So this is quite the crowd yeah nothing new for you, I presume that
All kinds of
Records that there was a huge queue going down the stairs and around the building. Is that true?
Have you guys been waiting a line for a while?
Well, I hope it's worth it
I know but I'm really excited to be here and to be able to have this conversation with you on one of my favorite topics
But first I just want to introduce you although you're someone who needs no introduction
the youngest
congresswoman in the house
From the great state of New York the 14th district which encompasses parts of Bronx and queens any local command
And my name is Brianna cray, I'm here from the intercept which
All of you might know but is a non-profit independent news organization that was founded about five years ago
By Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald's and today we focus on publishing
Independent news about corruption and the environment criminal justice surveillance war technology all the interesting things
And I want to tell you up top that if you want to tweet about this event and follow along you should use the hashtag
AOC intercept
so
The thing that makes you really stand out I think is the extent to which you've gotten so many people
engaged about a subject which frankly can be a little bit dry and that is politics and
Particularly the extent to which you've engaged a lot of younger people in the political process. I mean your your
Instagram feeds get an incredible amount of views you
Set records on
C-span for the amount of times that people have watched these clips
It might not be a very high bar to be but you beat it
So I want to ask you first and foremost, you know, why do you think it is that you've engaged people in this way?
well, I think
part of what happened last year was a little bit of a cracking system and
Even before
the primary and everything else that happened when when I was
Part of the team and making the campaign video ahead of the win it opened with this
line that said women like me aren't supposed to run for office and it's because
young people with with the norms and the systems and
an electoral system that's dominated by special interests and dark money and
Rules of seniority and all of these things young people aren't supposed to run
Working-class people aren't supposed to run people that have not been groomed
for a very long time aren't supposed to run let alone win and when we did yesterday, I mean yesterday it feels like
When when we did last year?
I think it kind of created this shock in the system where suddenly a lot of other people said, wait a second
Maybe I can do this too. And I think that is what is behind the surge. It's not like this top-down
Organizing apparatus, but it's really this movement starting to translate into
More of our electoral politics than then we probably anticipated
You know
What's funny is that this might be end up being the longest conversation?
That we've had despite the fact that I feel like we've been kind of circling each other for a while
I actually started at the intercept I think two days after it published its first article on you. Oh
and
the intercept is one of the first publications to really start covering your race because if it's hard to remember that now
That you are you know
such a trailblazer and such a popular political figure but in the in the spring of
2018 this all seemed like a bit of a long shot you were going up against one of the most powerful representatives in the state
It's one have a lot of influence and seniority
and
It was it's been quite the ride to be able to kind of
Start my career and start covering your beat the AOC beat if you will
And be there for your amazing
Primary victory and to see that look on your face. Yeah. It was a genuine registration. I'm surprised yeah
So now that your your you know a few months into your actual tenure
Is there anything in particular that you think you've learned that you didn't expect? Oh, man
What I've learned, I mean there's so much that you're learning every single day
you know and and every moment kind of represents a certain transition of sorts, so there was this crazy period
Of course, there was everything that we were doing before the primary and what we were learning up to that day
Then there was this insane period between the primary election in the general election
And then the general election and swearing-in and now is kind of about two months into our first term
and so there's each one of those things carries a huge lesson, but I think in the last two months, it's been really
fascinating to see
Exactly, you know we have this idea that
DC is dominated by dark money and that like lobbyists are hiding in people's, you know closets or whatever like Boop like
Vote for oil I'm like whatever it is
But it doesn't you know, it doesn't work like that. And so it's been very
Fascinating to see how subtle these very powerful
Influences make their way and and that is what makes them powerful is that there's you know
Sometimes it it is very transactional and it's like here's a check, you know
We have a relationship now
But a lot of times it's much more subtle than that and then the language and all of this stuff all of these little pieces
Add up to the reality that people sense and feel which is that the culture
that is governing Washington DC is
extremely separated from the reality of what everyday people are experiencing and feeling
Does that awareness of how?
Many cell influences. There are in the political process
Undemocratic influences. They're on the political process
I don't want to this isn't a conversation about 2020, but I'm curious how much that influences your
Decision-making and how much you think voters should attend to that when they select candidates and you know how you can
Start to tell or distinguish between candidates who may or may not have made efforts to distance themselves from those influences
I think it's really important and
It you know there there are some aspects to it that we should look for in terms of litmus test, you know
Does it can't has a candidate rejected corporate PAC money for example, but I think it also goes much deeper than that
And and you really need to look at the overall coherence and consistency
of a person's policy positions and when you see that they're consistently voting or they're consistently acting or
Defending certain interests you do have to ask yourself
why and sometimes that does go a little bit deeper than just have they taken money from a corporate PAC but
But it has to do with with a lot more influences as well
And so, you know, I think that that's something that's really important to consider
But again, I think it's it's really looking at the overall platform and and picture that any one
candidate or
elected official presents, you know
What is the story that they tell I think is extremely important to ask and to look for of people
So I think this is a good point to start to pivot into the main subject of remarks here today
Which is to talk about this race class divider this alleged raised class divide that
percolated up, I think in the aftermath of 2016 when Donald Trump's victory after a campaign that was so
explicitly
Racist I'll say not not racialized which is the first thing you all kind of been prized today right flavored like all these language
Tinged like I think he's but he's one of the few that you can kind of say
The term dog whistling is it's it's too subtle. Yeah
It gives them too much credit. Right? Right. So, you know following his win there were all of these
Gnostics about what actually caused it and the fact that he was so expressed where other people have been
Subtle made one camp kind of form that say it was predominantly
Primarily and sometimes even exclusively about racism and another camp emerged that said well
He was also speaking to a lot of populist things. He really
talked about trade a lot and
activated people's resentment around the TPP and
for some reason these has been kind of
painted as mutually exclusive
Rationale, what do you make about?
well, I think that the effort to divide race and class has always been the tool of
The powerful to prevent everyday working people from taking control of the government
that
is supposed to work for them and
So you see this?
And
So I think you actually see the beginnings of this, you know
2016 I think was a really stark example of this
But you actually see some of the roots of this and you see a lot of the roots of the issues that we have
right now
Take really start to take hold in the late 70s and during the 80s and one perfect example
I think a perfect example of how
special interests and the powerful have pitted
White working-class Americans
against
brown and black working-class Americans in order to just screw over all working-class Americans
Is
Is
Reaganism in the 80s when he started talking about welfare queens
So you think about this image welfare queens and what he was really trying to talk about was this who's painting this photo?
he's painting this like really resentful vision of
essentially
black women who were doing nothing that were sucks on our country, right and
it's this whole tragedy of the commons type of
Thinking thinking where it's like because these one this one specific group of people that you are already kind of
Subconsciously primed to resent you give them a different reason
That's not explicit racism, but still read it in a racist caricature
It gives people a logical
Realisable reason to say oh ya know toss out the whole social safety net
yeah, and then as a result, we are all devastated and
what we're dealing with in 29 2016 I think was like the reckoning of that again, which is
Yep, you wages have stayed flat for 30 years
Our nation is being more productive and more wealthy as a whole than ever before but that wealth is being enjoyed
By a very small amount of people and the reason for it is not systemic inequality or runaway hyper
Capitalism or the fact that we've taken away all the guardrails of a responsible Society. The reason is Mexicans
you know and
That's the reason
And
This
This is a it is an old trope, but we're getting conned and
we can start fighting over each other and this that and the other and the wall and
whatever, but this is why I say that it's we need to be really zeroing in on the malpractice of
governance and how
You know
Special interests have captured the only tool that we have to govern ourselves
fairly and not
at a profit
So how then do we redirect let me let me ask this first. I think that your point about the fact that
It seems as though Republicans generally
But Trump has been able to to fill a void right to kind of speak to these, you know
economic means
So-called economic anxiety, whatever you want to call it precarity the stagnation of wages, etc
That have been felt across the board. Of course, not just and
among the white working-class
And that he's able to speak to those interests almost in a vacuum
Like nobody else is speaking to them and I think that's something that that's so interesting
Is that you have risen you you ran a campaign and we have seen many popular politicians now running campaigns
But highlight issues which are characterized as fringe and on the left
But which have a plurality of support among not even just Democratic voters, but Republican voters as well
So why do you think it's taken so long to get candidates who are pushing issues like Medicare for all a green new deal?
$15 minimum wage to the foreground I
think
it's because
You know, I
So I'll I'll kind of go back with a story because even though people, you know
They try to characterize my district as far left and oh my god
every socialist in America lives in like East Bronx and queens or whatever like
It's but there are a lot of Trump voting
pockets of my district and I talked to these folks and
I'll never forget, you know
And it's there are parts of my district that look like the middle of the country believe it or not. And
And I remember on the remember. I'll never forget this one older woman who came to me and said, you know, I
always voted Democrat because growing up my dad told me that Democrats were the people that fight for
the working man and
We stopped and
The
Working man and woman and people is the majority of this country
And so what we I think we saw was now both parties frankly. I
abdicated their responsibility
And it was just no one was fighting
for working people who were struggling and so as a result it almost created this opportunity and
You can take all of this anger and direct it
To a negative and destructive end that allows a small group of people to benefit a great amount
Or you have to take a really bold
stances
to bring it the other way and direct it to the possibility of what we can accomplish together and I think
The thing that is really hard for
for people to sometimes see is that when we are on this path of a slow erosion and
a slow slow slow just like
Move away from what we've always been we'll be a hundred miles
You'll you know, you'll realize you won't even realize that you've drifted a hundred miles
So when someone's talking about our core, it's like oh, this is radical
But this isn't radical. This is what we've always been
it's just that now we we've strayed so far away from what has
really made us powerful
And just and good and equitable unproductive. And so I think all of these things sound radical
compared to where we are, but where we are is not a good thing and this idea of like 10% better from
Garbage it
Shouldn't be what we settle for. It's like this like it feels like
Moderate is not a stance. It's just an attitude toward life of like
Don't hold it back tell me how you feel about incrementalism
But here's the thing that upsets me is that
We've become so cynical that
that we view or
we view cynicism as an intellectually superior attitude and
we view ambition as
youthful naiveté
When we think about the greatest things we have ever accomplished as a society have been
ambitious acts of vision and
The math is like worship now for what like for what
I
Like to joke that incremental ISM has ruined my dating life
Because I have been on several dates now where people have argued with me. Not any ideological
measure per se but the the pure merits of
Incrementalism and when I find myself doing in response is often a booking some of the themes that I think make
Your approach so powerful which is to foreground the moral question
Mm-hm and to ask you know
if we say that X Y & Z is gonna take so many years if climate change is a great example because we've not been
Told we don't have but 12 years, right?
Who who actually?
Is hurt by by kicking the can down the road
that's right, because there was a lot of conversation in 2016 about how I'm kind of
you know irresponsible or naive was to
Pursue some of these big-ticket items and not a lot of conversation about the privilege that it takes to say
Well, we'll deal with this in the next generation, you know
So I I do want to connect this back a little bit more to the issues
Involving race because while you think that there is a great deal of popularity
These programs are pull after polls show overwhelmingly popular
There is this emergent narrative that says these kind of New Deal style
Universal programs are not
For
Diverse communities and that there's a lot of skepticism that I think is understandable among certain, you know
Non-white communities that says well these programs were floated before and they did a lot to do
Fix a lot of people have a lot of people in America, but they systemically cut out
Us yeah, you know
We weren't able to take advantage of them in the same way and they had the effect of widening the wealth gap and in other
Kinds of gaps. So how do we
Connect the utility
of these kind of New Deal programs to communities that feel like they have been insufficiently served by them in the past, you know, and
That's an excellent question because it's it was one of the founding questions with which we started approaching
at the draft of the green New Deal resolution
because
One of the things about history is that it is often revisionist, you know, Martin Luther King is cast as this
angelic person that never made anyone mad and just asked for civil rights and got it and and
Unions were always just seen as like this great powerful thing that nobody died
For a 40-hour work week and a weekend
And it's a similar thing, you know
the other way with the New Deal is that we act as though the New Deal wasn't racist and the New Deal was an extremely
economically racist policy that drew literal red lines around black and brown communities and
And basically it invested in
White America and what it did was that it allowed?
white Americans to have access to home loans that black and brown Americans did not have access to
Giving them the largest form of intergenerational wealth, which is real estate
And so this is really it really accelerated many parts of an already
horrific racial wealth gap that continues to persist today
So how do we turn this around and what we did with the green new deal is?
this is why the
intersectional frontline community aspect of the green New Deal is so important because it allows
indigenous communities to lead black and brown communities to have a certain
self-determination that has not existed in public policy
For these communities before and so one of the ways that we do that is we say we fix the pipes in Flint first
we clean the air in the Bronx first we
Rebuild the the electrical grids in Puerto Rico, and we fully funds
and
and
We fully fund the pensions of coal miners in West Virginia at the same time
because and
the reason that we do these things is because the truth of the matter is that economically
civically and beyond our
destinies and our prosperity and our well-being is tied its inextricably linked and when
we pursue public policy in a way that
Unlinks us from each other it is not sustainable
It's not sustainable eventually it catches up to you and it catches up to you in racial resentment
That and that racial resentment is a political tool to dismantle the economic
Advocacy that we need to have for ourselves
so I think your point about how
Important intersectionality isn't in the design of these New Deal programs is really well made
But I think there's this interesting debate that's happening. Where
Instead of arguing that programs like the New Deal these so-called Universal programs
Should be designed to avoid the mistakes of the past so that they should be more intersectional
There is a rising skepticism of them on the whole
And a feeling that instead of those programs
Marginalized communities to be better served by programs that are racially specific like racially targeted programs
that would put
resolving racial weight great race gaps rather first
and I think that raises a very really obvious political conundrum, even if kind of ethical concerns are
I
One would have empathy for them. Right? So the political conundrum is if we live in a country, that's still
70 percent white which is a number I think shocks a lot of people but if you include
White Hispanics it actually is that big?
Who often vote?
similarly to non-hispanic whites
You know, what as a political cost. Let's say of saying we're going to bow your hat and with a program like
Reparations, how much do you think those considerations should be made?
well
You know, it's a good question, I think that one of the things that we've seen from early polling actually is that I
think that we should
Distance ourselves and start getting away from this idea that
That
We should only care about our selves
Because when we really do start to assert and believe and understand and see how our how our destinies are tied
it doesn't it we kind of get away from this idea that only
You know people of color care about other people of color and only white people care about other white people and so on
There are a lot of systems that we have to dismantle but also it does get into this
Interesting area of where we are as a country about identity
because
Like what does it mean to be black?
Who is you know who is black and who is and especially as our country becomes more biracial and multi?
Multiracial same thing with being Latino same thing it brings up all these questions of like passing and you know, things like that
But but I do think it is important that we have to have substantive conversations about race beyond
beyond like what is racist and what is not and if someone says something
Racist does that make them racist like we we need to get away from talking
Well, not that we have to get away from talking about racism. It's important that we talk about racism but
Because we talk about racism so much. We actually aren't talking about race itself and
We aren't educating ourselves about our own history
To come to the conclusions that I think we need to come to. Hmm. I
One of the frustrations
Those of you who are familiar with my Twitter feed know that I'm very online and one of the recurring frustrations that I have
Is the way in which the the idea of a race class divide erases the extent to which?
The biggest concerns from my in my view. Anyway, when we talk about racism the negative effects of racism what we're really talking about are
one the kind of interpersonal
Slight and the feeling of marginalization and those kind of psychic harms, but most more significantly more often
We're talking about the effects which are awesome economic and how how kind of absurd it feels to be
to say that a conversation about closing the the wealth gap the racial wealth gap is somehow a
conversation that falls into one category either race or class or that if we're talking about
housing integration that somehow that isn't also a class issue and you know
It feels like not a lot of people are doing a particularly good job of connecting the extent to which
kind of
class equality efforts are in fact
inextricably entwined with racial equality effort
No matter what like as a matter, of course
definitionally, you know
What kind of do you have any any sense of what kind of messaging is effective there? I
actually think that it it's
It goes beyond messaging and it's really just about education
so like a lot of people don't know this story about the New Deal a lot of people don't know what redlining is and
because of that it's just like I don't know why there is a racial wealth gap like and
because when people are not educated about the tools and the systems that
created
Racial wealth gap disparities or other wealth gap disparities. It's just like this is the reality
I don't know and you create this gaping maw in which someone can tell a racist story that
That kind of tells people why a certain community is poor
They're poor because they're lazy they're poor because they're uneducated
they're poor because this but no one's saying they're poor because they're redlining and everyone else inherited a house except for
You know people of color yeah, and so I've got no house. Yeah. Yeah, and so
So I think a lot of it requires is part of our personal responsibility to educate ourselves
To get past the revisionist history that we're taught in the fourth grade
and so that's you know, I think that's an important part but also the messaging is important as well and that
it doesn't
Feel good to live in an unequal society. It doesn't feel good
Like I walked through New York City
Which has the highest rate of people who are homeless today
that in any other time since the Great Depression and at the same time, there are
Penthouses galore
fifty percent of which are vacant because they're people's like second or third or fourth home and it doesn't feel
good doesn't feel good walking down New York City and and
You know and and in walking and seeing so many veterans who are homeless so many
Elderly who are homeless and and so on people with mental illnesses that are homeless
Like it doesn't feel good to live in a society like that. And so
Part of it. I think does go back to the to the moral question
It's like and that's where you know, you're also able to combat that incrementalism because it's like we're talking for example with ice
I've stated very very clearly
I don't believe that an agency that's systematically and repeatedly violates human right rights can be reformed. I think it must be abolished
I
Got I got a lot of heat recently in the party because I was really furious when
When this Republican amendment was able to kind of slip through on a gun safety bill
That gave more power to ice it allowed
It allowed gun vendors to to report information
about
undocumented people to ice and I was furious about it and I got a lot of heat for being furious about it because
you know, whatever reason and so
but the the thing is the reason that I was so upset is because
we have an
agency, that is
Separating children from their parents and putting them in cages and CNN was reporting a year ago a
Year ago CNN had reports of ice agents pinning down children and forcibly injecting them with
Antipsychotic drugs and the thing that makes me furious is this app it is this idea of like let's just cage a few less
Let's just inject a few less
let's just
You know
it's too politically complicated and for me what is just so upsetting and heartbreaking about this moment is like
Since when did it become the moderate position in America to continue caging children?
And that's why I like we're not talking about we're not tough
We're not talking about the difference between a seven and a ten percent tax rate. We're not talking about percentage points
We're talking about human rights. We're talking about children
We're talking about what kind of nation we want to be and this idea that its electoral II complicated because we have allowed racial resentment
to become
legitimized as a
Political tool is a very difficult thing to grapple with
so so you mentioned
One of the things I said about is is that you know when it's if something is structurally
Irredeemable then we shouldn't be having conversations about redeeming it, you know
majorities of Americans I think for the first time a majority of American more Americans feel favorably about
socialism than capitalism and
Increasingly there. Are these kind of systemic critiques of
Of capitalism. Do you feel similarly that that our system of government is?
Irredeemable, I mean you've said you've said in the past, you know, you don't think it's
Ethical to have a country with billionaires where there were so many people who are you know?
struggling to get basic their basic health care needs met
you know at what point does that translate into a broader systemic critique of a country and a
Critique of what kind of leaders we should be electing going forward. I don't think that our government is irredeemable
If I did I wouldn't have run for office, but but capitalism in particular right because it could be different. So I think
The tough part about this about like is capitalism redeemable, etc. Is that
It's hard to have these conversations I think as a society because we all have different ideas
Of what just in the public imagination? There's a there are different ideas of
What?
Does capitalism mean what does socialism mean etc, but for me?
when I think about
What those definitions are?
Capitalism isn't to me is it's an ideology of capital
It puts capital. The most important thing is the concentration of
Capital and it means that we seek and prioritize profit and the accumulation of money
Above all else and we seek it at any human and environmental cost
That is what that means and to me that
Ideology is not sustainable and cannot be redeemed
But when we talk about ideas, for example, like democratic socialism
It means putting democracy and society first instead of capital first
It doesn't mean that you put other things last
It doesn't mean that that the actual concept of capital as a society is should be abolished or or anything like that
but it's it's a question of our priorities and I right now I think what we are reckoning with are the
consequences of putting profit above everything else in society because what we're what it means is
People getting paid less than what it takes to live. What it means is
People that need insulin die because they can't afford it even though us as a society
Can afford it and because and also because insulin was originally made free
because the idea of of having to pay to live seemed crazy even to the people who discovered it and
So for me, it's a question of priorities. And right now I don't think our priorities are sustainable
But there's also again in the public imagination a lot of fear-mongering
About what democratic socialism means that it's like you're you know
That government's gonna like take over the private sector and in fact in my opinion
those those two things need to need to be separate and what we're actually experiencing right now is the opposite we are experiencing is
You know just as there's all this fear-mongering that government is going to take over
Every corporation and government is going to take over every business or every form of production
We should be scared right now because corporations have taken of our government
In my opinion
We should be wary of any entity in which both of those things are combined whether it's through one way or the other
And that's why the emphasis in democratic socialism is on
democracy and it's not about
you know it it's it's just as much a
transformation about bringing democracy to the workplace
So that we have a say and that we don't check all of our rights at the door every time we cross the threshold
Into our workplace because at the end of the day as workers
And as people a society were the ones creating wealth not a corporate CEO
It's not a CEO. That's make that's actually creating four billion dollars a year. It is the millions of workers in this country
that's creating billions of dollars of economic productivity a year and
our system should reflect that I
think as controversial as a
debated rather as the
Definition of democratic socialism I think is probably also the definition of identity politics and in this last few minutes
I really do want to get to this because you
Did an interview with Glenn Greenwald for the intercept last summer in which you gave perhaps the most eloquent
description of identity politics that I've ever heard as someone who is a hundred percent on the idea of a politics
So I want to if we can play a short part of that
clip
At the end of the day
I'm a candidate that doesn't take corporate money that champions medicare-for-all a federal jobs guarantee the abolishment of ice and a green new deal
but I approach those issues with the lenses of the community that I live in and that is
not as easy to say as identity politics, but I think it's it's something that our
constituents understand on a very deep level
So so what I love about that that definition and there was a lot before but I would rather you talk about here at live
Then go back to your old
Is that you I think United to two kind of different definitions that I've been percolating that I think
cause a lot of the debate
There is a critique of identity politics from a right, right, which says identity doesn't matter
It's all about kind of rugged individualism
And there's to say that there are
Experiences that people have because of what they look like how they identify how the world interacts with them is
Silly or wrong despite the fact that that isn't cord with most people's lived experiences, right?
You know that when you walk through the world wearing a you know
a
Space helmet on that people are gonna react to you like you're wearing a space helmet and the same comes from other kinds of you
Know I more substantive identities
There's also this critique of weaponized I didn t though
which is I think the critique that more often comes on the Left which says
You know the facts of somebody's identity might be a proxy for their beliefs or their politics but is not
determinative and
That when particularly when we're looking at politicians and kind of picking our leadership
That it's important to keep both of those things in mind to say okay representation has value the lens has value
but the lens is a lens as opposed to
Kind of I don't know like an eye patch or a blight or something that completely cuts off vision. I mean, how do you
negotiate the balance between I think a genuine desire for representation and
you know a desire also to have substantive politics that don't always map on to politicians who
Possess marginalized identities. Yeah, you know and I feel like my perspective on this was really shaped
by where I came from in the Bronx because
There you know it took
So much effort in my community to get people to even vote
because they have been burned so many times and
they've been burned by politicians that look like them and
So in the Bronx, there's just this idea. There's really this idea that it's just like it doesn't really doesn't matter
and there's all of the cynicism that
Resulted from electing people. You know that
Ethnically matched the community, but once they got into power
advanced the same agenda that was
marginalizing the community to begin with and so there was a lot of cynicism about that and the thing that creates
hope about the situation is the joining of the two things is that you can have someone from the community that
Understands the experience actually
Advocate for the policies and the positions that can change our future
so
They're not, you know separable things. I don't think that
If I truly do not believe that if I ran on a platform
That was more moderate I would I would not have won my election I wouldn't have and
And
Because it has to be not just a superficial alternative or something. That looks different
It has to be something that actually is different and it has to be different on many levels
So so it yes, it's different in my identity and my identity and my experiences with my community
inform and add
You know a different
perspective to
The positions that I hold and to the policy that I hold because it goes the other way because you can't have just a progressive
position like Medicare for all
without an understanding of race because
Then you do get back to that position that you were talking about earlier where communities say. Oh this isn't for me
This is for somebody else people aren't thinking about me when you're drafting this plan
and because you aren't thinking about me then when it gets implemented, we're gonna get left behind again, and it's you know,
It's gonna be a benefit for somebody else and so to be able to articulate both of these things
Both of these arguments that wants to be able to talk about how criminal justice reform
Rather like the war on drugs was an economic agenda it
It it educates people and that's really what we need
We we really just need to be educating ourselves right now about how we've gotten to this place
Well, I would love to keep asking you a lot more questions, but I think I've been told to reserve 15 minutes for the audience
so
Does anybody have a question?
Yes down in front I
So the question is for anybody who didn't hear how do you talk to people with the kind of different beliefs about racism and
demonism and broader political beliefs
so the way I have conversations with people of opposing beliefs is
I don't try to convince them of anything
So that's the first thing stop trying to win people over
Stop trying to enter a conversation thinking that you're gonna like aah-ha them into
changing their mind and
So I think that you know, we've kind of lost the art of conversation
So when I enter a conversation with someone I actually try to learn more about
Where they're coming from
like I
Try I actually use it as an experience
To like let's say I'm talking to someone who's saying something really racist and they don't even realize that they're saying something really racist. I
Asked some questions because I'm interested. I'm fascinated by that
How does that work, you know?
but really and so I don't do it in a way that's like mocking but I ask questions to kind of dig like
You know when someone says oh this isn't racist why
But you have to we have to learn to like really disarm ourselves in these conversations. First of all
because we had proach them with so much hostility and like they get mad and we get mad and all of these things and
and we so part of it is like emotional work and and
The second part of it is intention. Like what are you trying to get out of this conversation?
And if you're just trying to argue with someone, it's it's gonna it's not gonna work
You know, you believe what you believe they believe what they believe
So I think the thing that we have to do is try to have a good faith
interaction of trying to learn more about where the other person comes from because often what I find, is that when
I do win people over
It's almost never in the conversation itself that I've won someone over is that I have a conversation with someone
I asked them some critical questions and I pretty like I pretty
Calmly explained to them. Well, this is where I'm coming from and this is why I believe what I believe
why do you believe what you believe and
You kind of like leave the conversation but very often
that person will sit on what you said and they will sit on the fact that you respected them and gave them space and
Then very often I've had interactions like that and I'll run into that person again a week later a month later
Etc, and they said you know what?
you said something that I really thought about and I changed my mind, but
Conversate no one ever changes their mind in the actual acute
Situation of a conversation it's like they ask it's like afterwards when it kind of sits with them
but if you rush in, you know fully-armored up
Attacking them and making them feel
Defensive they will never listen to anything that you have to say. So it's really about learning
How how we can have a conversation again? And also there's a really important conversation about good faith and bad faith
Conversations and when I sense that someone is engaging in me and bad faith. I just don't engage the conversation at all
It's not worth my time or my energy
If someone's trying to put you down or belittle you or approach a conversation as though they are more intelligent than you
Because like oh, no, there's no way that someone can disagree with me and still be smart. You know, there's this like
You know, there's a very condescending tone that that we have in a lot of our conversations
And and I think it's important to really approach those kinds of disagreements with a lot of compassion
because when they see they you know people really
Look at not just the logic of your argument
But how you make them feel as much as people hate to say that and admit it. It's true
Yeah, but I think that's good advice and really hard advice because I think there's a lot of talk about kind of emotional labor. Yeah
yeah, yeah the idea of having to put out emotional labor is controversial right because nobody should have to but I think the reality is
That if you don't approach these conversations in a certain kind of way
you don't get the results that you'd like and I and I do find I
found myself in those conversations a lot when I'm traveling around doing doing reporting trips around the country and
Was once in a car with a bunch of other not white reporters
where the uber drivers started saying some things that were like a little less than kosher and
everyone jumped in and kind of I think in my defense is what it was about and I was like
We've got 44 minutes till we get to Des Moines and I need this not to escalate
And what ended up happening was that giving the driver a little bit more space?
He basically talked himself out of his own racism using the ref' you know, I needed to give him enough rope
That's right. You know, that's right. I was just
you know Austin's a very special place for me because this is one of the first places where actually organized young people and I
have this
mentor and one of the best piece of pieces of advice that he gave me is
Always give someone the Golden Gate of retreat which is give someone enough rope
Give someone enough compassion enough opportunity in a conversation for them to look good changing their mind
yeah, and it's a really
important thing to be able to do because if you're just like, oh you said this thing like you're racist and and
When now you're forcing that person to say no, I'm not like etc. There's no golden gate of retreat. There you only
Retreat there is to just barrel right through the opposing opinion. Yeah, I'm sorry
I missed the line over there at the mic cuz it's brand new. Yeah
I
count the days that Donald Trump will not be my president, which will hopefully be tomorrow, but I think it's not
all right, I
Think it's not gonna be until 2020. My problem is I look at everyone and I have a hard time
Choosing someone I believe in versus just choosing someone
I will that will win and at what point will we have a candidate we all believe in versus?
Just getting ahead and getting that win. So he's not president
that's an excellent question a
lot of
you know, I think that the I think the person we believe in is the person who will win and so I think that
Even if who we believe in is different, I think that in this first initial stage, we have a responsibility
To find and really fight for who we believe in
because
What people my opinion and I think we've seen what people think will win is wrong
Almost always
people what people think though they'll say
Oh
I believe X Y Z but I think
the thing that will win is something other than what I believe and so everyone starts like
Triangulating what they think will win
Away, from what they actually believe and compromising all of the things that make them passionate about
Participating in our political system until we have this weird
Compromise like this weird
amalgamation which is like how we've gotten a lot of the politicians that we've gotten and a lot of our the complaints about
Politicians that we've gone today how everyone talks like a robot that everything is pre-scripted
That they're either like super out of touch like this is how we got this we take responsibility because we voted for these people
Like they didn't come out of nowhere
We voted for these people that we don't like
So if you're complaining about the system
It's because we're not fighting hard enough for what we actually believe in because we we we do idolize
like cynicism as an intellectually superior position and we're like, oh, you know
It's small of me or it's you know, the the child in me that believes we can have health care as a human, right?
Yeah, and I don't think we should believe belittle our beliefs anymore. Like we are capable of so much as a country and
We are capable of so much than what we're doing right now
Like we are capable of everything in the world
We are capable of saving the planet of guaranteeing health care as a right of educating our children through college
We are we are capable of establishing all work as dignified of
Respecting people's cultures of having an economy that not only welcomes immigrants but needs immigrants because we are being so productive
We are
We're capable of that
And like don't get duped by this person
That's like oh I you know blah blah blah technic the technocratic
No
We're capable of them and the position should be not
Let's not do it because we figured out all we haven't figured out all the details yet
How about the goal is let's figure out all the details
Because we've decided we're going to the moon we're gonna get there before the end of the decade and then we're gonna do it
You know
Like
When Kennedy said we're gonna go to the moon by the end of 10 years
People thought that he was crazy. He didn't have a plan
So many of the technologies that required us to get there weren't even invented yet
But it was taken seriously enough as a mission
Like we need to think of platform positions as well as our mission and it should be our mission right now
to make sure that all people
Have health care it should be our mission right now
our mission should
Be to make sure that all jobs are paid a dignified living wage and then it's you know
And it should like our mission should be to save our freaking planet
And this idea
Visit the New York Times said and I quote. They said in a headline the green New Deal is
Technologically possible but is it?
politically possible and so that to me is the biggest
you know condemnation of where we're at because there is an admission an
actual admission that we can do it and
Just the idea
That our biggest obstacle is political will should be the most embarrassing thing for us right now
First of all saw you at Foley Square on women's marched. It was really awesome. My name is Yael
I'm a I am a first generation immigrant
I wasn't even gonna say that but cool as a technical as a tech entrepreneur as well. I do think everyday about
automation and
The millions of jobs that are going to be replaced by machines in the coming decades and how will we as a society?
Be able to ensure that everyone can still earn a living or even find a purpose in an economy
That will not be able to support as many jobs
It's it's a it's a great question. And and I think we talk about automation
It's not just automating people out of work
But it's automating every system that we have right now and what it also means is automating injustice. So when we talk about
the trend of economic inequality
It's only going to accelerate
with the advancement of technology if we don't fix our underlying systems, so if we don't fix our
actual systems and how we handle the production of wealth, you know, we should be
Everybody should be feeling the fact that we are
Most prosperous point than we've ever been everybody in the country should be feeling the extent of our national prosperity
but the majority of us aren't and
And so when we talk about the you know job automation
One of the things that's difficult is, you know, people should not necessary
We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work, right?
We should have we should not feel nervous about
You know the Tollbooth collector not having to collect tolls anymore
we should be excited by that but the reason we're not excited by head is because
we live in a society where if you don't have a job you are left to die and
that
is at its core or problem and
So there are a lot of different solutions or a lot of different proposed
Ideas about how we go about that. You know, Bill Gates has talked about taxing robots at ninety percent and
What that means what he's really talking about is taxing corporations at ninety percent
But it's easier to say tax a robot
And so so, I think that
What we do is when we actually decouple ourselves from this idea
You know, we should get to a point and we should
structure our systems whether it's a tax rate whether it's
distributing wealth that is created by automation
If we talk if we if we approach
Solutions to our system and start entertaining ideas like that
Then we should be excited about automation because what it what it could potentially mean is
more time educating ourselves more time creating art more time investing and
Investigating in the sciences more time focused on invention more time going to space more time
Enjoying the world that we live in because not all creativity needs to be
bonded
by wage and
And I think that actually like one of the reasons that this ideology or
Questions of whether you want to call it democratic socialism or techno futurism or like whatever it is
It is because our
Technological advancement as a society has outpaced our system for handling finite resources
because now we are approaching approaching infinite resources and
How do like capitalism is based on scarcity and what happens when there is enough for everyone to eat?
what happens when there is enough for everyone to be clothed then you have to
Make scarcity art of artificial and that is what has happened
We have created artificial scarcity
And that is why
We are driven to work 80 hours a week when we are being our most productive at any point in American history
and so we you know
We should be working the least amount we've ever worked
If we were actually paid based on how much wealth we were producing
But we're not were paid on how little were desperate enough to accept and then the rest is skimmed off and given to a billionaire
yeah, I
Know that you grew up with Star Trek as well. I
Like to think of it as full Star Trek socialism is the goal. I
Want to get through a few more these questions quickly if we can
Hi, my name is Lupita. Hi, I'm Amir. We are the radical monarchs from East Oakland. Hey
Are you wearing Girl Scout masks? Yes, what is oh nice
Oh, um our question is what advice would you give to young girls of color who want to get into politics?
The advice that I give is stop trying to navigate systems of power and start building your own power
So
I
so I'm from I represent Queens and I was recently I was recently doing a town hall with girls who code and
What I told them was that you know
There are so many subconscious forces that make us try to act like somebody else and that's why it was important
And I've discussed it. So I was important for me to you know, wear hoop earrings to my swearing in because
We're taught that
You like when you're a woman of color?
there are just so many things about you that is just like
Non-conforming, you know like
My I happen to have been
You know, that's what I'm saying. Looks like I haven't I've been born with straight hair, but my niece's have like throws right?
and so down to that there are places where like you have to like make more space and
and
we're taught to like
like put our hair back and be small and and
articulate in a certain way and
you know be square and essentially try to
try to
do an impression of
power
which has really our subconscious signals to try to act like white men and
And so
It's down to how you're how you are
kind of forced or or
encouraged to speak
The idea that some ways of speaking are less legitimate
The idea that some ways of dressing are less legitimate or you know instead we don't say legitimate. We say unprofessional
And so that if you say a or if you say my momma or whatever it's unprofessional
but
even if you're producing the same result or the same quality of work you somehow scene is less than and so
So stop trying to navigate those systems because they weren't built for you. And we need to build our own systems and recognize
So
We're out of time but I in light of how long the line is. I do want to do like a rapid fire
So yeah
Keep your questions short and your I'll try to keep my answers do a little bit shorter than we need
for a few more people
so, my name is my kind of software company here in Austin majority of my staff or women about 15 and
In last election a couple months ago
I noticed a lot of them actually then go to vote and
It really annoys me as somebody who's actually from Iran from the country that is not easy to go
You know find a good Canada to to vote for
So as an American, I want to tell you guys that
Please go vote
Yes, it matters
every single one of them matters
How do I encourage my own staff
Majority of them again younger recent Gras. How do I encourage them to go votes? Tell them to run?
Thank you
You gotta tell them to run you need to tell them to start participating
even in small things like school boards and City Council's and things like that because I've had elections where I didn't want to I didn't
Want to vote I didn't want to vote because I was like, this is not a good set of options
And so the answer is to get them to run
Yeah, my name is Austin incised
I'm from Norway and it's very interesting to have a European perspective and seen from afar what your country's going through
I'm writing about I'm working down in Alabama in a diner and
What has changed?
Europe in the last century was more unions labor unions than tax policies here in the u.s
is a lot of folks focus on tax policies and
these women in my diner they not organize their a minimum pay they work by the hours and
They don't even think about organizing they just you know, hope that they will get an extra hour work. How are you gonna help people?
Like them you don't really you know, they do don't really fight for themselves
I'm surprised by the submissiveness and second question here is when you hear the word socialism in the US
People would said this morning Howard Souls socialism
What you talk about is Venezuela in Europe when we hear their word socialism. It's what?
Scandinavia is spilled on even though you might call it social democracy
I'm just wondering why don't candidates on the left here talk more forcefully about yes, there is a model
There's the Nordic model in Europe. That's a scandinavian model Norwegian model Swedish model
Instead of letting folks use
Teach the people that what you're talking about, that's Venezuela. So so I'll start with the first half of your question
which has to do with organizing and one of those things is because
We have been taught that we don't matter
In a lot of different
Subconscious ways. We've been taught that if you make $15 an hour,
You don't matter they've been taught that if you're poor you don't matter
taught if you're a person of color living in a community
You don't matter and when you internalize and feel like you don't matter you don't do anything to change your lot because you don't matter
because who cares but so the core is really
changing our
idea of ourselves that we matter and that our
Worthiness is not based on an external condition. Our worthiness is intrinsic to being a human being on this planet
and
If you are alive and a human then you are worth dignity and
that is I think
the the core tenets of organizing that
Needs to and is starting to in my belief awakened across the country. That's what we saw with teachers in, West, Virginia
That's what we saw in teachers in LA
That's we're starting to see that's why this is becoming the year of the strike because people are starting to say wait a second. I
Matter and my dignity is not up for negotiation
with your second question
about
Why we don't defend social democracy and from these bad faith attacks. I think it's because there's a lot of people
that don't want us to have a social democracy and they are in government and they are also in the Democratic Party and
You know and I'm not allowed to say that I'm gonna get in a lot of trouble when I go back to work
But
It's you know, I think that there are parts of it that are true
There's a lot of people it's no secret in government that go on this rotating door
And you would think that when someone leaves government?
they would go and
go back into a different form of public service that they would become a professor or
They would organize a community or they would work with unions
But now when politicians leave government
They go and work for lobbyists and that tells you everything about the coordinated interests that are in cahoots
All over regardless of party. It's just you know, I guess the industries tend to be a little more partisan and so
so I think that
there's just
Some people that don't want to defend it
There's some people that want to quiet down this idea even within the Democratic Party
And then blame it on their constituents say, oh, you know, they won't vote for that. It's because we don't fight for it. I
Think this has to be the last one. Oh
This is so nice
It's good to see you all I can't take selfies with everyone
keep in mind but
Here's what I think's going on. I want ask the question in two ways as you may know
I'm a white guy
I belong to two unions
But I think I think the problem on both sides is fear. Yep
People are afraid people of my ancestry are afraid of having to pay for everything when as immigrants come into this country
People who are come in the people who work at the diner in Alabama are afraid to try to ask for what is reasonable
So do you have a plan?
to work with people in
Congress that are afraid and I think that's what's going on with many of the conservatives
Especially when it comes to climate change people are just afraid of what will happen
If we try to make these big changes and I remind everyone
Article 1 section 8 Clause 8 of the US Constitution refers to the progress of science and useful
arts
So when we address climate change
We're gonna have clean water access to the Internet and renewable electricity for everyone on earth. Let's go
So I think one of the keys to dismantling fear is
Dismantling 0a0 some mentality
So that I think is a really important part of dismantling fear. So what what does that mean?
It means the rejection outright of the logic that says someone else's game
Necessitates my loss and that my game must miss necessitate
Someone else's lost that my gain must come at the cost of another person
we are increasing our
capacities for productivity and so there is we can give without a take is
Where we're going through
technologically
and when we say
you know this idea of how you're going to pay for it this idea that that there is a
person that pays that pays for it instead of
you know, we're viewing reviewing progress as a cost instead of as an investment and
Investments the difference between a costs and investment is that an investment yields returns?
And when we choose to invest in our systems, we are choosing to create wealth
We are choosing to create wealth and we invest in when we all invest in them then the wealth
Gets them the wealth is is for all of us - and so I think part of dismantling
The fear is dismantling a zero-sum mentality, but you know
It's not it's not just about like this idea of who are our decision-makers. It's that we like this is us
This is about voting. This is about the conversations that were having with our elected officials
Because I go there and whether it's true or not, they blame all of it on you guys
they do I
Go and I'm frustrated and I'll say why are you why did you weaken this?
Environmental thing and they say my community doesn't want that
It's my district, you know, man
Like it's my district and no one else like knows what anyone else's community is like so they're like, oh wow, that's weird. Okay and
and
Because no like I'm to this day
I've never heard a person person actually like level with me and be like listen
My main donors are fossil fuel people and I just can't
no, but even in like the candor of an honest conversation no-one's no one has said that to me no one has ever said to
Me listen, you know, I've got these really big donors and to be really honest with you. This is why I can't do that
but we all know it that's what's happening and
And everyone blames it on their on their electorate and when our electorate isn't speaking up
Then they're allowed to get away with that
But when we decide to participate in this system and what I talk about is not just in the on season
which is election time but when we
Raucous Lee participate in our system in the off season in the Vernon's time. We participate in our own
Self-governance not just our own elections, but our own governance when we see what bills are coming to the floor
we show it to the gallery in DC when we when we pick up the phone and call our
Congressmen as much as we call our local, you know Chinese spot for take-out like that's the kind of relationship
We need to have because once we start getting vocal they can't get away with the excuse of my district doesn't want that anymore
and
One last thing about fear you know is
I want to talk one thing
You know in the contrast to fear is is to tell you something about courage
Because the thing about courage is that courage is self-propagating
courage
begets courage
So the first person who stands up has to encounter the most amount of fear and discomfort
But once that one person stands up it becomes
Immensely easier for the second person in the third and the fourth until it doesn't take any courage at all
To stand up for something or to do something
and so what I would say, is that the biggest
Antidote to fear is to when you see someone that is being fearful is to choose to be the person that is courageous
to show other people what courage looks like to be the first person in the room to say
That's not right or to be the person in the room
You know when when you're there's this conversation the conversation starts to get taken over with fear-mongering
With like Venezuela this and this and whatever is to say, you know
What like the thing about fear is that it's it's all
designed to get you to run away from something and
It's not a plan
fear is not a plan and
But courage is a plan courage is this is what we're gonna do. This is where we're gonna go
This is what I'm going to stand up and this is the action that I'm going to take
courage is about our future and fear is just
about anxiety
And if you're sick and tired of being an anxious nation, then you have to just be rejecting fear outright
We can't allow ourselves to be governed by fear anymore
We can't allow ourselves to be governed by that kind of rationale to say I'm not gonna allow fear to control me anymore
I am going to stand up and do the courageous thing
You
