Latest / Coconut Justice / CJP #55: Chris Fields Senate for NJ

Transcript

CJP #55: Chris Fields Senate for NJ · Coconut Justice

• Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And like I said, Chris Fields is here. He's going to tell us about running for Senate in New Jersey's fourth district or no, he's from the fourth district, right? Hey, what's Chris Fields is an author, a community organizer, and up until just recently, he was trying to be a U.S. Senator for the great state of New Jersey. Chris Fields: Well, okay. So I'm Chris Fields, the unbought progressive ⁓ Democratic candidate for the 2026 ⁓ Democratic Senate race in New Jersey. So that covers all of New Jersey from Sussex in the North to Cape May in the South, from the Delaware River in the West to the Jersey shore. So, you know, it was certainly a fun. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): this conversation not only do we get to meet Chris but we also get to in this conversation not only do we get to meet Chris and talk about his platform but also we get to talk about his campaign and some of the challenges that come with trying to be an unbought Chris Fields: amazing, incredible experience. You know, last fall and this winter, just getting out there and talking to the people of New Jersey, ⁓ hearing their concerns and working together to come up with solutions to kind of our collective problems. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): some of the challenges and some of the challenges that come with trying to be an unbought grassroots candidate. This is my conversation with Chris Fields. Before we get into it, remember to go to coconutjustice.com to get you some clothes that I think would look good on you. Let's go. I'm glad you said that because I've been obviously this channel has turned more into ⁓ well, I talked to a lot more political folks and it seems like everyone is fine complaining, but no one talks about the solutions. So it's very refreshing to hear someone say I'm here for the solutions. Chris Fields: Yeah, and I mean, I think that is a big thing, right? Like from really talking to people and especially like towards the end there, you know, there is multiple times where kind of these like spontaneous gatherings would start of people who really wanted to talk about things from agriculture to AI to how do we get money out of our politics and what the real problems are. And I am really not a big ⁓ kind of like internet, social media kind of tech person. And it was really kind of ⁓ a necessary byproduct of what I was doing to hop in there. And so there is ⁓ a very key important step from ⁓ realizing that there's a problem to then being able to put forward viable solutions to that problem. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, I have fun talking to you guys about solutions because I think as normal folks pay more attention to politics, I don't think they fully understand the wrestling match that is politics? Chris Fields: Yeah! Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right, so then when we say get money out of politics, generally speaking we say abolishing ⁓ Citizens United. Right, that's basically everyone's focus, yeah. Chris Fields: And Citizens... Right, now Citizens United was a very big kind of shift, but it was really kind of a capstone of decades of a process, right? Like the core legal theory behind it basically came out of like kind of those black amendments, the 13th, 14th... ⁓ amendments there where, and this idea that corporations are people and thus have kind of some political speech rights. so citizens united really enshrined that and then allowed more money to then funnel into the system, ⁓ via super PACs. And so, yes, that's a big problem, but there was money in kind of politics before. And so. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: getting money out of politics and kind of overturning Citizens United is a big thing. But we've also seen the problem. ⁓ I was watching stories just this past week of traders making billions of dollars and about over Trump's statements with the war in Iran and whether that's connected to insiders. We've seen the kind of. the list. I think there's a few apps out there now where people can like track the members of Congress who do well with trading stocks and trade the same portfolios. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And then they get mad. And then they get mad when people start winning too. Like you're the leaders, we're supposed to follow you. Chris Fields: Yeah! Well, and I mean, I really think, right, we need to get, we need to really move to get money out of our political systems, move to more public finance campaigns, you know, not allowing our representatives to trade stocks at all, because it doesn't make sense. They clearly have insider information. How are you gonna have some of the best stock traders in the world are on Capitol Hill? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): 100%. Chris Fields: and not in Wall Street. It doesn't make sense. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And I always say this, if you are so smart as to make, you're going into, you're making, what do they make? Like the president makes $300,000 a year or something like that. Everybody else is like what, ⁓ 175 or something? Chris Fields: I believe for the Senate it's like 175 and then maybe a little bit less for the House, well over $100,000 a year and then you get paid extra money for leadership, right? You get full healthcare benefits and good pension plans. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, but then. and then you turn it into a millionaire. Yeah. And the good seats in the restaurants. Chris Fields: Exactly. Hey, the good seats in the restaurants, I mean, you go to like any metropolitan area, it could be impossible. That's a real benefit there. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah, I'm telling you. So you get all that. So you mean to tell me that you are so smart as to figure out the stock market, something as tricky as a stock market. But when it comes to homeless people, you just run out of ideas, don't you? ⁓ Chris Fields: . Well, I mean, it's systemic, right? Especially something like homelessness ⁓ and a lot of our problems. They've kind of tricked us into believing that it's about money or a lack of money. But there's numbers out there that to kind of police and take care of one homeless person can take half a million to a million dollars a year. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: Right? Cause like imagine ⁓ they ⁓ end up getting sick, which happens all the time and go to the emergency room and they can't afford to pay that bill. And those costs can easily run hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, it would actually be cheaper to provide, you know, quality housing ⁓ and the medical ⁓ mental health care that they need. Right? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that is where I know I get frustrated and a lot of folks that I know get frustrated is that point right there. We have enough money to go and destroy the planet. We have enough money to do all the things. And then we take a bunch of money and supposedly put leverage this money towards the homeless community and trying to improve that situation. the money never quite makes it, right? Chris Fields: Yes. And yeah, I mean, it happens all the time across the board. you know, one of the things I was talking, you know, out there to the people of New Jersey about is it's really not a lack of money, right? But Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Go ahead. Chris Fields: It's our approach to things. We're putting massive amounts of money into housing, into healthcare, into the programs that we have now. Yet in housing, we see this across New Jersey and I'm sure other people are seeing it across the country. These luxury kind of condo rises are going up everywhere. It's not that we can't build, but it's that the money that we're using is going to the profits of these landlords and real estate firms. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: and not to actually house people, right? The money that we're spending in healthcare is going to the profits of the insurance companies and big pharma, right? Versus providing people care. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah. I've been kicking around an idea. This is the first time I've ever set it out in public. So help me work through this. Right. So the problem that we have is money never quite trickles down to the people that we need it to trickle down to. Right. And then we have we have Chris Fields: Okay, hit me. and Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): So many programs we have EBT we have snap we have ⁓ Whatever other ones that we have right ⁓ I've been to Dubai and Dubai has the people of Dubai. If you're from Dubai, you get what we would probably consider universal basic income. Chris Fields: Okay. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right. So instead of paying for. Instead of paying salaries for so many people. Giving them the money and the responsibility to uplift folks, we could. This might not make sense. Whether it's whether it's connected to your voter card or your Social Security card or anything like that. All of the money goes directly to the citizens, which then they have a card and then if they need mental health, they check in with their card. If they have, ⁓ if they need groceries, they check in with their card. So that way the folks have the money, but then the people that would be the resources instead of getting paid by the government, they get paid by the people who have their card. Chris Fields: it. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Does that make sense? Chris Fields: So I mean what what you're describing at least to me sounds a lot like universal basic income. Right that you know, I mean our federal budget is is multi trillions of dollars a year and one of the problems that we see now is that instead of actually giving ⁓ resources directly to the people, you know, like we had mentioned homelessness before right? It goes to these. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: kind of like nonprofits and organizations. And I'm not saying that some of these programs don't do good work, but the incentive structure is totally backwards, right? Because they get money for enrolling people into the program, right? Versus helping people get out of the situation that they're in so they don't need the program. And sometimes, right, and often we're spending more money ⁓ maintaining these programs. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. We still need them. Mm-hmm. Right. Chris Fields: than it would cost to just house people. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, that's you see what I'm saying? That's my point. Chris Fields: Right? so, yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I totally agree. We need to focus on kind of grassroots, bottom-up, ⁓ progressive solutions instead of this kind of top-down, give coupons and subsidies to big businesses and intermediaries at the top and then hope it trickles down, because that just doesn't work. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Right, right. So we're in a consumer based economy, we're creating more consumers. We need to spend that, well, we don't need to, but we choose to spend that money, but it continues to get blocked somewhere. So like you said, and like Brie Woodson said, that trickle down triangle, if we flip it and let it trickle down that way, Chris Fields: Well, I wouldn't even say it's. Yeah, well, because I mean, we also see at the top, right? ⁓ You can look at Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, right? These guys and these companies are literally getting billions of dollars of subsidies ⁓ from the federal government, from our money. And it's like, you know, people will get upset. Remember the government shutdown we had a few months ago and SNAP benefits being on the line. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. So many, so many. Chris Fields: And people were literally ⁓ getting upset and saying, ⁓ these people who need help with ⁓ food assistant programs are to blame, yet the richest people in the world can get billions of dollars of subsidies. And that's okay. That's them being smart and ⁓ business geniuses. It just doesn't make sense. We're not putting our... our criticism at the right people. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right, right. You're getting upset, some people, not you. People are getting upset with the folks that obviously need help. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): but then you're not gonna get upset with the people that have been handed everything. And at this point, I'm sorry, you've been handed everything. We're not out here like braving the frontier anymore. We know where we live. So it's been handed to you. We've had generations of the same politicians. Chris Fields: hahahaha ⁓ Yep. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): so yeah, like if we're going to do anything different, it's, and, that's one of the sticking points. Anytime you talk about money, right? Folks get upset. They get a little tighter when you talk to them, Right. and that's one of the ones like if we're going to fix it, let's start doing things differently because what, if you have a school that's run down and busted up and you're going to rebuild it, what do you do? You put money into it. Chris Fields: Right. ⁓ exactly resources, right? What people need, ordinary people and working families, is resources. And it's unfortunate, all the resources in our system have just accumulated at the very top. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And let me toss in this reminder. All the rich people I've ever talked to, they say, you can't be rich if you give it away. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I mean, you also, they also like perpetuate this myth of, ⁓ you know, wealth being this product of hard work, but that's also just not true as well. The trillions of dollars of wealth, and we're in the process of this right now, kind of like the baby boomers, you know, and the inherited wealth. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, that is yeah. Chris Fields: you know, moving kind of to the next generation, and this is trillions of dollars, right? ⁓ That's just straight up inheritance. And the vast majority of the super wealthy inherited large chunks of their fortunes. And I'm sure you, especially out here in kind of the internet world, and it just makes me shiver every time I see these young people. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chris Fields: who are being fooled by these kind of like online like grifters, ⁓ the crypto guys, the, you know, whatever the latest multi-level marketing scheme is, ⁓ et cetera. Right. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, everybody's thirsty. That's what that's called. Everybody's thirsty and they're willing to drink from anyone's faucet. Chris Fields: Right, I mean that, unfortunately though, I think the main cause is because the other opportunities, right, even just something like a college degree, right? When my parents graduated and got their MBAs, you know, they were telling me that it only costs like three or $4,000. That was their student loan debt, right? I mean, and compare that to today, and that was to get their MBA, right? So. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: Right now today, across New Jersey, across the country, it could be $100,000, at least 50 just for an undergrad degree. And then graduate degrees are even more. And then wages aren't even keeping up ⁓ to catch up with that. So it's like, where is the opportunity for the young people to... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right, right. Chris Fields: to accomplish the things that they want to accomplish. Buying a house, being able to have just a little bit of kind of like ⁓ financial security and not being on the edge. This is why people are so susceptible to the grifters that are out there. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah, I agree. I asked ⁓ someone this question ⁓ and they gave me such a... ⁓ eye-opening answer. I asked, at what point did businessmen lay down their gauntlet and let the crooked businessmen take over for the business community. know? You know? Like I hang out with folks that take pride in building a business that then creates opportunities and stability for families. Like that's their approach for their business. Chris Fields: Hahaha. Well, so here's another one I came across, right? Because I was advocating, which I think is necessary, a $25 minimum wage, right? And one of the things that people said to me is like, what about small businesses, right? Can they afford to pay this $25 minimum wage? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): But then you have the trumps. Chris Fields: And especially here in New Jersey, right? The fight for 15 started in 2012. And so just to adjust for inflation, that would be over $21 today. And in New Jersey, our state minimum wage went from around the federal level, right? So, you know, seven or eight dollars to right now, it's above 15. So we saw that doubling and well, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): don't spend it all in one place. Chris Fields: But there was no small business apocalypse, right? To bring those wages up. And really, what it is that's hurting small businesses, it's Walmart, it's Amazon, it's these mega corporations that are stifling all competition and room for them to breathe, not ⁓ fair wages for ordinary people. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. And then for ordinary people, they'll go to Walmart because of the good prices. Not understanding, if you had the mom and pop shops, way more people would be working. Your community would be working. Your community would be invested in where you come from. Chris Fields: Right? But I mean, it's, that is just too difficult, right? This is why these problems, especially these mega corporations, right? We need to be using our antitrust laws, enforcing the laws on the books to stop this monopolistic competition. Because here's a, yeah, I mean, she was amazing and she was hopping in there, right? Doing her best. But then you saw as the administration changes even, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): ⁓ yeah, shout out Lena Kahn. Yeah. Chris Fields: Some of those, you know, she had some of the largest corporations on the hook and then all of sudden, now they're off the hook and all they have to do is donate a few million dollars to Trump's inauguration slush fund. Exactly. ⁓ my good, well, you know, these like prediction apps, ⁓ I think this is just another very ⁓ bad sign. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): and start a gambling app. Yeah. Chris Fields: because we're already seeing it in politics where people are starting to bet on how races are gonna go, when people are gonna drop out, how many words ⁓ certain speakers are gonna say. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. How many at what point these bombs are gonna get dropped? Chris Fields: Yep. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And if you think Nancy Pelosi was bad, look at Trump. Trump and his friends are making a killing and he's like, I'm gonna put $500 on two o'clock and he bombs at two o'clock. ⁓ Chris Fields: Right? Well, I don't think we've ever seen anyone grift off of public office the way Trump has in his second ⁓ administration. You know that guy on, I see him on Instagram at least, I think his name is like Scully or something, and he uses those cups to like represent money. And so, and he was showing how much money presidents have made, you know, in modern history. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): He's made billions. Chris Fields: You know, it the last like 15 or 20 presidents or whatever. ⁓ And basically all of them combined up till Trump, you know, maybe it was, you know, $100 million. And then Trump in this second administration racked up billions. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): That's bananas. And the frustrating thing is he says, well, crooked Joe Biden, and all his little monkeys are like, yeah, crooked Joe Biden. I'm like. Chris Fields: ⁓ And we've seen his Right? And it's like, and this guy's billions, billions. Remember the Trump coin ⁓ thing? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Them nasty ass shoes. Chris Fields: It's crazy. It's crazy. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah It is bananas. Chris Fields: And here's my other main thing with Trump. Like, at least to me, it seems like he's old as heck. His health is failing. What is his reason? It's just straight greed. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): just straight greed. That's all it is. You know what it is? It's a game. When you when you get so rich, there's a point where, ⁓ you know, that we've talked about it, we've touched on it, where people will, they get thirsty. And so Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Everyone wants to be in that, in that ⁓ sphere of power, of influence. So, and we're seeing it. All of these GOP members are, they look foolish. They look foolish. And it's all because they want to hang out with this dude that's ripping everyone off. So I don't want to hear any more about Nancy Pelosi. Yes, I know, but this dude reigns supreme. Chris Fields: You Well, and he's in charge right now, right? And I think, ⁓ you know, I've had people ask me this about politics. I am not a vote blue, no matter who person, right? But sometimes, but I also come across way too often people who are just saying, ⁓ both sides, they're just the same. And that is not true, right? If anyone is concerned about our system, we need to have a very clear-eyed, be able to make distinctions here, right? There's real problems, there's real ⁓ corruptions within the Democratic party, right? But what Trump and this current Republican administration doing is a whole different level of lawlessness. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah. Chris Fields: and really heading into fascism, you know, without apology. And so we need to be able to make that distinction. And sometimes what the voter is deciding is we're not like choosing for kind of like freedom or liberation or for everything to be fair. But sometimes what we're choosing is who, which side is gonna be more vulnerable to our interests. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: Right? Which side can we influence to, you know, make sure that our water, our air, our food isn't poisoned? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. And that's another hard one that for that. I have friends in the environmental ⁓ sector. And so I accidentally learn a lot of things that that are eye opening and you're like, ⁓ when you see another nation that won't take our food, it's because our food has been genetically modified. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Mmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): We are lab rats, basically. And so when you build a tomato, out here specifically, if you drive from San Francisco to LA, there's nothing but farms, farms and ranches. And so they have tomatoes and you should see the tomatoes that they pull in these big rigs. They're stacked like six to eight feet. So when you build a tomato that can sustain six to eight feet of tomatoes on you. Chris Fields: Thank you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Like that's a different kind of vegetable. And so when we try to, our farms are bigger and we do single crop farming and all this stuff, which has proven to not be the best way to do things. And then we're trying to sell this genetically modified stuff to Europe and Europe is like, no, we don't want none of that. We don't want it, we're good. Chris Fields: We don't want it. We don't want it. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And then people like Trump get upset. Chris Fields: Yeah, well, I mean, we've seen it, Like our, allowing kind of ⁓ big business and ⁓ unmitigated profits to be the central motive of everything that we do. What this does is it basically primes the entire system for profit, right? But that does not help ordinary people, right? That only helps that top 1%. And especially over the last 50 years, right, we've seen this clear trend of wage stagnation for ordinary people. And so imagine that timeline, right, the invention of the computer, the cell phone, the internet, all of this productivity, all these gains have just gone to the 1%. And I know people talk about kind of productivity all the time, but you need to make a clear distinction here because productivity... This is what workers give employers, give owners, right? Wages is what employers and owners give workers. So only one of those things has been on the rise and that's productivity. Whereas wages have been suppressed, right? So it's not something that we should be celebrating, ⁓ you know, because they've kind of disconnected. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And to answer that question for normal people, yeah, to answer that question for normal people, they will pay you whatever the hell they want to pay you because otherwise they will go to a different country. They're gonna go to Mexico, they're gonna go to Costa Rica, they're gonna go to India, they're gonna go to China, they're gonna go to Taiwan, you know? Chris Fields: Right. And this is another thing, right? Because this is this idea of free trade, right? And this is really kind of economic liberalism or, you know, neoliberalism, as people call it, where... So liberalism or classic liberalism is this idea in the West that kind of comes out of the feudal, monarchal Europe, right? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: Basically 80 % plus of the population was serfs. They had no rights, right? Only the aristocracy had rights, right? But then you have the enlightenment, right? Which leads directly to kind of the American Revolution and these enlightenment ideas coming. And they say, no, hey, it shouldn't be the king. It shouldn't just be the aristocracy that has rights. We all have individual rights, individual freedoms. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: Right? But the same way we're talking about Citizens United, right? Somehow this principle got applied to money that ⁓ a free democratic society requires that money should be able to move freely. Right? That a company ⁓ should, hey, if you've got to pay ⁓ American worker 80 grand a year, well, why not just go to Mexico or go to China where we can pay, you know, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: 20 grand a year. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): the same amount, but we get four or five developers. We get four or five employees. Yeah. Chris Fields: Right, but now how many people, how many ordinary people are out there saying free trade, this equals freedom, democracy, et cetera, but this is the direct result of that idea. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And isn't it funny how they will fight tooth and nail, they meaning the powerful. ⁓ They will fight tooth and nail to prove that a corporation has the right to vote, but they will use that same passion to try to keep people from voting. Chris Fields: Yeah, exactly. already, we're so, you know, the same free trade, free markets, which are not free, right? All of these major companies, you know, we mentioned the internet before and kind of the tech giants are the largest part of the US economy right now. We're seeing this extend into kind of this new AI wave. But the internet was literally developed by the United States government. It was a program of DARPA. So the basic ⁓ infrastructure and resources was developed with public funds. And then it gets traded out to these companies to profit however they want. It just, right? So there's things missing here, right? And we were talking about ⁓ Musk before and some people saw, remember when him and Trump broke up and he was screaming about the ⁓ Epstein files, ⁓ right? But these ⁓ subsidies for EVs, that's what got Tesla off the ground and allowed them to grow into the behemoth that they were today. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Chris Fields: So once again, it was public money, our money that has fueled these billionaires. It was no free market. ⁓ And then we're also seeing with our current ⁓ immigration crisis and these unlawful raids. So now money supposedly should be able to move freely, but then people need to be rounded up, harassed, brutalized. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How bad has ice been in Jersey? Chris Fields: ⁓ I mean, not as bad publicly as we've seen as Minneapolis, but still bad, right? The presence is here and it's growing and it's become one of the kind of, ⁓ infrastructure hubs for the ICE ⁓ network. So they started building these, ⁓ warehouse detention centers in New Jersey. And they're currently in the process of, you know, fighting one in, in Roxbury that's, that's being built. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: You know, the governor, Governor Sherrill, has been involved. think she just filed like lawsuits, right? So ICE is actively on the ground and expanding their presence of raids in New Jersey. And this is happening and it's a real ⁓ serious problem for people and people are scared. So, ⁓ you know, I work with a church in Newark. ⁓ And one of the reasons that I work with them is because they feed people and provide clothes in need for six days a week. Right? And I feel like, say that again? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Nice. Thank you, Church and Newark. I said, thank you Church of Newark. Chris Fields: All right. ⁓ But this is an incident that happened there a few months ago. So, you know, people were out to, you know, kind of like take part of those services one day and then ICE came and, you know, basically like scared everyone off and they tried to do ⁓ an ICE raid out front. And, you know, basically for like months afterwards, it drastically decreased. the number of people who could access ⁓ this vital service that they needed. And this is just one incident across New Jersey, but it's happening everywhere. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. That's a touchy subject for me ⁓ because I have family members that are afraid to leave the house anymore. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): ⁓ and that's no way to live. And I'm sorry, but, we're here. I've served my country in the military. I went to school. did all the things. And so for you to think that people that look like me are less than it really pisses me off. And so that's why I get to talk to you guys and I get to say whatever the, I want. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): to prove a point. Chris Fields: Yeah, well, and I think one of the things that a lot more people are aware of, and this is good, right, is that we need to make sure that no one is allowed to be kind of singled out and oppressed, right, from ⁓ the trans community to the black community to other ethnic and religious minorities, because once it happens, right, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): No. Yeah. Chris Fields: It spreads. These don't stay as isolated incidents. And I think that's one of the points that we really need ⁓ to make home or to bring home to people is that we're kind of connected in this. No one is safe once we allow these actions to start because they always spread. This is how repression Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah, right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: works. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And let me shame my people. I don't know if shame ever works, but it's gonna work today. I grew up in the black community. ⁓ And I grew up watching grown ass men getting beat down by cops. I've seen all of it. Chris Fields: Mmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): If the brown community has not learned from the black community, well, there's proof that they haven't learned because they thought that they were white or whatever you want to call it. They thought that they weren't black. Let's say it like that. They thought that they weren't black and they are currently finding out the hard way. You need to learn because I'm sorry. Black folks have been messed with for entirely too long. And then it's the it's, you know, ⁓ the powerful racists that are doing this stuff. They to me, I think that they realize that they can't be pushing black people. So instead, what they did is they want to level up to the brown people. and they're tearing them up, getting all the loose ends, all the ones that don't have papers, those are the loose ends, and then they're gonna come back down, they're gonna get the brown ones with the right papers, and then they're gonna work their way back down to the black folks, because you know black folks just can't rest. Chris Fields: Well, yeah, I there's been no rest for Black people here in this country, right? It's been relentless centuries of kind of ⁓ oppression and what we see here, I think kind of the, you know, and what you're getting to kind of we're connecting the current ICE raids to kind of Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: these centuries of racism and abuse, especially by the police, right? ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Jim Crow. You know what was mind blowing? Let me throw this in here and then I'll give you right back, I'll give you the mic back. I learned that all the Nazis were like all the brutality that they were doing. That came from doing homework off of Jim Crow era rules. So they were learning from our brutality. Chris Fields: Yes. I mean, Hitler very famously was a ⁓ fan ⁓ of kind of like Western movies, US culture. And yes, they particularly studied ⁓ the kind of ⁓ the Southern United States and our history here in the United States as they led up to kind of the Third Reich and all the atrocities. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: that they had committed. So there is a very ⁓ kind of close historical connection that people don't ⁓ like to acknowledge today about where, ⁓ you know, Hitler got some of his ideology from. And I mean, even if we just look at that era, ⁓ you know, kind of the pre-World War I, ⁓ World War II era, kind of the age of conquest and expansion of the West. You see not only the slave trade, but you know, millions of deaths across Asia, India, Africa, right? ⁓ Latin America, right? It was everywhere. It was widespread. We all know about the Native Americans and their population basically being reduced by 90. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: 95 % across the board, millions of people as, you know, kind of the United States expanded westward, right? And then you also have Spain and Portugal across, France, right? And other parts of the Americas. So the base of our current system was built on this conquest. ⁓ And this is typically what people call colonialization, right? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah. ⁓ We are 40 minutes in and I haven't even, we've gotten through so much ⁓ political information. I wanna tap back into you and. Chris Fields: Okay. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, are you originally from Jersey? Born and bred? No? Chris Fields: No, ⁓ so I moved to New Jersey. I was like 16 or 17. I was in high school, right? So my parents had moved out here, right? I was a kid. And so, but I've been, what's that? ⁓ From the suburbs of Chicago. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): From where did you say? From where? That's why I love you as much as I do. Attaboy. I'm originally from Chicago. Yeah, Albany Park. So, Kedsie Montrose. Chris Fields: Right? okay. Where at? Okay, so yeah, I lived in Gurney, you know where Six Flags is in the north? Yep. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yes, sir. Way up north. Yeah. Yeah. I loved it up there. So folks that don't know Six Flags Great America is kind of like Disneyland, but Warner Brothers. Chris Fields: Yeah! Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): and a little more ghetto. Chris Fields: I'm not even sure if back then they were owned by Warner Brothers. I think they might have just been their own like small little thing that they had like a few branches across the country. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah, no, Six Flags is the company. ⁓ Yeah, I remember the American Eagle was the long ⁓ roller coaster made out of just wood and tray tracks. Yeah. ⁓ Chris Fields: Yep, yep. Yep, exactly. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): That's cool. What was it like growing up in, I still have a couple of friends that live in Gurnee. What was it like growing up out there? Chris Fields: I mean, it was kind of like suburban America, I ⁓ was to describe it, very kind of the type of neighborhood, and this is like pre-cell phone, pre-social media, but where ⁓ you would run around outside all day, right? You'd go knock on your neighbor's door and we'd all just be out. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Chris Fields: running around and committing chaos, you know? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Did you ding dong ditch? ⁓ that's so awesome. That's so cool. ⁓ Yeah, and growing up in those days, ⁓ you know, it was special. I grew up in the 70s. Yeah, and so it was just special. Like, I tried to explain to people, you don't understand, like when I was a kid, we just left the caves. we... Chris Fields: Okay. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Not everybody had color TV. Not everybody had a phone. Chris Fields: Yeah. And now, so what do you think about kind of like kids now? I mean, one of the things that I'm always surprised to see, I guess, is like, you'll like go out to dinner in a restaurant and you'll see like a two year old kid and they'll give them this like little tablet, you know? And it's like the like new pacifier is the cell phone. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Right. ⁓ I'll tell you something. I would rather have that kid have that iPad rather than like what Cat Williams said in Pimp Chronicles. He said, let's stop beating. What did he say? I want to say publicly that we need to stop beating our kids publicly. ⁓ Chris Fields: Well, I mean, let's stop beating them privately too, right? I think there's better ways. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): How about it? Yeah, that would have to. No, like kids, I think that's a tough one, right? Because I've seen parents that don't wanna do that and they do have a tendency to have a harder time controlling their kids at a restaurant. ⁓ So I try to be patient and I try to... Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): If you're going to do that with your kid, make sure that it's something educational. Chris Fields: Okay. Yeah, I mean the content that's on these devices, especially social media, I think that's something that that we really need to do at the kind of legislative level because we're seeing it, especially with the teenagers and mental health. And you know, we're starting to see it in Europe with them really coming in and legislating. There are ways to, you know, just make some simple regulations about. allowing parents and even ⁓ adults to have some say over what's coming across these feeds and the algorithms, because they're not an accident, right? And we're seeing it, you know, they've been talking about that Facebook ⁓ case recently, and I'm not exactly sure where it is now, ⁓ but even Facebook had these studies. Right. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah. about Facebook being addictive. Yeah, ⁓ they lost that case. They lost that case. Chris Fields: and about it having these very, ⁓ wait, say that again? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): YouTube and Facebook lost that case. Chris Fields: Well, I mean, they should have, right? Because I mean, they clearly knew that, but the question is, so where do we go from here, right? Them paying $100 million or whatever fine they end up ⁓ paying is different than developing a real solution ⁓ for how we fix this and prevent these harms or at least start ⁓ mitigating these harms. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: That are cost right because because there are some methods right in terms of like reducing ads ⁓ protecting people's privacy and their data it not being able to be sold ⁓ to to advertisers willy-nilly Right having some say Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. And you want to see, let's, let's, I want to point out too, cause I think, I think folks make movies to give us a hint as to where we're moving as a society. Right. I always go to the Sylvester Stallone movie called Demolition Man. Chris Fields: Mmm. Okay? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And the other one was the one that triggered a memory when you were talking is Minority Report with Tom Cruise. Chris Fields: Yes, I do remember that one. ⁓ Where it was like the pre-crime AI thing and they tried to arrest them. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right? Yeah, and everyone had like some kind of implant in their eyeball and all the ads were specifically to that person. So when Tom ended up getting someone's eyeball and as he's walking through society, all these ads think that he's some Asian dude. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right. ⁓ Mr. Tamamoko. And then they show him add specifically to the guy who used to belong to this eyeball. That's what they're trying to move us to. Chris Fields: Yeah, I mean, it's very scary and dystopian. When I see people like Sam Altman or Elon Musk describe what it is that they want to do. ⁓ And they'll make these big claims about curing cancer and ending work, et cetera. But at the same time, then it's like, well, how is it that you own the system and make all the profits every... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Peter Tio. Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: other people lose, like where is the redistribution mechanism here? This is what I haven't heard anyone talk about. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, and to really piss everybody off who's hearing my voice. Your money went to help them figure all of this stuff out. You remember when we talk about Elon flipping rockets? It's not his money flipping rockets, it's your money flipping rockets. Peter Thiel. And then the thing that pisses me off, and let me remind everyone, Peter Thiel got help. Chris Fields: Yes, and it's Yeah, and Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): All these people got help building all this AI stuff. And then they turn around and they sell it to you for $20 a month. So you're paying for this shit twice. Chris Fields: Yep, and even worse. And no, three times or four, right? Because right now in New Jersey, we've seen this spike in utility costs because these AI data centers are incredibly energy hungry. And so as they put them on the grid, which is happening here in New Jersey, it's happening on the regional part of the grid that we're on, they start bidding for electricity with ordinary people. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: And then, so then that spikes the cost. And so that's just a direct subsidy from the people to these companies for their AI build out, right? And then I'm sure people have started hearing about the water, the environmental impacts, et cetera. So it's also having a real negative impact on the environment. And that's something that we all pay for as well. And it's only going to fuel the profits of these tech billionaires. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Chris Fields: And they're already talking about bailouts if things go wrong. Like, it's crazy. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Hahaha ⁓ What are we doing? ⁓ they just keep, they just keep us, and that's the thing, right? So all these GOP members that are business minded, and even some of the Democrats that are business minded. They just want to trick you out of your money. Chris Fields: Yeah, mean, there are, well, and here's another thing, right? I know a lot of people, and when people are talking about kind of fiscal responsibility in government, right? At the federal level, since the Carter administration, right? So this is Carter ⁓ before Reagan, I believe, actually don't quote me on that. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): They just want to trick you out of your money. Chris Fields: I could be totally wrong, I'm campaign brained, right? But from the 70s till the present, every successive presidential administration and federal ⁓ government has gotten larger in terms of spending. So when anyone's out there talking about, they're gonna shrink the size of government, that is just total BS. Government does not shrink, it grows. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. pay attention to and pay attention to how they're growing it when the people with all the power and all the money have control they buy more tanks and cops why because they don't want you they don't want they don't want Chris they don't want Carlos they don't want anybody who's broke in their neighborhood Chris Fields: Yeah, mean, and because they want to sell safety back to us, right? And this whole law and order thing is a total scam as well. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Period. Correct. And who's breaking the law more than the people in power right now? Chris Fields: Exactly, and I mean, even right now, you know, I think this would be for like 2024 or 2023, but the amount of wage theft across the economy, right, was around $50 billion. So this is people working overtime, not being compensated, their employers shorting them on their checks. Now, all of the kind of like shoplifting retail theft. in the entire country was around $45 billion, just to give people a comparison. And everyone's seen it. You can go pull up your feed today and you can find the cops coming out to brutalize someone over $50 from a major store. Yet all of these employers who stole that $50 billion from us, from you and me, nothing happens. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Take a look at what happened to George Floyd. That's a perfect example. My man bounced the check for 20 bucks, wasn't it? He bounced the check for $20 and paid the ultimate price. Chris Fields: Exactly. Yeah, I mean, it's it's. Exactly. the evidence-based ways to create safety, to create public safety, is making sure that people have access to quality housing, to healthcare, to education, and it being leading to opportunity and not debt, childcare, just basic necessities. These are the things that keep people safe, not more police officers and guns. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right. That's why them folks, the GOP side of the argument, that's why they get nervous when the Democrats take over because when the Democrats take over, they go and get tax folks, tax accountants and stuff. And then they start, that's the struggle, right? Or that's the tug of war is. The Democrats are in office, they hire a bunch of tax people because they know that companies are crooked. They know that all these people are trying to trick you out of your money. But then when the GOP takes over, they get a bunch of cops and a bunch of ICE agents to show you where your place is. Chris Fields: Well, unfortunately... Well, so on this one though, I think it's very unfortunate. think right now there is a clear distinction between the two parties. So no one who's listening to the sound of my voice get confused here, but these current ICE raids were being funded by the 2023, 2024 votes in the United States Congress. One that my opponent, Cory Booker, had voted to give them billions of dollars and to fund them and through 2029. And so they handed Trump a fully ⁓ maxed out funded DHS, right? And we've seen the current conflict in Iran, right? This is a direct result of both parties unconditional support for Israel and that military buildup, right? So I wish it was so clear cut to say that it was just the Republicans. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: on this ⁓ military police buildup, right? And I was watching, believe it was ⁓ Hillary Clinton, ⁓ just recently in the past few months, a video basically claiming about how ⁓ more people were deported under the Biden administration than the Trump administration. And we all remember ⁓ the kids in cages under the first Trump administration, right? These harms. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: didn't just kind of pop up overnight. And this system of kind of ⁓ building up the military industrial complex is a long time coming. And it's something engaged in by both parties. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I'm glad you brought up the fact that AIPAC is funding, isn't AIPAC funding Cory Booker? Yeah. Chris Fields: Yes, so just recently in the most like recent reports. So I mean we were surprised to see this in the in the past few weeks. So before he had received around 800,000 that was his track AIPAC number from AIPAC and its affiliates. Because as you as everyone knows, there's ways to bundle money and shifted around right so. Exactly now what the mechanism they're using to track. I just go with what the kind of most prominent trackers were. But then they updated his report and he crossed the $5 million mark, which means in the last year, right, he got over $4 million from them. And then just the other day, the day before the deadline, I'm on the stage of the Democratic Convention in Morris County. And I say this directly, right? My opponent has just received Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Sweet Jesus. Chris Fields: over $4 million of funding from AIPAC and his affiliates. So he's working hard, but the question, New Jersey, is, he working for you? And then two days ago, he releases a report saying, ⁓ he's not taking AIPAC money anymore. But the real question, Senator Booker, if you're serious, give that $5 million back. You can't take millions of dollars and then say... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. or not even give it back, give it to the community. Give it to the community. Because from what I understand, there's a little church in Newark who's trying to feed hungry people. Chris Fields: Of course, right? Exactly. North Reform Church, they need the money, right? And they're doing good work, senators. So, you know, if you're serious, it's not enough to have a press release about where you stand on AIPAC, especially after your consistent votes to send billions of dollars of weapons into the atrocities that we've seen committed against the Palestinian people these past few years. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Boom. Yeah, and this is after you guys told us that we don't have money for healthcare and yet Israel does. Chris Fields: Yes. And they've been receiving. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): That's where you lose me. You lose me at every time. You lose me every time. Chris Fields: and they've been receiving billions, billions in support from the US taxpayer, from New Jersey taxpayers. It is insane. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah to bomb people to bomb people that you talk about them the same way you talk about us You talk about the Palestinians the same way you talk about the black and brown communities and you refuse you would rather bomb and set up cops and and set up cameras and all that dumb shit rather than investing in education Chris Fields: Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): and small businesses. Chris Fields: And now I wanna say this and I wanna say it right now, cause in Morris, I gave that speech and at the time, right? We had the largest campaign on the ground of volunteers across the state of New Jersey. So I had to give that speech, run out of there and then we were gathering our signatures and getting them notarized. But a man, ⁓ you know, came out and he was concerned and he was Jewish and he wanted to talk to me, right? About my position on this particular issue. And so I wanna be clear and say this now as well. Anti-Semitism is a very real and dangerous phenomenon in our country. And it has been for a long time, this ⁓ mass blaming of the Jews. And so we also need to be very clear and very firm that criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu, members of his administration, the IDF, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. True. True. Chris Fields: and the illegal actions, the genocide they're committing is different and needs to be separated from condemnation or blanket attacks against the Jewish religion or the Jewish people. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): 100%. There is a difference. And then example is, I'm an American, I'm from the United States. But currently, we have this dumb dumb running the bus. I don't need to be associated to that guy at all. I can't wait for his time to be done. I can't wait for us to get better quality people in office. So there is a complete difference between good Jewish people and the Israeli government. We, the United States, is currently bombing and killing schools and girls and kids and families, all those things. Same shit's happening to us. Same thing. You show me where, especially, I don't know about Gurnee, but in Chicago, things get dire. There are neighborhoods that all they have is liquor stores. They don't have grocery stores. Chris Fields: Yes. And I mean, unfortunately, right, this is something we see across New Jersey as well and across the country, these kind of like urban areas which are really struggling, but it is not. And this is something that I think we all need to be clear about as well, right? Poverty is not the fault of people who are poor, right? It is a direct result of our system. and how it's structured. It's allowing people to profit and these large corporations to prey off of the vulnerable, to accumulate resources at the top. This is what creates poverty, not people's lack of individual efforts. ⁓ And I know earlier we were kind of talking about some of the horrors of the Nazis and the Holocaust and something that I... I like to bring up, because it really hit me the first time I heard it, is that people are preaching sometimes this ⁓ notion of, well, people aren't working hard enough, right? You just need to work harder. So the slogan the Nazis put above the gates of Auschwitz was hard work will set you free. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, that's not true. And let me tell you, that's not true. I've worked hard every day of my life. Every day of my life. And it's silly. It's silly. Chris Fields: Ha Yeah. And the problems people are going through is not a result of a lack of hard work. Everyone out there is working hard, but it's how our system is designed. And that's what's leading to these problems. And so the solutions are also systemic. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Right. Right. Again, we keep we keep wasting money the wrong way. ⁓ And and doing it, you know, people say, we got to run the country as a go. We have to run the government as a as a corporation. No, no, we don't. No, Chris Fields: Well, and the government doesn't even run as a corporation now. ⁓ And here's one of the other trends that we've seen ⁓ really kind of since the the Reagan era and that has continued under ⁓ both administrations. So the number of people actually providing services in the government has stayed about the same, you know, for the past. 40, 50 years. Yet the money we're spending has drastically increased. So where that extra money has gone is to contractors and private business to supposedly fill the gap. And the result that we see is that people actually get worse service at a higher price. And, but they use this rhetoric of business solutions and free markets. And really it just means taking our public money and fueling private profits. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right. And what, and what no. Right, right. ⁓ 2008, all the people that I knew didn't have anything to do with the real estate crisis. If anything, they had to pick up the pieces of their lives after. But banks are too big to fail. And they keep investing in banks and the stock market and stuff like that. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Right. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): instead of investing in you, right? I always try to remind folks, isn't it nice that they're making all these wonderful products? Isn't it terrible that no one can afford them? Chris Fields: Right. And. And I think 2008 is another kind of like great example, ⁓ right? Because I personally really wanted to believe in Obama and the change and the hope, right? That he was out there fighting for us. ⁓ And yet when that crisis actually hit and the government did move trillions of dollars in terms of ⁓ loans and bailouts. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: ⁓ And like the entire program, yet most of that money ended up shifting to the big banks under that theory of too big to fail. But if you think about it though, right, it was caused on the housing crisis and how they had made these risky bets on Wall Street of the houses. But the houses were still there, right? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): and nobody went to jail. but if you bounce a $20 check. Chris Fields: And so what the end result was is the poorest people or the people who were struggling ended up losing their houses. And so those same houses end up shifting to the wealthy people at incredibly low prices for them to make money. Instead of helping the people who were struggling the most with the money, we helped out the banks because they were too big to fail. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Chris Fields: And now we see the result, right? And the banking profits are back to all time highs. some of those, a lot of those homeowners and people who really got hurt, ordinary people in that crisis still haven't recovered. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. It's It sometimes it feels like it's a fight and an unwinnable fight. But the more I talk to you guys, the more it feels like there's a lot of people that are going to snap us back on track. Chris Fields: So I think that's a great point. And one of the things that I really want to kind of emphasize here, right, is, because, I mean, really, tomorrow, I'm going to go out, you know, I've got a bunch of invites, and I'm certainly going to make at least one of them to go out to the No Kings protest, right? And I was also involved with Black Lives Matter. you know, people are en masse. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: in the millions, they realize we've got a serious problem, right? And we've got to come out and we've got to make change. But at the same time, right, we need to be able to organize and focus our efforts because we've got important things, right? So I'm not going to be on the June 2nd Democratic ⁓ ballot in New Jersey for people to vote. But this is because essentially the part of the primary that mattered was that signature hunt and the convention season, you know, basically running from early February until the deadline. And so most of New Jersey didn't realize, right, that the decision period, the time to act and to get politically engaged was, you know, this winter into the early spring. And now that is gonna lead to there not being ⁓ an unbought choice, right? And even in New Jersey, so in 2024, the current other Senator from New Jersey is Andy Kim. And at the time in that race, he was the other kind of like front runner in the race was Tammy Murphy, the governor's wife. And so how kind of conventions ⁓ work. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: in New Jersey is. Each of the 21 counties ⁓ holds a convention for for endorsement. Right, and so leading up they all have their own rules and different mechanisms to carry out this process from town halls or some have meet and greets, etc. But you can imagine each of these counties ⁓ basically, and you might have a county or two that you know for one year. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: doesn't end up getting organized, right? But for the most part, all of them get organized. They bring their members together in this process. And that's the place, the primary place where people gather signatures, right? That's the infrastructure ⁓ for the primary. And so you basically need ⁓ three things to get into the process, right? You need to be qualified and file your paperwork to run for the office. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: that you're running for, right? And then you need to be a registered Democrat. This is a Democratic primary. And then you need a notice, which is typically called your letter of intent to compete in these endorsement processes, right? So now when Senator Kim went through, some of the counties in the 2024 cycle, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Sure. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Chris Fields: you know, ended up kind of like deciding inside, right? Like kind of the leadership made the choice and basically those endorsements went to Tammy Murphy, right? And Andy Kim, the more open democratic ones, he ended up winning those and then, you know, ended up coming out and then becoming the next Senator of New Jersey. Now at that time in 2024, the signature threshold for statewide office was 1,000 signatures. And then at the same time, Andy Kim went to court because another byproduct of the outcome of these conventions was that whoever had won in that county, their name, they would get the line. So their name would be first on the primary ballot. And Andy Kim went to court and said, hey, that's not fair. That gives an advantage to whoever the parties use. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Here we go. Okay. Chris Fields: or whoever the parties endorse and it's not exactly Democratic. And so the court struck that down and so they changed the law and so it goes to random order as to who would get top placement county by county. But now in response. Right, but in response though, what they did is they increased the signature threshold so it used to be 1000 signatures to get on the ballot. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): You Everything turns into a lottery, man. Chris Fields: And just the other day, it was 2,500. Right? And then I'll kind of give just a brief example of what happened to us. So I got into this race like really late for a statewide race like this, right? In October, I had decided to run because I felt like we... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah. and the process started last February. Chris Fields: No. So the process would have started this February, right? So I started, I got in the race October, 2025, right? Convention season starts February, 2026. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Okay. Chris Fields: Okay, so October comes around and so we're kind of gearing up, right? I'm basically, you know, running against kind of like Cory Booker and there's certainly a decent amount of anti Cory Booker ⁓ sentiment out there. But one of the reasons why I got in this race is because I felt there needed to be a real challenge, right? And not like there just wasn't other candidates and it was kind of like getting late and now You know, a lot of candidates who kind of jump into statewide office, they hold, you know, some, uh, you know, other government position, right? Or they're like, well, self-funded, et cetera. I didn't have all that, right? I, um, you know, basically took $2,000 of my own savings, right? And I pledged very early on that, you know, I'm not going to take corporate PAC money or, or, or AIPAC, you know, not now, not ever, but- Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Right. Chris Fields: What I can do, right, is compete in these conventions across the county, right, to meet people, to grow and build support in the democratic ⁓ base as we go along. And also this is the prime place to collect signatures because these Democrats that are gathered in these conventions, right, signing signatures and petitions is part of the process. Every year they're used to it. Whereas, ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: You know, on the day before the deadline, as we're like ⁓ rushing to get signatures, right? I have ⁓ one of our like best volunteers who was out knocking doors, had collected signatures with us. And then ⁓ two other, they were content creators with a hundred thousand plus following. And you know, they had met me out there and were like, ⁓ we're short, we need to do more. So we rushed across town to the mall, right? There's four of us. You know, for two hours, you know, hit the mall. We're out there talking to people, trying to like scrounge up signatures, right? So there's four of us, two hours. We gathered 30 signatures, right? I just want people to understand how difficult it is in terms of man hours to gather signatures when people think you're trying to sell them Girl Scout cookies and they don't really understand what you're talking about. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: Right? You're talking about hundreds of man hours, right? I would say 20 to $30,000 or another way to look at it as the convention process. Imagine an in person event, right? A venue, hundreds of people, sometimes even thousand, over a thousand in these like large counties ⁓ coming out across 21 counties. How much it would cost to build Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: a comparable infrastructure, right? It's not cheap, right? And it's not easy. And the timeline is relatively short, right? They released petitions ⁓ like the first or second week in January, and then the deadline was March 23rd. Okay, so let me go back to the story here. So it's October and instead of reaching out to every news station in the country, right, we're gearing up for this convention fight. And so it's really data and infrastructure. So a lot of campaigns and I don't know how deep you got into this with other candidates, but the main democratic voter system is called VAN. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Okay. Chris Fields: which is, you know, you can do door knocking, right? Create your list, contact voters, knock doors, text banking, phone banking, et cetera, right? But that system is really expensive. What's that? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, this is the part, yeah, I'm glad you said that, because that's, we have touched on this topic, but I love that you guys are sharing this, because I don't think the normal person knows what it takes to do what you tried to do. And then, so when they say running for office is expensive, and why only rich people do it, and all this other stuff, this is exactly what I want people to understand. why it's hard for a grassroots candidate that isn't taking PAC money or isn't taking AIPAC money, whatever, and why it's so difficult to make change. And that whole, we need a third party. Yeah, but you're not supporting the people that are trying to be or trying to represent a different way to do it. Anyway, go ahead. So it's expensive, van. ⁓ We've learned on this channel, we've learned about the phone banks, we've learned about knocking on doors and stuff like that. go ahead and share your experience. Chris Fields: So. Right, so so that system of voter contact, right? If we were to use van. You'd even need to get the state party to pay for it for you, which they do for a lot of candidates. But we knew that we would have trouble with that because of the cost for a statewide race. And then they'd also have access to our data, you know, would be 10 or, right, 10 or $20,000 a month. So instead we built our own, right? And so we literally had Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And the first question they ask you guys is, how much money have you raised? Wow. Wow. Chris Fields: by the new year, our own system of, you know, we had good clean phone numbers for over 400,000 Democrats across the state of New Jersey, right? Close to a million in terms of like addresses and the data system to do, knocking, text banking, and then also to bring our system down like a laser and target the seven to 8,000 Democrats ⁓ that are part of this convention system. in the 21 counties. Okay. So typically, remember I mentioned the three things that you need to kind of like get into this process. You need to be a qualified candidate, right? File your paperwork, right? So I filed in October with the FEC, right? And the qualifications for office for United States Senator are regulated by the constitution, Article 1, Section 3. So I'm qualified, right? I'm a registered Democrat. a, you know, I was a party, I was part of this system myself as a long time committee man. I spent years as a municipal vice chair and served on a county executive board as well, right? Which takes part in this process every year of doing that kind of hard, unseen work of getting Democrats elected up and down the ballot. And you know, I've... ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): So you've worked in the belly of the beast. Chris Fields: right. But now when I kind of like stepped out to run against Booker in October, ⁓ there kind of did become this kind of like schism of some of the people I thought would support me. I've worked with for years, ⁓ who were also in the party, you know, didn't want to help. So I had to start from scratch, right? Okay, so we get to January. ⁓ and then the third thing you need is a letter of intent. And typically your letters of intent are due, you know, a week or two before. And remember, all the 21 counties can have the ability to make their own rules and do it their own way, right? So there's no like firm period, but that's just the typical thing. So now remember dates start in early February. So it's around the first of the year, we built our data, our systems, and we're ready to hit the ground running. So we start researching and we find out, we get this horrible surprise. So Monmouth County has scheduled the first convention of the season on February 7th. But the date they set for a letter of intent was the day after Christmas on December 26th. And so we had missed it. And this is January 3rd that we find this out. And so we're like, oh my, like what's going on here? Cause remember petitions weren't even released by the state until the first or second week of January. And so they set this Christmas deadline and it was only up posted on their website. And then in an Instagram post is where we found it with 20 likes. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): So everybody was paying attention. Yeah. Everybody meaning 20 people. Chris Fields: ⁓ Exactly. So we're like, right. And so we're like, oh my goodness, this is a serious problem, right? Now that's just for the one county, but we're like, okay, this is a problem. But now imagine if this happens across New Jersey. So the three things, right? Qualified candidate, registered Democrat, letter of intent. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: So our response was on January 3rd, I wrote a letter of intent to compete in all 21 counties across the state of New Jersey. And I sent it to the state party of New Jersey, to every, know, to all the chairs, you know, we can find. And then I got it published in Insider NJ ⁓ in a newspaper. So now we saw the letter of intent for across New Jersey, right? And then we started. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: We basically filed an appeal in Monmouth County as well, that first convention, and they even had it in their rules for exceptional circumstances. Now they ended up denying us, ⁓ and so we ended up observing in Monmouth County as Booker got the endorsement by acclamation, and we gathered no signatures, and we moved on. But then, county by county by county, You know, we ran into other problems in Bergen County. They wanted ⁓ a loyalty pledge, basically saying that if I lost the vote in Bergen County, I would not run against ⁓ Booker in the primary. And according to the rules, they have a screening committee in the rules, but of course they don't have that detail in it, right? We're in this like email chain back and forth when this comes up. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: And now technically, when we're talking about process to the data infrastructure, I can't reject to take part in the rules because they have a screening committee, but they didn't list this loyalty pledge until much later, right? And so instead I said, hey, I'm qualified under Article 1, Section 3, and I'm a registered Democrat, and you already have and have accepted my letter of intent. And so that satisfies the rules. But then I ended up observing again in Bergen as, you know, Booker's campaign manager and a team of five or six volunteers collect signatures from over 700 Democrats in the room that day. And we get zero. Then we moved to Middlesex County. And now for those of you who are not familiar with Jersey, these counties that I'm kind of like talking about here. So now Monmouth was first and they're like a smaller medium sized county, but Bergen and Middlesex are like two of the largest ⁓ population counties had the most delegates ⁓ of any counties in the state, thus. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: the most signatures as well. So Middlesex County sends me, ⁓ you know, rules in January in response to my notice, and it explicitly says, you're not allowed to communicate with our members until you get our approval. And even to this day, we have yet to get their approval. And after appeals to the state party and the state party said, who in their own rules say they guarantee due process to qualified candidates at all levels and subordinate themselves to the Constitution. And their answer to us was, hey, go back and talk to the counties. So, as this is rolling out and our initial plan, right? And remember the convention season kind of like bunches up ⁓ from February until that third week in March, it ends a day before the deadline. We're like, okay, we gotta gather signatures another way. And I also told you the story about the mall. If you were to hire a crew, ⁓ of like professional paid ⁓ signature gatherers, right? That would cost 20 to $30,000. which we also didn't have. So we had to call out to the people. I mean, amazingly, we built the largest team of volunteers on the ground to help us gather signatures. And I mean, and I was literally out there on the state house steps. ⁓ So the deadline was March 23rd at 4 p.m. ⁓ And I was out there from noon until 4 p.m. That's when I got there. And the last... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I was watching you kid. I was watching you. was... Chris Fields: Two days we were right. And I'm on the internet saying, New Jersey, come out. We just need a few more signatures. And people are driving in the rain from over an hour to come and sign. They're dropping off packets of signatures that had gotten notarized. I walked into that building because they also had to be notarized, right? So one of the other candidates that's running, she's a notary. So she was in the building. And so she shoots me a text and she's like, Chris, you gotta sign in to hold your spot in line, right? Cause it takes them hours. They were hours behind. ⁓ So at one o'clock and that was like my plan. If I can get these last little bit, you know, maybe around the hundred signatures, I can run in there, you know, run back to my car, grab the pack that's in my car, right? I'm collecting the stack as people are delivering them to me and then get the last ones. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: ⁓ notarized in the room and hand in. That was the plan. And so I went in at one o'clock and I signed my name on the thing and they didn't call my name until 4.06 ⁓ PM and we were still out there in front of the State House ⁓ doing our best. We kind of got our last signature a little bit after four and we just missed it. But think about that though. the infrastructure for the primary across those counties, right? This is what really decided this race. And most of New Jersey wasn't even really aware of it. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. And, and that's the part that frustrates normal people. It's the system is corrupt and the system doesn't work for us and all this stuff. And then you're like, you have to give the system a chance. Let the system be the system. And then you realize that there's people who are utilizing the system who like to, they like the power. They like to have to say so. And it's tough. Chris Fields: Yeah, I mean, it's not easy, right? We had to. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): This story could very easily be a Netflix movie. Chris Fields: hahahaha Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I could see like the boiler room type of thing, know, like, we gotta get these, we gotta get these signatures, we gotta get these. And it's just a rush. then, and then at the end of the day, you realize that it's an uphill climb and they gave you roller skates. Chris Fields: Well, I mean, it's interesting. I think there's still some interesting questions to be answered, right? But between the counties and the state party, right? It would have to ⁓ go to someone who has the appropriate ability to examine this, right? Because we know how they treated us, right? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Sure. Yeah, yeah. Chris Fields: And this is supposed to be our democratic infrastructure here in New Jersey. ⁓ And so how did they treat Cory Booker? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Well, you know when they asked Cory Booker how much money did you make and you say four million dollars Like obviously they're gonna listen to him Chris Fields: Yeah, but then people ask and then they're, ⁓ right? So this is why though, we're talking about kind of these, ⁓ our grassroots progressive candidates who are out here and so many of them really came and were part of the signature drive, right? I mentioned another candidate was willing to notarize signatures for us in the filing room on the day, another progressive candidate running for Congress. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good looking out. That is quite the hookup. Chris Fields: Right? So we are out here. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Go get anything notarized. Go get anything notarized, depending on what it is. What's it cost? What's it cost to notarize anything? Like 25 bucks, 30 bucks? Chris Fields: Hahaha! No, so for just like one piece of paper, it's like five to $6, but it just shows another ministerial hurdle because when you're gathering signatures. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Right, how many signatures did you need to get on your signature packet? 2,500. 2,500 times five to seven dollars. Even just getting. Chris Fields: So 2,500, 2,500 was the minimum, right? Well, no. So it would be by packet, right? So a packet needs to be notarized by the gatherer. So like me myself would be considered a gatherer. And I probably grabbed, I was the single most person who grabbed signatures, you know, and maybe it was like 300, 350, right? So I could put all of that in one packet and notarize it. But we also had people who grabbed three or four signatures. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Okay. Okay. Chris Fields: But now that's because, so then that would need to be notarized separately. So every packet needs to be notarized by the gatherer. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): That's a new packet. Yeah. Yeah, okay, yeah, which I get. All right, fine. You know, I understand that. Chris Fields: Right, but it's another part of kind of the infrastructure though, because in the county conventions, right, they have a notary sitting on hand. So you gather people's signatures, you get your volunteers, your candidates, whoever, you gather signatures, you notarize before you leave the building for free, and then boom, now you've got a stack of signatures from clearly registered Democrats. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Chris Fields: who were there, ready to sign, understand the process, and then you're good to go. Whereas us, we're now doing it the hard way, right? People out across New Jersey, gathering signatures at malls, at train stations, at colleges, and then we've got to get them notarized by the gatherer before they can come back to us and hit our pile. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Huh. Yeah. We're gonna take a turn, because after all of this, need to ask you this question. This is a lot of work. Chris Fields: Yes. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Young Chris. What did young Chris want to be when he grew up? Chris Fields: Okay. So I'll go back to kind of like my college days and this like split, because I'm sure especially a lot of young people have experienced this, right? So, you know, I went to Rutgers and, you know, my parents, of course, at the time, they're like, ⁓ you know, you got to do something, you got to major in something practical. You can get a job, right? Make some money. ⁓ So for me, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Chris Fields: That was economics. No. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): You said graphic design. They're like, hell no. ⁓ Chris Fields: So it was economics, right? But then as I'm getting towards like the end, I think it's like the last year, you know how they'll have you meet with your counselor, make sure you're gonna graduate, right? And what you need to do. And so I had that meeting and they're like, ⁓ you only need to take one more class in political science to double major, right? Cause I was a poli sci minor, but those were the classes I was just really interested in and I was taking them. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ooh, let's go. Yeah. Chris Fields: And so she was like, ⁓ one more class? I was like, great. So I ended up double majoring in economics and political science. ⁓ And so, you know, the younger me probably was more interested in kind of economics, business, ⁓ things of that nature. you know, I've certainly done things in that realm. But then, especially after 2016, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Nice. Chris Fields: I really then ⁓ got way more focused into the political side. And also during this process, ⁓ I did publish my first book. So I'm a scholar of political economy. ⁓ And my first book is called Policy, Wealth, and Politics. And the core idea is that wealth in our system, and this covers American history from the revolution to the present day, is really more of a byproduct of our public policy than it is individual efforts and hard work. It's on Amazon. Even though, you know, Amazon is evil, but they're everywhere. So, you know, check it out. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Where can we find this book? All right, cool. I'm gonna look it up. Right. That's one of those, that's one of those where. ⁓ The service itself is so perfect. But what they do with the money, once they get your money, what they do with that money, that's what's in question. It's not the question that Amazon doesn't serve a purpose. Holy cow. Chris Fields: ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): but it's what they're doing with their leverage and their money. That's the part that's questionable. Chris Fields: Well, and how they treat their workers, right? So, I mean, I myself have, you know, worked in politics and in campaigns. And in New Jersey, we have campaigns every year, right? And so there was a time a few years ago, my car broke down, I needed a new car. And, you know, so I ended up working in an Amazon warehouse for like four or five months. And I am telling you, it is hell on earth, like how they treat their workers. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right, exactly, exactly. Mm-hmm. I've ⁓ had a bunch of friends work at FedEx and UPS. UPS is big out there actually, out there ⁓ in Illinois. ⁓ They have a facility in Buffalo Grove. I believe that's where it is. Everyone that I knew that's ever worked there has come out in shambles. They work. Chris Fields: You know, it is no joke. It is no joke. Yep. ⁓ Like the, yeah, like, ⁓ like what's it called where, you know, you get these like ⁓ muscle, like tendon strains from like doing like repeated motions again and again. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): You lost me at pee in this bottle Chris Fields: Yeah, like every person I met there who had like worked there for like a long time, like over a year, had some type of like brace or something. ⁓ Like, so it is no joke. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah! That's as close to sports training as you can get without getting a gym membership. Chris Fields: Yeah, it is no joke. ⁓ There's serious, serious problems in ⁓ the kind of like backend of a lot of these like large companies and their labor. We also see it across our gig economy as well, ⁓ where they're like, know, essentially you've got all these workers who aren't getting benefits, ⁓ you know, their total ⁓ pay ends up being well below minimum wages. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: And this is just all so these mega corps can profit at the top. And especially in our system, almost everything that the modern ⁓ worker thinks is kind of like fair and just from worker safety standards, minimum wages, ⁓ social security, ⁓ benefits, the 40 hour work week. These things were fought for and bled for the... early organized labor struggle was really radical and often violent ⁓ by organized labor. And yet today we have some of the lowest organized labor participation standards. ⁓ And that really hurt us as ordinary people ⁓ across the country because we don't have that same level of organization and thus lose power across the entire system. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's easy for normal people to disengage. because this is a lot. This is a lot like you have to have, you have to be cut from a different cloth to jump into the fire like you did or like you're like you and some of these other folks have been trying to do. Cause it's nothing but it's nothing but bullying. So Corey, say, right, let's say Corey Booker, he's out here and he, ⁓ I'm Corey Booker. just got $4 million. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm cool. I'm cool. And then Chris shows up and he's like, look, the way we've been doing things doesn't work. And they just like, they put you through this gauntlet of disappointment. Chris Fields: Well, I mean, one thing I, you know, I want everyone to understand is kind of the entrenched interest. They're organized. And they're out there, right? And so for us, we need to organize. We need to resist. We need to grow. We need to sustain that. That is the fight. Right. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): 100%, 100%, yep. Exactly. Exactly. And the big one for us is if we are trying to make this change, we need to understand that we're the flag bearers. We need to understand that we need to hold ourselves up to a completely different standard. If we're telling people, look, we're trying to make change, we can't be caught. doing it in the pizza shop, you know what I mean? Doing the E-files and all that. Chris Fields: Yeah, would say, right. I would say there's one standard I like to hold myself to and progressives, real progressives, right? Is you cannot engage in predatory actions against vulnerable people. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. We're in this together. You want to talk about the system. We are all part of this system. It's just here in America, we have a piece of paper and we have a document that is saying, is how we're going to treat everybody. And we need to stick to that. Chris Fields: Exactly. Sometimes, right? Well, I mean, sometimes, right? I mean, us, black people, have been on both sides of that document. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right, But the, right. But the current one, and this is why I don't even get upset when people say, nah, we gotta start from scratch. Like, cool, but this document that we currently have does have a lot of really good ideas. And we need to understand that if you thought we were rolling out of the caves in the 70s, 200 years before that, Chris Fields: Stop. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): They were still in caves. They had wooden teeth. These folks were enlightened with the situation in which they had to live. Things have changed. Chris Fields: And it's typically always easier to build on a foundation that's already there than starting from scratch. Right? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right. Like if we wanted to go through and clean everything up and it said, everybody is created equal. And when you are in this house, everybody will be treated as such. And then if you don't, then we have to ask you to leave, because you're not part of the team. You're not part of the team. I'd be blowing people's minds. I'd be blowing people's minds when I'm talking to people from English descent, German descent, all that stuff. I'm like, here in America, we're supposed to be treating everyone, we're supposed to hold each other to a different standard, and we're supposed to be treating each other like teammates and stuff like that. So if you don't like that, Chris Fields: Yeah? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Stephen Miller, grab your things and go back to where you come from. We don't need you here. Chris Fields: Yeah, mean, it's it's very I mean, Stephen Miller is one of the most dangerous people ⁓ in the country. His ability to kind of like make these incredibly discriminatory policies. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Let me tell you about Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller is lazy. Stephen Miller has very little hands and they're very soft. Stephen Miller, Stephen Miller is dumb. He's got a little bit of money and he and he gets out of pocket. And the only reason he does that is because he has the protection of all these dumb dumbs that are all around him. That's all. He's nothing special. He's not threatening to me. His words. make me want to slap the hell out of him. Chris Fields: But he ends up ⁓ making some of Trump's most dangerous policies be able to get slide through court and be affected. That's what I mean by he's dangerous. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah, that's why we need to get more people like you in office so we can stop having people like that making rules. Because it's only obvious that it's against what we're here for. He could be dangerous, but the only reason he's dangerous is because they let this clown take over. We didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know Stephen Miller from a ⁓ brick laying in the street. Chris Fields: Yes. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Until he got up here and started talking all that stuff. So now Stephen Miller is going to be up here talking all that mess I got a big mouth to bitch. Let's go Chris Fields: Right? And you know, but... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): and I've worked for a living and I got big ass hands that will cup your face. I'm not worried about Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller can kiss my whole ass. And I'm sorry for taking your interview to that level, but I have run out of patience. I have run out of patience for people like Stephen Miller. Chris Fields: Yeah, and Me as well, right? And I guess at least the thing that's on the top of my mind, right? And that I'm really gonna be ⁓ pushing for, know, people are like, ⁓ Chris, what's next, right? Is we've gotta find a way to organize, to get organized and sustain it. Because guess what? Next year, right now, right? We've got these other progressive candidates that are challenging. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: incumbents ⁓ across the state, right? And then next year, there's still gonna be that signature wall in the winter and in the spring. And unless something changes, ⁓ the establishment is gonna play their same tricks, right? So we've got to organize something for ourselves, right? A system where we can have ⁓ candidates who have pledged not to take corporate PAC money. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: be able to come together and have a people's unbought forum and get signatures and talk to people, right? We need to build and organize. And yes, it's gonna take time. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. And let normal people know that you can trust this movement. You don't necessarily have to trust Carlos. You don't necessarily have to trust Chris. You have to understand that we are trying to come together and we are trying to help each other and we are trying to bring attention to people like Chris that are out here trying to do the right thing. we're trying to get money out of politics. We're trying to invest in our communities. We're trying to do all these things. And our messages get drowned out because it's easy for the powerful, because they're the ones with all the money and all the influence and all that stuff. But what social media is teaching us is that if we band together, what ends up happening, I've been using this analogy a lot more often lately. It's like, Right now what's happening is like the Pixar movie A Bug's Life. And all the ants are telling each other, fuck these grasshoppers. That's what's happening. Chris Fields: Right? Yeah! Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right? So yeah, like we're getting there. We're getting there. Chris Fields: and For sure. But to get money out of politics, right, we need to, as the public, support unbought candidates, support candidates who are pledging and will not take this money because you cannot. It is just impossible. You can't be taking millions of dollars from the wealthy, from these major corporations and corporate PACs and AIPAC and then represent Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): First. Hmm. Chris Fields: the interests of ordinary people and working families. It is impossible to do both. But one of the things that ⁓ grassroots progressive candidates have again and again is like the name recognition and the support is manufactured for ⁓ these large candidates, right? And the public, one, not only do we need kind of organizational structures to help Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: our kind of grassroots progressive candidates go from zero to a place where the public can see them. But then the public also needs to start paying attention, not in November, not in June, but in January. Right? That they just like those seven or 8,000 members of the party across the state, they know every single year, candidates need petitions, they're out there and we're... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Chris Fields: a part of the process, right? And we want to talk to these candidates, see what they're about, decide, right? And sign their name on the dotted line. And that's not something that the general public is focused on. And so we've got to build kind of comparable, we got to build our own organizations if that's what we want. Because it also isn't going to take one person or two, right? We've seen our dysfunctional Congress, it's going to take a movement. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Right. It's us. Yeah, yeah, it's going to take us. It's in the name United States, U.S. us. Chris Fields: I like it. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): us. It's going to take us and it's going to take us Carlos and Chris. It's going to take us to let people know we understand. We understand that up till now all of these politicians have been taking you for a ride. We get it. But we're trying to show you that we're normal people. We're tired of the BS as well. And you need to trust that. people like Chris are doing this for the right reasons. We have to trust that if we take money out of politics, everything is going to get better. And we have people that have been in power for all this time and they just, they build mistrust and they continue to do that and they continue to divide us. But when we have Chris showing up and we have all these other candidates that we've been talking to on this channel, And everybody's like, let's make it better for everybody. Not just the rich. Chris Fields: Exactly. And I understand, and I have talked to so many people across New Jersey who are disenchanted, right? They know for a fact not to trust politicians because they've just been lied to again and again. They've ⁓ failed to deliver on their promises. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: However, disengaging is not the way to fix that problem, right? Instead, it actually takes the opposite. We need to get more engaged. We need to get more organized. We need to make sure that we're supporting candidates across all levels from the local level, all the way up to the top that are representing something different. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): It is not. way up. MAGA has been doing that too. Mm hmm. Yeah, that's why ⁓ before Trump took over, we started noticing not we but like I started noticing stories out there where ⁓ there's a lot of people running for local office MAGA people that were running for local office. And they got they got ⁓ mobilized. And they went in and they started running for Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): for all these seats. At the end of the day, you guys, what the president does, it's obvious that what the president does doesn't necessarily affect your every day. We're over here bombing all kinds of countries and stuff like that. You and I still have to go to the grocery store. You and I still have to go to work. We still have to go get this high-priced gas. Our day doesn't change, but it's these local offices that do affect your every day. Chris Fields: Yeah. And. Yes, the vast majority of the things that people are concerned about schools, your roads, ⁓ your own neighborhoods are things that are handled from the local, the county and the state level. Right? The quality of your food, ⁓ the quality of your air, your water. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. and the state, Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: These things are very local. we're kind of talking about ⁓ a lot of, there's a lot of attention, especially in the mass media and even social media at the top of this kind of like ⁓ political arena. ⁓ Yet as someone myself who has been a community organizer, organizing local races and county races. getting attention on those races is 10 times harder. ⁓ But it's actually probably inverted, right? It actually matters more. And even, you you mentioned ⁓ MAGA. One of the scariest things that I've seen and that we're seeing across New Jersey is one of the things that they're focusing on is school boards. So the education of your kids, there's... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. ⁓ Lord. ⁓ Lord. Chris Fields: There's MAGA school board adjacent ⁓ members across the state. And because people aren't focused on that, they only need a few hundred votes in some cases. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. And if you think, and if you think. Chris Fields: and then the effect they have on the next generation. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And if you think that, if you think that this is something that I learned about Florida and it just blows my mind. Whoever's in charge in Florida, and more specifically the school board, if your kid goes to a public school, well, a better way to say it, public schools have the building, right? There's a certain kind of private school that can then come in and just basically confiscate classrooms for their classes. Chris Fields: ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): and they don't even have to pay rent. Yeah, so when I tell you, when we tell you, you have to pay attention to what's happening in the school board, your local school board, stuff like that, these are the kind of silly things that these clowns are pulling off. Chris Fields: Yes. And now... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Pay attention to local politics. It's huge. Chris Fields: Yes, and I would say this. ⁓ For everyone, if you really wanna make a difference, you've gotta get involved in an organization. ⁓ Because our individual actions, they're important, they are, but it's not enough. We need to be organized. And so the great part about this is you get to decide what organization you wanna join. My only suggestion would be is that you choose one. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Right. Chris Fields: ⁓ whose mission you believe is focused on making a positive contribution to people's just aspirations. And again, you get to decide what that is. But if you do those two things, you join an organization or even form one that's making that positive contribution, then you can't go wrong. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And it feels good. It feels good when you make that positive change and you see that your efforts are going to something that actually made that positive change. ⁓ know, over here they were trying to close, here in Sonoma they were trying to close the school and all this stuff. And I'm like, aren't we like the richest nation on the planet? Like, why are we closing schools? Why are we taking kids and jamming them into one classroom so now a teacher has to help raise 30 kids? When we know the science behind it, we know that a teacher should have 10 kids, maybe 15 kids to be effective. Chris Fields: Yeah. ⁓ And there's really no reason for it, right? We've seen this wave of kind of voucher programs and privatization of our public school system, which at one point was world class with like the highest literacy rates in the industrialized world. And then the past few decades, right, we've been sliding down. And... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: these kind of school voucher programs in particular, they end up sucking out resources from our most vulnerable under-resourced schools. And they end up as like a very regressive subsidy to end up helping parents who would already be able to afford to send their kids to private school. Now they just get, it becomes a little cheaper for them. But then the kids in that same district who couldn't afford to go to private school. end up with a school that's in worse condition that has less funding. And schooling is also very connected to families and how individuals are doing. One of the most kind of correlated thing to students success is parental involvement in their education, being able to work with them on their homework and just saying, hey, how are you doing in school? But now this is the same thing that shows Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: the systemic problem. If you've got parents that are struggling to make ends meet, have to work extra ⁓ just to pay the bills, right? And they're struggling for housing and healthcare, then that's gonna disadvantage their kids, right? So we've gotta work on making sure that we're putting our resources instead of weapons and bombs and this madness. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: Right? That is going towards quality housing and healthcare and education and childcare. Right? That's the shift. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, if you want a population that is less violent, educate them. You won't have to spend money on missiles if you're spending them on books. And then if we have everyone educated, feeling good because everyone's got universal healthcare, and not having to struggle. ⁓ Because I don't know about you, but in all the black and brown communities that I have lived in, folks that got money, folks that got jobs, folks that are feeling good, they don't steal things. Chris Fields: Well, I would say for normal people, that's true. The people at the top, they're stealing all the time, but a lot of times it's legal and the chances of them ever paying any consequences is minuscule, right? I mean, we've seen Trump, he's never walked into a deal that he wasn't trying to rip someone off in. Right here in Jersey, many of his... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. That's what I was, yep, I was gonna build up to that. Yeah. Exactly. Chris Fields: business ventures in AC, there's still small businesses and contractors that were owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and have never been paid, right? So there are people out there, yeah, and so the people at the top, they're stealing, hand over fist, right? But they're not being held accountable. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. He's very destructive to small businesses. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been spreading this idea too. It's not a two-tiered system, it's three-tiered. There's the powerful, there's the whites, and then there's us. Cause I know a lot of people in that middle section that are shaking their fists at the people up top. You know, it's three tiers. We don't get away with anything. We can't bounce a $20 check without dying. Then the next level up, they can do all kinds of Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes and all that stuff. Maybe they'll get in trouble. But the folks up on top, they do it all. They got betting apps. They got their... Chris Fields: Yeah? they also need to. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): They're like this dude is straight up making decisions off of how him and his family are going to get rich and no one can touch him Chris Fields: Yeah. And actually what I want to bring up is, you know, something I didn't talk about in the campaign trail, but you know, maybe you've talked about it with others is the Epstein files. Because yes, I, so one, Trump in particular, I don't think, yes, they should release the Epstein data. I totally approve of that, right? But I think, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: A lot of our energy and attention here is a little misaligned. So one, you don't need the Epstein list to know that Trump is a sexual predator, right? There's over 20 allegations out there of women who are telling their stories without the Epstein list, accusing Trump of these actions going back years, right? So. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): tell them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: So these things are kind of disconnected. And I know in New Jersey, but I'm sure you ⁓ experience this in other parts of the country. Just you go on social media and you'll see these ads come up all the time. And they'll talk about, if you've been in a juvenile detention center and we're sexually assaulted, call this number. That's going on everywhere across the country where you have vulnerable children. And we've seen it from the Catholic church. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. everywhere. Chris Fields: to the Boy Scouts, right? This is happening everywhere. And I understand that the salaciousness of the Epstein files has the public attention. But if we really want to protect vulnerable people, vulnerable children from being preyed on, then we need to care as much about our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, the people in our community, because it's not always. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yep, yep, yep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: You know, these billionaires and multimillionaires with jets that are preying on people, it's happening everywhere. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And the creepy thing is, if you think it's only the Epstein files, do you think that's the only organization that's doing that? You think that? That's very naive. If you think that Epstein is the only one, that's very naive. Chris Fields: Yeah, I mean, it's serious problem, right? Sexual predation is... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: It has a very well documented and long history in the United States, right? And yes. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): in our own history, in all of human history, not just us, all of human history. Chris Fields: And at the same time, we have a very serious problem of victim blaming, of instead of our smoke and our criticism, being on the predators, blaming the people who have been preyed upon. And we need to call that out whenever we see it. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ boy, were you dressed like that? What the hell? I was wearing pants. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the thing. Like we have to, I've been saying this, we have to change the culture. We have to change the culture because here in America, we think that we're cowboys and Indians and we're not. We're already at Star Trek. Chris Fields: Yes. Star Trek, Well, we definitely have the communicators, but I'm not sure I trust, ⁓ what's that thing where it like de-atomizes you and moves you across? I always wondered, you know, is that you or is that like a clone of you that they've like reassembled? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. No, hahahaha! Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, don't send me on that thing. Don't send me on that thing. I am fine doing a video conference. Chris Fields: ⁓ Right Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): ⁓ So ⁓ this go round, you started a little late and you missed the signature portion of the competition. Chris Fields: Yes. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): are you quitting? Are you done? Chris Fields: So in New Jersey, and there's been a lot of people kind of talking about like a write-in option. However, in New Jersey, how it works is that signature deadline is basically final for the June primary, right? So even if a write-in candidate, magically, and you know how the Tories, like write-ins are lucky to get 1 % of the vote, let alone crack 51%. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Chris Fields: But even if you cracked the 51%, you still could not get the nomination, right? You had to hit the signature threshold on March 23rd. So for me, what I think is the most important thing to do right now is to focus on organizing, right? And helping our other great progressive candidates across the state of New Jersey who've gotten on. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah. Chris Fields: Right? It's not about, especially in politics, right? ⁓ There's no shame in losing. Everyone, every big name in politics you've heard of has lost, right? But you learn your lessons, right? You reorganize, you get better, and then you get back out there and the fight continues. So when I stepped out and told the people of New Jersey, hey, I'm in this, I'm unbought. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): It's part of the game. Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: progressive democrat fighting for ordinary people and working families. That commitment has not changed. And so we're just going to reorganize and continue the fight. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Hell yeah. I'm in. I'm in. Yeah. Tell me. Chris Fields: Thank you. So I got a question for you. Why coconut justice? What's the coconuts? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): that's wonderful because, there's a long story and there's a short story, right? So the short story is it's a gamertag. Chris Fields: ⁓ okay. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Right? Longer story, because you're the first person to ask and this is fun. Coconut Justice. I was working as a developer and I used to overwork with this dude from Puerto Rico. And I have to say it that way because he was, he was like from the West Indies or something. So he's very dark skinned and the curly hair. And he, I believe he was born and raised in Puerto Rico. So he's a black Puerto Rican. And we would work together and he would get into, know, kind of bad mouthing American blacks. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Mmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): So I had to sit his ass down and educate him. I'm like, you are from Puerto Rico. Our people, we still live in the jungle. Still to this day. So then ⁓ take that lesson that I was trying to share with him and add it to the fact that when you are building software, ⁓ there's a lot of cram sessions. You're working weeks at a time with no stop. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And then we would show up on a Monday morning and the powers that be would basically, you know How do you say, they would review what we were doing and they would wanna change some of the most insignificant things. And so you you get a little frustrated, ⁓ right? And then that turns into what if we were, what if we were still in Puerto Rico, still in the jungle, how would we fix the situation? And I said, me, I would throw coconuts at them. I'd hit them with the coconut justice. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Ha ha! ⁓ okay, coconut. Coconut justice, okay, I see it now. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ So that's a long winded story of saying, I'm just silly. Chris Fields: Now, what was your game of choice? Because I actually, ⁓ you know, was the director of operations in an e-sports company for a while there. And I think the game was like League of Legends. I've not been, I'll date myself right here. Like the last video game I played was like Halo 1 on Xbox. That's how long it's been. But you know. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Nice. Yeah. Chris Fields: I know people like really are incredibly passionate about it. So what's your game of choice? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. For me, it was always Call of Duty. Chris Fields: Aha, okay. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Always Call of Duty. I have an addiction to that game. It has everything that I look for. Obviously all the military stuff, you know, I was in the army, la la la. So that's the easy one, but it has teamwork, it has reflexes, it has ⁓ communication. If you're a terrible communicator, you will get shot and you will not have backup. ⁓ Chris Fields: Mm. Right. I'm going home. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): You know, so that was it for me. Call of Duty. I did get into Halo. I never liked it as much as ⁓ Call of Duty. ⁓ I got into things like Quake and World of Warcraft and stuff like that. ⁓ My first job out of college was at a video game company. I was a 3D artist. ⁓ Yeah. Chris Fields: Okay. ⁓ wow. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: Do you still drop? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): ⁓ yeah, yeah, if I give you a tour of my little studio here, you'd be like, yeah, you draw. I got my Cintiq behind me. I got all kinds of film equipment. When I was a kid, what I wanted to be when I grew up was an animator and a filmmaker. Chris Fields: Okay. Wow. Well, I saw one of your clips on Instagram, but I didn't understand the context and you were asking people to ⁓ help you get the rights and your documentary. So what's the documentary? What's the vision? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And it took me a minute, but I'm here. ⁓ Well, that project was the history of Chicago hip hop. Chris Fields: ⁓ wow, that would be cool. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we worked on that project for a long time. I'm not 100 % sure where they are. I had to step away from that project to build up my YouTube and then just to come and help you guys out, you Because I have a big mouth. I don't know if you've noticed, but I have a big mouth. And I get to say things that... ⁓ Chris Fields: Right. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): that normal people, if normal people had access to you guys, that's how I approach my conversations with you guys. If normal people had ⁓ the connection to talk to you guys, what would the questions be like, right? ⁓ Like, how can I voice my people's frustration, my people meaning the black and brown community, right? Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm, which is which is incredible. One of the things that I'm most proud of right is I am the only ⁓ Democratic candidate for the United States Senate this year that actually hit the ground and and talked to those Democrats from Sussex to Cape May ⁓ You know those those last few days in Essex ⁓ In Morse and fought to get into every room and Cory Booker never even came Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. And that's what, and to me, that's what people are tired of. Like, how are you, ⁓ how are you my representative? You don't look like me. You don't talk like me. Your bank, God damn sure don't look like mine. Chris Fields: ⁓ Yes. And you won't even answer people's basic questions. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): and you won't even you exactly exactly and I think that's one of the one of the good things about being one of these young up-and-comers is that you have access to your people they know they're they're they're bad-mouthing social media and all that stuff yeah there is a lot of slop out there I get it but if you leverage that same Chris Fields: Yes. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): technology for what we're doing to create change, to build that trust, to call people out. Yeah, we understand that Cory Booker's in office. Yeah, we understand that, but we also understand that he's crooked too. Chris Fields: Exactly. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And I want people to connect with me in that way. I want normal people to understand that I'm not crazy rich, and if I was crazy rich, I would be in the streets building schools. I'd be in the streets figuring out how to educate our people. For me, that's the big one. With education, you change culture. You change culture, you change the trajectory of your country, of your people. Chris Fields: Yeah, I mean, I think kind of our political discourse is the leading edge of the process, right? That what we're talking about, what we think, that roles, right? Even from, you know, we were fighting to get across that signature line, but even in my own small part, consistently calling Booker out for that millions of dollars. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Right. Chris Fields: He received an AIPAC and their affiliates and saying, hey, this is a problem, right? He's already had to come out publicly and say, he's not gonna take AIPAC money anymore. Now, I don't think that's enough. I don't think you can take $4 million from someone in the past four years or in the past year, excuse me, and then say, oh, I'm not gonna take it anymore and not give the money back and be clear. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah. Chris Fields: But it's something, it's better than him just unashamedly taking more money. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, and let's not pretend normal people are like, they're going to find a way. Yes, they're going to find a way to filter that money to him anyway. They know that he's susceptible to those big checks. We know. Chris Fields: And well, and there's a question for him. So I started calling him the $30 million man on stage. You know, that was the most recent amount of money that I had. And I was like, you know, people want to know how am I going to beat the $30 million man? Right. But now I'll, I'll, tell something else, you know, cause we're it's, it's, it's a little different. So we can take the most recent governor's race in New Jersey. So our current governor, Mikey Sherrill. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: right? And she was up against Jack Cittarelli, the Republican candidate. So each of their races, ⁓ they finished and they both had around a million dollars left on election day, but with like trailing expenses of hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? So that means a typical candidate in a New Jersey race, at the end, you basically got zero dollars left. So why is the Senator building up this war chest of $30 million when even an entire race ⁓ for Senate, for reelection, should be somewhere around five to six million dollars, eight at the high end. And so I don't think the Senator, that that $30 million war chest is really for New Jersey. And I think it's possible he's got other plans. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. One of the things that I've learned is, say, the Speaker of the House. It's not that the rules for Speaker of the House, it's not that someone bakes better cookies. It's not that they're a better speaker. It's that they can make the money come through. Chris Fields: Right, yes. And fundraising and donations has been, especially in our kind of political times, it's one of the key metrics that people use ⁓ typically to kind of evaluate candidates, right? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: where, I mean, it's an unfortunate byproduct of our system because it costs so much to run, then if only the people who can raise money ⁓ are considered quote unquote viable, then it means that everyone who's viable is compromised because they've taken so much money and you're in this kind of like horrible catch 22. But now on the plus side, right, for us grassroots progressive candidates, money, is not a resource in and of itself. It's the medium of exchange for resources. So, I mean, the people support, mass supports, grassroots movements, that is a resource as well. And it's something that can be used to match money right? Even if we're looking at our own kind of like petition drive and remember the numbers. So in that last two weeks leading up, you know, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: we probably got the volunteer hours efforts of work that people put in to gathering the thousands of signatures, 20, $30,000, that's no joke for a two week window. But that's not a financial kind of contribution, that's people's sweat equity, their work, their belief. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: to come out. So it is possible. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): What are a couple of the more local issues that whether or not you're in office, what are some of the local issues for how do you say New Jersey ins. Chris Fields: New Jerseyans? Yeah, that's exactly how you say it. Okay. So from both my experiences recently in talking to the people of New Jersey, and then also what I see is kind of like viable given the current state of our politics, right? So just last year, we got a new governor, Governor Sherrill, right? We have a very... ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Is that what it is? Yeah. ⁓ Chris Fields: You know, we have ⁓ a Democratic state legislature, right? So policies can actually get passed. Something I would like to see, I would really like to see for Governor Sherrill to come on board is I think we could move universal health care ⁓ in New Jersey or at least a robust public option, right? One plan, full coverage. I think that would ⁓ provide the most kind of benefit to the most people on ⁓ a shorter term basis, right? That can be accomplished. ⁓ Now, the other thing that, and this issue has just been like rising up, and I think everyone's aware about it, is AI. They've been starting to build the data centers here, right? We have a lot of candidates that are... ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: you know, and movements across the state that are like really pushing back. I've already talked about these like utility prices, but then also remember New Jersey, we're like kind of like right outside that New York financial center. And part of it comes into, you know, our North Eastern Jersey towns, right? Where you still have, ⁓ you know, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: ⁓ big portions of finance companies and their offices in New Jersey as well. So the other portion of this AI that I think is really worrisome is the financial kind of speculative aspect. In 2025, it was basically the largest portion of growth in the US economy was AI data centers, AI ⁓ related speculation, right? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. ⁓ Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Chris Fields: And here's one of the other things that I've seen with AI and I think you've seen it too. They have not built this PhD in a box like they claim. It's, right? It's just not as good as they... Exactly. And so I think there's a very worrying possibility of a financial crash on the downside of them putting these... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): It's a glorified encyclopedia is what it is. Chris Fields: Hundreds of billions so far aiming supposedly at trillions into this in these last few years ⁓ And so we need to be sure One not only do we need to protect people in terms of their utility bills as well as the environment from this hyper scaling build out which is insane right, but we also need to to be very watchful and mindful of the financial impacts of of AI and this financial speculation because we've seen when the markets, can have this like kind of like downfall and it can cascade incredibly quickly. ⁓ And especially now with it being a full on war in Iran and you know, these ⁓ oil oligarchs and their investment into this AI hyperscaling. Right? There's a lot of connections here. It seems like the dominoes are really lined up. So we really need to be watching ⁓ kind of AI in a lot of levels. And this is what I kind of just described is some of the systemic downside, right? Where things don't go the way that they're preaching or talking about ⁓ where AI could go. But also with AI, we've got to watch the upside. If the tech billionaires do end up creating God in a box that's going to put everyone out of their jobs, then we've got to worry on that side too, right? And then even currently how this technology is being used in law enforcement tasks, ⁓ deep fakes, misinformation, right? So this one area is really big. It's moving very fast, right? And there's a lot of pieces. And so I would say those, you know, we certainly got to Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chris Fields: really be on top of AI. And then I think what would offer the most immediate impact to people's lives is let's really improve healthcare in New Jersey. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, preach, Let me, let me, cause one of the things that really intrigued me about you was ⁓ watching you on social media talking about AI. I am trying to get this guy, our schedules keep interfering with each other's schedules, but I have a guy coming on who is running for office who, ⁓ Chris Fields: Mm-hmm Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): comes from the hedge fund world and is backed by technology companies. If you were to ask this person one or two questions, what would they be? Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. Mm. Okay. So my first question would be what is the mismatch between the capabilities that the big AI companies, OpenAI, know, Grok, Google, what they're advertising their products can do and what they actually do. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Chris Fields: And then my second, especially because he has ⁓ experience in the hedge fund world is given how much money these, the hundreds of billions that these companies have raised in these past few years on the kind of the promise, what type of returns would they need to see across the next four or five years? ⁓ to return those valuations to investors. And if that sounds feasible, whatever that number he comes up with is. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Alright, so the type of returns you need to see in the next four to five years to make to to realize the valuation. Chris Fields: based on how much. Yes, the money they've raised ⁓ on their current valuations. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Okay. Cool. Thank you. I'm definitely, ⁓ like I said, I'm trying to, we've been. Chris Fields: Yeah, no problem. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): things happen and so we rescheduled and then rescheduled and rescheduled. seeing you so passionate about AI and normal folks, I'm talking to you right now. It's true. AI, there's a lot of rich, powerful people and from everything that I've learned in this world, rich, powerful people tell everybody else what to do and they're dictating where we go as a society, right? Chris Fields: Yep. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): And right now, all these rich folks are hell-bent on this AI thing. Chris Fields: Yep. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): ⁓ And they're going about it pretty recklessly. ⁓ And just like everything else, you need to have a plan. How does it benefit? How does it ⁓ ruin things? ⁓ And ⁓ are we even interested in moving in this way? Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. And one of the things I personally have found frustrating, I've heard from others, I think you've probably experienced it as well, is they've just like literally jammed this thing into everywhere. It's like you're trying to just like type into ⁓ the normal bar and then you get the AI answer. But I'm sure one of the things you notice with AI is you can't trust the thing. It'll very confidently give you wrong answers. And so... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, the vacuum cleaners have AI now. Yeah, always do your research behind it. Chris Fields: When you need something that's like really accurate, which in most human endeavors, you need that. And it's like, and they are trying to take away people's choice of access to the human information in favor of the AI version. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Don't even get me started on these kids making relationships with these things either. That is not healthy. That is not healthy. Chris Fields: Definitely not. Well, and here's another scary thing. I think I saw, you know, and I could be wrong, but you know, the open AI ⁓ guy, I believe it was him, was out there talking about how AI was, you know, the solution to ⁓ the mental health crisis, AI therapists. And I believe it was Zuckerberg. is out there pitching AI friends. These ideas are insane. It is insane. Right? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): They're idiots. They're idiots. And I think normal folks listen to me. I also work in Silicon Valley. I also have done the programming. I've also done all those things. I think all these guys are idiots. They're on TV. They get put up there and they get all exalted and everything. ⁓ look at all these smart people. No, they're idiots. They're all idiots. They're all idiots who are really good at programming and that have this insatiable thirst for money and power. Chris Fields: you seen the movie ⁓ Mountainhead or yeah, yeah, I think it was called Mountainhead. Okay, you gotta check it out. It was like a parody of these like the top tech bros, billionaires, creating these different AI companies. I won't tell anymore of the plot ⁓ to ruin the movie for anyone, but it was good. And it reminds me of like the current situation. Cause at one point, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): No, not yet. Is it on Netflix or is it out in the movies? Chris Fields: ⁓ I had just like googled it, you know, I have like ⁓ I end up like watching stuff like basically like on the internet and like YouTube and I think I might have ⁓ You know, like one streaming service. I won't name it because I don't want to advertise for them Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Okay. Yeah, ⁓ I'm so to communities, dude. really ⁓ I want to see our people. ⁓ take control we do things better we do things as a community right and yeah this this stuff that we're watching i don't ain't no way ain't no way and i think ⁓ Chris Fields: Yeah. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): been ⁓ been trying to get ⁓ right wing nut jobs ⁓ to talk. But they don't. But they don't know they're high. They're hiding. ⁓ know, and it's not even ⁓ Chris Fields: Okay, and were they willing? Riot. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): our people aren't tapped in the way they need to be because there's no Hope is a weird word to use right now, but We've been challenged for so long that it's like, it's this insurmountable thing. And I want us to know that that's not the case. Chris Fields: Whoa And I mean, I actually think it cuts. So one of the things that they, you know, about the black community in particular, right, is that just as a group of people, and I totally understand people's frustration with the lack of results for the Democratic Party, but you know, just consistently, know, 87, 90 % are like, hey. what these Republicans are selling is bunk, right? That they could see that very clearly and very consistently. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and I've been describing it. Yeah. Chris Fields: Right now, the Democrats need to do better, us progressives, we need to do better, we need more of us ⁓ actually in there and delivering those results. ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah, and they're out there. They're out there. Chris is a perfect example. Shout out to Bernard Taylor, who's killing it in Florida 21. Chris Fields: Mm-hmm. For sure. And all the... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): You know, ⁓ Russell Cleveland out here in Montana. We got folks. ⁓ I'm forgetting his name right now and I don't want to say it because I don't want to say the wrong name. But we have a friend. We have a friend in Louisiana who's running for Mike Johnson seat. You know, so we out there. We out there. Chris Fields: Right, I don't want to either, but. Mmm. Yeah, I mean, there's like 50 or 60 of us just in in ⁓ in reasoned reality and and and growing, right? So there's there's candidates across the country who have all pledged not to take corporate PAC money ⁓ that are really in this fight ⁓ for for working people and and aren't for the corporations, right? And elections, one of the things I I Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: kind of want everyone to know. This isn't, it's not about like backing who we think is gonna win, right? Especially not backing the person ⁓ who we think is, who has raised the most money, et cetera, right? And I think I said this earlier. I'm not a vote blue no matter who person, right? I think all of us need to be very, ⁓ one of my favorite analysts says, When it comes to politics, we need to be cold, distant and calculating, right? So we need to be voting for the policies that are gonna help us the best. oftentimes things like freedom or liberation aren't on the ballot. What we're voting for is making sure that there isn't lead in the water. ⁓ What we're voting for is making sure that who's elected Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: ⁓ you know, we might not even agree with them all the time, but hey, at least when, when, when we give their office a call, right? When we organize, when we go out that they are vulnerable to us to make changes, ⁓ to, to, make appeals. And sometimes our gains are measured in inches. Right. But it's still worth that fight because everything in our lives from what we eat. ⁓ to where we work, to our working conditions, to the roads, to schools, to healthcare. All of these things are political. And so they all matter. And there's no such thing as being neutral or not taking sides. Essentially, that position means that you are on the side of the status quo. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: ⁓ Who was it? Noam Chomsky who said like, there's no neutrality on a speeding train, right? If you step back and say, ⁓ I'm not taking sides, then guess where the train is gonna head to the next station. So you can ask yourself, where's this train headed and do I like that direction? And if not, right, then we need to get organized. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Right. And not for anything, but it's better than any TV show you're ever gonna watch. Chris Fields: Which part? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Politics in general, politics in general is way more exciting than anything on Netflix. Chris Fields: Okay? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, like just give it a chance. And people roll their eyes like, ⁓ I'm so tired of talking politics. Politics is gonna happen whether or not you want it. So you might as well have a say so in it. Chris Fields: I mean, it's. True. But I would say, you know, gotta scratch a little bit deeper. Even myself, I don't watch CNN, Fox, MSNBC, any of that like top tier stuff, you know? Typically, I'm more reading articles for ⁓ What's Up to Current events. ⁓ I'm out here in the real world, engaged in the process with organizations. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: ⁓ with individual people. So I could see if you're watching those same talking heads and those four and a half minute segments being like, hey, this is kind of silly, because I think it's silly too, ⁓ but there's more, right? And there's way more. And so get out, get involved. We can do this, join the fight. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. There's way more. Yeah, and if you are, know, the murder mystery kind of, we need your brain so we can unravel all of this stuff that's happening. We'd, ⁓ they did that? Well, they did that because of that. And if they did that, then they did this and then they did this. And then if you look in history, they just keep running the same playbook. They point their finger, they point their finger at someone and say, look, they're different. Chris Fields: Yeah? Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): We need money to put them back in their place. And then they do it and then they can pick someone new and then they pick someone new and they do keep. If you're tired of it, it's time for change. And you know, this whole three party system and we need a three party system, da, da, da, da. Okay, fine. Well, we're showing you an alternative. It's still under the umbrella of the two party system. We get it. We understand. But there, there are some people, there are some people that really do want to leverage the system to change it. Chris Fields: Yeah, and I mean to... Exactly. And to change the rules, you need institutional power, right? And to get institutional power, you need to win elections, right? To win elections, you need people's support, right? You need donations, you need visibility, ⁓ right? You need volunteers, signatures, exactly. And one of the other amazing things Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Signatures! Chris Fields: is I also understand not everyone is in a position to get out there and knock a door or, you know, they're not in the place to make a phone call or text bank or whatever it is, right? But even just paying attention, sharing it on social media, you know, something that takes literally 15, 20 seconds, educating yourself. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: So that way your friends, your family, you can get out there and say, hey, have you seen this candidate? They're not bought and sold by the system. They have some good ideas and pass it to others. Because one of the most effective methods of campaigning and making a difference in our electoral process across the country is neighbors, friends, family members talking. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: to the people they know about the candidates they support. That's the number one effective method. And that's something that everyone can do. And all it takes is just being aware. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, yeah. And the more you put into it, the more you focus in it, the more you'll realize that there's people out there that think like you. Like, before three hours ago, Chris and I didn't know each other, and now we're just kind of like, Chris, I would move mountains for you if you let me. ⁓ Chris Fields: Well, I appreciate that Carlos and and I remember you know you telling me earlier about you know ⁓ People you know wanting to like break the record and I'm like, how are we gonna talk for like two hours? And here we are approaching the three hour mark ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I'm telling you, time flies. Time flies. always tell people ⁓ two hours is gonna fly. And they're like, no, no, no, okay. All right, fine. And then we're in three hours later, we're like, I told you. Chris Fields: It does. Whoa. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): But I love it, I love this format. Because I'm, and I tell all of you guys, don't bring your bullet points, don't bring none of that stuff. I don't know what we're gonna talk about. Chris Fields: I mean, I know. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): But that's like, want people to connect to you, who you are. they can, to me that's important. If you're gonna trust someone to go do this job, I wanna know who you are, what you've been through, your decision making process, ⁓ the way you come up with these solutions, and your experience really does. Chris Fields: Right. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Your life experience, not necessarily political experience, your life experience informs so much of how you're gonna process this job. Chris Fields: Yes. And I would love to see, you know, kind of more of our top politicians really seem to be avoiding this particular format, right? Because so, I mean, because it's one thing to do these, and I was very disappointed at the kind of the recent governor's race in New Jersey. It boiled down to these like 45 second ads from both sides and they both Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, because they're bums. ⁓ lord. Chris Fields: We're saying the same thing at the end there, right? Spend millions of dollars on these commercials where they accuse the other one of wanting to raise the sales tax. And it's like, so what? Both of you guys want to raise the sales tax, but you can't because... Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Because the other one snitched on you? Chris Fields: Ha ha ha! Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah, that's the funny thing ⁓ is the politicians that are the polished ones. They blame each other for the same thing, and then we find out that the same people are giving both of you the same money. Chris Fields: Yeah, it's very unfortunate, right? Which is why this money in politics is a central issue. It's one that we keep coming back to, right? ⁓ And it's one that I've seen. I'm really... ⁓ Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. Chris Fields: kind of ⁓ impress that there are more and more progressive candidates, you know, making that pledge to not take corporate PAC money, right? This movement is growing. It's gaining ground, right? But at the same time, it needs more support. It needs way more support to really make the change that we want to see because it's not about one candidate. It's not about one office. Right? We need a movement. It needs to be organized. It needs to be sustained. That's what leads to the difference, the change that we all want to see. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): I love it. Chris Fields, go ahead and take a couple more minutes, let folks know your last thoughts, your parting thoughts, and then let them know where they can find you online. Chris Fields: Okay, well everyone, I'm Chris Fields. I'm an unbought progressive in New Jersey. And it was great having this conversation with ⁓ Carlos. And I hope that all of you will really get more involved. Look into your local candidates. Get involved with local organizations because... I know tomorrow I'm gonna be out there in no kings and you know, just the movement, the energy across the country. And one thing that I wanna leave you all with is that it is not leaders who make movements, it's movements that make leaders. And so it's the energy of the people, it's the energy of the masses that brings change, not the people at the top. But in order for it to bring the type of change that we wanna see. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yes, sir. Chris Fields: Right? We need to organize and we need to sustain. We need to resist. So you can find me. The best place is Chris Fields, 4NJ on Instagram, on TikTok. And I hope to see all of you again. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Excellent. Thank you again for taking time to come and talk to us and explaining a little bit more of like the process of what it is to run for office. I think this is a valuable lesson that folks can take and it will inform them on the tomfoolery we'll say that is happening. That's happening in the halls of power over there. Chris Fields: And I certainly don't want to discourage other people to run. I actually think you should run. But here's the other thing I'll say. Whatever time you think you need to get in the race to get ready to run, add six months. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yeah. That is, yeah, that's good. That's good. I'm glad you said that. Because ⁓ yeah, yeah, we keep seeing funny tricks being played. So play it safe. Give yourself six extra months. Hell yeah. Chris Fields: for sure. Exactly. you know, small dollar donations, of course, this is what I'm talking about, but raise some money, right? Look into those filing rules of what you need to do to do it properly, to do it legally, right? But Act Blue is great, right? There's multiple ways. I'm more familiar with the rules for federal office, right? But each state has rules as well. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: for state offices, local, county offices, right? Because one of the big advantages that kind of the incumbents and the establishment has is that they're always raising money, right? So this is something that we need to understand. Yes, it is, it takes more, ⁓ it's a different type of effort to raise small dollar donations, but on the plus side, Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Chris Fields: You can get a flood. The only thing that's stopping it is visibility, which can come at any time. And then on the plus side, you don't owe these wealthy entrenched interests anything. So it's very possible. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Mm-hmm. Exactly. You get to do your work for your people. Chris Fields: Exactly. And then this way, you're always fighting for the people. And I mean, we've got amazing content creators like Carlos, and there's networks of them forming across the country, across your area that can help you deliver you from your message to the people. And everything can change. So I guess I'll leave you with this. Join the fight. Together, we can do this. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): Yes. I love it. I love it changing going to make itself Chris Fields: Exactly. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): So Chris Fields, thank you for doing everything that you have done. And thank you again for coming on this ⁓ on this channel to share your story. I do think it's very valuable information for people that are making up their minds on who we want driving this bus. So for that, thank you so much. Chris Fields: Well, thank you for having me, Carlos. It was a great time and a great conversation. We'll have to do it again sometime. Carlos Gomez (Coconut Justice): ⁓ yeah, sometime soon. And with that everybody, and with that everybody, we're out. Chris Fields: Okay.