're mad at the Democrats for what they feel are false promises, whether that's the last president or this incumbent or going back to the Obama era or the Clinton era. But a lot of them are really mad at the Republican Party for essentially turning face and kind of not. or turning heel, whatever the expression is, and kind of betraying the working class and everything going on with the Epstein files and the constitutional crisis with this president ⁓ and the fascism. A lot of people in my district are just mad and don't know what to do and they can't afford anything. So the New York problems are affordability and it's accountability and those are my first two tenants that I'm running on. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Gotcha. So another thing that I think, and you actually sort of talked about it, that I think most people in this country are frustrated with all of our politicians, regardless of which side of the aisle you're speaking about, is the idea of accountability or the lack thereof when it comes to anyone in office. So ⁓ one of the things that I am interested in is what you see what accountability means to you, what being accountable to the people of your district looks like to you. Joseph Perez-Caputo: Sure. mean, first off, if you and I don't do our jobs, we're going to lose them. And I don't think that margin should be non-existent with government. It should be higher. So I've publicly stated I support term limits and a ban on stock trading. But I also want to take that a step farther. You can't stock trade until you're X amount of years out of your service. You can't release a book. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Joseph Perez-Caputo: what until X amount you cannot self profit, self promote or self benefit for X amount of years till after your service. I also believe in a total career politician cap. So not just a term limit in general, but let's say for example, I've been a state representative for four years and now I'm a congressional representative, blah, blah, blah. After like 12 years in completely different offices, I have to stop. Unless I like run for president, I'm done. 10 to 12 years, I did my time, and that's that in elected public service office. So ⁓ another aspect to that would be the ability of constituents to actually fire their ⁓ public officials if they're not doing a good job. We have impeachment, it's supposed to work. We've sort of... That entire system has gotten befuddled. So I would love to see it utilized, restored, made more efficient. And impeachment on every level, right? If someone fails to do their job, if people die because of bad policy, they don't get to just not host a town hall, stay real quiet for a little while, and then throw out an email and an Instagram video for name recognition when reelection comes. You know, people deserve to be held accountable. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I cannot argue that any way, or form. ⁓ Obviously, we've got a division problem in this country, regardless of whether or not it's really as much division as some of us think there is. I think a lot of us tend to agree on a lot of the same things. That being said, there are, I'm sure, people in your district that Joseph Perez-Caputo: You ⁓ Breaking The Meta: consider themselves Republicans, consider themselves conservatives, probably have always voted conservative their entire career. What has been your experience going around and talking to people that ⁓ are conservative, but see that you're running as a Democrat? Joseph Perez-Caputo: Great question. Well, first off, most of my family is conservative. ⁓ So some of them have been like, yeah, you know what, Joey's always cared. And I get it. And what's a name? He's always the same revolutionary. He carries the values that care about the community, whatever. Some people are the opposite and it's team sports. It's like, well, no blue, dumb, not listening. You're an idiot. And that's okay. I mean, we live in a propagandized system. Breaking The Meta: Mmm. Joseph Perez-Caputo: where we start to identify what narratives, and both parties have done these like jurisdictional grabbings of hot button topics. ⁓ There are many left-wing things in both parties, more right-wing things in both parties, ⁓ that they've taken as topical hot button issues. And when you start talking with people about them and listening to what people have to say, You find that half the time when you approach that aggression with gentleness, you might not have a good conversation. You really might. And I can I do that in about three seconds. But when you have those conversations, it's incredibly profound. If I talk to. Let's give an example of, let's say, a police officer who was forced to retire, right? Lifelong conservative. You know, the Democrats are in control of my ⁓ city. They changed our contract. I had to retire. I'd lose 30 years of benefits. I would go up to that conservative and I would say, well, that's a neoliberal Democrat. That's a corporate Democrat. And they're all in bed with the same people who are now offering you salvation. Let's sidestep both of them. Let's talk about how we make sure those kinds of civic contracts for all people, right, for firefighters, for nurses, for everybody who works anywhere close to the government, they don't as a working class get messed over. All of a sudden now you have someone who would hate to talk about different words, talking about policies that might live under those words, whether that's socialism or whether that's mutual aid or whether that's, or whether that's. So I found that approaching things without fear, Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Joseph Perez-Caputo: and just listening and even though they're angry, it's from hurt. People have been hurt by public policy. People have been killed by public policy. I vouch for universal healthcare because I truly believe my father's death is a social murder. If we had universal healthcare, he would not be dead. If we had good policy, he would be alive. And once you start putting that humanity out there, that's what you hear back. Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm. Joseph Perez-Caputo: Not from all, some people are fully in the team sport and that's the way it is and that's fine and just don't throw punches at me son. But you know, that's how it is. ⁓ But that's what I've heard back is the pain, the pain. And if you address the pain, they give you the source. And if you address the source without sidestepping, you'd end up sometimes really having a beautiful conversation about roots and about what we wanna do next. Breaking The Meta: Right. Yeah. Have you noticed that there seems to be as things like the tariffs which have caused an increase in cost, ⁓ things that have happened in like Venezuela or Greenland have happened, the Epstein files even more recently and the revelations that have come out from that. Have you noticed that while the people really far that are just firmly stuck on this is all I'm ever going to support and they can do no wrong. Not them, but have you noticed that people that in general have aligned themselves more towards the center or at least more open to listening because of everything that has happened? Joseph Perez-Caputo: Yeah, yeah, I've found that. Sometimes it's a single issue. Sometimes the propaganda machine means they close their eyes to Venezuela or to a single topic. But I've seen a lot of people who are hardcore right wing, angry about ICE. That's not what I was trained to do. This is murder, right? Like people who are trained. I've seen people, especially with the Epstein files, say, you know what? You know, let's tear it all down. Let's build together. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Joseph Perez-Caputo: rather than separately. ⁓ People are definitely starting to break at the seams because they realize that this kind of false structured binary we've been given is meant to keep us from doing this. A little trick that I like to tell people is true. When I was 19, I still thought that I was conservative. I refused to say I wasn't a Republican. I was in college, I was talking to people, people knew who I was. Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Yep. Joseph Perez-Caputo: And then I said something out loud and they were like, and I was like, well, why are you upset? I didn't understand. So someone walked through, line item, what I believed in. said, Joe, you know what? Let me talk with you. What do you think about this, this, this, this, this? I could say their names, but I don't want to call them out in case they don't want to. I remember the two people who did this for me, who offered me this kindness. They said, okay, I'm going to talk to you tomorrow. They came back the next day and they said, here is a Republican. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Joseph Perez-Caputo: in, I forget, local or federal. Here's an independent left-wing senator from Vermont, and here's like a moderate. I want you to just look into these three people and then get back to me because I don't think you are Republican based on policy. Yeah, I think you like the team. Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. what you stand for, yeah. Joseph Perez-Caputo: foundational conversation for my political philosophy. So I don't argue. I'm an old school punk guy. Like I'll punch a Nazi in the face. I'm not here to save you. I believe in Luke Skywalker. I'll use the sword or I'll give you compassion. But I lead with that compassion because someone did it for me. And I was able to stop, step outside that propaganda wing as early as 2011, 2012. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Joseph Perez-Caputo: And the alt-right has been attacking men who look like me and come from my background, Sicilian, Puerto Rican, Roman Catholic, athlete, martial artist. Every career I love and have and hobby I have is sort of attacked by this propaganda. The biggest thing is breaking the propaganda. And that comes from trying to lovingly punch a hole and say, what are you going to do about this? Can we talk about this? So I try and do that. People are starting to break. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Joseph Perez-Caputo: They don't like this. They don't cosign this. Breaking The Meta: Yeah, I've definitely noticed. I've never seen someone so consistently just attack everything everyone believes in in their own party, just as much as the country as a whole has been pretty wild. ⁓ I obviously mentioned things like the tariffs and Venezuela and Greenland. And we've also interacted with things like this president talking about leaving NATO and Joseph Perez-Caputo: Yes. Breaking The Meta: having trade deals and then putting tariffs on people with those trade deals and then saying, they're gone and threatening to put them back. All this to say, for the last 80 years, America has been at the head of the table. In one year, we are no longer at the head of the table except in one specific administration's mind. Regardless of what they think, I firmly believe based on just what I have seen that There is a supreme lack of trust in America, especially the American government. And that's not something that we can easily gain back. How do you see America's foreign policy going forward based on everything that has happened so far? Joseph Perez-Caputo: Thank you for asking me this question, because I don't believe anyone has yet. Breaking The Meta: There you go. Joseph Perez-Caputo: When I grew up, I listened to politicians talk this big rhetoric about what America is to ourselves and to the world. And it wasn't, ever. So I say, we make that lie real. We make that promise real. Growing up, the Navy had all these videos of like the tsunami coming in and then American aid coming in. Let's make it that. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Mm-hmm. Joseph Perez-Caputo: If we're to have any foreign policy in the future to earn back people's trust, it's going to be humanitarian aid and restitution for the 150 years of imperialism and extraction that we caused. Now, I believe USAID also was eradicated, X amount of million people are gonna die because we're not providing the same. medicines and aid that we were providing. And that was already insufficient when you compare it to our war machine and our extraction machine. Half of the immigrants who are coming to this country now from all over America, the total American hemisphere, are coming from countries that have been destabilized by our CSA or our NSA or our corporate backed administrations, deposing their administrations. So we create these economic toils. Breaking The Meta: CIA. Yep. ⁓ Joseph Perez-Caputo: So I believe that if America is going to be the first economy, the best army, the this that, we need to go into the next couple hundred or thousand years, however long our civilization deserves to last, with a heart first mentality. We need to be a humanitarian peacemaker, the one we lie and think we are. it's time to actually step into the mantle. You don't get to say you're Superman and be Homelander, which is a very popular meme that's going around for a decade. So that would be my approach is I would say, okay, how do we take these specific named crimes that we've committed and how do we say, listen, honoring that, we owe you a blood debt and we're now gonna, we're gonna pay up. So humanitarian aid and restitution. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Yeah. The thing that I've always pointed out is, especially when it's come to people that have been our allies up until this point, when the first Trump administration came through, ⁓ there was obviously some damage done. But we as a country, especially the Democratic Party, I think there was this idea that maybe we'd gone past it and and we could get back to quote unquote normal. I think the second, this second administration has shown that there can't, whether you're talking a trade agreement, whether you're talking any agreement made with this country, how can you fully trust it? Because even if we put in a, you know, a democratic president in 2028, who's to say another MAGA won't come into place in 2032 and do the exact same thing that this administration did. So I think that's, there's a lot of trust lost that we're going to have to work through. Joseph Perez-Caputo: Yeah, and we deserve that, right? Like a good ally is not always on your side. They love you enough to check you and say, yo, I don't trust you. I would say we need to rebuild those relationships for sure. Breaking The Meta: Yeah, yeah. Let's do a little future casting if you don't mind. ⁓ So primaries gotten through. I don't know if you're running against anyone in the primaries, but you have probably an incumbent that you'll be going against. So get past the incumbent and you get into through the general election. You're voted in as the ⁓ congressman of the fourth district. January 2nd comes along. You are sworn in. Joseph Perez-Caputo: Sure. Yeah. Breaking The Meta: You've picked a speaker of the house. What's the first thing that you do? Joseph Perez-Caputo: So the first thing I'm gonna do, I've already prepared it. I'm gonna have about 20 different bills and maybe 20 different articles of impeachment. And I'm coming out swinging. So some of the bills are gonna be for economic justice for my district or civil rights justice. Some of them are gonna be to undo some of the legislation that's happened. And some of them may fail on the floor in the committee. Some of them are gonna be impeachment for all the crimes that are happening at the top. But one of the first things I'm gonna do is create some level of task force. And I mean, I want the most bloodthirsty, weird people. And they're just gonna be forensic, like detectives. And their job is gonna be to do what the DOJ has failed to do. do what the federal probes has failed to do. And their job is to go through every single unredacted Epstein file and allow for appropriations for them to all have therapists, because I don't think you can come out of some of these things unchanged. And their job would be to relentlessly gather everything we need to prosecute, try, and hopefully imprison everyone guilty of harming all these kids. I want to essentially almost be a good guy version of McCarthy with the red scare. I want people to tremble at the name of the politicians who are coming for blood against this old empire. My entire generation has been affected by the way they've turned the world and it's been Republicans and Democrats. ⁓ Pam Bonde, you recently said if you prosecute everybody in the Epstein files, the whole system collapses. Okay. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Joseph Perez-Caputo: We're Americans. We build everything from nothing. We're working class. We build everything from nothing. That's our Tuesday. That's nothing to us. So I will advance a ton of bills that will be the reconstruction and renaissance side and a bunch of articles of impeachment and the task force that'll be the deconstruction side. So I'm here for the age of reconstruction. That's what I'm here for. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. There you go. Sounds good to me. ⁓ if anyone who's listening has listened this far heard everything that you said up until this point, ⁓ what are one or two things that no matter what you want to make sure that they come away with knowing about you and your campaign? Joseph Perez-Caputo: Can I use three? Perfect. ⁓ The first is don't trust me. I don't like politicians. I grew up punk and metal and revolutionary and I'm only doing this because I feel like it's a tool I can use. Make me earn your trust. Do not fawn on me. Do not do that celebrity worship garbage. Make me earn your trust every step of the way and I'll do the work. Breaking The Meta: You absolutely can use three. Mm-hmm. Joseph Perez-Caputo: So that's the first thing. The second thing is I'm one of you. I have debts right now. I live paycheck to paycheck right now. I have no insurance right now. I'm 33 years old and I moved back in with my mother so that I could do this. I'm here for this. I live and die under bad policy. So know that I'm not just some industry plant. But again, circle back to number one, make me earn that. right? Make me earn that trust. But know that I'm here living and dying next to you, whether you choose me or not. I'm in law school right now. If I win this, I have to talk with my school about whether I can complete law school. This is sacrifice as well. And if you don't choose me, I'm going to take what I learned in law school, become an attorney and fight for all of this anyway. So my agenda remains the same, no matter which role you want to pick me for. The third thing, and this is where it gets cheesy, I was an actor for many years. I grew up loving Star Wars and Superman. And Christopher Reeve once said in an interview, you know, what do you think is the draw of Superman or his best power? And he said he's a friend. And I think that if you're in public service and you're in it for power, prestige, and not to be emergency response, be there on everybody's worst day to hear their concerns, to prevent these concerns, to redress these concerns. If you're not here to be a friend, get out. This is a vocation and a calling as much as it's a job that you can build a skill in. ⁓ So I want people to know that I'm here to earn the friendship as well as the trust. Make me earn your trust. I'm here for you and I'm gonna live and breathe and die next to you under all these bad policies. And I do wanna be your friend. I wanna be an accessible office. Breaking The Meta: If anyone wants to learn more about you or ⁓ support you in any way, where can they find you? Joseph Perez-Caputo: They can find me at the ballot of JBC for Congress at Instagram. ⁓ On all of my social media, I have in all my links that will take you to everything. It'll take you not only to my TikTok and my campaign website, but it will also take you to other legal tools as you keep scrolling down and sometimes other campaigns as well as Citizens Impeachment, which is a group of almost a hundred progressive candidates from around the country. ⁓ independents, democrats, and I believe one republican, ⁓ who are progressive and they're running to win to do the same thing in their own words for their own districts to advance policies that'll bring about an American renaissance, bring about some substantial justice and impeachment. So you can find me there and the links will take you everywhere. Breaking The Meta: ⁓ wow. Awesome. Well, Joseph, thank you so much for hanging out with us, letting us get to know you a little bit and what you hope to do for the people of Connecticut. Joseph Perez-Caputo: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Breaking The Meta: Absolutely, absolutely. And for everyone listening, getting this far, thank you so, so very much. Please hit all those buttons below, like, subscribe, all that stuff. It really helps to make it possible for me to keep doing what I'm doing here. Just so you know, the reason that I am interviewing people like Joseph and all of these other progressives that are running for office is they're trying to do it the right way. They're trying to, they're running their campaigns in a way that we keep saying we want them to. which means they're not taking PAC money. They want to be held accountable. They want to break the status quo. They want to fix the problems that are going on in this country. Every time we talk about something in this country that we want to fix, it requires getting people in office like Joseph who want to fix those problems. That's the way we get these things done. So whether or not you are part of Joseph's district, please watch, share, not just my content, but all of their content too, because that's how they get the visibility and the name recognition that allows them to potentially get into office and do all these things that we want to do. So please, please, please do that. Also, if you don't know much about this podcast, know that the goal of breaking the meta is having the hard conversations when necessary, breaking the status quo and fighting for the idea that all people, no matter your race, religion, gender or identity, get rights, respect, dignity and safety. Thank you again, Joseph, for being here and for everyone else. We'll see you next time on Breaking the Meta. Bye, guys.