The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Taya Graham:

My name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report livestream, the great American Copwatcher debate edition. Tonight, we are going to be exploring the controversy surrounding a popular Copwatcher, Long Island audit, specifically his encounter with Suffolk County Police Union officials that was the subject of our last episode. Now, a confrontation that started with Sean showing up at union headquarters to ask questions and then escalated when union officials stormed out of the building and put Sean Paul into handcuffs. Let’s just watch a few seconds of the encounter to set the scene.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Have you seen me leaving? I immediately began to leave. Lucivillo, would you like to come on? I am leaving. Would you like to come on the channel? I’m leaving. I am leaving. You seem to leave me? I am leaving. I’m leaving. I’m leaving. Lucivillo, you go on talk, you go, I’m leaving. I am leaving. Immediately begin to leave. That’s how the law works. Yes, I’m leaving. Get off the property. I am leaving. I’m getting off the property. You are trespassing. I am leaving. You will be placed. I am leaving. I am leaving. I’m going to place you under arrest. Do what you need to do. I’m identifying myself as a police officer. So do what you need to do. I am leaving. You need to leave. I am leaving. You’re such a tough guy. Do it then. Do it. Do it. I’m leaving. I’m leaving.

I’m leaving. Not resisting. I’m not resisting. Have you seen me leaving?

Taya Graham:

Okay. Now this video and our discussion with Sean set off a heated debate and it was so, let’s say lively that Steven and I decided that we needed to do a show to respond to your comments and discuss their implications. And luckily we were also able to get the man himself Long Island Audits to participate. But before we get to Sean, I want to give you a sense of the format of the show and how we’re going to handle the debate. And remember, this is very live, so please bear with any technical difficulties we might have. And I’m going to do my best to put on any comments from the live chat on the screen as we go through. So over the past week, Steven and I have been reviewing hundreds of comments on our YouTube channel and on Facebook and selecting what we hope is a representative sample of your thoughts.

Our goal is to select what best represents the framework of the discussion about Sean Paul’s work. And we’re going to show them on the screen. I’ll read them and then Sean, myself and Steven will discuss. But a big part of that is going to be what you think. And I mean the police accountability report community, in my personal opinion, is one of the most thouhtful and insightful collection of rebels. And yes, rebels I think is the right word on YouTube. Believe me, we feed off your ideas and your insights and tonight we need you to chime in. So Steven, first off, welcome to The Great Indoors.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you so much. Oh God, it’s some nice to be inside. Although yeah, it’s good to be back. It’s good to be back in the studio. Yo didn’t even have to coax me. I came in voluntarily.

Taya Graham:

Yes. Well, we gave you some coffee and left out some candy and he just followed them in.

Stephen Janis:

Free coffee. Though Max said it might come out of my paycheck, but that’s okay. It’s good coffee.

Taya Graham:

But look, before we introduce Sean, why don’t you explain a little bit why you felt like this debate needed to continue? What struck you as the critical question at the heart of it? So

Stephen Janis:

The critical question for me is the question of dissent, right? Democracy doesn’t function without free, fair dissent. And to me, journalism is the epitome of dissent because it’s saying the oligarchy truth is not the final truth. We can challenge that truth with a different reality. And when I see Sean entering the space of power and being challenged, just to ask a question, I think we have to ask critical questions about how do we preserve dissent and what this is really about. I mean, why would they just storm out at him and not allow him to ask a question? And to me, one of the defining points of this is we cover inequality in another show called the Inequality Watch. And I think as wealth becomes more and more concentrated in this country, I think the fight over the truth is going to become more important and therefore dissent is more important.

And to me, journalism is quintessential dissent. It’s organized, constructive and thoughtful dissent. And that’s what Sean was doing. I mean, he was just showing up to ask a question. That is our only army. He wasn’t ambushing them or doing anything. He just had a question. He did have a big truck. Yeah, I’ll admit that was kind of cool. We’ll talk about that. But it was just dissent. And to me, that’s what this is about. I mean, if they could take away our ability to show up at a building and ask a simple question about what they are doing with taxpayer money, then we’re done.

Taya Graham:

Then

Stephen Janis:

The oligarchs have won. So that’s why I though it’d be interesting. And I want to debate the people who somehow think that journalists are a pain in the ass. So hopefully we are. Yes. Anyway, that’s my though.

Taya Graham:

Thank you for asking. Technically, journalists are supposed to be a pain. We’re supposed to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Exactly. And honestly, what you mentioned is something that is a classic part of journalism, which is to follow the money. And I believe that’s what Sean Paul was trying to do. He’s just trying to find out where taxpayer money was going. But before I bring him in, let me just first shout out some of the people that I see in the chat. I’m going to look down here. I see Noli D. Thank you so much for being here. Lacey R. Thank you so much for being here. I think Joe Cool’s here, which is amazing. Oh wow. Joe Cool. Amazing copwatcher. And there’s another copwatcher down there. I’m not sure if I should shout him out. Yes, you should. Should I shout out the name?

Yeah. Eric Brant. Wow. Eric Brant, the man is in the chat. So we definitely have some copwatchers here who I’m sure have a lot of strong and thoughtful and insightful opinions about the nature of cop watching and journalism. Oh, and let me also say hi, Katie Keyne. It’s really great to see you again. Okay. And you too, Prairie745. All right. Now, without further ado, I want to bring in the man himself, Long Island Audit, also known as Sean Paul Reyes. Sean Paul, thank you so much for joining us.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Taya Graham:

We are so happy to have you. So now first, before we completely dive in, there’s been an update with the arrest that occurred during your encounter with the leadership of the Suffolk County Police Union. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

So the update is that the criminal charge of trespassing in the third degree that I was originally arrested for has been dismissed by the district attorney’s office. That charge required that the property being closed in a manner to exclude intruders, i.e. An offense. It wasn’t the case for that property. So they dropped it down to a trespassing charge, which is a violation, not a crime, which requires unlawfully entering or remaining on a person’s property, on private property. So that’s where it stands. And I mean, we can get into more detail on the order of protection and ex parte hearings, but I’ll defer

Stephen Janis:

To you. I mean, I don’t really understand. You were exercising your First Amendment as a journalist. You have some privilege to be able to go to places and knock on doors where you’re not wanted, right?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Right. Yeah. So generally the Supreme Court case, I don’t really remember what it is right now, but there is a Supreme Court case that even with a no trespassing sign, the public and people say, “Well, you don’t get extra rights because you’re a journalist or a YouTuber or whatever they want to call me.” And that’s the topic of today’s discussion. But generally, anyone has a license or privilege to approach someone’s door and do a knock and talk. You can knock and ask questions the same way a law enforcement officer can knock on your door, same way the solar panel, Girl Scout cookies, whatever. People knock on people’s doors and ask them questions. Once that privilege, that license or privilege has been revoked by the private property owner, then you must vacate the property.

Stephen Janis:

Which is what you were doing. But anyway, not to digress, Saya, go ahead. Sorry.

Taya Graham:

Okay. And let me just give a shout out to HBO Matt. HBO Matt, great to see you there. Another cop watcher. Wow. 1A and 2A auditor who’s in the chat as well right now. We got to shout out all those people out there doing that work. Okay. So Sean, now here’s the tough part. We’re going to start going through the comments. Now we’ve tried to pick a representative sample. And though I will say in general, more people support you than not. Some of your critics are pretty adamant that your work doesn’t benefit the community. So let’s start there. Okay. Let me hit you with comment number one. Okay. A clout chasing provocateur whose approach is ambush journalism. Real journalists make an appointment. People at work don’t just drop everything because this YouTuber shows up. Wow. Okay. So Sean, let me start with you. What do you think?

Is this a valid critique?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I don’t think it’s. I think anybody’s opinion is valid. Everybody can have their own opinion on what I do and how I go about it. So I’m not going to say that their opinion is invalid, but I would push back on their opinion that it’s ambush journalism. I mean, I’m asking questions. I don’t have to make an appointment. I can just walk up and ask the question. And really, to the person who made that comment, do you think if I would have called and made an appointment, they would have let me in and give me an appointment? Let’s be real here.

Stephen Janis:

I’m just laughing. Sory. I’m

Taya Graham:

Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.

Stephen Janis:

But go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Sorry.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Okay. No worries.

Taya Graham:

It just seems unlikely. Yes.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. More likely than not. They wouldn’t just, “Hey, yeah, we’ll pency in for 2:30,” right? Especially with the questions that I’m asking. I’m not asking, “How does it feel to save lives every day and put your life on the line, Mr. PBA president?” I’m asking why hundreds of millions of dollars of Suffolk County taxpayer money, hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 15 to 20 years have been put in the pockets of other people who have had their rights violated. So that’s my tax dollars. I’m a lifelong resident of Suffolk County. I’ve been investigating the police union and their power structure, and it comes from their donations to the legislators, to the county executive. There is more to the story than just showing up with my billboard truck. And again, I will say that most journalists don’t have a billboard truck. I do. And if you want to paint me out as it’s advocacy journalism, whatever word you want to put in front of journalism, it’s still objectively journalism, opinionated journalism, advocacy journalism.

It’s still journalism. Journalism is asking questions, doing investigations and disseminating that of matters of public interest to the public. Maybe it doesn’t interest you, but it interests me and it interests a lot of people out there, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people across my social media platforms. So if you don’t like the topic, you can tune into your favorite journalist that you want. I highly recommend the police accountability report here. Well, thank

You. But at the end of the day, ambush, whatever adjective you want to describe how I operate, it still doesn’t make what happened to me any less unlawful and any less a violation of my First Amendment rights.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I don’t like the word ambush because I don’t think asking a question. Ambush has militaristic overtones, but if we had to make an appointment with every person that we wanted to ask a question that they didn’t want to answer, we wouldn’t have a job. Now, we cover Capitol Hill, right? Reporters roam all around confronting people who don’t want to answer questions. The entire process is about people showing up when you don’t expect them. That’s the whole way it works. There’s no journalism without the so-called ambush. And so I don’t like that term because that’s not what you were doing. You were asking a question which is about as passive as you can get. But yeah, so that’s just BS because almost our entire work centers on the fact that we can just walk up to someone and put a mic in their face.

If we can’t do that, we can’t do our jobs.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I really do have to agree with you on that. I mean, we show up to all sorts of places without an appointment. I have to say, on occasion when I have asked for an appointment, there was a particular time in Trenton, New Jersey where I made an appointment with their press information officer, told her I was going to be there, and she ghosted me. Just a little TikTok about the fact that I had made the effort to travel there, confirmed everything with her. She wasn’t there. And perhaps she should have been at her desk and she wasn’t. But I can tell you within eight hours, my entire TikTok account was banned and taken down. We’re just posting – Questions are not

Stephen Janis:

Ambushed.

Taya Graham:

Questions

Stephen Janis:

Are.

Taya Graham:

So it can be difficult for a traditional journalist to get an appointment. And even just reporting on the fact I didn’t get the appointment, got my TikTok account banned, which I think was a little mean, to be perfectly frank. I agree. But before I go on to the next criticism, I want to shout out Ophelia Moonrose. I thought you had a great comment there. Big G audits, good making case precedent in your state. That’s awesome. So one of the criticisms that we’ve seen of auditors like Sean is that they’re all after clicks and views, but I thought this was an interesting take on that critique. So let’s put up comment number two. Okay.

And also, I apologize if I mispronounce names, please give me some grace there. I’ll do my best. Gerek Diffelton says, “Clicks and views, spreading awareness and capturing focus for issues you want the public to see is exactly the point of journalism. Sean uses outrageous reality to catch attention and the New York Post uses lies and misinformation.” Now, Sean Paul, I think you said something quite similar, right? And Steven, can a journalism org survive without clicks? No. I mean, if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did the tree fall? I mean, if no one sees your journalism, does it even count? Yeah.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. I mean, my response to that is obviously all journalists want clicks and views. All media outlets want clicks and views. And I can give you just a recent story. CNN ran a story on First Amendment auditors just recently, and I’m actually going to do a video of this on my channel. They reached out to me and their question was, “How much money do you make? Can you provide us with your financials?” And I answered them back. Yeah. I answered them back politely and I said, “I would love to discuss with you the financial aspects of what I do in a video format, just like how we’re talking right now in a Zoom or a live stream.” And they said, “Oh, we’re going to move in a different way for our story. No problem.” And then they came out with a story and it was about how First Amendment auditors make money.

And they found two random individuals who have no idea who they are. They’re a couple. They curse a lot. They scream a lot. The video was just them cursing and screaming at members of the public and law enforcement and getting kicked out of this public building. And they went over and these two, I call them useful idiots, that’s what they were because they didn’t even shout out their channel or anything like that. So I have no idea who these people are. And most probably in our community don’t know who they are either. But they went and they showed them their YouTube studio. Yeah, I made $600 on this video. I made this and the CNN reporter’s there and they followed them around when they did these audits. And it’s crazy because the goal of the CNN story was to portray First Amendment auditors as only wanting clicks and views and being provocative and looking for negative interactions.

The ironic part of that is that’s exactly what CNN did in their story. They didn’t want me to come on their story and be a part of their story because I would talk about boring things about how I’ve been invited to train police departments, district attorney’s offices. I’ve done ride alongs with law enforcement. I’ve worked side by side with law enforcement. I investigated corrupt mayors. I’ve broken stories on mayors using federal funds for receiving federal funds that they voted on for their construction companies. So again, and I don’t curse or scream in my video, so it wouldn’t be as entertaining for people, but CNN selectively chose these two useful idiots so that way they can get what clicks and views on their video. So again – Right.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, go ahead. Maybe CNN doesn’t like the competition from you

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

From people. I don’t think so. I think they see it as a threat. I think that’s a good valid point because even Newsday is our local newspaper here on Long Island. News 12 Long Island is the broadcast arm of that. And none of them have covered, the New York Post covered this arrest because Lucavila wanted them to, the police union president. But none of the local outlets have covered this story. And I would argue that it is the quintessential public interest story. Whether you want to hit me out as a YouTuber, a gadfly, an agitator, whatever you want to call me. I’m still a public figure. And Lucavilla was the police union president and there was a confrontation where I was arrested. That seems like news that would be interesting for the residents in Suffolk County or Long Island that they report to, but they choose not to.

They pick and choose their stories. They pick and choose the themes of their stories. And I do the same thing. And my themes are focusing on police accountability, exposing what’s happening inside our police departments. I’m telling everybody watching now, and I say this on my channel, the police unions, especially here in the Northeast and specifically Suffolk County, they receive. Again, I don’t just go up there with a camera. I was just working before looking up. It’s a 501C. I’m looking up their financials. They have $15 million, the police union in Suffolk County, $15 million in assets. They bring in $5 million a year in annual revenue. They get paid through the contracts, through the contracts from the county. They get paid canine time, canine a pay. They don’t have a canine. I want to make this clear. There is not one canine that works for the PBA, the police union.

They get canine pay. They get hazard pay. They get a midnight pay. It’s a nine to five

Stephen Janis:

Job. One thing, Sean, that you’re touching on, which I think is really important, is how lucrative policing is in terms of their relationship with the government. Because I remember in Baltimore, we had take home cars. All officers had take home cars and they could drive back to Pennsylvania and the city paid for the gas. And it was like $100,000 benefit, but the mainstream media doesn’t want to take it on because they want police officers to feed them crime stories, which is more of their fodder. But what you’re doing is amazing because you’re actually challenging their lack of good reporting, which probably embarrasses them. I mean, to hell with the truck.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

And I completely agree with you when they want the murder scenes, they want the vehicle pile ups, they want to get that call. And if they’re adversarial, which you guys were talking about how a press should be adversarial. And I completely agree. I think that’s the foundation, an adversarial press towards the government. But they want those stories. And then it’s such a big story because they just got an 18% raise. Lucivillo, for example, gets paid $265,000 a year as the police union president. He keeps his full law enforcement officer capabilities, yet he doesn’t patrol, he doesn’t investigate crime. He sits in a desk defending officers who are accused of misconduct all day long and pushing his propaganda out to on. They own radio stations. They have podcasts. They’ve embraced social media in order to brainwash the people.

Stephen Janis:

Do you know where the $5 million revenue comes from? I mean, do they get it from donations or do they charge for services or something? Are they doing moonlighting or where’s it come from? Do you know?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. So I just started looking into it before I

Stephen Janis:

Came

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

On here. I was just looking at everything, all the documents –

Stephen Janis:

I’ll look into too. Yeah.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

501 documents, but their revenue comes from union dues. And again, they’re in violation of election law. In New York State, you can’t force somebody to donate to a candidate. So what they’re doing is they’re collecting union dues. And whether the police officer is a Republican or a Democrat, sometimes that money goes to somebody who the police officer doesn’t want it to go to. And that’s in violation of election law. And a Suffolk County legislator, Rob Trota, a former detective for the Suffolk County Police Department, he blew the whistle on this. So I give him all the credit and the district attorney said, “You know what? I don’t have jurisdiction.” It’s funny how the district attorney didn’t have jurisdiction for a New York state crime, but the district attorney can receive $500,000 in campaign contributions from the PBA. The Suffolk County executive gets a million dollars.

These legislators think about this. How can anybody be okay with the system where Suffolk County Police Union can funnel money into the pockets of politicians and those same politicians get them elected? They go door to door for them. They mail out, they have mailers, the whole apparatus. And then they get elected and then they in turn vote on these 18% raise increases, hazard pay for police union. 20

Stephen Janis:

Year pensions. 20 year pensions. 20 year

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Pensions.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Like that. They make these backroom deals where there was an officer that was accused of using the surveillance apparatus for his own personal gain. And he went on to have 14 years. They said, okay, admit to this misconduct. And in 14 years, 14 years, when you get your full funded pension, you have to leave. That’s not accountability.

Stephen Janis:

Oh, and we’ve had multiple officers who have been charged, committed, charged, convicted of crimes who are allowed to keep working. I mean, the basic thing is you pointed out, I think, in both your Brian Fahey case, which we’ll get to, is these pensions are golden parachutes. Absolutely. They are multimillion dollar bonuses for these people. So a lot of what happened in Baltimore is that even though you’ve been convicted of a crime, they keep you on the payroll so that you get your pension qualification, which is like that’s when you hit the jackpot of the library. So that’s great work you’re doing there. You want to get to the next one so we don’t –

Taya Graham:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So I have another comment here. I shouldn’t point that way. Give you some fair warning. Here is a proponent of police power urging you to obey a lawful order, which of course has some pretty broad implications. So this is Jim 0417 commenting on the Sean Paul Reyes arrest coverage. I agree there is free speech. However, don’t push your luck. Just leave. Then no problem. No arrests. I am a retired police detective. And if I’m told something by the police, I comply. It’s just that easy. Now, Steven, I think this refers back to some of your thoughts on police power. What do you think?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I mean, I think the idea that there is this police control over space that somehow, if they deem a space to be theirs is sort of an extension of some of the worst aspects of this country’s lessening democracy. So I mean, I didn’t say this in the beginning, but I think one thing that Sean Paul exposes by going into police space and pointing a camera at them is their absolute thought of control over space, which I think is a way of showing how latent authoritarianism in America kind of makes its way through policing. Because it’s really weird when you think about it. You show up with a camera, they could have ignored him. They could have just answered his question. They could have done a lot of things, but they decided to confront him with power, with power and command over that space. So I think disobeying orders from police about space is pretty much the most fundamental American kind of descent you can do.

So I’m all for Sean going and pointing cameras because what amazes me of what you see. I mean, someone points a camera at you and you start ordering around and say you’re going to arrest him. What does that mean? What is that telling you about this country? What is it telling you about authoritarianism? Sean, are you surprised sometimes when people freak out because you show up just by showing up, not even doing anything?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. I’ve been doing this five years now and it still surprises me to this day because it’s so nonsensical. You’re 100% right. The police union president could have. He was upstairs in his penthouse suite. He didn’t have to come down with five other officers from the

Police union. He could have stayed up there, told the receptionist, “Tell him he needs to leave. He’s not welcome here.” And I would have left and there would have been no incident. There would have been no clicks and views. There would have been no story for that particular video. I just would have left. I was leaving. And these people, like this former officer that commented that, and I see it, especially in my county. I want to use my billboard truck to bring awareness to this and my voice and my platform, especially I’m going to focus on my county moving forward because it’s important to me. When I was protesting, one of the neighbors of the district attorney told me, “You’re a liberal communist.” And they were so violent in calling me a communist. And these people don’t even know the definition of communists, but they just repeat what they hear.

They have no idea what a communist is, what communism is. They have no idea what these terms mean, but they’ve heard other elected officials call people communists because of they don’t like them. And they say, “Oh, you’re a communist. You want to hold the police accountable? Then you’re a communist.” And it makes no sense. So I still get shocked to this day. Lou should have done that. Lucivilla, the police union president should have just told someone else to tell me, but he was looking for the confrontation. He came out with handcuffs in hand. He was looking for that to happen. Oh, so Sean, he

Stephen Janis:

Had his handcuffs. Had his handcuffs in hand?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

He had his hands. Remember, he’s not a real law enforcement officer. He doesn’t do law enforcement activity, yet he gets paid for law enforcement activity, but he doesn’t do law enforcement activity. He actually does the opposite. He shields officers in this county and they introduce legislation. They just introduced a bill into the New York State Senate where you have to be 15 feet away from a law enforcement officer. That came directly from him. He’s the one pulling the strings. And it doesn’t matter, Democrat or Republican, they all take PBA money. They all want to be seen as back the blue, especially in my county. And it’s just sad to me that people like that commenter, I don’t blame him. I think his ignorance comes from his lack of critical thinking skills, his lack of a variety of media consumption. And he just wants to blame somebody, just comply.

But the most ironic part is I was complying. I mean, how can you watch that video and not see that I was complying? Maybe I wasn’t complying in the way that you wanted me to. Maybe I wasn’t complying in the way Lucid Villa wanted me to, but legally I was complying.

Stephen Janis:

What was interesting is it was almost the opposite of when police use the stop resisting to do it. You were saying, “I’m leaving. I’m leaving. I’m leaving.” And basically making it clear that you were retreating and following and obeying the law and their requests. So it was just weird and ironic that they kept confronting you even when you said you were leaving, which I think has to do with this police preoccupation with space and dissent because you are showing them up for what they’re doing to the taxpayers of Suffolk County. And they don’t want that. And it’s interesting that it’s you that’s doing it and not the people, the mainstream media with all their money and power that are doing it. But it’s one guy with a truck and a YouTube channel that is actually doing this, which I think. Well, I mean, I think it’s really telling, right?

Because I’ve covered this kind of stuff in policing and you get so much pushback when you talk about their pensions or about the fact that they can work. The guys you’re talking about get some sort of dumb desk job where they sit and they file. They don’t do anything. I mean, we had the gun tray task force where they literally went on vacation in the Bahamas and got overtime. So what police are able to do with money and what they’re able to do with the resources of a community is confounding.

Yeah, they use that money.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Go ahead.

Taya Graham:

Oh no, I was just going to say, I think you explained that basically Suffolk County is the home of the million dollar pension, right? Yeah. So I actually did some calculating on how long it would take me to save that type of pension with a little bit of money I put aside each year. I would need to work 200 years to be able to have that be my pension. Yeah, it’s a Ponzi scheme. So that’s something to look forward to. It’s a

Stephen Janis:

Ponzi scheme.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

It is a Ponzi. They’re extorting the police officers in Suffolk County through the police union are extorting the taxpayers. And they put out buzzwords like, “Oh, because we protect you. We keep you safe. We do this. We put our lives on the line.” All propaganda, that means nothing. They’re law enforcement officers. Even for body cameras, we had to pay them. We had to pay them more money every single year. I believe they got an extra $2,000 a year each just for them to put on body cameras. In what other profession does your boss tell you, you need to put this on your uniform? And then they’re like, “Well, I’m not going to do it unless you pay me.” It is a racket. It is a racket and the people need to know about it. And a lot of people know and they don’t care. They back the blue regardless of what.

And that’s why we call them bootlickers.

Stephen Janis:

You know what?

Taya Graham:

I’d like to go onto the next comment. I think it’s very appropriate because it’s apparently, Sean Paul, you’re just not nice enough to rich people. That’s what this comment’s saying. I thought it was a little odd, but I thought it was worth talking about. So this commenter, Alma Adams, 3631, wrote on a recent episode, “I was on this guy’s side until he brought up Bezos and Musk.” How are they the bad guys again? I mean, did this guy go to Comedy College? I mean, I guess they all are these days. Comedy College. Okay. I’ve seen –

Stephen Janis:

Just a public service announcement. So we are very welcoming of a Marxist here and communists at the Real News Network. And

Taya Graham:

Libertarians and libertarians. And libertarians. And any

Stephen Janis:

Ideological strike

Taya Graham:

Really. Okay. We welcome all political viewpoints to have all types of thinkers with all types of ideologies who support democracy and want to have an interesting conversation about it. So communists, come on in and have

Stephen Janis:

Conversations. Why would you critique him that way when he’s talking about police pensions? I think that’s an interesting connection, right? Symbolic, Sean?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. I mean, again, there goes the commi thing. These people are, they’re just brainwashed. And it really disheartens me as an American and somebody who loves this country that there’s so many people out there who have been brainwashed by people like Elon Musk. I’ll call them out again, Jeff Bezos. They’re an oligarchy. They’re no different than And the oligarchs in Russia, the only difference is that you love them. The people love

Taya Graham:

Them. Exactly.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

You worship

Taya Graham:

Them. Well said.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

They’re no different. They’re celebrities here. That’s the only difference. The oligarchs in Russia are just hiding behind their fortresses and that’s going to happen too. Listen, in another life, I would have been a history teacher. I love history. One of my favorite quotes is, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And you, we are on the track for the oligarch. Thank you. Look at the wealth separation in this country. It doesn’t make any sense. You could call me a communist or whatever you want. I’m telling you, these billionaires don’t have the everyday. You’re sitting here, that person, the sad part is that person is defending the oligarchy and yet they’re living paycheck to paycheck every week. And that’s the sad part to me.

Stephen Janis:

And I think that’s the point of police power to project the idea that you’re not worthy of an equal society with an equal sharing of wealth. I think part of the thing is that police make you feel that there’s some sort of chaos outside of this constructed oligarchy. And that if you challenge police, you’re challenging law and order. And then there will be this chaos of, like you said, like commies, like Long Island Olives knocking on your door. And I think that’s part of the point of why policing fuses with Bezos and Musk in that sense.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

They’re meant to protect the oligarchy. That’s the whole point in

Stephen Janis:

Case

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Things go south. They’re the defense against the oligarchy. That’s the part. They’re not here to protect you. They’re here to extort you through tickets and everything else. You get pulled over, you’re paying hundreds of dollars for tickets. I don’t understand. Can police officers be heroes individually? Sure they can. Sure, they can engage in heroic activity. And I will admit that, but to call law enforcement officers generally heroes is disgusting. To me, it’s like, it just doesn’t make sense.

Taya Graham:

You know what? I just have to jump in here because when I heard you talking about oligarchy, and I think in a past life, you were a history teacher. I have no doubt. But when I think about Jeff Bezos and his net worth, and when I think about Elon Musk, our newest trillionaire on the planet, that kind of money, that kind of money is more than some countries have. That kind of money, it absolutely influences our government. It influences public policy. So to say that we shouldn’t criticize these people, hold them accountable is absurd to me. These people don’t deserve some sort of unique protection because they manage to win out in the lottery of life. These people, if they have the power of a government because of their bank book, they deserve to have questions answered and we deserve transparency.

Stephen Janis:

Great.

Taya Graham:

So I’m sorry, that just gets me a little heated because we actually have a show called the Inequality Watch, which I think Steven would argue is the oligarchy accountability report. I mean, how would you answer that comment or really?

Stephen Janis:

And it’s interesting because the two fews, like Sean has pointed out, Sean Ray has pointed out policing and inequality and oligarchy all kind of come into one big problem for all of us working people in a sense. So you want to do the next one?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. The people are working against their. I’ll just end with this. People need to stop working against their own interests and

Stephen Janis:

Fighting

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Against their own interests. I mean, you’re defending a man that has more money than he could ever spend in a million years and you can’t afford to pay your electric bill. It’s bizarre to me. It’s bizarre.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. I completely agree. I really don’t understand it. I try to understand the psychology of it, but it does allude me. But let me go to another comment here for you because I want you to see all of them. So this is someone who looks at Sean Paul’s work in kind of a broader context. And I’m wondering what you both think of it in terms of what at stake and whether we’re overlooking some of the broader implications of what auditors and First Amendment activists do. So let me read it and I’ll have Dave put up clip five. Okay. So democracy itself is at stake. Being ruled, terrorized, controlled, manipulated, dominated and lied to is not freedom. Okay. So to me, that’s very heavy, very powerful. So what do you think? Do you believe you’re fighting for democracy, Sean Paul?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I think I’m fighting for accountability and democracy. Anything that gives power back to the people. That’s why I wear my we the people hat everywhere I go. I want the people to have the power and I want people to act in their own interests when it comes to power because the people that are elected in our offices do not have our best interests at heart. It’s because you see the ads. Money controls politics between campaign spending. It all revolves around money. Look how much money Elon Musk put into the election. No one man should have all that power, right? Right. In the words of Kanye. But it’s crazy to me that people, even with flock cameras, the advent implementation of flock cameras, they’re here for your safety. Another favorite quote of mine is by Benjamin Franklin, “Those who give up their essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” And it’s so sad how quickly we’ve forgotten and have handed over all of our rights.

We’re going to have a surveillance state, police state, and all of these people in power that have all of this resources and money. And no one does anything about it. Most people don’t even go out and vote. Most people don’t make their voices heard because they’re too busy working. They have their own family drama, everything else, and they don’t pay attention or they only watch CNN or they only watch Fox News. They don’t broaden their horizons to try and really critically think and analyze what’s going on in our country. And I think that needs to change. So my platform is to try and bring accountability to those in power. And I can’t. I can’t do it by myself. All I can do is put it out there for people to see. And what they choose to do with it after that, I got to expose it.

I’m going to expose the police union here.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, I think of all institutions, policing is the most anti-democratic. And like we said before, kind of the authoritarian impulses of society kind of course through it. And so your battle with them and the battle over space is pretty much to me the most so pro-democracy thing you can do as a reporter. I mean, in some ways the battle over democracy is incremental. When I worked for a TV station, when we go out to film, we had one space, which was a sidewalk because you couldn’t go on private property and you couldn’t go on the road because then they charge you with obstructing traffic. And yet even though the sidewalk was like the one place we could set up our camera and our tripod, police would still try to kick us off it. We constantly were battling. And it kind of was illuminating to me because here we have this one little space to do our jobs to expose X, Y, and Z, and we can’t even do this.

And so that’s why I think that sort of sense of taking all space over and sort of forcing people not to confront, not to ask questions, not to have a circulatory system to this democracy. I think that’s why it does make your work sort of pro-democracy because you’re fighting in some sense the most anti-democratic force. This doesn’t mean I’m anti-police or anything like that. I just think the institution itself, as you talked about before, is corrupted by the political economy that sustains it. So yeah, I think democracy is at stake in a sense, along with the broader issues that we covered on Capitol Hill, but this is an important component of it.

Taya Graham:

Steven, you were talking about how we’re covering Capitol Hill and it definitely seems like our democracy is under stress. I mean, what do you think about this idea in a broader context?

Stephen Janis:

Well, yeah, in the broader context, we just covered the federal government or the Republicans voting for a reconciliation bill that gets $70 billion. Let’s talk about real money. ICE has a hundred billion. Republicans get up and they give the ICE another 70 billion with absolutely no details or explanation of why. The point was just to fund ICE for an infinite length of time to fund ICE to do anything. So we’ve seen how ICE uses law enforcement tactics to disrupt democratic processes like in Minneapolis. And then of course killed two people that didn’t need to die. And so they give him $70 billion. And so I think here’s Sean fighting it on a local or a local level. In the national level, the same thing is going on. I mean, talk about giving unlimited money to law enforcement. I think there’s parallels there. Suffolk County has $5 million a year, 15 million here, extravagant pensions.

And then on Capitol Hill, $70 billion to an agency that doesn’t need it. They still had a hundred billion in the bank and they’re funded not year over year, but until 2029. So

Taya Graham:

The

Stephen Janis:

Unleashing of law enforcement through money, which we’ve seen in Suffolk County, we’ve written about this, is now playing out on a national level. And now you have a national federalized police force with unlimited funds.

Taya Graham:

You know what? Let me jump to our next comment because I want to make sure to get to as many of them as possible. Absolutely. And we’ve had some great comments that we’ve been putting on the screen from the live chat. I appreciate you. And don’t worry, I will ask about the tiger picture. Not now, but I will ask about the tiger pictures. There’s a person who’s obsessed with your painting, Sean. So before you go, you’re going to have to talk about it. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Stephen Janis:

I don’t know what you guys are talking about. Sorry.

Taya Graham:

It’s okay. I’ll

Stephen Janis:

Tell you. But I sure I’ll find out hopefully.

Taya Graham:

Back to police unions, one of our favorite topics. And full disclosure, I am a member of a union. I am a union steward. And I can let you know that the Communication Workers Association does not receive any taxpayer dollars. And I’m not receiving a million dollar pension. Like I said, I would need to work 200 years to earn that pension. Anyway, Sean, you explained on our show that you wanted the police union to answer questions about how they protect members who are accused of brutality and misconduct. One of the viewers weighed in on the power of police unions. Dave, if you don’t mind putting up comment six for me. Okay. Here we have Charles Harmon, 4159 says regarding the police union, “Police unions throughout the nation are the problem. Unlimited power and authority, the unions, qualified immunity, rampant racism and corruption. Nothing will be correct until we check this.” Wow.

I mean, Sean Paul, from your experience, how is bad policing a consequence of the power police unions?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

So because they shield officers who engage in misconduct and brutality against accountability. They’ll tell you that. That’s what they do. They say buzzwords and things like, “Oh, we’re just making sure they get due process, that they need to have the same rights as everybody else and everything else.” But there is no due process when there’s no accountability at the end of that process. That’s like if people would be happy if they said, “Oh, we’re going to give due process to immigrants and then we’re going to let them stay here.” People would be upset with that. When you bring up ICE, that’s a hot button topic on when I talk about ICE on my channel.

I completely agree with what you’re talking about. And again, that’s by design, the division. We can’t say that the ICE is receiving too much money without accountability, without body cameras, without having to take off their masks, not violate people’s rights. I went to the location and flew out there to Minneapolis where Alex Pretty was murdered and I was at a eulogy there. And it really hit me that a man was murdered and executed by ICE. And people say, “Well, he kicked a car two weeks ago and broke the taillight.” And it’s like, come on, you need to understand something. That is not. Yes, Alex Pretty engaged in violent behavior two weeks before he was executed. Even if he was executed that same day, kicking a taillight is not a death sentence. We need to understand this. Wanting accountability for ICE is not pro-immigration or pro-illegal immigration.

These people, they have this in their mind where if you criticize ICE in any way, it’s now you’re pro-illegal immigration, you’re pro this. When I talked about judicial warrants, the differences between judicial warrants and administrative warrants. And I put this on my channel and people, I got so much blow back from my community about, oh, but Sean, you’re just trying to protect illegal immigrants. And no, I’m trying to protect you. I’m trying to protect me. I’m trying to protect our country. Because there’s a big difference. You cannot go into someone’s house on an administrative warrant because an administrative warrant is basically like a decree from the king. Then we’d be going back to the decree from the king where he says, oh, that’s the warrant. And then we’re going to go. A judicial warrant is necessary to have a third party look at the facts of the case.

I’m trying to protect everybody’s rights, including illegal immigrants’ rights because whether you like it or not, they do have rights and it was by design. And you don’t have to like it, but you have to accept reality for what it is. And police unions generally in this country, but specifically in the Northeast, specifically in the Northeast, they are so powerful, so well funded through tax money. And they shield officers from accountability every single day. It happens all the time. And I think police unions should be abolished across the country.

Stephen Janis:

Sean, Ray, one time I went to police union headquarters and they actually have a bar in there and they offered me a beer, which is kind of funny. But when I asked Congresswoman Mike Lawler about ICE funding about $70 billion, you know what he said to me? He said, “Do you want to abolish ICE?” That was his answer to my question. Of course. So what you’re talking about, this sort of. Well, it’s part of the culture of policing, right? You are for or against. When someone says you can either be for or against something, you know you’re in really treacherous territory. Tay and I always make this joke, do you have to be for and against the sanitation department

Taya Graham:

To

Stephen Janis:

Ask us? Well, if you ask a question about why we’re spending so much money on sanitation,

Taya Graham:

You’re against

Stephen Janis:

Sanitation.

Taya Graham:

Right. If you criticize that we don’t get Tuesday and Thursday pickup anymore, we only get Thursday pickup, then you’re anti-sanitation. You hate sanitation workers.

Stephen Janis:

And you’re somehow un-American.

Taya Graham:

There’s no other organization and agency. That we can’t just criticize.

Stephen Janis:

And part of that is the union themselves because as Sean Wright points out, they have five people that are getting paid by the taxpayers sit there and espouse the perspective of the union. And let me tell you something, union officials have great relationships with the media. They didn’t have it with me when I was covering them, but I got a lot of crap because the media was so intertwined with the union officials on police uni officials. They are so much more powerful, even more powerful than union officials for other aspects of government. There’s no comparison to the power of the police union with the power of other public services.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I mean, just as I’m sitting there chained to a desk within hours of my arrest before I’m released, before anything else, the New York Post has an article out. Do you think that the New York Post was just looking at. No, they made a call to somebody at the New York Post and even they got a title change. The New York Post reporter that spoke to me when he went to my court, when it went to my arraignment, I said, “Why did you change the title of your second article? It was very critical of the police union because he was talking about how the video doesn’t seem to. It raises questions.” He said it in a very nice way too. He said, “It raises questions as to what the police union president stated in his original comments to the post. They changed the title of that article to Police Union President Receives Death Threats.” And I said, “Why did you do that?” He said, “Well, my first title, the police union president called my boss and he made a big stink and we had to change the title.” You want law enforcement officers to have that much power – That’s incredible.

Over the media, over your politicians, over your money, everything. That’s incredible. All because they’re heroes and you want to idolize them.

Stephen Janis:

Is he like the editor of the New York Post? I mean, just so people know, when Sean Ray, after the encounter, the New York Post ran very, I would say, inflammatory articles about your encounter with them. Not mentioning the pension or any of the questions you were asking, but simply talking about how once your video aired, people called, which happens with any publication. When I worked for a newspaper and we published a story, people didn’t like. We get tons of calls in hate mail. That’s normal. That’s not like you doing something. They made it seem like you had somehow corralled everyone to call. Yeah.That was something that you had done like, “Hey, everyone, call the police union. No.” And that’s extraordinary though that they have that kind of power.

Taya Graham:

It really is. You know what? Let me jump forward to comment eight because there are a few more comments I want to get to. I really want to check in on this one because – Give me some hard ones.Come on Tara. Because I’m going to try. People are going to town about qualified immunity in the comment section in our live chat right now. Favorite topic.

I think this is a really great time to discuss it. Yes. Okay. I mean, any discussion would be remiss without mentioning qualified immunity. And you know what? Let me just give a little explainer. I think everyone in our live chat, our PAR community knows qualified immunity, but just for anyone who might stumble across us, basically qualified immunity is a legal loophole that makes it extremely difficult to sue the police. So qualified immunity was created as sort of a threshold to give public officials immunity from violating people’s rights. And that was a consequence of a law passed during Reconstruction. I think it’s a 1983 part of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was actually passed during Reconstruction to give people the right to sue again for the violation of their rights. But the qualified immunity loophole basically says you can’t sue someone if the right hasn’t been established, which means it has to been put through some sort of adjudication before you can sue someone like a cop.

And it has to be a case that is incredibly specific to your situation, but if it hasn’t been adjudicated upon, it’s going to be really difficult to sue. And I think Liberty Freak in the comment section and Mr. Brandt know a little something about that. Okay. With all that said, here’s the comment about it. Now this is from American Patriot 3515 on qualified immunity. We the people are getting sick and tired of that document known as the Constitution being used as toilet paper by law enforcement all across this country. We need to ban qualified immunity. That would be a good start. Okay. Sean Paul, to you. How big of a problem is qualified immunity when it comes to holding police accountable?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I think it’s a huge problem. Again, but I don’t want to minimize. I think the number one problem is the police unions. That is the number one problem because as things qualified immunity is horrible, but a lot of people focus on qualified immunity. That’s probably the number one thing that people who want police to be held accountable are saying, abolish qualified immunity, get rid of qualified immunity. But even if you did, the police unions are going to run rampant. It’s not going to change anything. I mean, you might be able to sue them and get some additional funds and everything, but most of the rights have been clearly established. But what judges, some judges will do, not all, but some judges will find a wiggle room. And this is what makes qualified immunity dangerous is that they’ll take, “Oh, well, this fact doesn’t add up right.” Or any layperson would be like, “Well, you can film,” for example.

I’ll give you an example of probably what a judge could do, is that you were filming the right to record the police on a public sidewalk is clearly established. But if you recorded them from the public parking lot, that’s not clearly established. So therefore right next to the sidewalk, so therefore he’s going to get qualified immunity. So eventually they’re going to run out of little loopholes to try and get people because it is qualified immunity. It’s not what prosecutors have, which is absolute immunity. Judges have absolute immunity.

So eventually they’ll run out of the little work. And I think qualified with the workarounds, I think qualified immunity is very important, but I want to stress to everybody that the police unions and the way they operate within the political system is far more dangerous when it comes to the lack of accountability and police power.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I think there’s a case that talks a lot about qualified immunity. It’s the Eric Brandt and Liberty Freak case in the 10th Circuit. Maybe you want to explain

Stephen Janis:

About that? Well yeah, in 2021 or no, I think they actually, it was in 2019 that Eric Brandt and Liberty Freak were filming a police officer. They were filming just a traffic stop. And then a police officer drove up and got in front of them and then her drove his car at Eric. And this is in the 10th circuit. And I think the case was adjudicated in 2021, 2022. The initial district court said that the officer had qualified immunity because the right to film police had not been established. Now they won that case. The ACLU joined in, even the Cato Institute joined in, Electronic Frontier joined in. So they won it, but it can show you, as Sean, as you’re pointing out, that sometimes things slip through the cracks. And at that point in the 10th circuit, the district court judge had said, “Oh, there’s no established right to film police.” And this is in 2021, 2022.

Now, of course they won, but it just shows you sometimes these things can be a little more complicated. But I do agree with you that police unions are this source and locus of power when it comes to policing. It’s almost impossible to battle police unions.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. I mean, I’m taking it on now and I’m not going to stop. And I don’t see an end. I think this is going to be for the rest of my career because what I’ve seen is just horrible, especially in my own county. And I want to bring awareness to it. But the machine is just, it’s so big that it would take people really waking up and voting out these politicians who can end these contracts, who can make sure there’s accountability. But again, they have a propaganda arm. They have everything. They’re an S corp. They get paid a salary. They have expenses. They do this. It’s just such a machine.

Stephen Janis:

And a lot of times they fund. If a police officer gets into trouble, I don’t know what goes on in Suffolk County, but the police unions, like all the officers who were charged with the death of Freddie Gray, which for everyone who doesn’t know, Freddie Gray was a young man who died in police custody in 2015 and set off basically an uprising here in Baltimore. But all the police officers didn’t have to worry about hiring a lawyer because the police union pays for the lawyers for police officers who get in trouble in Maryland. I don’t know how it is in Suffolk County, but they have a lawyer on twenty four seven for them. If anything happens to them, they get free legal services from pretty well-paid law firms. Very well paid

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

First. Yeah. But that’s the secondary, that’s like the safety net. Most times in my experience, police officers get indemnified by the county or municipality. We’re going to get to

Stephen Janis:

That. And yes,

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

You are correct. They get taxpayer funded lawyers and they’re not getting the county attorneys, especially in Suffolk County or Nassau County, the neighboring county on Long Island. They hire $2,000 an hour attorneys, private attorneys. And I’m sure if I looked into that, I’m sure those attorneys probably donated those law firms. Oh

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely. We had the same thing going on in Baltimore. Absolutely.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

It’s a whole racket. It’s a whole

Stephen Janis:

Racket.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

It’s a whole big club and we’re not in it, just so people

Taya Graham:

Know. We are not in it.

Stephen Janis:

It’s a classic political economy. We had law firms were getting millions of dollars from Baltimore City to handle these lawsuits and basically –

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Instead

Stephen Janis:

Of settling,

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

They couldn’t use that money to settle the case.

Stephen Janis:

Well, exactly.

Taya Graham:

Right. But

Stephen Janis:

That’s the

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Thing. Fight it. It’s insane.

Stephen Janis:

They would spend millions. We have a municipal cap in Baltimore in Maryland. It’s 500,000 or 900,000. And they would spend more money defending than just, might as well just pay it out. They would spend five, six, seven million dollars just to defend a lawsuit. They’d eventually pay out. But instead of just paying it out, I think they wanted to run up the billable hours, which is to your point. You have the law firms getting involved, making millions and millions of dollars. The politicians getting donations. It’s a pretty nice business. Nice work if you get it. And the amazing thing about it that you point out, I think that people don’t understand, is if you mess up, the more mistakes you make, the more lucrative it is. In our city, after the Justice Department investigated our police department and found the Department of Justice found it practiced unconstitutional and racist policing for like a decade, the police department got $70 million to fix the issues.

Tons of consultants

Taya Graham:

Like you said tons of work. That was the first thing that happened. They were handed millions more dollars.

Stephen Janis:

70 million. And it just went to all sorts of extracurricular activities, which eventually ends up in the pockets of the union.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, absolutely. You know what? Let me grab comment nine because I think it’s an interesting one because it kind of is a dig at me and Steven. There’s someone who thinks we shouldn’t even be talking to you, Sean Paul. Dave, can you put up comment nine and I’ll read it. Sean Frey, excuse me, 7975 says, “You going to hitch your wagon to that mule. Lost all respect for you.” Wow. Yeah. Steven, I’m not sure exactly where that’s coming from, but I’m sure you have something to say about it. Well,

Stephen Janis:

First of all, I want to say I have tremendous respect for Sean Ray and all the work that he does. I don’t even care what they say about that. But also I think we should disabuse ourselves with this notion that interviewing someone means somehow you’re hitched to their wagon. Covering what Long Island does, Long Island Odds does, does not mean we endorse anything he does. It just means that we feel that he is newsworthy and that what he does is worth showing to our audience. That’s all it is. It’s not like we’re saying we’re endorsing everything Sean Ray does or we’re in. Sean Paul, sorry. Sean Paul Ray does. We’re not saying that at all. What we do as journalists, we interview all sorts of people. I mean, should we not interview Republican politicians who disagree with us or should we not interview people who we don’t think are perfectly suitable?

That’s not what we do. That’s not the kind of judgment we make. We judge things based on their newsworthiness. And Long Island Audits has made a lot of news for a good reason, for accountability reporting, and therefore we will cover him. And I don’t really care what people say about it, but I do have tremendous respect for your work. So

Taya Graham:

Either

Stephen Janis:

Way.

Taya Graham:

Steven, I agree with you. What we do is cover things that are newsworthy. For example, we have covered victims of crime and we have also interviewed people who have gone to prison for crimes. Does that mean I shouldn’t interview someone because they’ve gone to prison? Right. Does that mean I should only interview people that I like and never someone that I might have some fundamental differences in? Half the politicians

Stephen Janis:

In Maryland have gone to prison and we’ve interviewed all of them.

Taya Graham:

Oh my gosh. And they’re Democrats for the record.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. So we interview

Taya Graham:

People all the time. They actually did go to prison. Our previous mayor did actually, and I had a lovely interview with her. So I should not interview people because they’re problematic. If they’re newsworthy, if interviewing them is going to reveal something important, then I should interview them for the benefit of the public. It’s not about liking people. It’s not about hitching your wagon to a star. It’s about giving the public information that they can find useful. Period. Case closed. Case closed. Now, Sean, I’m not going to force you to react to this unless you want to. I will.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I will. So first of all, to me, this is indicative of the tribalism and the death of nuance. And these people, they want to be closed-minded. They don’t want to have conversations. And this person probably, he says, if you asked him, you do support the First Amendment, do you support the free press? Do you support? And you probably say, yes, yes, yes. I love the Constitution. But the minute that someone engages with somebody that they don’t like or starts talking to them, again, just because I’m on your channel doesn’t mean that I am not. We do not endorse each other for everything that we do. If tomorrow you did something I didn’t like, I have full rights to talk about that as well. I don’t have a blind loyalty to people. I love the work that you guys do and I appreciate it. And I think what you guys do on Capitol Hill is great.

I watch you guys all the time. And you really speak truth to power. It’s great. I wish I could be up there on Capitol Hill agitating people and provoking people. I wish you could too. I

Taya Graham:

Was going to say,

Stephen Janis:

You

Taya Graham:

Can join

Stephen Janis:

Us. Can you bring your truck up to Capitol Hill one time at least once? I

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Would love to bring the truck. Yeah, I

Stephen Janis:

Would love to. All right. We’ve got to do the truck one

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Time. I would love to join you guys over there a Capitol Hill.But again –

Stephen Janis:

We’re doing that. That’s the date.That’s the date. I love it. I want that truck on Capitol Hill, man. Right on the triangle. It would be

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Great. It’s crazy. And people are like, “Oh, journalists don’t have billboard trucks. That’s true. Most journalists don’t.” I wish we did. Right. I’m sure most journalists wish they did too. It’s a good way to spread your message around. And again, I’m not saying I’m not Caitlin Collins of CNN. I’m not – Neither

Taya Graham:

Am I.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Whoever from Fox News, I guess. I’m not those people. I’m Sean Paul Reyes. My platform is my platform. I objectively engage in journalistic activities. I objectively exercise my First Amendment right. And again, if you want to call it advocacy journalism, opinionated journalism, yeah, I have opinions. And I don’t hide that. I talk about things that interest me and interest my audience. And I think that me building platforms that have over two million subscribers and at this point, probably a billion views, 500 million, 600 million on YouTube alone. These are matters of public interest that people want to see. People are very passionate about it. I get death threats. I get people are passionate on the other side too. People threaten to kill me, threaten to kill my family. There’s a lot of things that go into this. And it’s sad to see that people can’t have conversations anymore.

Even if we were totally different, I would still come on your channel. I invited Lou, when the body camera footage comes out the Sunday on my channel, the Sunday morning at 10:00 AM, I invited him to come on the channel and he accepted. So Lou, if you’re watching this, you’re still welcome to. I think that he is a despicable thug with a badge, but I would bring him on my channel. Absolutely. Great point. So that way I can debate him. Absolutely. But he would never come. He says it on the body cam. “Yeah, I’ll come on your channel. Yeah, let’s do it. “While I’m sitting in handcuffs, while I’m standing there in handcuffs with a pinched nerve in my wrist because he put the handcuffs on so tight, he says,” I’ll come on. “I said,” Come on the channel. “Because I would have anybody on the channel if I thought it brought value to the greater conversation.

Absolutely. I think him speaking to me on my channel, I think it’s going to show you exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to the police union. They talk just generalities. Oh, they don’t get into any specifics about anything. It’s just you’re an agitator, how? You’re a provocateur, how? You hate the police, how? I’ve had police officers on my channel, I’ve gotten pushback from, if you want to talk about the other side of it, I’ve brought chief of polices, detectives, I’ve had law enforcement on my channel. I’ve done ride alongs, I’ve done trainings, I’ve done command staff meetings, district attorney’s offices, and some of the more anti-police who have just a bad taste in their mouth for police and don’t think that police should exist whatsoever, they’re like, “Why would you bring on a cop?” Because I want to have conversations with people who have different views than me.

I do so I can understand what it is I need to do and how I need to tackle a problem better. I would

Taya Graham:

Bring

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

On anyone. I would.

Taya Graham:

You know what? Steven, you know what this sounds like?

Stephen Janis:

What?

Taya Graham:

This sounds like a journalist.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Let me just make one public service announcement. I know, because I know he’s watching our editor, Maximolia Alvarez. We would like a truck. So just put that on our budget because I’m jealous of Sean. I want to show up at Capitol Hill with a truck.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

You can use my truck. We will definitely collaborate

Stephen Janis:

And I will. Oh, you were coming out with that truck. Absolutely. We would love that. We have to do a collab. I would love to do

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

It. After how it works and everything. It’s

Taya Graham:

Great. And I just want to shout out some of the people in the comments. First off, hi Car Thief News. Thank you. And also, I want to say hello to Wrights Crispy. Hello, another wonderful cop watcher out there. We still have Joe Cool out there, hippie auditor out there. I think I even saw John Felix. I don’t know if I hallucinated it, but I’m almost positive I saw the John Felix out there. And I just

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Want to –

Taya Graham:

I

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Like Joe Cool.

Taya Graham:

I know. I know. As a matter of fact, Steven, do you have a DVD next to you?

Stephen Janis:

Oh yeah.

Taya Graham:

You know what? Why don’t you show that DVD?

Stephen Janis:

Okay.

Taya Graham:

If people are interested in learning a little bit more about Copwatchers, there is something you can watch. It’s called I Am But the Mirror. The

Stephen Janis:

Story of American Copwatching.

Taya Graham:

Story of American Copwatching. Lacey Arnold D, if you wouldn’t mind dropping the link in the comments. It’s on Fossum. It’s an amazing documentary where we followed Copwatchers and in particular a very controversial one for several years. And we share their story. We share the story of how we learned about Copwatchers, their lives. Just about some of the

Stephen Janis:

Topics we talked about tonight too.

Taya Graham:

A lot of the things we. No, no, it’s okay. A lot of the things that we touched on tonight, it’s a very personal and intimate look at the lives of Copwatcher and some of the very personal costs that happen when you put everything on the line because you believe in accountability and transparency. So if you’re interested in Copwatching, definitely recommend it. Okay. I just had to throw that out there for people who might be interested in continuing this conversation in another way. Okay. I’m going to go to the comment 10, and I have to admit this as a little bit of a personal peeve for me. Okay. This is the infamous democracy versus republic debate. I know there’s some historians in the comments, so you’re welcome to weigh in on this. This is from Edward Cominar 1493. I stopped watching when you called us a democracy.

We are not a democracy. And since you believe that, I will not sub to your channel. Bye. Okay. Well, all right. I hate to say it, but this is not an airport. You did not have to announce your departure. It’s okay. I love that. But secondly, I want to put this up because very often when I use the word democracy in the show, someone brings up that it’s formerly a constitutional republic as a point as if I didn’t know this or wasn’t aware. So please let me break it down so maybe I don’t have to go through this again. One is a legal framework or structure of governance, i.e. A constitutional republic. And one is a process for conferring power within that structure. Neither are mutually exclusive. One does not preclude the existence of another. We can live within the structure of a constitutional republic while simultaneously participating in a democracy.

I mean, Steven, am I wrong here?

Stephen Janis:

No, no, no, no, no. The two exist, coexist. I mean, the process itself of voting is democratic. So I just wanted to put that up there because people say this constantly when we have this discussion. And just remember, they’re not mutually exclusive. They really work well together. So when we say one, we’re not precluding the other is the point.

Taya Graham:

Right. Just

Stephen Janis:

Wanted to make that point quick.

Taya Graham:

Yes. Think of the republic is the building in which the democracy is housed. How about that? That sounds good. Okay. So we don’t have to argue about this, you guys. I promise. I promise. Okay. I won’t ask you to. Let’s get to 11 because we’re – Running out of time. We do have some time. Yeah. We do have to watch out for time. Last

Stephen Janis:

Comment.

Taya Graham:

Okay. Last comment that we saved from earlier from Facebook and YouTube. Okay. Who is footing the bill? Okay. So I think this comment makes a really good point, so we need to highlight it. Dave, thank you so much for putting it up. This is Sean Strauss’s point. Remember, everyone, cops never pay a single cent for lawsuits. Even in a successful lawsuit where qualified immunity is denied, individual LEOs are still literally always indemnified by the municipality. It’s the taxpayers who pay for the lawyer’s fees, court costs settlements, and even judgements issued against them. We the people currently have no meaningful legal recourse to hold our LEOs accountable, neither civilly nor criminally. So either one of you can take this. Well, let’s have Sean do it. Yeah. Is it true that police are indemnified by the taxpayers?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

In most cases, yes. There was actually a case that I brought up. I’d covered this case where this man was walking down the street in New York City and officers hopped out like a gang. Literally a gang hopped out of a patrol vehicle and started going into his pants, checking him, searching him. He was just walking down the street, minding his own business, but apparently he must have looked a certain way or walked a certain way. Who knows what they were thinking? But they hopped out and they started searching him. They ended up grabbing his genitals and doing all types of craziness to him. And he got upset and I raid about it. He ended up filing a lawsuit. I covered this story probably three years ago. And then he had texted me, told me, “Hey, they ended up settling for $100,000.” And I bring this up because out of that $100,000, well, they had to hire their own attorneys, but as Steven indicated earlier, they hired their attorneys through the PBA, through their union.

They don’t call it a PBA, but their union, they hired them attorneys. And then they had to come out of pocket out of that $95,000 of that $100,000 settlement this gentleman got was taxpayer money. And the other 5,000 had to be split between the two officers who violated his rights. So at the end of the day, cops can be held accountable civilly, but nine times out of 10, 99% of the time they are indemnified by the municipality and the taxpayers end up funding the bill. I completely agree that there’s such a lack of accountability when it comes to government officials and our public servants, whether it’s locally, on the state level, federally. Federally is even worse. Federally, you can’t even. I didn’t know this until recently when I was unlawfully detained by border patrol and they went and cut open my suitcase, searched my vehicle, deleted the video from my phone.

Thankfully it was my recently deleted, put me in a jail cell.

You cannot sue the federal government under the 1983 civil rights lawsuit. You can’t. They’re not named as a. It’s for state actors, not federal actors. So you can file what’s called a tort claim, which that’s for actual damages. I could have filed a tort claim for the damage they did to my suitcase. It’s almost impossible to hold the federal government accountable. So it goes all the way. The lack of opportunities we have and the lack of avenues, I should say, that we have to hold state actors or federal actors accountable for their misconduct is basically nothing because they have unlimited money because it’s our money. It’s our money. They have unlimited money. They can just pay out lawsuits because it’s our money. Even if the federal government, they print the money. So they literally have unlimited money. And the state governments, they can’t print money, but they have a lot of it, especially places like New York, Maryland, where there’s high taxes.

They have a lot of money to be able to spare. They factor this in and they say, “Well, it is what it is.” It goes away. The person gets their money and they move on. And there’s never any accountability. If it came out of the law enforcement officer’s pockets.

Law enforcement is designed, is supposed to be, right? This is what they tell you to hold people accountable for their criminal actions, is to enforce the law. And the criminal justice system, again, I’m not co-signing their view, but they’re saying the criminal justice system is supposed to stop people from committing crimes. Not only the individual that’s being charged with a crime, but it’s supposed to serve as a deterrent to society as a whole to say, “Hey, you can’t do this because this will happen to you the same way it happened to this guy.” But in law enforcement, when there’s no accountability for the individual officer, that breeds a lack of accountability across the whole department and across the police as a whole. And because they know that, “Hey, I can do this.” Just recently, somebody was charged with a crime for using flock cameras to stalk their girlfriend.

And the investigator, the IA investigator who investigated him was arrested as well for doing the same thing after he did it. So it’s just the lack of accountability is astounding and it breeds more misconduct and more misconduct. And unfortunately, unless we change up, unless we get the right politicians in there, public servants to legislators, executives in the executive branch to hold them accountable, it’s not going to change.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I mean, it’s really interesting. I want to make this point before we wrap things up because one of the first times we started talking to Sean was when his encounter with Sergeant Fahey in Connecticut. Connecticut state trooper that seemed like his overtime was a little excessive for someone who worked at a desk and then retired with a pension. And I’ve been doing some digging on it. And it turns out that the couple thousand retired state troopers cost Connecticut taxpayers $110 million a year to fund their pensions. And we started looking at some of the last couple years, because the last couple years is what defines your salary. So what happens is that they start collecting a lot more overtime and therefore their final average pay goes up and therefore their final average pension becomes larger and more lucrative. And I think the point is in what you’re saying is that you are really attacking the crux of the matter in the sense that this is real dollars.

I mean, $110 million a year to fund the pensions for a couple thousand people is really an extreme use of resources in a country that purports not to be able to pay for healthcare for average working citizens. This is real money that keeps getting tossed around. When we looked at the budget for Suffolk County, it was like $1,400 a year for each household to fund police. I mean, think about that. So we are talking about hundreds of millions of billions of dollars being funneled into one organization that represents a very small number of people and hundreds of billions of dollars not going to pay for people’s healthcare or for childcare or for whatever, for education, you name it. So this is not a minor, this is a kind of a crux issue. And I think Sean, as you point out, these people are really the warriors on behalf of the oligarchy.

So yeah, I just want to make that point because that money struck me, $110 million. What could we do with that?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

The Suffolk County Police Department has a billion dollar budget. It’s insane that the amount of money that goes into these six figure pensions for the rest of your life, for the rest of your life, but yet I might not even get my social security one day, but yet they get from. They’re going to get six figures for the rest of their life.

Stephen Janis:

For the rest of their lives. Yeah. I mean, it’s extraordinary. And Suffolk County’s like the hotbed of crime that I

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Know of. No, it’s not. You know what they do? You know what they do, Steven? Again, I like the rank and file people of Suffolk County. I do. People, I’ll probably get chewed up for that. I like the rank and file officers because I think they’re pretty cool guys, but it’s the system, the police union, the administration. But what they do is they hide behind firehouses and just sit there all night long and just hang out. That’s what they do.

Stephen Janis:

Right. Right. Meanwhile, collecting $100,000 a year. Yeah. 200,

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

300, 400, $500,000 a year, that much.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, Suffolk County’s like Stony Brook University and a couple malls. I mean, seriously, a billion dollars, what? What’s going on there?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Keep us safe.

Taya Graham:

I wanted to say there have been some really great comments. And unfortunately, I didn’t get to ask some of the questions that were on the screen. So I just want to shout out a few people. I see Garden State Accountability, San Joaquin Valley Transparency. Otto, the watchdog is out there. Hey, Otto. It’s good to see you. How are you? One of our favorites. Leroy Truth. There’s a vigilance committee. Joe Kool is out there holding it down in the comment section. I love it. Big Nick South. Saw Rice Krispy. So I just want to make sure. I’m sorry if I didn’t get to mention everybody, but the comments are kind of flying by. I just want to thank all of you for participating. And I just want to ask, and there’s a great question on the screen of whether or not people. They want to know, do we think that this kind of cop watching, this kind of auditing, this kind of First Amendment activism, do you think it’s making a difference?

That was a question. It’s a good question. I’m so sorry. The name flew by too fast for. But I want you to know out there whoever’s in live chat, that was a great question. So Sean, I just wanted to ask you, do you think it’s making a difference?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I think it’s making a difference. I don’t think it’s making enough of a difference, but I do believe it’s making a difference. Even in the last five years, there’s a bunch of, you just named a bunch of people. There’s so many people that came before me. I’ve been doing this for five years. These people have been doing this for the last decade, 15 years. And I give them all the respect in the world for starting this. And I think it’s made a huge difference, but not enough of a difference. And I think law enforcement officers, they won’t just grab you and arrest you at a traffic stop anymore. No as much. I’ve noticed that when I walk into a public building now, most people, they’re like, oh, they know what you’re doing and everything else. And they treat you with respect and just the basics that should have been happening from day one.

But they don’t want to be famous online or infamous, I should say, online. So I think all of us together have really accomplished a lot. And I think my platform is really branching out into actually investigating in particular mayors, particular just like Lee Roy Truth or others out there who are focused then on one person or one organization. Because I feel like over the last five years, I’ve been stretched out and I feel like I’ve failed my county. Again, I’m proud one raised resident, Suffolk County, Long Island. And I feel like I failed my county by not taking this police union head on from the start. I’ve been all over the place from California and Hawaii, Florida and everywhere in between. And I think I need to focus my resources in one area and be able to really affect change, maybe even run for a legislator just to make them, even if it’s just to make them

Stephen Janis:

Spend money against me. Wait, wait, wait. So you’re going to run for office?

Taya Graham:

I’m

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Thinking about running for legislator in Suffolk County.

Stephen Janis:

That’s news. Okay. Can we just break news? We just break news.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I mean, listen, my legislator, I looked it up. He won with 8,000 votes. Oh my

Stephen Janis:

God. I’ve got an audience of a million. You got

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

The senate. My district is like 75,000. So 8,000. Get out to vote people. Come on. Whoever supports the police unit support, vote the opposite. I don’t care if it’s a Democrat or a Republican. Whoever the police unit supports, vote for the opposite of that person. Whatever it is.

Taya Graham:

That’s solid platform. That’s a solid platform. We

Stephen Janis:

Are covering your campaign beginning to end. One thing I want to say –

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Great campaign. I got the billboard truck already. It’s going to be great.

Taya Graham:

You’re

Stephen Janis:

Already

Taya Graham:

Halfway there.

Stephen Janis:

Taya’s from Long Island. My family’s from Long Island. Several of our other coworkers, we have a very strong Long Island.

Taya Graham:

We’re Long Island strong here at The Real News. So

Stephen Janis:

Just so you know, we’re in solidarity with you on Long Island.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I spent summers in Stony Brook in Suffolk County. And I spent summers in Stoney. I know how quiet it is. Okay. Last question. Last question, you guys, so we can wrap up. I just wanted to ask what you envision for the future of your work and perhaps kind of YouTube auditing in general. Do you think it’s going to evolve? Do you think the police are going to push back harder or where do you think we go from here? Because I think there’s going to be an auditor summit coming up. There are people who still want to get involved, become auditors, become First Amendment activists, become cop watchers, but there are some challenges there. So what do you see as its future?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Yeah. I’m familiar with the 1A auditor summit that’s supposed to be held next year. And I think it’s important. I kind of got into it already. I think it’s evolved to where. One of the things that frustrated me about First Amendment auditing is that there was never any follow up. And I think that’s what I would see somebody whose rights get violated and then I would never know what happened after that. I would never see them file a complaint. I would never see the results of the complaint. We all know that they’re going to investigate themselves and find out what we’re doing, but take that step because it’s important to show that’s part of the story. It’s important to show that you are filing a complaint with Internal Affairs who’s supposed to be an independent part of the police department, which they’re not. And it is important to show that they’re going to unsubstantiate it.

When your own eyes tell you exactly what happened, they will lie to you straight to your face. And I think it’s important for follow up. And I think more and more, I’m starting to investigate more into an investigative journalism kind of phase where I’m looking at the numbers, I’m looking at the papers. I’m talking to informants sources that are. I just got off the phone with a former law enforcement officer right before I almost was late because I was talking to a former law enforcement officer giving me all this information. And it’s important to evolve what you’re doing and to be passionate about it. And I think that moving forward, I think people like Leroy Truth, there are so many others out there that have really changed when it comes to actually focusing on particular issues and really digging into those issues because recording in public spaces is very important.

Recording law enforcement on a traffic stop is very important because it shows you what happens when power is challenged in any little way. These people with their ego, when you challenge their ego, I was arrested by Lucavillo because I said, “You’re such a tough guy, then do it. Let’s be real. Not because I broke the law. It’s because I went there asking questions about how his agencies are costing us hundreds of millions of dollars and I challenged his ego.” And he couldn’t control his emotions. Now imagine when you see those people, when you see these videos of these law enforcement officers who can’t control their emotions, if they’re doing it to me, if that man, Lucivillo, the police union president, is willing to do that to me, somebody with over two million subscribers across social media, hundreds of millions of views, what do you think he’s doing to John Smith down the street with no family, no money?

Stephen Janis:

Exactly.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

They run them through the system. The process is the punishment. The difference is that what law enforcement hasn’t figured out yet is that the process isn’t the punishment when it comes to people like me because the process, you’re thinking of I’m being punished. I’m not because I have a bunch of supporters that help me out with legal bills. I have a bunch of supporters that will write letters. So the process isn’t the punishment for me, but they’re so ingrained in that kind of way of thinking that this might not hold up in court. It’s probably not going to hold up in court, but he gets to sit in jail for seven hours. He has to pay a lawyer. He’s going to end up taking a deal anyway. And at the end of the day, if it all goes to shit, it’s going to get paid by his money anyway, taxpayer money.

It’s not going to affect me in any way. I’m not going to be held accountable.

Taya Graham:

Steven, let me ask you, what do you see as the future? I mean, you worked on that documentary, I am But the Mirror. You should know a little bit about Copwatching by now.

Stephen Janis:

Well, first thing I want to say is my editor-in-chief Max is in my ear and he’s telling me that this truck is on order for our billboard truck. So yes, I’ve been informed. I wanted to break that news that we will have the Tay and Steven billboard truck in operation shortly. But I think Sean injects creativity into journalism. I mean, journalists, we have a little high priestess sort of priest sort of feeling about bureaucratic. We can be a little bureaucratic and a little full of ourselves. And people like Sean come in and say, “Well, I’ve got a whole new way of approaching this, billboard truck included.” And I think that creativity is what flows from copwatchers because they went out – Yeah, that’s a great way to describe it. And they’re evolving, right? Sean says, “Yeah, I used to first film cops. Now I’m investigating overtime and going through public records and making record requests and following up.” It’s like we’re watching a whole new sort of journalism emerge.

And I think what’s great about copwatchers is they challenge the orthodoxy of what we do, which has a lot of orthodoxy in it and a lot of assumptions we make about the aesthetics of it, how it should be done. And Sean says, “No, I’m going to do it this way.” And actually it’s really effective and kind of very similar to what we do, but it kind of gives us a new way of looking at it. I mean, I have learned a tremendous amount from the copwatching auditing community as a journalist myself who came from a very conventional background. I work for a newspaper. If anyone knows what that is, I’m not sure if people are familiar with them, but they used to be delivered in your mailbox. And so I myself have said, wow, that’s a really cool way of approaching this. Or wow, I never thought of that.

Or just exposing things like now that I’m looking into the Connecticut State Pension System, thanks primarily to Sean and his encounter and what happened with Sergeant Hayes. So I think it’s a great way, a catalyst for journalism to change and evolve and adopt to an audience where audiences are, which is on YouTube and Instagram and places where Sean is quite popular. So yeah, it’s a good thing for all of us. And I’m looking forward to driving that truck

Taya Graham:

To Capital. Steven, that’s such a great point. I mean, in a way, you’re kind of making me think that it’s not as much about the future of copwatchers, but are journalists going to become more like cop watchers? Are we going to become more independent, more creative, more untethered from institutions, which can be controlling? We’re very fortunate as independent journalists that work for a nonprofit org to let you know, if we get five views on this or five million views on this, we don’t get a single nickel more. We’re a nonprofit org. We don’t run any ads on our channel. So literally we can report on what we want. So we are so lucky to be independent in that way. And I think copwatchers and the power that they show that basically a regular person who cares, who cares about transparency, excuse me, transparency, accountabilities, got a camera, willing to follow the money and do the work can actually make a difference in their community and help protect people and make change.

So I think if anything, if journalists are smart, they’re going to become a little bit more like copwatchers.That’s

Stephen Janis:

What I’ll say. Maybe should all become copwatchers. I’m an auditor. Sean, do you think I qualify to be an auditor or a copwatcher?

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

I’ve seen the work that you’ve done in Baltimore, both of you, and you guys do great work and I think you’d be perfect copwatcher. Thank you. And listen, I got to say that part of it’s waking up the public. The public is asleep. And sometimes you need a billboard truck, a flashy billboard truck to wake them up. I totally agree what you said, Steven. The institutions of journalism and everything else allegedly. I hate it when journalists say, allegedly, when I just watched the guy get punched in the face and allegedly he was punched in the face. And it’s too cutesy, too wanting. Instead of trying not to take a side because you don’t want to be part of the story and you don’t want to be in journalism. I’m going to tell this objectively. Sometimes there is no two sides to the story. Sometimes the police unions are just corrupt and you got to call them corrupt.

Stephen Janis:

Anything we say in journalism is like, it’s either raining or it’s sunny, but it’s not like there’s two sides to that, right? So yeah, good point.

Taya Graham:

You know what? I just have to say some of the folks, for example, Liberty Freak says that the police are going to push back harder. And you have a good point. I mean, I was just thinking about how there’s somewhere between 80,000 to 120,000 flop cameras across the country. The surveillance state is increasing. At the same time where there’s laws being made to say, stay further back while you’re recording, stay further back while you’re recording for us regular folks. Sure. Yeah. So it’s going to be interesting. Police like to

Stephen Janis:

Turn the cameras on up. As Sean has pointed out, they don’t like to have the cameras turned

Taya Graham:

On up. Exactly. Exactly. So Sean, we want to thank you so much for your time. And before you go, people want to know about the tiger painting. I’m sorry. I think

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

We’re going to get to that. So I’ll show it. This is not my portrait. I am in a hotel in Louisiana right now, so I have no idea what this is. And I was interested when I first saw it in my hotel room too. Okay.

Taya Graham:

So it’s not a family heirloom. Okay.

Stephen Janis:

No. So people are asking about a painting in

Taya Graham:

This

Stephen Janis:

Hotel

Taya Graham:

Room. Well, because Steven can’t see it. So there’s a tiger and this pretty woman wearing a dress with kind of like a boostier and petting a giant tiger. I’ll show you a screenshot of it later. It’s quite a shot. That’s pretty cool. Sean Paul, we have to thank you so much for your time. We took up more of it than we should have. I apologize for that. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you so much, your work, your willingness to speak about it, and your very singular insights into government accountability. And we look forward to speaking to you again soon and going to Washington DC with you.

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Love it. Can’t wait.

Taya Graham:

Thank you for

Sean Paul Reyes (Long Island Audit):

Having me and keep up the group work. Thank you

Taya Graham:

So much. Oh, thank you. You as well. Take care. Thank you. Okay. Steven, how was that for a conversation? I am so amazed about the things we learned from folks about talking about police power. And of course, one of my favorite topics, cop watchers. I got to do it. I got to say it again. Anyone who’s interested in the subject, check out the documentary, I’m But the Mirror. Steven, hold it up. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. The story of American Copwatching and either Lacey R. Noli D. That’s me right there. If one of you put a link in the chat, I would very much appreciate it. And I just want to thankry a goofball. Everyone who was in the comments. And I really do apologize if I didn’t get to everyone’s comments. I tried to, with Max’s help, to put as many comments on the screen as I could.

And I just want to thank every single one of you that took the time to show up at this live. I appreciate it so much. And I’m going to make a point later on tonight to go through the comments that you guys leave underneath, give out some hearts, give some of my own personal responses. And I’m also going to go back to doing a comment of the week. So your comment might end up being highlighted on our channel if you take the time to make one. So if you can take a moment to leave a comment, maybe give us a little thumbs up, we really do appreciate it so much. So Steven, I’ve got to give you a chance before we sign off. Well, okay. And before I say thank you to all of our patreons, before I sign off, do you have any thoughts about tonight’s

Stephen Janis:

Discussion? Yeah, no. I mean, it was really interesting. And I think we’ve created a vicious cycle of comedy on comments, the comment on comments.

Taya Graham:

It’s very meta.

Stephen Janis:

It’s totally meta, so I’m pretty happy. But this is really cool to have this kind of debate and have the opportunity to hear what people think, because that really informs everything we do. If you don’t give feedback, you don’t think we read comments because sometimes you get like eight or hundred or thousand. I read a big majority of them and this time we really went through them. And what emerged was a really interesting dynamic debate that should be had every day about democracy, about journalism, about what we do, about how we should do it. That’s a great point. About how government kind of hoards resources and then uses them to attack us. And then how people on Long Island Audits are being creative and approaching it in their own way. I wish they had these debates when we go to conferences on journalism. I’d be much more interested to hear what people had to

Taya Graham:

Say

Stephen Janis:

If they were this vital.

Taya Graham:

So all

Stephen Janis:

Credits to the people on YouTube and to Long Island Audits for the way they bring out people and to talk about this. You don’t hear people debating democracy other than on CNN with a bunch of highly paid hairstylists. This is great because this is the people talking.

Taya Graham:

Yes.

Stephen Janis:

And more I hear, the better I feel about democracy.

Taya Graham:

Oh, Steven, that’s actually really beautiful. Yeah. It’s really beautiful. And I’m so glad – And the truck. And the truck. And the truck.

Stephen Janis:

And

Taya Graham:

That’s why I’m really so glad that we had this discussion and this debate to let people know we really do pay attention to your comments. And these spaces on social media, I think in particular YouTube, are places where we can really show that our democracy is so vital, that our First Amendment is still incredibly important. And that there’s real lifeblood in us that wants to have a healthy, equitable society where there’s not government overreach that is harmful. I agree. I agree. Honestly, Steven, our civic life in a lot of ways is becoming more and more precarious. And I think the right to disagree and to dissent is the most important part of it. Agreed. I mean, it’s the mechanism that keeps our democracy healthy. I would say this, this will be my little rant.

Stephen Janis:

Okay.

Taya Graham:

The right to dissent is a critical ingredient of our democracy, or if you’d like to call it constitutional republic. If you think about it, the right to vote is a form of dissent. It’s a right to express your disagreement with the people in power by voting to remove them. It’s actually the most potent form of communal dissent, actually. Our ability to collectively express dissatisfaction with political leaders and effectuate change is fundamental to who we are. But as Steven pointed out, it’s a facet of our system that can be easily manipulated or eliminated altogether. And it’s fragile and often challenging to preserve. Otherwise, I think copwatchers like Sean Paul wouldn’t continue to be arrested if the right to dissent was not in some sense provisional. So keeping dissent healthy and vibrant requires work. And that work can often lead to uncomfortable truths. So one of those truisms is that dissent, which makes us uncomfortable, is just as important to protect as that which we agree.

So what do I mean? So let me give a little bit of an analogy to explain. So imagine our collective discourse is a spectrum, a broad range of frequencies and colors intertwined, but separate. And in many ways, a spectrum of light is nature’s representation of the great Variety of colors and frequencies, all separate but equal, just like all of us in our different voices and ideas. And we need all of it because all of it is us. But acknowledging the existence of the spectrum requires acknowledging its full intensity. Let me give you an example. When noted cop watcher Eric Brandt, let’s say some people would say he provoked cops and waves, and please excuse my language, he waved a flag that said F cops. Well, a lot of people were made uncomfortable. And when Sean Paul shows up at a police union spontaneously, some people think his tactics are aggressive or even rude, but dissent does not always conform to our expectations of politeness or comportment.

It doesn’t always work when it complies with our expectations. Not every disagreement can be settled by a stoic debate or a polite exchange or even nuanced, reasonable discourse, even though sometimes I wish it could. No, I think sometimes these extremes are necessary to help keep the entire concept healthy. Sometimes more vibrant or discordant colors are necessary. Sometimes a more extreme approach is critical to making our entire project of finding ways to hold power accountable through public pushback, relevance. Sometimes dissent is just going to be ugly whether we like it or not. But my point is here that ultimately dissent must be created to survive. It must evolve to exceed the limits, as Steven pointed out, of the authoritarian impulses that exist within every government. It must be something that can accommodate citizen journalists with cell phones just as much as it protects reporters for the New York Times or Washington Post.

It has to be flexible, adaptable, and sometimes even confrontational. But the key is it’s up to us to define it. That is we, the people. It’s up to us to judge and debate what works and what doesn’t. It’s up to us to decide what we support and what we don’t. And that’s why we had this debate tonight and that’s why we ask for your comments. That’s why we do what we do. It’s an essential part of who we are. Proponents of free speech and protectors of the right of others to criticize our government and even us. Key to preserving it is discussions like this. And cop watchers are part of that recipe and so are you. So please help us fight for it together and argue like true Americans with courage and conviction and freedom to speak the truth even loudly to each other. And in the end, that’s all we have.

And I hope it’s all we’ll need. Once again –

Stephen Janis:

Very well done.

Taya Graham:

That’s my rant.

Stephen Janis:

It was a great

Taya Graham:

Rant. I had to do it.

Stephen Janis:

I agree with it entirely.

Taya Graham:

Well, Steven, I want to thank you for all the work you did to make this livestream possible today. Thank you so much. It was a very robust conversation. It

Stephen Janis:

Was. And we can disagree too. We disagree a lot of times. So just so people know.

Taya Graham:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

It’s not all perfect

Taya Graham:

Here. No, we actually agree pretty often. Except when we just disagreed now.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, we just disagreed that we didn’t agree. Oh my God. Irony.

Taya Graham:

Okay. And I also want to thank Long Island Auditor’s time today and all the amazing folks that showed up in the live chat. Thank all of you. And I have to give a very special thanks to moderators Noli D and Lacey R for their support. Thank you both. Hi, Noeli D and hi to Ryan. Can I just

Stephen Janis:

Say quickly how good

Taya Graham:

Long

Stephen Janis:

Island Audits is? How good he is and how interesting? You’re

Taya Graham:

Going to blow your objective journalism cover here if you do that.

Stephen Janis:

Okay.

Taya Graham:

Right. I take that back. It’s not supposed to be about interviewing people we like or don’t like. It’s about to do the world. No, I’m just saying that

Stephen Janis:

His interview

Taya Graham:

Was

Stephen Janis:

Really good. He brings up a lot of points that surprise me. And yeah, so go ahead. I’m sorry. I just wanted to say that.

Taya Graham:

No, you absolutely have the right to say that. I just don’t want people to think that you were biased. Okay.

Stephen Janis:

Good point.

Taya Graham:

But you’re right. He was a terrific interview and that is fair to say. But we have to thank our very special helpers who might be unseen. Maxime Alvarez. Oh yes. Thank you, Max. Who’s getting the truck apparently. Jocelyn, Brian and Corey for moral support. And like I said, at the very end, I’m going to thank every individual Patreon. So I’m just letting you know because I love my patrons. I do. And I’ve got to say it, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tipsprivately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Point on Facebook or Instagram or at Eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course you can always message me directly at TeasBaltimore on Twitter or Facebook or Tea Graham on Facebook or Instagram.

And please like and comment. You know I read your comments and appreciate them. I think we proved that we read your comments. And we’re probably going to have a Patreon link pinned in the comments and maybe even the live chat below for accountability reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. You know we don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything could spare is greatly appreciated. And as you see, I do shout out my patreons. My name is Tea Graham. I’m your host of Police Accountability Report. And for all of you, please be safe out there.

And now we’re my patrons. Real quick, I got to run through. I got to thank these good people. Are you ready, Steven? Hang on. Yes. I’m going to try to do this. Okay. Matter of rights, Tamara Anderson, XXX, Chris Robinson, David Keeley, Ronald Hensley, Gary T, David Bach, BD Gates, Calvin Mack, True Too Blive, Martin G. Nope. Talia B. Louie, Artemis LA, Lacey R. Steven J, John P. Alan J, Kyle R. Keith Bernard, M. Marcia E. Don T. Kipke, Cameron J. Joe Six, Donald, sorry, Daniel W, Frank FK, Mary M. John K. Kurt A, Steven B, John M. Conrad B, Siggy Young, Joel A, Patty Blibbets, Sescal Samian, Jimmy Touchdown, who is my very first patron. Thank you. Bill D, Rhym P. John K. Dean C. Umish H. Graham Graham, B. Joseph P. Durdevil, William T. G. Kemmy, Steven D. Just my two cents, Peter J, Sean Best, Julius Geezer, Linda Orr.

Hi, Linda Orr. Cindy K. Social Naturalist. Douglas P. Tim R. Laurie. L. D.B.M. Hugo Flores Noli D. Chris M. Shussant. Kimmy Kat P. Janet K. Omar O. Potshot and Ron Fried. Thank you. You guys are great. We appreciate you, and I hope you all have a great night. Take care. Take care. We appreciate you. Say goodbye, Steven.

Stephen Janis:

Bye.

Taya Graham:

Be safe out there, folks. Be safe.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Maximillian Alvarez: I’m here in the Mexican American Council Building in Saginaw, Michigan, and I’m sitting with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who is running to represent Michigan in the United States Senate. Brother Abdul, great to see you again, man. Thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: An honor.

Maximillian Alvarez: And we first met when you were running for governor here in Michigan in 2018.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Feels like yesterday. It feels like 15 years ago.

Maximillian Alvarez: Exactly. Both a day ago and a lifetime ago. And I think the circumstances around each election can sort of trick us into feeling like they’re very similar moments. When you were running in 2018, the question was how are Democrats going to respond to Trump? But also, who’s going to inherit the Bernie Sanders mantle? AOC just won. And so you were part of that progressive cohort. And now we kind of have a similar situation. How are Democrats going to respond to Trump winning again? Zorn Mamdani just won in New York. Who’s going to inherit the progressive movement? But these are two very different moments and you’re a very different person than you were back then. I wanted to ask to start how you would characterize the differences between that campaign and this one.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Let me break it down two ways. There’s where we are as a country, and then there’s the growth that you do as a person. I think where we are as a country, this is a moment where I think, to be honest, we had failed to learn the central lesson of Trumpism. I think a lot of folks felt like the record had skipped, that there was this mistake. And they didn’t see the fact that Donald Trump was exploiting a foundational pain in people. And I said this thing at the time, I think that was just, it was premature and most folks didn’t see it. Donald Trump himself is not the disease of our politics. He’s just the worst symptom of the disease of our politics. And the disease is the system that allows corporations and billionaires and would be oligarchs to buy and sell politicians to do their bidding.
You watch as they use their power to suppress our wages for the work that we have to do and to raise our prices for the things we have to buy. And I think this time around, people are recognizing that actually we dealt with the symptom, but we didn’t deal with the disease. And as a doctor, I’ll tell you, if you only deal with the symptom and you don’t deal with the disease, it comes back roaring worse. And that’s exactly what’s happened now. So I think folks are a lot more interested in authentic engagement with the structures of our system. Even now though, you got a lot of corporate folks out there who just want to deal with the symptoms. They’re like, oh, affordability? Okay. I’ll make one thing more affordable for you. It’d be great. And they’re like, no, there’s a structure underneath affordability. There’s a reason why everything accelerates in the wrong direction always.
And if you don’t deal with the foundational infrastructure, you’re not going to deal with the outcome. I’ve grown up a bit. I was 32, never run for office in my life. I had one and a half years of public service, two years of public service under my belt. Didn’t have any kids, lived in my in-law’s basement. I’m 41 now with two kids and a mortgage. And I’ll tell you, there’s something you learn about yourself when you have kids. And I think more than anything, it puts a patina on your soul in the sense that your kid walks into your bed, they piss your bed, and then you have to clean them and your bed while they’re pitching a tantrum in the middle of the night. Which is, to be fair, really unfair. But you’re like, “Hey, the baby, it’s okay. It’s all right. No worries.
It’s okay.” And it’s that ability, I think, to just have to metabolize more of life. That I think for me is probably the big difference.
I also, I think I learned a lot about life is short, but it’s also quite long. And one of the frustrations I think I have with some folks in our movement sometimes is that we want people to agree on the critique. And we always break apart on the critique. It’s not about the critique, it’s about the outcome. And I think the more you could focus on how you want the world to be like and get people to agree to that, even if they come at it with different perspectives, I think the better off we are. And I think that’s probably what I’ve learned over time.

Maximillian Alvarez: I’m thinking about what you were saying about having kids and the way it changes your worldview. And I wholeheartedly agree. There’s a foundational, existential humbling that comes with having kids and getting your ass beat once in your life. And you can tell the people in politics who have had neither of those

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Things. Well, I’d had the first one.
Delivered a couple myself, but I’ve had the first one. The second one, right? To be honest, having kids, to your point, that humbling nature of it, because it never ends. There’s always something. I give all the credit to my wife, Sarah. She’s a real MVP. And I’m just in awe of all that she has to do every day because of what I’m doing right now. But there is something about recognizing you’re trying to cherish something vulnerable for what it could be. And isn’t that what we’re trying to do here? And I think it also forces you to contend with pain quite a bit. And for me, I’ve trained as a doctor and that training’s been really useful for me because both doctors and politicians have to be really good at being able to sit with other people’s pain and to speak truth to pain. It’s true truth to power, but also truth to pain.
And I think having a kid has really brought that’s crystallized that in a certain way because you kind of understand the project. You know what I mean? Taking care of you because I love you. And I also love what you could be, even if I don’t love what you’re being right now. You know what I mean? And I think those are the moments that your kids test you the most. And you get tested like that enough times. You come out in political circumstances and you’re like, at least you’ve been pissed my bed.

Maximillian Alvarez: I agree with you, but by that definition, my mom would be a great politician because I test her a lot. And let’s talk about how you’ve grown as a person, but also as a politician –

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: I’m waiting for the Mama Alvarez congressional.

Maximillian Alvarez: Oh man. Yeah. Mama Alvarez would take it, baby. But you’ve grown as a politician as well. Your career in public service and my career in journalism almost started around the same time. And again, you know this because I was the Cub reporter on your gubernatorial campaign bus being like, “What am I doing?” And

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:: Wrote one of my favorite profiles then. So I was really grateful. A good journalist can see the thing beyond or the depth, the structure of the thing. And I appreciated that then.

Maximillian Alvarez: Thank you, man. I appreciate that. And I wanted to ask, how have you changed in those 10 years, especially let’s focus on the work that you did in Wayne County to prepare you to be qualified for US Senate?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Yeah. There’s a couple pieces there. I had run a health department, but the Wayne County department was just a lot more complex. 550 FTEs across all the programs that you run, the contracts that you oversee, et cetera. And $172 million budget, all kinds of moving parts in a bureaucracy that can be really difficult to negotiate and manage. And you’re working with everything from federally funded programs to state funded programs to county programs. You’re managing constituencies. And more than anything else, you are responsible for a particular thing for a particular group of people. And I think negotiating all of those moving parts for me was really valuable in a space like the county. And also just deepening my relationships with the community in Wayne County. Wayne County is Michigan’s largest, most diverse county, about a fifth of the state’s population. You got all kinds of different communities.
Downriver community, predominantly working class, black or white. You’ve got Dearborn, you’ve got the city of Detroit, of course. And thinking through the ways that you have to build coalitions around the work that you can do to deliver for everybody. And then there’s the technical part of things. And as a public health director, you’re responsible for a very technical set of things. So to me, the space of public service I’ve always been most excited about is how do you bring the technical, the practical and the political together? And you think about where we are in the Senate right now, you think about what we lack. We lack the political will to actually take on Trump and also to articulate what we’re fighting for and not just what we’re against. We lack a lot of technical skills in terms of understanding some of the leading edge questions of our time, whether it’s AI or rebuilding a public health infrastructure that RFK Jr.
Is all but ruining right now. You think about what it means to take on the healthcare challenges we have. We’re fighting for subsidies, for health insurance for 25 million people when we should really be having the conversation about whether or not 350 million people should have to worry about premiums at all. But these are technical questions that are political and practical in their nature. And so I think for all of those reasons, going back to public service, being engaged on the ground will make me a better public servant. The last thing I’ll say is this. At the end of the day, these issues, the rubber hits the road in city and county government. We don’t have folks who’ve served in these rules in the Senate all too often where you actually have to look people in the eye and say, “Here’s how you get this thing done.
And here’s the service we can render to you.” And I hope I can bring that. So whether it’s the technical skill set when it comes to healthcare, we haven’t had a Democratic doctor in the Senate since 1969. Never had a public health official in the US Senate. Whether it is the practical part of it, understanding how is this legislation that we put together going to impact Ms. Sue’s life living in downriver. And then it’s the political work of bringing people together around building and moving, I think is a good preparation all around.

Maximillian Alvarez: Well, and kind of bringing that back into the climate that we’re in. I’m going to ask you basically a similar version to the same question that I asked Beto O’Rourke when I got the chance to. Because I imagine you would agree, but my sense from the coverage we’ve done is that the 2024 election was less of a referendum on how much people love Donald Trump than it was a referendum on how much people hate the Democrats. And the people’s faith in the Democratic Party is in the basement right now, especially on top of a year of doing what feels like virtually nothing to stop Trump. Caving on the longest government shutdown in our history while people are watching their SNAP benefits, their healthcare disappear before their eyes. So the question there is like, is why run as a Democrat? And how are you going to address that lack of faith and prove that this isn’t just the right message that you’re going to meet people’s needs?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Yeah. I know what I’m about. And Democratic Party hasn’t always met my needs. I think a lot of people out there feel like they’re Democrats by hostage situation. You look at the other guys and you’re like, “That’s crazy.” And then you look at the Democrats and you’re like, “I don’t know what’s worse.” Being cruel and crazy or being feckless in the face of being cruel and crazy. Now, the party is so far away from its voters. The majority of Democrats out there, when I talk to them out at Democratic clubs or indivisible or you name the organization that I’m out, they are so far away from the party elders who hold all the power. And I think we have an opportunity as a party to molt. Out with the old, in with what the people underneath the party really want. And I’ve said this for a very long time.
The problem with Democrats is too often they’re taking money from the very same people who created the problem. So now you’re in this weird position of trying to articulate a solution to the problem that includes the people who created the problem. That makes sense. I don’t take over money. I never have. I never will. And I understood from the day I started in politics that that wasn’t the big issue. And so when folks look at me, they say, at least I know what he believes because he’s not bought. And I think the party could do the same thing. Say what you will about Donald Trump. He’s got a coherent narrative. You out of a job. Immigrant took your job. Out of a home. Immigrant took your home. Out of healthcare. Immigrant took your healthcare. That’s his narrative. Simple, easy to understand, dead wrong. We could have a narrative too.
Out of a job, corporation offshored or automated your job. Out of healthcare, corporation squeezed you out of healthcare. Out of a home, corporation speculated that you can’t afford a home. But when you’re taking money from corporations, guess what you’re not going to say? So you come with your little list of 10 point policy plans that’s going to deliver something for maybe somebody 10 years from now. It’s bullshit. So I think the party could be better and I’m running to make it better. So I’m a Democrat with lowercase D, and I hope someday we can win the fight for what the Democratic Party can be. And I’m not willing to let go of all that infrastructure because a few folks who can’t let go of power say that it’s theirs.

Maximillian Alvarez: Do you feel hopeful about other people running as Democrats that you’ll be among a cohort of people who believe that?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: I hope so. I hope so. I think there are some folks out there who see the issue, working to try and address it, and we’re going to have to build power. No one US Senator is going to solve all the problems. I mean, one out of 100 senators, 1% of the US Senate, always, that’s all you are. So you better figure out how to build the team. But I also think that we’ve given up on persuasion. Democrats do this thing where Donald Trump’s out there persuading people left, right, center all the time. And we’re out here trying to run a poll and figure out where people are and then speak right to the poll. So what happens is the public’s moving in one direction and we keep speaking to where that is. We can be like, “Well, immigration’s not a popular issue.” I was like, “Are you kidding me?
Shredding the damn constitution over it.” Popular issue. I don’t give a damn.This is the issue of our time and you don’t want to talk about it, but also talk about it in a way that’s complete. So you get a lot of people who talk about immigration as this esoteric abstract thing that sits on a mantle and we just admire it. I mean, democracy was broken the day corporations started to buy elections. That didn’t just happen. We’re at death’s door now, but we’ve been here. We’ve been sick. And so why don’t you talk about it in ways that are actually fully complete? Hey, every time a corporation comes in and buys off a politician, that kills your democracy a little bit. But most of these folks who want us to talk about democracy now didn’t feel it when that happened. And I think we got to talk about it completely.

Maximillian Alvarez: I want to talk about what that means for where we are sitting right now in Saginaw, Michigan. And I have a special attachment to this place. My wife grew up here. I have a lot of in-laws who live around here. My wife’s family had generations of men work in the old GM plant up the road. It is a cold, hard, but beautiful place with a lot of families, with a lot of deep roots. A lot of immigrant families going from back to Poland, Germany, Mexican and other Latino immigrants, a lot of black folks who came up during the Great Depression. People don’t give towns like Saginaw credit for how complex and beautiful they actually are. But in many ways, this is the archetypal rust belt

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Town.

Maximillian Alvarez: I mean, there is a lot of pride. There’s a lot of joy. There’s a lot of family here. There’s also a lot of boarded up windows. There’s a lot of blight. There’s a lot of pain. There’s a lot of poverty and economic devastation. So why is it important for you to come to a place like Saginaw? And again, moving past the sort of democratic messaging, I guess my question is not how do you hope to reach people who live in places like Saginaw, but what can you and other politicians do for places like Saginaw?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Yeah. The simple question, how do you reach? You come. We’re here. You know what I mean? This is not my first time in Saginaw. It’s not going to be my last time in Saginaw. And then I think the way you reach folks is to be vulnerable with them. I can’t solve all the problems, but I can’t tell you why the problems exist. And I can tell you I’m going to try like hell to take it on. And then I think you need to go back to that point that I was making to be a really good listener to people’s pain and to try to forge that pain into purpose. I can’t solve it. Anybody walks in here is like, “I’m going to fix your problems.” No, you’re not. We can solve it. And if I can be a vessel that helps to create something that can organize us and can impose what it is that we’ve been asking for, for a very long time into power, then I think we can solve it.
We can’t solve it tomorrow, but we can solve it in due time. And I’ll tell you that the analogy here to medicine is clear. Somebody gets a cancer diagnosis. You want to tell them you’re going to be fine. It’s bullshit. If I tell you you’re going to be fine, it’s a lie. But what I can tell you is I’m really sorry that this happened to you. And I can tell you what we know. And I can tell you what we can do. And I can tell you I’m going to sit here and listen for as long as you need me to listen to you. And that I’m going to be your advocate for helping get the best outcome you want.
In this case, it’s not terminal. Places like Saginaw can heal, but not doing the same shit that we’ve been doing. And so in some respects, there is an honesty that you have to tell people. It’s not just always going to be okay or I’m going to solve all your problems. I’m not. I’m going to do my best to help you, to be honest with you about what the problem is, to sit down and think about what our approach moving forward can be, and to fight like hell for you against people who’ve created this problem. And if we can do that and you can trust me to do that, we can build things over time. But it starts there. And I just think there’s a humility and a vulnerability in that.

Maximillian Alvarez: And I know I got to let you go in a minute because you’re about to walk into the next room and participate in a round table with members of the Latino community out here. And I kind of wanted to end

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: On – Well as a Latino myself.

Maximillian Alvarez: Well, that’s why I kind

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Of wanted – I’m not Latino, but I’ve been mistaken one

Maximillian Alvarez: For

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Enough times that I’m just like, I kind of get it.

Maximillian Alvarez: I was about to say, it was like you walk into a family party. People would think that you’re, hey, he’s Mexican. I walk into one of yours and be like, “Hey, he’s Egyptian.” Exactly. But that’s kind of where I wanted to go with it. We’re both brown men living in America in 2025. You’re running for office. Your last name is Elsayed. I don’t need to tell you that this is a dangerous exercise. But I wanted to sort of ask for yourself, your family, your children, why is it important to you to run when there are so many forces in America that are trying to keep people like you out of America?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Yeah. I spent a lot of my childhood summers in Egypt with my grandmother who’s the smartest person I ever met. And she never got to go to school. So I’ve spent a lot of time with really smart people. The smartest of them was the person whose story would never get told. You would never know she lived. People who got to live with her knew she lived. She was immense. And I saw the chasm and opportunity that I had versus my cousins. So I know what America did for me. And I also know what America fails to do for so many other kids. And so in some respects, I’ve gotten to live a really nice life relative to all my cousins. I’m kind of playing with house money. You know what I mean? So to me is when you’re playing with house money, you put it all back in the center of the table and say, “What can I do to create the America that other kids deserve?
The one that I got.” And at the end of the day, if that’s the value of a life is to create opportunity for other people, that’s the best I can do. And it means so much to me to get to do it because I don’t know what it’s like to be someone whose American identity has a bit of an asterisk on it. And so if my doing this gets to take a little bit more of that asterisk off, gets to erase some of that asterisk, that’s meaningful. More importantly, if there are kids out there who get to manifest and get to live the kind of life that I got to live because of the work that I did, I think that’s the kind of thing that would make my grandmother proud. And that to me is meaningful. How I judge my moral work is like, would my grandmother be proud of this?
So you can get all the titles and all the accolades and all the everything. And there’s a moral simplicity to being able to speak to the right side of right and wrong for someone whose sense of morals were never clouded by what an institution thought. And so I think it’s just put it all back in.

Maximillian Alvarez: And are you scared? And what do you say to people on the campaign trail who are very understandably, justifiably scared right now?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Scared. That’s a complicated sort of thing. I think I am scared for where our country is headed. I’m scared I will not do what is my responsibility to do about it. But there is something about. I don’t believe in the term happiness as much as I believe that happiness is a whole bunch of consolation of different things. There is contentment. Eating ice cream, that’s contentment. There’s fulfillment. I got a good workout in. There’s joy, just the excitement of something that’s happy. And I would choose fulfillment over the others every day. And so I know I’m putting everything I can into trying to create opportunity for people who otherwise don’t have it, and that leaves me fulfilled. So in that respect, I think if all of us tried to chase, I did what I could with what I had where I was, I think we can get through this.
And the thing that to me frustrates me the most is that we know enough to be scared. There are a lot of folks out there who are so busy just trying to make life work that they can’t actually think about the broader existential questions at play. And I fear for those folks. See what I mean? Because most of the time those folks’ lives have been a function of circumstances they can’t control. And this all feels a lot worse. So I think that’s probably where my fear comes from.

Maximillian Alvarez: Well, I know we got to get going. All right. Yeah. And what’s, I guess, again, for folks who want to fight back, don’t want to go gently into the night, but are still afraid. They’re afraid of getting abducted by ICE. They’re afraid of getting surveilled online. They’re afraid of not being able to make their house payment. How do we respond to the politics of fear that Trump has risen on? What is the counter message

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: To that? Tell you what I do.
So for a long time I’ve realized that anxiety is, it’s the fear of a future pain. And so what I try to do is just actually think that through. So what would happen? What would that actually feel like? And I process that and I seek to get myself comfortable with the worst possible outcome. And then I think about my life and what I have to lose versus the people I’m trying to fight for. See what I’m saying? And I don’t know. I try to think about what is courage in this moment because that’s what we’re all trying to summon. And I think courage is the ability to be comfortable with your loss of control and to metabolize the pain you might experience.
And pain comes in a lot of different ways. But you see what’s happened over time is that the people with the most power have folded the fastest. And I never want to be that guy. And so I just think that there’s like soul work you have to do to get comfortable losing it all. You know what I mean? And to be okay with the fact that if you’re willing to incur pain so that other people don’t have to, that I think is virtue. And I think it’s important for all of us to actually think through those things and do that exercise and to live in that moment of saying, okay, if this so-and-so were to happen, what would that mean for me? And also just, I’m a person of faith and I believe that there’s another side of the equal sign. That what happens here is not the end.
And so I’m comforted by the idea that if you do what is right here, if you are willing to take pain here for others for the right reasons, that in the end, God doesn’t forsake you. So however people think about that in their belief system, I think these are the moments where you actually have to really reflect on it. Do the spiritual work of asking what begets virtue for you? What begets courage for you?
Because we’re going to need it right now. And that’s the thing is we don’t know really where it’s going to go, but we’re watching the richest and most powerful fold the first. And what that tells you is that we have a certain spiritual failure. You know what I mean? You got the most to lose. What’s the point? I mean, it’s like, what’s the point of having F you money if you can’t say F you? You mean? And in a lot of ways, I’ve been so privileged in this world. All the advantages. What’s the point of having F you privilege if you can’t say F you? You know what I mean? Yeah. At the end of the day. So at some point, you look at Donald Trump and you’re just like, F you. We’re not going to back down.

Maximillian Alvarez: That was the perfect ending spot. So I will close it there. But brother Abdul al-Sayed, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate you. Appreciate it.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and today, amidst so much bleak and awful and overwhelming news bombarding us at all times from all over the world, we’re going to do something different and we’re going to talk about some good news for once. Because this week, a new worker-owned cooperative launched in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it’s called the Pittsburgh Progress. Here’s their story, which you can find on their website. “The Pittsburgh Progress is a cooperative news organization owned and democratically run by its workers and members.

It was formed in the weeks and months after owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced on January 7th, 2026, their intention to close the newspaper. This move by the post-Gazette came just weeks after unionized workers there had won a strike lasting more than three years. Those workers and their community supporters initially formed the organization Pittsburgh Alliance for People Empowered Reporting or Paper, with a mandate to research the creation of a daily news outlet more deserving of Pittsburgh. Paper quickly resolved that any new publication would, unlike the block-owned Post-Gazette, respect its employees and address the concerns of all working class people in the region. The publication would serve as an essential and sustainable source of communication and connection in the Pittsburgh region. Workers and their supporters decided on a publication name, the Pittsburgh Progress, in a nod to the striking Post-Gazette Workers Award-winning strike publication, The Pittsburgh Union Progress.

Work continues on the Pittsburgh Progress website, marketing strategy, and the building of a newsroom. We continue to raise funds to lift up worker-centered journalism in Western Pennsylvania, and those funds will be used to hire full-time staff and freelance journalists dedicated to looking out for and telling the stories of the working class people who form the heart and soul of our diverse communities.” So to talk about the birth of the Pittsburgh progress and what it means for working people in and beyond Pittsburgh, I am really grateful to be joined once again on the show by some familiar voices. Steve Mellon is a journalist who was on strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for more than three years and is now a founding worker member of the Pittsburgh Progress. And Natalie Duleba is a former post-Gazette striker. She serves as local secretary of the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, and is now also a founding worker member of the Pittsburgh Progress.

Natalie, Steve, it is so great to see you both and thank you so much for coming back on the show for over three years while you guys were on strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. We’ve gotten to know you and your coworkers over the many conversations that we’ve had on this show, on the Real News Network, when I was at Breaking Points. It’s been a long road. Did you ever think that it would lead you here?

Steve Mellon:

No, I certainly did not. Our hope, I think Natalie probably feels the same way. I won’t speak for you, man and Natalie, but we were hoping to win the strike and get a contract. That was our goal. And we thought we had accomplished that. We had an incredible community support during the strike. That was a long, hard battle. And Max, you know that. You guys cover the strike more than any other publication, more than any other organization, you know that. But we did win the strike. We won. We went back to work. Things were going pretty well. We had a big rally in front of the Post Gazette. All the community showed up to support us. We went back in. Things were going pretty well. I think we were as acrimonious as the strike was, we were working together. We were resolving conflicts. We were actually producing good journalism.

That all changed on January 7th when the company announced it was just. Max, this came just about an hour and a half after the Supreme Court had denied the Post-Gazette’s request for a stay on a healthcare issue that was related to the strike. It was think of the last gasp effort of the owners of the Post-Gazette to delay the consequences for their lawbreaking actions. Don’t forget that this strike was a result of a law-breaking action by the owners of the Post-Gazette. So they announced the closure of the paper within, I think, what, Natalie, two hours or so after that announcement came down that the Supreme Court had denied their request for a stay. They announced the closure of the Post-Gazette. And it’s like at that point, I think that among a lot of us, Max, there was a lot of anger and frustration is that we did all this stuff to win, and yet the system still fails you.

The system’s not going to let workers win. And at that point, I think a lot of us, we were angry, we were frustrated. That very quickly settled into, we have to do something about this. We cannot let this stand. And we had an extraordinary meeting that night. I think January 7th was a Wednesday, Natalie, I believe. And that night we had an extraordinary meeting of our membership and we just decided like, no, we’re not. You learn things about yourself and your community when you strike for three years, about your colleagues. I looked at Natalie and Erin and all the people we’ve been to strike on. I thought we can do whatever we want. We have a community support, we have the skills, we had the talent, we had the determination. And after a series of meetings, we though, let’s form our own publication, one that we can inoculate against corporate abuse, against the influences of money.

And the result was a worker, community-owned cooperative, a multi-stakeholder. So no, I had no idea I’d be in its position to be like a co-owner with so many other people in the community and my coworkers of a publication. So no, I did not expect to be here, but it feels good.

Natalie Duleba:

Yeah. During the strike, our goal was always to get back to work, but also to build a Post-Gazette that ourselves, but also journalists that came after us could build a life with. And the Post-Gazette still remains. The Venetulas Institute for Journalism did buy the Post-Gazette from the blocks. And Steve and I were among the journalists who were not retained, who were not hired by Venetulas. But we do still have former strikers who are at the Post-Gazette doing the good work to get a new contract with new owners. And we’re hoping that the victories that we got during the strike are carried forward in that bargaining. There’s a bargaining session that is happening today.

And I think that the Venetulas at least knows that the journalists of the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh aren’t afraid of a fight. But I think that the strike really taught us that if you want something, you got to get it yourself. And when we were looking at the possibility there was no Post-Gazette, a huge vacuum in Pittsburgh, they’re like, “Well, something should replace it.” And some of the other publications in the city were circling vultures, and some of them have expanded into areas that they weren’t in before. But even with the Post Gazette continuing, the new owners did cut the newsroom by about 40%, 80% of which were strikers. We all have an intimate understanding of the gaps in the coverage and communities that told us during the strike and after the announcement of the closure that they felt underrepresented, misrepresented. Those of us before we were not rehired, we were willing to bring that knowledge and that trust in the community to Venetulus to maybe start to repair the damage and reputation the post-Gazette suffered underneath the blocks.

But they weren’t interested in that, at least from us. So yeah, it is wild to think that we’re building our own news outlet. That’s not something that any of us though was going to happen. We wanted to get back to the post-Gazette, but now we’re in control of our own destiny in a way that we weren’t during the strike. Yes, we were out there fighting for ourselves, but also we’re at the mercy of the slow cogs of the justice system. And this is like we’re setting the pace, we’re doing the work ourselves, and it’s fully under our control, which is really amazing, but it is also a lot. It’s like, it’s our responsibility. Yay. It’s our responsibility.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I know it intimately. Yeah, it’s such a head spinner where you’re like, oh shit. Now we got to do that. Oh shit, we get to do that. It forces you to confront the sort of decision-making that affects our lives on a day-to-day level. And it is both liberating and terrifying to have more of that decision-making power yourself instead of just trusting it to be done for you by our higher ups. But so many of us, for that reason, I don’t think have even considered what it would look like in our day-to-day work lives to have that agency, to have that democratic cooperative sort of model rather than the kind of top-down authoritarian model that we’re all so comfortable and used to, which we’ve been conditioned to be used to by force for many, many generations. But I digress. I wanted to hover on that for a second and ask about your time at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

What did working and striking at a paper like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette teach you about what a project like the Pittsburgh Progress needs to be and why it needs to be?

Steve Mellon:

Well, we learned several things during the strike. Quite honestly, when I was a journalist, I tried to be out on the street a lot and talking to people. But it wasn’t until I went on strike that I was put into conversations with people in various communities that were underrepresented. And I learned a lot during the strike, especially after the strike was over. After we’d won the strike and the Post-Gazette announced its closure. And at that point, Max, we had conversations with people in the community. One of the first questions we asked, I remember, was what does it mean to lose the Post-Gazette? What does it mean to you and your community to lose the Post-Gazette newspaper? Because at that point, we didn’t know that the Venezuelas Institute was going to step in and buy it. And one of the responses really stuck with me is a young woman stood up and she said, “The closure of the Post Gazette doesn’t mean anything to me because they’ve not been relevant to my community for years.” Now, as a journalist who spent his life, a good chunk of my professional life reporting on this city, that was heartbreaking to hear that these institutions that I’d given my life to were irrelevant to the communities that had supported us during the strike and had leaned into our effort, Max.

That’s like, well, what’s wrong with this? What’s wrong with this? This is an issue. And it gets not just to journalism. It’s like we’re seeing the crumbling of communities all over this country.

There are a lot of forces that profit from creating division. And newspapers, news organizations have failed in their duty to be the cohesive force. And it’s like, okay, that’s an issue. How do we solve that? We kicked around several different ideas. And one, I don’t know anything about co-ops, Max, but in our discussions, when we brought up the fact that. Because we talk about nonprofit models, these different models. When somebody said, “What about a co-op?” People got really excited about that. And when we started talking about a co-op, that’s when we started to see a lot more people to show up. I was at a journalism conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania about two months ago, and there was a lot of talk at that conference about engaging with your audience. How do you engage with your audience? Honestly, if we haven’t figured out that at this point, then we failed anyway.

But we thought, okay, well, we’re not going to engage in our audience. We’re going to ask them to become stakeholders in this process. And I think that is a game changer. I think this model going forward is one that can be replicated. There are co-ops, successful news co-ops that exist in other places, a whole list of them. So we’re not new to this. But I do think that what we can do here in Pittsburgh is build on those models and take the lessons we learned from the strikes, take ideas from the communities, the people that we met during the strike, the people that we reported on for a pup, and use those to build a publication where we are not going to have people stand up at a town hall and say, “The Pittsburgh progress is irrelevant to my community.” We’re trying to make sure that that does not happen to us.

And our way of making sure that happens is having that young woman in the room when we’re making decisions.

Natalie Duleba:

The things that I learned at the Post Gazette, besides the things like the skills that I built there that I’m bringing in, I was a copy editor and a pay designer before the strike. I came back to be full-time on the web desk. I’m bringing those skills into this. I’m glad that I can bring that extra oomph to what I can offer. But also I think that being on strike, we saw what it was like to be on the other side of business interests overriding journalistic ethics or the coverage of the strike was just insulting, honestly, because we knew where these things were being obfuscated, but it went deeper of the Post Gazette trying to hide the fact that people weren’t talking to them because they were holding our picket line and getting around not saying the mayor is not responding to comment on this issue because he’s not responding to any comment, but not putting in, he’s not talking to us at all because he’s respecting a picket line, shades the way that people may have perceived that article.

They may think the mayor is running away from accountability on this issue or leaving off said in a press release so it looks like somebody who was holding a picket line maybe gave them a quote. And an average reader might know about the strike, but not know that that came from a press release. And then they’re like, maybe they could see the way that these perceptions change potentially. Or even a local news station that has a business relationship with the post Gazette had coverage during the summer when SAG and WGA were on strike and they had a segment where they talked about all the active strikes in the country and they didn’t mention us. The strike that at that point I think had gone on for over a year at that point. We were deep into our strike. It wasn’t like it was brand new.

And to just see, okay, so the business relationship you have with the post Gazette, I mean allegedly, it’s not like I got this confirmed by anybody, but why else would they leave it out if not because of that business relationship? There’s no other reason why I could think to not put the strike that’s happening in your own city into report about strikes that are happening across the country. And there’s no way that there’s not other communities, other issues that have been covered in that way that have felt like the nuance has been left out or that there has been gaps that have not been filled with reporting. And us being so intimately on the other side of it, I think really places us in such a great position to poke at that. What is not being said in these press releases?

What is the CEO or the founder of this big company obfuscating with legal language? Where when you poke at it, you can like, oh, well, technically what they said is correct, but there’s all this stuff that they’re leaving out that we learned by talking to the working class, the people of Pittsburgh, the regular everyday citizens that are affected by these decisions, who have first person experience being the little guy who was affected by that. And it sucks to be on that side of it, but it has allowed us to build that extra lens of looking at things that way. I mean, journalists are trained to ask questions and poke at things, but I think seeing behind the veil intimately and personally is going to allow us to easily see where that is happening. And also, I mean, we had a little exercise when you’re in one of our founders’ meetings about what don’t we want our newsroom to look like?

What behaviors do we want to avoid when we’re building our newsroom and our editorial practices? And a lot of it came down to not understanding why things are being done.

Why is this decision being made? Why is this policy in place? And why aren’t these things being communicated to the people who actually have to follow these rules? And I think that the transparency that comes in being a worker-created newsroom and a worker-led newsroom will allow. When someone’s laid off, that sucks, but a lot of times an owner just says, “We got to lay you off because we are losing money, I guess.” And you just have to take the word for it. But hopefully we don’t have to ever confront that type of thing. But if we do, that’ll be a decision that is made collectively where you understand what’s gone into it, why. And it’s not a callous just cutting of the cord there so that the owner, I guess, doesn’t get to buy a second summer home. It’s like you’ve been involved in the whole process and there’s trust that is just baked into a democratically run newsroom or any business, I suppose, but we’re talking about a newsroom here.

But we want to try to build a newsroom that people are on the same page, that is collaborative, and that people understand the mechanics that are going on and that the work and the journalism that is being done is ethical and not bowing to business interests. And I think that we’re well on our way to doing that.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah. Well, let’s bring this down to paper level and talk about what this looks like in the now officially launched publication. I know as we said in the intro, and as y’all say on your website, this is a work in progress. Y’all are growing, but you have officially launched. So tell folks more about what the Pittsburgh progress is, where it’s going, and what they’re going to find there, and what they can do to support y’all.

Steve Mellon:

Well, right now, we did launch on Monday. We’re considering that our soft launch. We’re working up to becoming a regular daily publication. We just started this process. It’s kind of crazy, Max, to think that this wasn’t even a topic of discussion until January 7th. And it took a couple of weeks before we had consensus about to even move forward with the idea of a new publication. And so a lot has happened very quickly. We’ve had to come up with a business. We’re journalists, Max, we’re not business people, but we’ve had to become business people. And it’s like, okay, the learning curve for this is very, very steep. We’ve had to come up with a business plan. We’ve had to come up with bylaws. It’s over and over and over again. It’s your social media strategy. We’ve had to hire people to do some of the things that we just don’t know how to do, and we don’t want to mess them up.

We have to become incorporated. How do you do that in a timely manner? And all these things. So a lot has happened very quickly. It wasn’t until quite honestly a couple of weeks ago that we were able to sit down and think about, “Oh, wait a minute. If we’re going to publish, we got to have some stories in this damn thing.” So we put together a slate of stories that we felt matched what we want to be and what we want to do that align with our mission to give people a glimpse of what we hope to be in the very near future. If you look at pittsburghprogress.com right now, you’ll see, I think, five or six stories. Our lead story right now is about organized nurses here who are fighting for our contract. That’s a big, big story in this town where these big medical companies have such a big footprint.

Nurses on the front lines of that. So that’s one of our lead stories. Natalie has a story on third places for the members of the LGBTQ community. We have a review of a new book on WPA workers. Kim Kelly wrote the foreword for that. You guys all know and love Kim Kelly. So we have our origin story is another part of that. We have a couple sports stories. We are really going to lean into high school sports because we’re interested in not covering the millionaire. God love them, our millionaire sports heroes. We are interested in covering the sports played by the sons and daughters of the working people of this region. So that’s what you’ll find when you go there now. We’re going to continue to build on that. We’re still working. We’re a small team right now. We’re building and adding, but we’re a small team and we’re having to walk and chew gum and tie our shoes and bake dinner and comb our hair all at the same time.

So it’s going to take a minute to get this thing up to where we want it to be. And we’ve learned, Max, that this group of people, when we get together, we set our mind to something, we can accomplish that thing. And this is a goal we have set for ourselves. And I know we’ll do it. I know we have a community of support. People who want to support this, learn more about it, go to pittsburghprogress.com. You’ll find a button that says join us. It’s like a maroon button, a red maroon button. Click join us. You can learn about progress. You can learn how to support this effort. If you have questions, you can reach out to me or Natalie, I’m sure you’re willing to answer questions too. We’re hoping that there are. I’ve been in journalism a long time, Max. Most people that I was in journalism with, most of the people that I knew in journalism all over the country, none of them are in the business now.

They’ve had to get out. Their newspapers have closed. They did not make enough money to support their families. For one reason or another, they’re out of the business. That’s got to stop. What’s the model for that? Well, we think this is a model that can be replicated in other cities. One of the things, we have a couple of goals here. At least that’s the way I see this. One goal is to do just what Natalie said, provide news coverage that is ethical and that focuses on the needs and concerns of the working class people in our region. But another goal is to say, “This can be done and this is possible. There are other cooperative news organizations that have done this. This is our model. We want to build on those models and say, okay, we’re going to take the baton and run with it.

We are going to run like hell with that baton, and we want somebody else to pick that up too. So we’re all running here and building news organizations that are engaged in covering the news, informing, being a source of communication, but are also building community. And I think that’s one of the things I learned about working in newspapers as a young man. This is back in the ’80s. I worked at weekly newspapers. These weekly small daily newspapers in small towns were part of the fabric of that community and held the community together by being a voice where people could look at that publication and recognize themselves and recognize their community. That’s gone. What we see in a lot of newspapers that post, because that is an example of this, we have an institution talking to other institutions. And what happens when that worker voices, regular people voices are lost?

One of our goals is to do that here in Pittsburgh is create a publication that does not do that, where people can look at that publication and recognize themselves and recognize the community that they care about and that they’re willing to invest in. So that’s where I see where we’re at right now and where we want to go.

Natalie Duleba:

Yeah. The pittsburghprogress.com is our website, but we’re also on Instagram, BluSky and Facebook. You can find us on all three of those by searching for the Pittsburgh Progress and all the same, the link to how to join us is available in all those places. And giving us a follow there is really helpful. And also you can stay up to date on the next steps in our rollout. But I think that having edited all of the stories that went up for the soft launch, that I would encourage people who want to support us to really. Obviously, I’d like you to read all of them, but if you do, you’ll see the way that they actually plug into each other, that they build on each other, the same concepts of building community. We have a high school football coach who has led an incredible team, but he’s also committed to staying at this high school to build up these young men into not only good football players, but also good young men and having that commitment there.

And there’s a football club, a soccer football that’s for a community football club. And the runner of that is similarly aligned and also has similar goals of making the players better people as well as improving their skills. The review that Erin put together of American-made stories of work, it’s a look at the working class voices of many generations ago and how they echo into today’s concerns, even if the technology has changed, but it’s still working class people trying to carve out a space for themselves and finding connections through the lens of history. Also, it’s just like you feel smarter after reading it. And my own story, these are business owners who you think that the kicker is more than money. Obviously they’re running a business, but they want to build community with their customers and fill gaps that they see in their own communities. These are all sober spaces, trying to have that safe third space for people to come to and build community and find like-minded people they can be themselves around.

And then the McGee story of nurses trying to fight for the best for their patients because they’re passionate about what they do and they’re going against big UPMC interests. And I think that seeing the way that came together and how when you let journalists pick where they can find these stories and how they do blend together, if we can continue that, I’ll be so happy and so pleased. And as Steve said, I think that as people feel more alienated from each other and from the bigger interests that control the country, that they will turn to one another and be like, “Let’s do it with each other, with our neighbors who are the people that we know and trust, and we can count on to follow through on what they’re saying they’re going to do.” I mean, our strike was sustained by donations from regular people and the other worker-led newsrooms that we’ve spoke to, they’ve been so open with us about how they did it, how we can follow their example and learn from their mistakes.

There’s been no gatekeeping amongst the worker-led newsrooms that we’ve spoken to. And it’s the same story of journalists who were let go by a new owner or had their publication shut down, and they just turned to one another and said, “What if we did it?” We have the skills, we can learn the new skills that we need to get it off the ground and get it going. And I think that the contraction and consolidation of, as Steve said, of these local newspapers that serve communities as that continues to happen and be gutted by private equity, I think that’ll be the workers who build those things back up, that we’ll see more worker-led newsrooms under various models pop up and fill the gap that business interests left in the pursuit of more profit, more money. And I’m excited to be part of the fabric of that, that there’s other rust belt cities or cities maybe who don’t have the same kind of working class history as Pittsburgh to be like, “We know how to cover our city.

We know these communities. We don’t need permission from a rich person to do this work. Let’s do it ourselves. Let’s get off the ground and they can rely on our lessons and the resources that collectively these worker-led newsrooms are putting together to offer.” And I would really love to see that. And I’m hopeful that we can find our place there, get our legs under us, and that we continue to see the support that we saw during the strike and during the past six months, which it is wild to think it’s only been six months since January 7th. I mean, a little bit more than six months, but what’s that? Is it that Margaret Mead quote of, “Never undermestimate the work that a small dedicated group of people can do.” I’m butchering that, but that’s the sentiment is that people who are passionate and committed to a thing can achieve it because that’s how everything has ever gotten done is people roam up their sleeves and putting in the sweat equity.

This way, all of our work is going to directly benefit us, not rich owners who don’t actually need the money and have never had to worry about being able to pay for the food on their table or keeping the lights on. And Steve said that in his origin story on our website, and it was echoed in the conversation that Aaron had with the editor of American Made. If you resonate with any of that, you’re going to resonate with what we’re doing. So if you want to be part of our story of our effort, check us out on pittsburghprogress.com, on Instagram, BluSky, Facebook. You can hear everything that we’re doing in the next couple months as we head toward our hard launch. We really love it.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guests, Natalie Duleba and Steve Mellon, both former strikers of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and both now founding worker members of the newly launched Pittsburgh Progress, a cooperative news organization owned and democratically run by its workers and members. Go check them out using the links that we provided in the show notes. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network, where we do grassroots reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Check us out across our YouTube channel, our podcast feeds, our website, and our different social media pages, and help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today.

I promise you guys, it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Crowd Chants:

We are we. We are we. We are we. We are we. We are we.

Gwendolyn Levi:

We need to be able to say that we in our community are willing to stand up. We’re standing up for our young people. We’re standing up for our seniors. We are standing up for our communities.

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

On July 7th of this year, 2026, a comrade in my brother was brutally beaten by six youth at this same said 7-Eleven, brutally beaten for over 10 minutes. He was able to get into his vehicle and only go a few blocks before he had to stop. He was in so much pain that he had to call the police and have them to take him to the emergency room at Sinai Hospital. A few days later, the video was exposed and it was something that you couldn’t believe you were seeing. When he got out of the vehicle, those brothers was laying right there.

There’s a stack of crates that they got from this 7-Eleven. Look at it. I want you to see it. That’s why we had it here. What they call ground zero. When he got out of his vehicle, they saw him. They weren’t laying for him. They were laying for somebody to come that way. They were willing and waiting for somebody to come down Towanda or Tioga, like my son did in 2017 when he left the 7-Eleven. So after walking 20 feet with my son, he put not one, not two, not three, not four, but five bullets into his body over a cell phone. Victorias fought for his life and it was stolen from him. It wasn’t taken because he fought back. It was stolen. On July 17th of this year, my comrades, this Black Panther veteran fought back.

Speaker 4:

Children today lost respect. You know what I’m saying? And I’m not saying all our children. I’m not saying that. But these little young men that came and jumped Bob and when I seen that, I said to myself, wow, they are chumps. They are cowards and they don’t have no dignity.

Speaker 5:

I don’t want it to be a blanket thing where like all our children are bad. I once was one of the little brothers out here running them up, but I’m telling you, we are misunderstood, uneducated, misguided, and easily let us stray. We need the community to gather around these young men. We don’t believe in throwing our peoples away.

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

I am commissioning the entire city. There’s a $50,000 reward. Here’s a QR code. Do not call yourself an organization or revolutionary or anybody else until you click this and donate so we can find those babies. We have to find them. No one else can find them. We have to find them. We will find them. But we’re not finding them so that they can be locked up and we throw away the key. I heard that. We’re not finding them so we can throw away a key. We’re finding them so that we can follow them, hold them, love them. We’re taking whatever these demons have for them off the table. They can’t have our children anymore. That’s over. They’re our children. As hard as that is to say with what we saw, they’re still ours. They are still we are we. We’re going to walk with them every step of the way.

Yes, we’re going to walk them to the police station. They have to be accountable for their behavior, but we will never let them go.

Gwendolyn Levi:

We need to teach our community the difference between snitching and protecting our community. There’s a difference. There is a difference. If your grandmother walks down the street, she can’t even go to the store. That’s not snitching. That’s saying, I want that community. I want my storefront cleaned off so my grandma can go to the store. That’s protecting your community. That’s protecting your loved ones. If you see something, say something. That’s not snitching. Snitching is when you and I go rob the 7-Eleven and not go tell on you. You need to know what snitching is. This is not snitching. This is happening ourselves.

Speaker 6:

You young. You haven’t lived enough life to understand anything. So when you hear elder up here talk about snitching and all this, I see your faces twisting up because you’re not intellectually understanding that these things that are being said are true in fact. But the arrogance in who you are as a person won’t allow you to listen to the truth until you’re old enough to have a child and somebody takes it from you. And now you want justice. Now you want peace. Now you want understanding. I used to be your age. You never been my age. My job or responsibility is to guide you.

Speaker 7:

Yo, people just need to be taught y’all. We’ve been there done that. Let’s not be so quick to forget. But one of the things I can say, I’m 63 years old. That’s something I’ve never done. Jump on it. Y’all, an older man. No, we ain’t do that. We ain’t do that. We guarded them to factor them even though we did our little stuff on the side, but we ain’t do that.

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

I watched that video over and over and over and over. Even though I kept watching it, when that baby pulled that sword out like he was a samurai, all I could think about was please don’t stab him. Even though I knew he was home, I knew he was safe. The pain is so real. The visual is so vile that even when you know they’re safe, you still fear for them. When I turned that off, I said to myself, if he can fight, we can fight. If he’s not afraid to fight, even if he dies, we can fight until we’re not afraid to die. I saw it. He proved it. You can say what should have or could have happened, but what happened is he fought back. They beat him. They kicked him. They knocked him. They tormented him for 10 minutes. Do you know what 10 minutes feel like when someone is attacking you?

All the time. It feels like forever, queen.

Speaker 8:

I was inspired when I looked at the fact that you just kept getting up. You just kept getting up! And if I take anything from that, here’s what we must continue to do as a people. We got to keep getting up. They talk about black people hate each other. Black people hate black people. And I often say to them, you can’t get this

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

If we hate each other. It’s time. One of the flyers say, if not us, then who? If not now, then when? We are going into that 7-Eleven and we’re telling those people, because I called them all week. I went in and got the phone number. I called them all week with no response. We tried. No response. We tried to no avail. Now we’re going full throttle. We’re not taking any prisoners. We’re not walking backwards. We’re going in there. We’re letting them know what they need to do to protect this community.

Ujimma Masani :

We want to walk over to this store. We want you to walk with us. We’re not going to tear up the store. We’re not going stealing anything. We just over there to let them know we ain’t playing. We write to you, not as adversaries, but as neighbors who share this corner with you every day. This location has witnessed a brutal assault of a 74 year old man, elder, an overnight break in and years of prior tragedy at the same address, including a loss of a young man’s life in March 2017. We believe you want this corner to be safe as much as we do. It is in that spirit, cordial but firm that we present the following list of demands. Number one, we are giving you a 72 hour notice to post your hours of operation in lettering large enough to be read clearly from the street.

Number two, cut down the overgrown bushes that create a hidden nook where perpetrators can wait and hide to attack unsuspected customers and install brighter lighting throughout the parking lot. Number three, we urge you to donate toward the community reward fund established to help apprehend the assailants and toward the medical costs of the 74 year old elder who was attacked. Number four, invest in stronger security measures, including roll down security grates when the store is closed to deter further break-ins. And number five, acquire off-duty police presence to enforce a no latering policy and help assure the safety of your customers and this community. This is not a request made lightly and it is not one we intend to let go unanswered. We ask for a response and a plan of action within a reasonable time and we will report back to the we. Until then, we will continue to stand on this corner in agreement until this community is safe.

Respectfully, the we community.

Ade Oba Tokunbo (Stephen King):

This gathering here is important because the community around us can see it. And they need to know that this is what needs to be done. These killings and these robberies and these auto thefts, we, I believe, can decrease it by teaching our people that hoodrats are not appreciated and should not be tolerated. I’m a veteran of the Black Panther Party. My paternal grandfather was a member of the UNIA. We are more than just a group of organizations. What I feel, because you have concern for me and care for me, this is my family.

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

When I realized who it was and where it was, it brought back the night that my son Victorius walked out of this same 7-Eleven, down those steps, down to Tioga Parkway and was approached by a young man who demanded his phone. A fight pursued. The young man took out his gun and he brutally murdered my son, victorious. He shot him five times, one in the stomach, then the kneecap. Then when he fell, he shot him in the head, shot him into his eardrum, which hit his jugular vein. And as he was falling over, he shot him again and that bullet grazed his back. He left him for dead. Someone who witnessed the entire event ran over to my son, held him and told him to hold on. He called the ambulance. They took him to the hospital. And he was pronounced dead at 3:43 AM on March 26th, 2017, four days after my birthday.

That was enough for me to say I’ve had enough. The next morning, Sister Ujimma called me and asked me how the Bible was doing when she had heard about it. We talked about what had happened. I shared with her what had happened to Victoria’s and telling her that that was the same location where Victorius came out of before he was murdered. Almost the same time of night, about three Victoria’s, I think it was like 3:15, 3:20, somewhere around that same time almost. And we said we have to do something. She called Mama Gwen. And once we came into what the Sister Queen always says, we have an agreement. That was it for us. We had decided that we were going to take no more, that we were going to do the same thing that Baba did, fight back. And that’s what we started doing. So we created the we organization mindset that we were going to communicate with every organization that we could in this city to let them know, to meet us here, where the assault happened and begin the process of changing how we think and how we look at the city and how to move forward as a collective, as a we, in agreeance, in agreement.

Ujimma Masani :

In agreement.

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

And that’s what we did.

Gwendolyn Levi:

Thank you. I think one of the most significant things about this gathering that we had today is that it was not retaliatory or negative. It was not we against them or – Pointing fingers. Pointing fingers. It was to say we are here. We didn’t point fingers at our young people because we know we got some good young people in the city. Many of them that were out here with us today. But we all got some troubled young people. Sister said it best when she said it early. Some are broken. Some are just bent. Hopefully we can get to the bent ones before they get broken. That’s what this cry is about. That’s what the querying cry was for all organizations to say, “Hey, we are here for our young people. We are here for our elders. We’re here for our neighbors in the community. We are here.

All you got to do is just look around your community. If you don’t see us in your community, call one of our older. We’ll come. We got brothers who can walk the streets with us. We got brothers who could go up in the alleys with us. We got sisters who know that our young sisters who are running up in stores and just grabbing stuff. No, no, no. You don’t have to do that. We know how to go get your nails done.

We can get your hair done. Come see us. Come see us. That’s what we’re saying to our young people. We are here for them. And yes, you must be held accountable for your actions. I did. I served 16 years of a sentence. Guess how many years I was supposed to serve? How many? 400 months. I’m going to let you all add it up. And the ones who can’t add it up, that’s why we need to change our board of education. That’s a whole nother source. But I’m not going to tell you how many that the 400 months is figured out. But I did 16 years over 400 months sentence. I was transformed. And if old as I was can transform, I know we can help these young people who have a whole life ahead of themselves. And that’s what we’re trying to do. Save our youngsters mainly before they get into the system.

But even the ones that get into the system, we’re here to help you so that when you come out of that system, you will come out and do what we’re doing. Do what the Tandea family, do what some of these other young or the cry organization, do what they’re doing. Help each other. Tell your story. Your story is impactful. Your story can help somebody.

You have a store, young man. You have a store young lady. And I know some of you might be mad, not mad at me. Look in the mirror. Tell yourself who you’re mad at and address that situation before you come out here and get into some trouble that you really don’t want to get into. We are here.

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

We are here.

Gwendolyn Levi:

For those six men who assaulted my brother, we are here.

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

We are here.

Gwendolyn Levi:

Call one of us. Yes, you have to be held accountable, but in that accountability, you will have support. You will have support so that you won’t become broken. We don’t need more broken kids in our community. This is a healing city. This is a city that can be healed. And we are here to say that the healing has begun by the we. Thank you.

Ujimma Masani :

That was beautiful. Thanks. So in our effort to address this, I guess, our trust that hangs over our city with youth being not accountable in what it is that needs to happen. We’re looking for our first step, which is to be a place where you deposit information. This is an information bank. We are a repository for every organization that’s out here helping families, youth, and elders. So if you have resources, if you have services or programs, this is the one stop shop that you come to. We are not saying at this moment that we are doing anything other than that. What we want to do is when we connect with families, elders, and youth, we could point them in a direction of where they may can go. We won’t select your program for them, but we’ll tell them where they can go to get that service.

And we’re going to aggregate all the information and make it user friendly. And you’ll be able to obtain it through our social media. We’re going to be able to obtain it through our website. And most of all, we’re going to be boots on the ground. The next event that we hope to kind of commandeer everyone together is that we’re going to be at the March on Washington on August 28th. There’s a free bus available by the National Action Network provided by the local chapters, community and city of NAN through the Reverend Al Sharpton. And we are going to take our voice across this country because I believe that other communities need the same kind of help. So we want to show that what it looks like, we’re not just the wire, we’re not just the corner. We’re not just the dancing, numbing and snowballs and the bikes.

We are more than that. And people need to see us as a whole. And we have to take this as an organic approach to what we need to be getting done. And that’s what we’re here to do. I’m a graduate from the Morgan State University School of Social Work, and I’m calling on all my social workers, all my counselors, everybody who’s doing that work in this city. This is not about the dime or the doubt. This is about remembering how to bring community together. And with that, we are a we. And when we are we, we are in agreement. With that, I say

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

Ashe. I think the most important aspect

Of what we are doing is to specifically reach out to families. We want the mothers and fathers of this city to know that their children are loved, that there is help available, there are resources available. Like mama said earlier, we’re not blaming anybody. There are no finger pointing. This is not anyone’s fault. If it is, it’s all of our faults. There’s no one person we can blame for this situation. I heard someone say we need to lock them up and throw away the key. I think, I hope, and I believe that we’ve had enough of that. There’s a system set up that eats, that sets up retirement funds, that sets up vacation time for our children being incarcerated. Being in a system where they’re abused, where they’re raped, where they’re tormented, where their lives literally stop. That has to stop. That has to stop. We can no longer accept our children being put into these systems and saying, lock them up and throw away the key.

Ujimma Masani :

I want to say one important thing. People say that things start in the home. Some people don’t have a home. We have so many people who are homeless, families that are living out here in these woods. People who have no resources whatsoever, no family in foster care. We have the largest number of foster care people in the system, youth in the system, but we’re only 13% of this whole national population. So if you keep saying that it begins at the home, did you check out whose home life you’re talking about? Because everybody don’t have a home. We

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

Don’t even know if these young men had a

Ujimma Masani :

Home. Right. We don’t know where they come from. And we don’t know that if their home is safe and protected and wholesome. How do we know if they’re not being abused or abandoned or – Neglected. Neglected or molested? We don’t know what that is. It’s in the body. It’s in the body. And so what we’re going to teach them is something called clean talk. We’re going to teach them about facts, feelings, judgments and outcomes. We’re going to change the dynamic of how we communicate with these people, with our babies. And that is where we’re going with this clarion call Baltimore.

Queen Mother Victory Swift-Gye Nyame:

Changing our journey to change their journey.

Crowd Chants:

We are we. We are we. We are we. We are we. We are we. We are we. We are we. We are we.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Speaker 1:

Michigan is shaping up to be one of the most closely watched Senate races of this entire cycle.

Speaker 2:

Democrats will choose between Congresswoman Haley Stevens and former director of the Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services, Wayne County, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:

We pay more for the stuff we got to buy, get paid less for the work that we do and watch as our tax dollars get misappropriated abroad to drop bombs on other people’s kids instead of to invest in our own kids and their schools and their healthcare.

Speaker 4:

We’re done. Business as usual politics is over.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:

Most people don’t walk around thinking, where do I stand on the left right spectrum? Most people walk around thinking, how am I going to afford my groceries? How am I going to pay for my rent? Can I ever afford a home? What am I going to do if I get sick? The majority of Democrats out there, when I talk to them, they are so far away from the party elders who hold all the power. And I think we have an opportunity as a party to molt out with the old, in with what the people underneath the party really want.

Speaker 5:

Obviously politics are a very tumultuous time right now and the Democratic Party’s kind of in disarray. So I’m coming out to support Abdul.

Maximillian Alvarez:

He really knew and understood the people, that he was for the people.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:

So we’re running a campaign to do three very simple things. Number one, we’ve got to get money out of politics. We’ve got to take on the system that tells us that corporations are people and that their money is speech. So we’ve got to get money out of politics. Number two, we’ve got to put money back in people’s pockets. So what does that mean? It means empowering people to join or form a union in every sector of our lives. It means standing with small businesses like this one that really do create the backbone of our economy. And it means finally taxing billionaires some wealth.

Speaker 7:

And that is precisely why we need people like Abdul in the US Senate.

Speaker 8:

I worked third shift and I made sure to get my butt out here in support before I have to go into work because the message has always been amazing. Watch out. There’s a car right there. But yeah, the way he just speaks to the working class I feel like is really what we need. And also when I shook his hand, he dabbed me up like a homie.He felt like somebody I knew already and that’s somebody I want fighting for us in the Senate. So I’m really glad I came tonight.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:

The question for us is bigger than this seat. It is about what we want out of our democracy in the first place. So if everything is working just fine for you, I’m not your guy. Do not vote for me. But if you believe that you deserve healthcare, if you believe that your tax dollars ought to be spent on you, if you believe that corporations should not have a bigger say in our politics than you do, then maybe I am.

Maximillian Alvarez:

We first met when you were running for governor here in Michigan in 2018. The question was how are Democrats going to respond to Trump? But also who’s going to inherit the Bernie Sanders mantle? AOC just won. And so you were part of that progressive cohort. And now we kind of have a similar situation. How are Democrats going to respond to Trump winning again? Zorn Mamdani just won in New York. Who’s going to inherit the progressive movement? But these are two very different moments and you’re a very different person than you were back then. I wanted to ask to start how you would characterize the differences between that campaign and this one.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:

Let me break it down two ways. There’s where we are as a country and then there’s the growth that you do as a person. I think where we are as a country, this is a moment where I think to be honest, we had failed to learn the central lesson of Trumpism. I think a lot of folks felt like the record had skipped, that there was this mistake and they didn’t see the fact that Donald Trump was exploiting a foundational pain in people. And I said this thing at the time, I think that was just, it was premature. Most folks didn’t see it. Donald Trump himself is not the disease of our politics. He’s just the worst symptom of the disease of our politics. And the disease is the system that allows corporations and billionaires and would be oligarchs to buy and sell politicians to do their bidding.

You watch as they use their power to suppress our wages for the work that we have to do and to raise our prices for the things we have to buy. And I think this time around people are recognizing that actually we dealt with the symptom, but we didn’t deal with the disease. And as a doctor, I’ll tell you, if you only deal with the symptom and you don’t deal with the disease, it comes back roaring worse. And that’s exactly what’s happened now. So I think folks are a lot more interested in authentic engagement with the structures of our system. Even now though, you got a lot of corporate folks out there who just want to deal with the symptoms. They’re like, “Oh, affordability? Okay, I’ll make one thing more affordable for you. It’d be great.” And they’re like, “No, there’s a structure underneath affordability. There’s a reason why everything accelerates in the wrong direction always.

And if you don’t deal with the foundational infrastructure, you’re not going to deal with the outcome.” One of the frustrations I think I have with some folks in our movement sometimes is that we want people to agree on the critique and we always break apart on the critique. It’s not about the critique, it’s about the outcome.

And I think the more you could focus on how you want the world to be like and get people to agree to that, even if they come at it with different perspectives, I think the better off we are. And I think that’s probably what I’ve learned over time.

Speaker 4:

There’s a big battle brewing. A battle brewing against not only the corrupt fascist forces of the Republican Party, but also against do – nothing Democrats that would rather sit there and collect paycheck after paycheck and fundraise from corporate donors that put your interests second to the interests of those very same corporations.

Maximillian Alvarez:

The 2024 election was less of a referendum on how much people love Donald Trump than it was a referendum on how much people hate the Democrats.

Speaker 2:

Agree.

Maximillian Alvarez:

People’s faith in the Democratic Party is in the basement right now, especially on top of a year of doing what feels like virtually nothing to stop Trump, caving on the longest government shutdown in our history while people are watching their SNAP benefits, their healthcare disappear before their eyes. So the question there is like, is why run as a Democrat? And how are you going to address that lack of faith and prove that this isn’t just the right message that you’re going to meet people’s needs?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:

Yeah. I know what I’m about. And Democratic Party hasn’t always met my needs. I think a lot of people out there feel like they’re Democrats by hostage situation. You look at the other guys and you’re like, “That’s crazy.” And then you look at the Democrats and you’re like, “I don’t know what’s worse.” Being cruel and crazy or being feckless in the face of being cruel and crazy. Now the party is so far away from its voters. The majority of Democrats out there, when I talk to them out at Democratic clubs or indivisible or you name the organization that I’m out, they are so far away from the party elders who hold all the power. And I think we have an opportunity as a party to molt. Out with the old, in with what the people underneath the party really want. And I’ve said this for a very long time.

The problem with Democrats is too often they’re taking money from the very same people who created the problem. So now you’re in this weird position of trying to articulate a solution to the problem that includes the people who created the problem. That makes sense. I don’t take over money. I never have. I never will. And I understood from the day I started in politics that that wasn’t the big issue. And so when folks look at me, they say like, “At least I know what he believes because he’s not bought. And I think the party could do the same thing. Say what you will about Donald Trump. He’s got a coherent narrative. You out of a job. Immigrant took your job. Out of a home. Immigrant took your home. Out of healthcare. Immigrant took your healthcare. That’s his narrative. Simple, easy to understand, dead wrong. We could have a narrative too.

Out of a job, corporation offshore automated your job. Out of healthcare, corporation squeezed you out of healthcare. Out of a home, corporation speculated that you can’t afford a home. But when you’re taking money from corporations, guess what you’re not going to

Speaker 2:

Say?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:

So you come with your little list of 10 point policy plans that’s going to deliver something for maybe somebody 10 years from now. It’s bullshit. So I think the party could be better and I’m ready to make it better. So I’m a Democrat with lowercase D, and I hope someday we can win the fight for what the Democratic Party can be. And I’m not willing to let go of all that infrastructure because a few folks who can’t let go of power say that it’s theirs.

Speaker 7:

So what the hell is going on? Why are we living in a society where workers are producing more and more and virtually all of that income and wealth is going to the top 1%?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:

It’s the system that allows the richest, most powerful people, corporations, billionaires to buy and sell politicians in ways that leave them rigging the system against us. Corporations get bigger, more powerful. Our lives get harder.

Speaker 2:

I feel like I don’t ever see hardly any campaigning politicians come to Saginaw and it’s so underrepresented given how much we’ve been through. I mean, we’re very similar to Flint in a lot of ways and how we had a booming industry and then laws were passed that just discriminated against every single person one way or another that pushed us out of different areas for companies and contractors to come in and exploit us. And I think he touched on that in a way I haven’t seen a lot of politicians really focus on, at least for again, Saginaw.

Speaker 1:

I absolutely think Abdul is right on track of having the billionaires stop having power in politics and allowing us to have a voice and making sure that everybody is treated fairly. I do a lot of the organizing of the Latino community here in Saginaw, Michigan. So I’m trying to get them a voice because for too long there are too many Republicans and Democrats that have been voting to cause harm to the Latino population.

Speaker 5:

I think an unapologetic progressive populism that’s centered on delivering for working class people is how we win in the future. And that’s exactly what Abdul’s message is.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:

I mean, democracy was broken the day corporations started to buy elections. That didn’t just happen. We’re at death’s door now, but we’ve been here. We’ve been sick. And so why don’t you talk about it in ways that are actually fully complete? Hey, every time a corporation comes in and buys off a politician, that kills your democracy a little bit. But most of these folks who want us to talk about democracy now didn’t feel it when that happened. And I think we got to talk about it completely. I

Maximillian Alvarez:

Want to talk about what that means for where we are sitting right now in Saginaw, Michigan. And I have a special attachment to this place. My wife grew up here. I have a lot of in – laws who live around here. My wife’s family had generations of men work in the old GM plant up the road. It is a cold, hard, but beautiful place with a lot of families with a lot of deep roots. A lot of igrant families going from back to Poland, Germany, Mexican and other Latino immigrants, a lot of black folks who came up during the Great Depression. People don’t give towns like Saginaw credit for how complex and beautiful they actually are. But in many ways, this is the archetypal rust belt

Speaker 2:

Town.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I mean there is a lot of pride. There’s a lot of joy. There’s a lot of family here. There’s also a lot of boarded up windows. There’s a lot of blight. There’s a lot of pain. There’s a lot of poverty and economic devastation. So why is it important for you to come to a place like Saginaw? And again, moving past the sort of democratic messaging, I guess my question is not how do you hope to reach people who live in places like Saginaw, but what can you and other politicians do for places like Saginaw?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed:

Yeah. The simple question, how do you reach? You come. We’re here. You know what I mean? This is not my first time in Saginaw. It’s not going to be my last time in Saginaw. For me, I’ve trained as a doctor and that training’s been really useful for me because both doctors and politicians have to be really good at being able to sit with other people’s pain and to speak truth to pain. It’s truth to power, but also truth to pain. And then I think the way you reach folks is to be vulnerable with them. I can’t solve all the problems, but I can’t tell you why the problems exist. And I can tell you I’m going to try like hell to take it on. And then I think you need to go back to that point that I was making to be a really good listener to people’s pain and to try to forge that pain into purpose.

I can’t solve it. Anybody walks in here is like, “I’m going to fix your problems.” No, you’re not. We can solve it. And if I can be a vessel that helps to create something that can organize us and can impose what it is that we’ve been asking for, for a very long time into power, then I think we can solve it. We can’t solve it tomorrow, but we can solve it in due time. And I’ll tell you that the analogy here to medicine is clear. Somebody gets a cancer diagnosis. You want to tell them you’re going to be fine. It’s bullshit. And if I tell you you’re going to be fine, it’s a lie. But what I can tell you is I’m really sorry that this happened to you. And I can tell you what we know and I can tell you what we can do.

And I can tell you I’m going to sit here and listen for as long as you need me to listen to you and that I’m going to be your advocate for helping get the best outcome you want. In this case, it’s not terminal. Places like Saginaw can heal, but not doing the same shit that we’ve been doing. And so in some respects there is an honesty that you have to tell people. It’s not just always going to be okay or I’m going to solve all your problems. I’m not. I’m going to do my best to help you, to be honest with you about what the problem is, to sit down and think about what our approach moving forward can be and to fight like hell for you against people who’ve created this problem. And if we can do that and you can trust me to do that, we can build things over time, but it starts there.

MARC STEINER [FIELD]:  This place has changed so much. Wow. When we were kids, this is where the Black and Jewish world met, right here. Oh, because Jewish was this side, Jewish and then Baltimore’s 125th Street was Pennsylvania Avenue, and that was down that way. So, that’s where it all… wow.

MICHAEL FOX:  Late last summer when I was in Baltimore, you and I went over to Mondawmin Mall.

MARC STEINER:  That’s right.

MICHAEL FOX:  And you told me the story of your first political activism.

MICHAEL FOX [FIELD]:  All right. And if you could just set us up, where are we right now?

MARC STEINER [FIELD]:  We’re at the Mondawmin Mall on the Westside of Baltimore, and it looks really different than it did when I was a kid. It’s just all… they’ve redone the whole outside, probably inside as well. But this was a predominantly white mall, and we used to shop here. 

And my mom and I came down here, it was 1960, and we went down — I forget what we were shopping for, whatever we came for — And so we were there, and we’re looking over the railing. And as we looked over the railing, there [was this] line of Black college students, turned out to be Black college students, picketing the White Coffee Pot — Which was an appropriate name because it was segregated. They had restaurants all across the city.

So, I asked my mom — I was 13, not quite 14 — I asked my mom, could I join the picket line? And she said, in her English accent, all right, my dear, go ask the picket captain and see what he says. So we went downstairs and they said, sure. And that’s the first day I marched.

And so from that moment on, I was in the Civil Rights Movement, and then a couple years later I became the youngest person to be arrested in civil rights in Maryland. In Cambridge, Maryland, not Baltimore, but in Cambridge, which was like, we used to call that Maryland’s Mississippi, Eastern Shore, which is [where] one of the last lynchings in America took place, on the Eastern Shore. And so that was what opened up this world for me.

And I would say from 11 years old to like 17 when I was expelled from high school, my world was different. It was segregated, but my world was Black because of Boy Scouts, the street corner, the all-Black frat. It was middle-class Black guys. So, that was my world. 

And in Baltimore, people forget Baltimore is a Southern city. It’s a mixture of the industrial North with the immigrants coming from all across Europe and later from Latin America that was later from all across Europe, and it’s a Southern city. It’s a deeply segregated town. It’s still very divided. There are very few interracial neighborhoods in Baltimore, even to this day. Most neighborhoods are mostly Black or they’re white or they’re Latino.

MICHAEL FOX:  This is The Battle for Free Speech, a multipart narrative podcast series brought to you by The Real News. I’m Michael Fox, and today we’re going to spend the entire hour speaking with my co-host, Marc Steiner.

First, let me say that if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you will notice that he’s been absent lately. Unfortunately, he’s been dealing with some health issues and he had to take a step back. That is all the more reason why I’m so excited to get to speak with him today for the entire hour.

And let me just put this into context. In this podcast, we’ve looked at the attacks on free speech rights today in the United States. We looked at the history and how movements and organizations have stood up and used free speech in their work. We looked at how social media, AI, and disinformation are undermining our free speech and how people are responding in the United States and abroad.

In this final episode of the series, we’re going to focus on what free speech means within the context of one person who’s been through it all. That is my co-host, Marc Steiner. He turned 80 earlier this year. Today, I sit down with Marc to discuss all of these incredible layers of his life: community organizing, theater, education, journalism, what they all mean for him, and how they all add up to nearly seven decades standing up and fighting for free speech, and how they fit into the battle for free speech today. That is where we’re going to spend this hour. I’m so excited because the stories of his life are incredible. They’re often funny. And for me, they really take the idea of free speech to another level. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

MARC STEINER:  And the backstory is that A, my mother always raised us with clarity about race, that there’s no difference between races. We’re all the same. We’re all human beings. And when I was 11, I wanted to join the Boy Scouts, just dying to be a Boy Scout. Read all the books. My English grandmother and uncle sent me books about British Boy Scouts, and I was just really into it. 

And so, my mom and Mrs. Jackson, who is a Black woman who worked as a domestic in our home, were sitting at the end of the workday together, as they usually did, having coffee and cake before Mrs. Jackson left. And she was being picked up by her nephew, Mr. Dennis Foster. 

And so, they were eating, and I ran downstairs saying, Mom, Mom, I’ll be 11 years old next week. I got to join the Boy Scouts. You got to sign me up. And she said, all right, love, we’ll sign you up straight away. Beth Tfiloh, Monday morning, which is the local synagogue that we used to go to. And I said, Mom, I don’t want to be in a Jewish troop. I want to be in a troop with all kinds of kids, which didn’t exist. 

And Mr. Foster, who’s African American, put his coffee cup down, looked over the table and said, I’m a scout master. You can join my troop. And my mother, I remember, I could still see her face. She said, oh, that’s a lovely idea. And she knew exactly what that meant. 

And so that Monday he picked me up in his Mercury at the house and we drive off from Northwest Baltimore and past the golf course and went down to a street called Garrison Boulevard and into Walbrook Junction, which was the separating line between Black and white neighborhoods. And we kept on going down North Avenue, and all of a sudden the world became Black. Went down, made a right on Broadway, which is a deeply working-class Black neighborhood. Made a left on Ashland Avenue and ended up in front of the Faith Baptist Church. And there I joined an integrated troop, as I always say, because I integrated it. 

And so, I was a little Jewish boy in 1957 in segregated Baltimore in an all-Black Boy Scout troop where I learned firsthand about racism as a little boy. Whether it was the Boy Scout troops that we camped near in the Boy Scout camp, they were mostly white troops. And then one kid saying to me, what are you doing in a troop with all those Ns for? And I remember that just shocking, a Boy Scout would use that word. 

Or when we went out with Mr. Foster to get some ice cream or whatever and we stopped in front of an ice cream shop and kids got out of the car. And I remember sitting there in the car, and I’ll never forget his words. He looked in the window and said, Marc, wherever we can go, you can go. And those kind of things became foundational for me in understanding what kind of society we live in as a little boy, what we faced.

And so, that time when I was 13 and we were at Mondawmin Shopping Center and my mom said, well, ask the picket captain. And I went down there, and Skip Logan was the leader of the picket line — And he was also the head of the Civic Interest Group, which was Baltimore’s arm of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which is a major radical civil rights group — Said, sure, gave me a picket sign, and I started going to CIG meetings and became very active. 

They wouldn’t let me sit in until I was 16 because they didn’t want me getting arrested if I didn’t… And the first arrest I had was in Cambridge, Maryland, which we used to call Maryland’s Mississippi. It was rough. I was 16, arrested, and I was the youngest, whitest thing there. And they pulled me out and put me in this room, looked like a kitchen. And then all these cops, maybe, I don’t remember how many, six, eight cops surrounding the table, and wanted me to sign this document that said I was coerced by communists to come down to foment trouble among the negro population of Cambridge, Maryland.

MICHAEL FOX:  Wow, Marc.

MARC STEINER:  And I refused to sign. And then it proceeded to get hot, and they poured hot coffee on my head and smacked me around and punched me around and hit me and all kinds of stuff. And I wouldn’t sign. 

And, it’s a digression, my mother, she was a tough lady. She was beautiful and tough. But she always told us, the three of us, the kids, to come home on your shield. That was her line to us. You are a Round, her maiden name. We never back down. You come home on your shield. So I didn’t sign [laughs].

MICHAEL FOX:  Wow.

MARC STEINER:  And so mom got me out, took me home, and I got fixed up. So, I continued on the picket line and continued working in Cambridge and going between Cambridge and Baltimore. The only trouble was that I started screwing up in school because I was so involved between the Civil Rights Movement and the street corner, I didn’t get much school time in [both laugh].

MICHAEL FOX:  What was it about Cambridge? What was it about Cambridge, Maryland, that was —

MARC STEINER:  Cambridge was, there were two focal points of the Civil Rights Movement in Maryland. One was Baltimore because it was the biggest city with the largest Black population, except for all-Black towns in Prince George’s County and some other places. And Cambridge, Maryland, which was the Eastern Shore of Maryland that you had to pass through going to Eastern Shore. Eastern Shore was literally like Mississippi. It was the Deep South in Maryland. So, our work was in both places. 

And in Cambridge, we were both picketing to integrate things, but we were sitting in, and we were registering people to vote. And the leader of that movement was a woman who became very famous in America just because she became a figure. Her name was Gloria Richardson.

GLORIA RICHARDSON [CLIP]:  Still we had segregated hospitals, housing, jobs…

MARC STEINER:  I interviewed her years later on my radio show in the ’90s. She was really old then. And I remember one of the greatest days of my life because I was in Cambridge, set the equipment up, about to do the interview. And she looked at me and said, I remember you. You were that little white boy. That was a great day. She actually remembered me. 

And so it was a rough place. And I really literally was beaten and tortured in the prison. They wanted me to sign a paper, I wouldn’t sign. But anyway, that was the civil rights era.

And I had a very weird teenagehood. It started out because I was a white boy in an all-Black Boy Scout troop on the East side of town, which was a working-class community. I started hanging out with this group of Black guys, two groups of Black guys. One was the Imperials who were the sons of Black doctors, lawyers, judges, middle-class guys, still close to some of them. 

And the other was the guys on the corner. That happened because when I was in junior high school in the seventh, eighth grade, I was friends with some of the Black guys in class, and it was newly integrated and majority of kids were white, but there was a huge population of Black students. And we became friends and I started hanging out with them, and that was the street corner. 

So, I had these two worlds I was part of. And I was also a member of the Young Socialist Alliance, which was a Trotskyist youth group that I joined when I was 15. And so, I was a young revolutionary.

MICHAEL FOX:  Marc, you also refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer in school, right?

MARC STEINER:  In the 10th grade when I got to City, which was a high school, I refused to take part in opening exercises, which then became part of a Supreme Court decision that I was mentioned in. So, you had a pledge of allegiance and you read the Lord’s Prayer, and I refused to do that. It was the Lord’s Prayer as well. I refused to do the Lord’s Prayer. And when they did opening exercises, I would leave the homeroom and stand out in the hallway till it was done and then have to walk back in. And the same thing when it came to giant student assemblies. I get up, walk out of the assembly with thousands of students, and walk back in after the opening exercises. 

So, I became a target. One day, there used to be these trucks that would be outside the school [at] lunchtime selling food to kids who didn’t want to eat in the cafeteria to go out to get food from these food trucks, and I was standing outside the pizza wagon. And these, I don’t remember, seven or nine white guys semicircled me around the wagon. And I looked back, and I said, OK, here we go, and I ordered my pizza. And the guy said, we don’t like no N lovers in the school. And I looked back and I said, sound like a personal problem to me, man. What you want me to do about it? And they came at me. And when they did, the pizza came out. I grabbed the hot pizza and pulled it out and threw it in his face. So, he had this hot pizza burning on his face.

MICHAEL FOX:  Oh my gosh.

MARC STEINER:  And these guys jumped at me and beat me up. And I walked back into the classroom after lunch and my shirt was torn. I was bloody and shit. The teachers told me, you need to go to the nurse. The guy sitting next to me was a guy named Stokes who was Black — Because our chairs were assigned by alphabetical order, so I was sitting next to Stokes since I’m Steiner. And Stokes said, what happened to you, man? I told him, he said, what? Next thing I knew after school, all these Black guys beat up all these white guys because of what happened to me. And I got suspended. And I cut school, got suspended. 

And then one morning the homeroom teacher said, Steiner, this is no damn standing. Go sit in your seat. And I said, Mr. Camps, if you can’t speak to me with a little respect don’t talk to me at all. And he said, what did you say? And he walked over to where I was sitting ,and he had his yardstick in his hand, and he picked it up. Said, what did you say, Steiner? When he raised the yardstick, I went boom, and hit him. And so all these teachers came in and grabbed my ass and took me down to the principal’s office, vice principal’s office, Mr. Yost and Dr. Greenberg, who was a vice principal who had graduated at that high school with my father in the class of ’29.

MICHAEL FOX:  Oh my gosh.

MARC STEINER:  Called the hospital where my dad had just gotten out of surgery. He was a surgeon. Pop had to come up to the place, and vice principal went, Al, this is Marc’s junior year at City. He opened up some whiteout, which was when people typed on typewriters had whiteout to cross things out, opened up a bottle of whiteout. Said, this is Marc’s junior year at City, whoosh. Get him out.

MICHAEL FOX:  Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, Marc.

MARC STEINER:  So, I was banned from all City Schools, and my junior year never existed. I was sent away. And I saw I was in the Civil Rights Movement. And it was after that that I got beaten up in the Eastern Shore and my parents came and got me and brought me back. But I kept staying in that. And my life was between [the] Civil Rights Movement and the street corner and some other radical groups I was part of, Young Socialist Alliance, Fellowship House, things like that. What I didn’t do was go to school.

MICHAEL FOX:  [Laughs] This Supreme Court case that you said that you were part of for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer and stuff, what was this court case?

MARC STEINER:  My name was only mentioned, it wasn’t my case. But there was a student in Baltimore who also refused to take part in opening exercises. His case went all the way up, and that’s the reason they took prayer out of schools.

MICHAEL FOX:  Wow. Wow.

MARC STEINER:  And so it was me and two other guys in Baltimore who didn’t take part in the opening exercises. It wasn’t my case, though.

MICHAEL FOX:  Yeah. You know, what’s fascinating about this, Marc, is that when I was talking with Mary Anne Franks, she’s the professor, the law professor at George Washington University. She said that for her, one of the most — And I don’t remember the court case, I don’t remember if it was this one or another one — But she said that the court case in the Supreme Court which defended people’s right to not say the Pledge of Allegiance was exactly what the First Amendment should be. Because not only should it give us the right to speak out, but it should also give us the right to remain silent in moments that we don’t want to follow the doctrine of the US. And she said that is the example of what the First Amendment and what free speech should be in the United States. I thought, that’s so interesting. I didn’t realize that you had a similar experience.

MARC STEINER:  It was in some ways an isolating experience because I would walk out of the homeroom and I have to walk out of these assemblies that I said earlier. And it was jarring because I was like this target for being this weird kid.

MICHAEL FOX:  Why did you not say it? Why did you not participate in the assemblies?

MARC STEINER:  Because I believed that religion had no place in public schools as a kid. My father wasn’t real happy with it, but both my parents were atheists. Even though my mother converted to Judaism, they were both atheists. I was raised in this contradictory world where both my parents were atheists. And every twice a week — Because I was also kicked out of Jewish schools — When you were Jewish, if you didn’t go to Jewish school, you went to Jewish school twice a week in the afternoon. It’s like Hebrew lessons and everything else. And I was kicked out of there too. And so Mr. Manischewitz, who was a Holocaust survivor who taught there, would come to my house twice a week to teach me the Talmud, the Torah, Hebrew, Jewish history. And so I was steeped in that as a kid. 

Well, first, to me, it was Christianizing the prayer in school. And what about us who don’t believe in Jesus?

MICHAEL FOX:  How incredible was it that your mom supported your organizing? She supported your activism. Did she always remain steadfast in defending you and in supporting you standing up?

MARC STEINER:  Yeah. She was, always, she was a radical Brit. She came from a family of miners who ended up owning the coal mine in England. She was a radical as a young person. She was a member of the Communist Party in Britain for six months. Didn’t jive with her free spirit so she left. But she was always a little different than the rest. Everybody loved her, but she was a little different than the rest. She was an actor. And with my kids, we went out and caught butterflies and labeled them and found amphibians and reptiles in the rivers and brought them home and created terrariums. And she also liked her vodka [laughs]. Mom liked her vodka. She was a trip. She was a trip.

MICHAEL FOX:  Wow. Marc, I want to move forward a little bit in the timeline. When you were banned from city schools in Baltimore, you ended up going, was it called Stockbridge?

MARC STEINER:  Yeah.

MICHAEL FOX:  Tell me about Stockbridge. And is it true that you actually shared a room with Arlo Guthrie?

MARC STEINER:  We were roommates. That was in our junior year. We still stay in touch. In our junior year. 

So, I ended up at Stockbridge because I couldn’t go to any public or private school in Baltimore because I also punched out… The kid showed me around friend school the day I was supposed to go to friends. I asked him a simple question. His father owned Glen Echo Amusement Park that we were picketing to integrate. When he said, we keep our Ns to a minimum, I said, what did you say? And that was it. That’s all she wrote. So, I couldn’t go anywhere.

So, when I ended up in Stockbridge, the headmaster came down to Baltimore to interview me. His name was Hans Maeder. And Hans was a Marcusian socialist who was in the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany in the ’30s and ’40s, and an educator. Interesting guy. Hans Maeder, M-A-E-D-E-R. I say Hans because we all called our teachers by their first name at Stockbridge. And we went out to Miller Brothers, which was then Baltimore’s fanciest restaurant. And so he asked me, this is 1963. He said, so tell me, Marc. I want to know who your heroes are. I said, Che Guevara and Malcolm X. And he said, oh, this is wonderful, you must come to my school. And I ended up in this co-educational interracial international boarding school in the Berkshires with this incredible radical faculty. And many of my best friends are still from that era, from my experience there. 

So, that’s why I ended up there. And I graduated in ’65 instead of ’64, but it’s all right. And it was a great experience. It saved my ass. It saved my ass, A, from the street corner because I was on the road to ending up in juvenile jail for other stuff. And it was a great place to have ended up. That county had a couple of really progressive schools for whatever reason. They flocked to Berkshire County.

MICHAEL FOX:  Wow. Amazing. Amazing. 

Marc, were you at the March on Washington?

MARC STEINER:  ’63?

MICHAEL FOX:  Yeah.

MARC STEINER:  Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah absolutely there. Cause I was in the Civic Interest Group, which, as I said, was Baltimore’s arm of SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And we all took the bus down from Faith Baptist Church down to DC. It was an amazing day. It was hot as hell. I dressed the wrong way, but it was OK. 

So yeah, I was there because I was in the Civil Rights Movement. And so all of us who had been part of what was going on in Cambridge and in Baltimore and on Route 40, Freedom Riders, we were there. Yeah, we were there.

MICHAEL FOX:  Wow. That’s such an iconic moment in US history. It’s almost hard to believe that actually even happened in real life because it’s so iconic.

MARC STEINER:  A quarter of a million people of all races together in Washington, DC, at one time.

MICHAEL FOX:  What did that feel like, Marc?

MARC STEINER:  It was amazing. Because you’re on demonstrations and you maybe have 20, 30 people with you when you’re on the picket line or we’re sitting in or whatever. It was very different. This is a mass of America from across America. That and being part of the Poor People’s Campaign in ’68 were amazing experiences just because of what they brought and the numbers of people from all different communities across the country being in DC at one time. It was amazing. It was a day I’ll never forget. It was huge for me because I wasn’t in school either. So I was a full-time activist and getting ready to be shipped off to Berkshire County [laughs].

MICHAEL FOX:  Talk to me a little bit about the Poor People’s Campaign, your organizing for it. I know that you were there in DC in those days. Tell me a little bit more about your role.

MARC STEINER:  Well, I was living in DC. We were founding Liberation News Service at the time and I was working with the Washington Free Press. And in SDS, there’s a thing called ERAP.

MICHAEL FOX:  Students for Democratic Society.

MARC STEINER:  I’m sorry, Students for Democratic Society, which was the leading radical left group on campuses across the country. And within SDS, there was a thing called ERAP, Economic and Research Action Project, which were people in SDS who went into poor communities to move into communities to organize. And so one of those communities was in Chicago in Uptown.

CLIP 1:  …Southern ghetto, a lot of people who’s migrated from the South to the North, do better jobs and stuff like that. We had a school set up to teach neighborhood people how the system works in the United States…

MARC STEINER:  And they had an organization there called the Young Patriots who were the equivalent of the Black Panthers in the poor white community. So, I got very close to them when I was in SDS and did a lot of work with them. And still one of the guys there, Hy Thurman, is back down. He’s still around. I’ve done a bunch of interviews with him about his work over the years. So, our job was to organize the poor white community into Resurrection City. And so we went all through poor white working class communities in the United States, especially in the Northeast, at least I did, and in Appalachia itself to organize them to come down to be part of Resurrection City.

CLIP 2:  Since the middle of May, the campsite of Resurrection City has housed the poor marchers campaigning in Washington. The murder earlier this year of Dr. Martin Luther King gave renewed intensity to the demands for equal opportunities as the underprivileged came to petition the power for a new deal and a new hope.

CLIP 3:  A lot of people knew the condition of some of these places. And I think that when they see and know the condition that a lot of people will be interested enough to try to make things better.

MARC STEINER:  It was interesting. Encampment of mostly white Southern poor that flew the battle flag of Dixie above their encampment because it was the rebel flag. Nobody gave a shit in the camps about that. And it was a pretty amazing experience. Here you have this encampment of Black folks from across America, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, poor whites, some Asians, some Chinese and Japanese people in this living together, eating together, cooking together, working together. And it made a statement that to this day, it’s what pushes me to do the work I do because you can see what is possible if you organize and fight.

CLIP 4:  We’re building our own house over there, and I want to tell you something. It looks better than anything that we have in Brownsville. We got our house better than anything in Flatbush, which is middle class.

CLIP 5:  It is working down in Resurrection City. And please listen to that. That beautiful thing down there is just the top of a movement that stretches from coast to coast.

CLIP 6:  This is the last chance, I think, for this country to sort of respond to the quiet and peaceful petitions of people for asking for very, very just solutions to very, very real problems.

MARC STEINER:  So, I was there until they tore down Resurrection City when they came in. And I had an apartment in DC because that’s where I was living. That and the Institute of Policy Studies became like refugee centers for people who were forced out of the Resurrection City.

The saddest part of it was there was no structure beyond that moment to keep it together, to create a movement that did change things, but could really have changed things had we had something to solidify it and make it come together. But many things came out of that in different parts of the country. It was a historically important moment in this country, critically important. It began when King was assassinated and his body laying in state in DC for a while, and it could have been a greater moment than it was, but it was an important moment in our history.

MICHAEL FOX:  Marc, I want to just pause for a second. All of this organizing activism, obviously this is a podcast about free speech, and I want to connect it up to free speech. What does all of this mean for you for free speech in your mind? How does free speech straddle all of these issues in terms of organizing in your teens and your 20s?

MARC STEINER:  The movement that began at Berkeley with Mario Savio, who was a civil rights worker. What’s important to take note here is that that movement exploded, and it was led by people who were white, who were civil rights workers in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, and then went back to their campuses. And so I always look at the free speech movement was birthed by the Civil Rights Movement. They were radicalized to fight when they go back. And that was one of the causes on their campuses that they fought for.

And it happened across America. Berkeley was the center, but I was at Maryland, the University of Maryland, ’65. And in ‘64, I was still at Stockbridge, but it became something I was just obsessed with. It was a movement that frightened the establishment because in part what it came from, the civil rights, but also because these academic establishments were these “state institutions” that controlled life on campus. This was the first major disruptions that took place in decades on campuses.

CLIP 7:  You could never believe such a thing could happen at the University of California where this many students have said they’ve had enough and they’re going to stand up right now. Thank you [applause].

MARC STEINER:  And that helped radicalize an entire movement, student movement in this country. That was the beginning of it. Without the free speech movements, there wouldn’t have been an SDS with that kind of power. So, it was a critical movement in changing America. And many of those students remained radicalized, organized, and continued on. And I think that’s what people forget even though the movement kind of waned and died, that particular movement, the people in it continued to push. Most universities were run by the wealth of this country, and these establishment figures who ran that wealth also ran our universities. That was the first major confrontation against that in that era.

MICHAEL FOX:  Marc, talk about the Washington Free Press and the Liberation News Service. How were you involved? What were those outlets?

MARC STEINER:  Well, I was involved first off with the Washington Free Press. After I was flunked out of college, I moved to Dupont Circle, which is a neighborhood in DC, which is around the corner from Washington Free Press. And I met the guys, the people from Washington Free Press. We hit it off immediately, and I started writing for them and working with them, and also with SDS at large in DC. We actually had… The radical movement had rented a building near Dupont Circle and Logan Circle, which was three stories. The different movements had their headquarters in that building.

MICHAEL FOX:  Wow.

MARC STEINER:  I was there, a guy named Marshall Bloom and I organized a national conference of all the underground papers in the country to come to DC for a weeklong meeting because there were underground papers across America then. Every city had one. Everybody had one. Small cities, big cities, college towns, they were everywhere. And so we brought them together to start what became Liberation News Service, which really became an effective movement. We were collecting stories from across the globe, across the country, and giving it out to all the papers across the country to use and creating a communication between the underground papers and some college papers, Michigan, Chicago, Wisconsin, other places around the country. So, in its lifetime, it was a very effective group.

MICHAEL FOX:  I think it’s fascinating to think about how that communication was happening back then because right now everything is, oh, it’s all internet. You just send an email. It’s super easy.

MARC STEINER:  Oh, right. There’s no internet.

MICHAEL FOX:  Right. No. And so back in those days, what is this? Over telephone, you’re sending —

MARC STEINER:  Telephone and US mail.

MICHAEL FOX:  Wow.

MARC STEINER:  Yeah. Telephone and US mail. That was the only way to communicate, only way it could happen.

MICHAEL FOX:  What was it about the media, the underground media and the writing? What is it that called your attention? Why did you want to get involved in this?

MARC STEINER:  The largest group created papers that were alternative weeklies speaking to a different population, against the war, for the Civil Rights Movement, for the radical movement, the countercultural movement that took place in the late ’60s, early ’70s. So, it had its audience, and in alliance with groups like The Black Panther newspaper and other Black and Latino newspapers around the country that were part of it as well. 

But it was this alternative press that made a big difference because people actually read it. It brought community together in ways that doesn’t exist right now. We’ve got this right here where we’re working at Real News, which in some ways is the grandchild of the underground press. But there were so many, every locality had one. I can’t think of a part of our country did not have a piece of the underground press. 

So, we were able with Liberation News Service to share stories around the country, to bring stories in from Europe and Asia and Africa and share them with the papers around the country and also bring people together to talk strategically about what it means to create a newspaper and underground press and how that’s an organizing tool.

It was a great period. It was the same period where we were involved in draft resistance. It was the same period where we were smuggling people out of the country into Canada to get out of the army that I was involved in as well. We actually thought the revolution was at hand. Little did we know [laughs]. It wasn’t about to happen. But it was a significant movement.

MICHAEL FOX:  Was there a backlash by elites, by the forces that be against the underground papers or was it so underground that it wasn’t a big deal?

MARC STEINER:  That’s a great question. What was the demise of the underground papers? That’d be a really interesting question to explore. Part of it was people drifting away and getting older and the movement dissipating and just not being there anymore. It could have been something as simple as that.

MICHAEL FOX:  But it’s at the same time as COINTELPRO was happening, right?

MARC STEINER:  Oh, no, no, no. Look man, here’s the story. I guess this was 1960, early ’68 maybe. And we had some telephone problems. So, we asked the local Washington company to come over and fix it. And they were doing that. And then the guy who was working on it said, hey, you want us to fix the other phones? And we went, sure. Which other phones do you mean? And he said, just half a block away at whatever the number was, 17 something P Street. We were 1719 P Street. And we said, oh, sure. You can take those out.

MICHAEL FOX:  Wow.

MARC STEINER:  So, they were bugging [laughs]. So, the feds were collecting information on us literally across the road. There were no real indictments of the place, at least where we were in Washington. But when the movement got more militant and more aggressive and, like all my friends in SDS who became part of the Weather Underground, that was a different time, then they came after everybody. 

In ’68, I went to Cuba. January, February, March of ’68, I was in Cuba. They came after us who went there. They tried to seize our passports. They harassed us. They got me fired from a job, and one job wouldn’t fire me. That was a couple of years later when they came again. So, they did go after… If you were on the left and you were still active, they came over to silence you.

MICHAEL FOX:  Marc, fast forwarding a couple years, talk about the Tenants Union Group in Baltimore.

MARC STEINER:  So, as I said earlier, in SDS, there’s a group called ERAP. And these were people who went out, Tom Hayden, others, who was probably the most famous of the crew, went out to organize in different working-class communities across the United States. So, that was the early stages of people doing that. We weren’t part of ERAP, but we were just revolutionists and radicals who wanted to go introduce organizing. 

Baltimore had, because of the steel mills, because of the docks, a lot of people ended up taking jobs in those places, the auto plant, to organize internally inside unions in the workplace. And then people moved into the communities to continue the organizing in the community. So, we had collective houses across Baltimore in neighborhoods like Waverly, South Baltimore, Pig Town, across the city. And so, there were four of us who knew each other really well. And we moved down to South Baltimore and got really involved in both the South Baltimore voice and in creating their Tenants Union Group.

We went out to organize tenants of these slumlords, mostly white. Well, white and Blacks. There was a street called Charles Street, which is the main thoroughfare in Baltimore, but the bottom part of it in this part of Baltimore was the divide between Black and white working-class communities in South Baltimore. The Black community was called Sharp-Leadenhall, which before the Civil War was one of the oldest, biggest free Black communities in the country.

Anyway, so we began to organize. And other things were happening too. Radicals in Charles Village, was a neighborhood, and those of us organizing in Waverly, another white, Black working-class community, we created the People’s Free Medical Clinic with radical young doctors and nurses to serve the people. We created a People’s Free Grocery Store where my ex, still my dear friend, and my daughter lived above it. And it was a grocery store where there were no profits made, but were there to serve the people to give them food. They can buy food at cost. 

And we had a People’s Free Garage that was started by two people in the John Brown Collective that I was part of as well. After South Baltimore, I was part of the John Brown Collective. And the People’s Free Garage was a place where these two guys, Michael O’Brien and Gene Flanagan. Gene was a vet and Mike was just one of the big Irish boys. And they knew cars, and they started this garage where people could come fix their cars and work on their cars and be taught how to work on their cars. 

So, we had all these collective cooperative movements that we started in the city. So, it was really a center of radicalism that hasn’t gotten much play in terms of our history. 

And it was mostly really a working-class movement. It wasn’t just college kids but people who lived in the community who were radicalized in different ways so that in 1971 when the invasion of Laos happened, we organized a demonstration against the war. 

In that demonstration, there were a lot of Vietnam vets who were part of our work and other people as well. And what they didn’t expect, the police, was that they thought we’d be like college kids and run. The difference was it wasn’t that kind of group. It was a group of hard-fighting, hard-drinking, crazy working-class kids. So when the police attacked, we all stood and fought, and really fought. The headline I still have on my wall at home, which said 21 police sent to the hospital. And people got charges like assault and battery, intent to commit mayhem and murder and other things like that. And I was charged, but that’s another story, because I broke this cop’s nose when he tried to arrest me. 

So, it was a really center of radicalism, both in organizing and in militancy in the city. And it changed laws. I mean, TUG changed the tenant laws in Baltimore working with radical legal aid lawyers who were on the left working in legal aid. And we would organize rent strikes and put the money aside in case we had to give it back. But anyway, we actually changed the law to benefit the tenants of Baltimore through our work, through our rent strikes. 

So, it was a heady period in the early ’70s here. We were doing a lot of stuff. People’s Free Medical Clinic was unheard of. It was like doctors and nurses giving their time when they were not getting paid to work in a medical clinic for poor working class people in the city. So, it was a very special time to be part of. Nobody planned it that way. It just happened. We were just there and we just began to organize and work.

MICHAEL FOX:  There’s something I think that’s really important that is oftentimes missed or people don’t make this connection, and that is the deep roots between organizing, activism, standing up, and our right to free speech. And I don’t necessarily mean the free speech movement. I just mean our right to stand up and speak out. I feel like these are two different things. Someone might be, oh, First Amendment. Oh yeah, that’s over here. Or oh, that’s our right to speak. And then organizing activism or protesting, it’s as if they’re separate, but they’re not. 

You said something a couple of episodes ago that really stuck with me and you said free speech is organizing. It is coming together and taking action to actually organize. Can you talk a little bit about that?

MARC STEINER:  Free speech is at the root of the struggle for independence in the 18th century in this country. That’s where it began. You may have gone past that in terms of Marx and the wobblies and the rest, but the roots we’re in is very American.

And that we demand the right to say [what] we have to say and to organize and to stand up and speak. And if it’s done right, it can be a very scary opposition to those in power. And I think that’s what we saw. And I think there’s a movement afoot now to clamp down on free speech in this country. I see a lot of what we face in America today as a reaction to what we did 50 years ago that’s been building over these decades. And the fight to stop free speech is part of it. You’re seeing it across the country. On campuses today, many campuses are doing their best to shut down radical protestors on their campuses, to end the right to stand up and say what you have to say. It’s one of the fundamental rights in any democratic society. You can’t have it without it. It’s uncomfortable. It can be misused, but you have to have it.

MICHAEL FOX:  Marc, talk to me about theater and what theater means to you. It’s been a huge part of your life, but it’s something that when I go back and when I hear stories or you tell stories, it’s like the theater piece, which is so important and that you’ve worked in theater for years, those stories end up sidelined a little bit or I don’t hear that often. Talk to me about what does theater mean to you and how important has this been in your life and why?

MARC STEINER:  Theater’s always been part of my life since I was a teenager, especially once I got to Stockbridge, the high school I graduated from. But we had this Broadway theater guy as our acting teacher and stuff. 

But I think that theater of the streets and the underground theaters across America and the world played a vital role. We would do street theater against the Vietnam War where we would act out what’s happening to the Vietnamese and actually pulling people into it who are on the street. It didn’t always work so well because people resisted, but that was part of it. And we made the bridge between this is what happens to the Vietnamese people and we’re dressed like American soldiers. 

So, I think that there’s always been a radical left element in theater, especially in Europe and here in the United States. And I think that it has always played an important role. Things like the living stage in DC. The guerilla theater movements in New York and San Francisco and LA and Baltimore where we would act out things on the corner to show the world what was going on in Vietnam, to show the world what was going on in poor communities, to show the world the threat against our very democracy and rights to freedom in this country. I haven’t thought about this in a while. There were some brilliant theatrical minds who dove into this all over. 

And I think that, in retrospect, it had a greater effect than you think. Because you’re bringing theater into community and into the streets that make people stop, especially when you pull them into it, force them to be part of it. And they weren’t expecting that.

So what people don’t realize it doesn’t get much play, it got play in some books, is that theater has always been part of political movements, especially on the left. More on the left than the right for sure. And they were in the Civil Rights Movement. There was Freedom Theater and part of SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And the music was, the Freedom Singers as well. And we had Living Theater in New York City, which was a group nobody knows about anymore, but it was this incredible theater on the streets. They went out and did this incredible work, original work that really talked to issues and talked to people. They were an influence on me. 

I’ve been in theater forever. And I taught at Baltimore School for the Arts for 15 years. The sophomore ensemble was mine. And I worked in prison theater. I ran a therapy program for inmates under 21 in an adult prison. And a world famous actor came out of our group, Charles S. Dutton, who left us too soon. He became known as Roc, and he had a TV show called Roc. So, I started a theater company in the prison and we performed in the prison and guys flocked to it because I did theater classes twice a week inside jail. A good part of my life it was at the center of my work.

And being inspired by left theater in Paris, in London, New York, in Palestine-Israel where actors were crossing boundaries early, the Palestinian and Israelis coming together to do political theater. And those things are getting lost. And they’re very effective, and they become a voice that doesn’t get heard otherwise.

People don’t realize in SNCC, the Freedom Theater that performed all throughout the South. Nobody talks about that anymore, but they were doing these performances in churches, in cotton fields across the South. And political theater seems to have lost its power at this moment. It may resurrect itself. Always does. 

But it’s incredibly important because you’re doing… When we had guerilla theater in the streets around the Vietnam War, we did it all over Washington, DC, is where we had our Washington Guerilla Theater. And we would literally pull people out of the crowds and make them prisoners to give them the feeling, what it felt like to be a Vietnamese stuck in this hell of an American war. And in working-class communities, it gave people an outlet, a creative outlet they didn’t have before. We became from weirdo theater people into actually being part of the community.

MICHAEL FOX:  It’s incredible how, as you’re mentioning this, it comes to mind just how much theater is this deep form of communication because you’re not just telling a story, but you’re actually part of it. You’re actually acting it out. And particularly when it’s guerilla or when it’s on the street, you’re trying to incorporate other people. So, you’re literally being immersed in the story as if you are an actor, as if you’re actually living it yourself and how profound that is. It’s another form of communication, but even more active. But even more active.

MARC STEINER:  You had the Living Theater, you had the Diggers, you had the Art Workers’ Coalition, and Guerilla Action Group. You had all these groups around the country who were deeply involved in community life. And what they did was interpret people’s lives through the theater. Interpret what you’re going through through theater. To have a creative outlet to allow that to happen.

And they were part of a movement. We did that when we were organizing the Tenants Union Group. Besides changing the law, we actually created theater in the community about what it felt like to be evicted from your home. You interview people, get their stories, and you turn that into theater to tell people what they went through, the struggles they’ve gone through to tell that story. And we did that with Vietnam vets, took down their stories and then performed their stories to talk about what people went through. And there were very highly emotional pieces that really affected people because you were using… And some of the people who acted with us were Vietnam vets, [a lot of us] were not Vietnam vets. We were anti-war vets. 

But to tell that story and also to tell the story using the voices of Vietnamese, we turned some of that into radio theater as well. When I did my Vietnam documentary series, we did nine audio documentaries and some video, most of them were audio. We spent a lot of time with Vietnamese actors and bringing stories back to create stories that emotionally told the story of what it was like to live through that war from the Vietnamese side.

Political theater is not always popular with some people, but it’s important. If there’s anything I miss more than other stuff, it’s missing the theater. I miss the theater. I do. I might have to rectify that.

MICHAEL FOX:  That’s right. 

Marc, what was the first time that you were on air? Tell me the story of how your show began.

MARC STEINER:  Everything in my life has been an accident [Fox laughs]. Nothing completely planned, totally. So, it was 1992, ’93. I was trying to create a history of the Jewish people through their music. It was the history of Jewish music. And we did a couple of episodes. WJHU then was the public radio station of Baltimore. I raised some money, did a bunch of interviews, and I was trying to create this history of Jewish music. I was trying to make a bridge then because I was, having been a Zionist, I wasn’t part of the anti-Zionist movement, I was trying to build a bridge to tell the story. But anyway, so that’s how it began.

So, at the station, for various reasons, the series didn’t take off. But I went into the general manager’s office, David Craig, good guy. And he said to me, Marc, we’re thinking about starting maybe a talk radio thing on the station — It was a classical station then — And he said, you know Baltimore, you know politics, you know life, you know lots of stuff. What do you think about that? And out of my mouth came, I think you should let me be the host [Fox laughs]. He said, what? You don’t know radio? You’ve never even run a radio show. How could you be the host? I said, give me the mic. I’ll be the host. 

And so we went back and forth, and he opened a door he shouldn’t have opened. And I kept bugging him. I kept hocking him. Hocking is the Yiddish term for bugging somebody. I kept hocking him. And he finally said, OK, man, look, I’m taking All Things Considered off every Tuesday night from 7:00 to 8:30. No money. No producer. See what you can do. And I said, OK, I’ll take it.

And I did. And the first show I did was a debate on Norplant. Nobody knows what Norplant is anymore.

MICHAEL FOX:  No.

MARC STEINER:  Norplant was a controversial drug implanted in women’s arms to keep them from getting pregnant. And it was being used in inner city neighborhoods. So, I had this debate between four people, pro and con. That was the first show. 

And then it just grew from there. Every week, I would do a show a week on many different subjects. I did a show from inside prison, inside a juvenile center. I did shows on abortion rights. I did shows interviewing politicians. And we did a lot of community. We led a lot of broadcasting from the community itself. And then the show went from Tuesday nights to Tuesday and Thursday. And then it went from Tuesday and Thursday to Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And then it went from Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And we just built the show out.

And then they decided to sell the station. Johns Hopkins wanted to sell the station. So, I helped lead the movement to buy the station. And we raised the money to buy the station. And I went to all these really wealthy people and raised money from listeners and raised 5 million bucks and bought the station. And then I was vice president for broadcast, and I went to a full-time talk show host as well, Monday through Friday, noon to 2:00. That’s how it started. And it opened a world for me that allowed me to bring voices to the air that wouldn’t be heard anywhere else.

[Overlapping radio clips play]

We did the work that other public radio stations did, public radio shows did. But we brought voices on from the left. We brought voices on from poor working-class communities. We brought voices on organizers, and we brought the traditional points on as well. But to me it was a balance that was missing from poor working communities, from organizers, and bringing issues up they didn’t want to bring up. 

And so, we built the show and it became very popular, and we ended up buying two other radio stations in Maryland. So, the broadcast went across the state into DC and up into Pennsylvania and into West Virginia and then became nationally known, and I eventually lost the internal wars where I was pushed out. That led to a revolt where people picketed the station for like six months, but never got back there. 

No public radio station had ever brought voices of color onto the station as the main part of the broadcast, and I did that, and to really broaden the audience in ways that didn’t exist before. It was a great part. It was great. It was a lot of work, but it radically changed radio in Baltimore, at least for that period.

MICHAEL FOX:  Marc, what should journalism be? Real journalism, for you?

MARC STEINER:  Oh, Lord… real journalism has to get under the headlines and under the news. Real journalism has to bring in voices that are not heard anywhere else. Not just your pontificators or paid a huge salary. I mean, they’re part of it as well. They’re going to be there, but you got to bring other voices in. You can’t be cozy with elected officials. Your job is to question elected officials, not to be their best friend. Your job is to bring the voices of the street, of the community, whatever that community is, to the airwaves. 

For me, in terms of racism and race in America, it means no matter what subject you’re talking about, whatever that is, whether it’s politics or theater or music or culture, whatever it is, you have to bring voices of color into the conversation, always. And in this city that meant Black voices, Latino voices, whatever that is, that you can’t let it be the domain of white men talking. And I know I’m a white man talking, but that’s not the point. The point is when you’re doing the work, you have to change it from the inside.

One of the attacks I got when I was in WYPR from the guy who took over the company and from some of the board members is there were too many Black people on the air. And that mindset’s there, and you have to fight it.

One of the great beauties of America, as we know, this country has its issues and they run deep, but we are the most multiracial, multicultural nation in the history of humankind. We have to make that part of our work. We have to let that resonate. We have to make that part of what we produce and do and work. We forget that. 

Yeah, racism runs deep. Class issues are pervasive. We’re fighting to save the environment. All that’s real, but we are an amazing place in many ways. And we forget that. For all its faults and all the fact that this country was founded by men who enslaved other human beings. The documents they wrote for white men belong to all of us. And so they had no idea they were birthing a democratic movement to upset the world, but they did. And I think those things are really important to remember.

MICHAEL FOX:  Marc, I listened to a talk you gave a while back, and in the talk you had a story about the question of what is communication? And there was a group of Native Americans there who had an incredible vision or understanding of what this was. Do you remember the story?

MARC STEINER:  I do. Exactly. It was something that changed my entire approach to my work. So, this one guy, Joe Waterman, he was an Arapaho holy man. They have four holy people in their nation. He was one of the four. We became very close. And we had a conversation in public and he asked the question, what is communication? And everybody had ideas, making sure you could say what you have to say and putting your ideas out there and being forceful and all those other things we would say. And he looked around the room and said, it’s one thing. It’s listening. Listening.

So, it was the beginning of my radio career, and I realized that’s the key to running conversations. That’s the key to producing something is listening to what other people have to say, not just listening to yourself, but hearing what they say and letting that kind of push the conversation and learn something new from it. You don’t have all the answers. Learn something new. 

So, whether it was me listening to a conservative person on the right or listening to a guerilla in El Salvador, listening to what they had to say and understanding that truth lives in every corner. Even though that can be on the left or right or wherever you are, that can be an anathema, it’s the only way to find the truth. It’s the only way to find out what’s really real. It’s to listen, and listen objectively to what people have to say and turn off your shit so you can hear it.

Did I say that word? Yes. I’m sorry.

MICHAEL FOX:  That’s awesome, Marc. I have a quote here from someone that I want to see if you can tell me what this means to you. George Orwell: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

MARC STEINER:  Yeah.

MICHAEL FOX:  What does that quote mean to you? Why is that quote important right now?

MARC STEINER:  It’s one of my favorite statements because if you control the interpretation of what’s happened before, you control people’s understanding of why we’re here now and where we’re going. It’s a constant debate and battle. You can’t give up the struggle to control that. You have to fight for it all the time. You can’t let them define what it means to understand why we’re here, understand the struggles that brought us here and where we’re going to take them. But I think it’s a really critical thing. It’s just like the other one I said, listening. They’re both equal parts of understanding how you communicate and understand why we’re here and who you are.

And that’s why history is so important. When I first started out academically, I wanted to be a PhD in history because I needed to understand the past and the contradictions of the past. And understand the contradictions, you understand that nothing’s written in stone. Existence is struggle. It always has been, always will be. Utopian perfection is a great idea, but then pass me the joint [laughs]. 

So, I think that that concept is extremely critical to our understanding, which is why when you’re doing a program, when you’re interviewing people, you really have to step back. And everything you do is fueled by your own life. You can’t help that. But you have to step back and really listen to what people are saying so you can bring out their truth so others can wrestle with it. And if they need confronting in that process, you confront it and push back.

Which is why when I think about what we do and how important it is, we have a critical role to play in bringing understanding to the world. The truth lives in every corner and you have to listen. No one has a hold on it.

MICHAEL FOX:  Marc, is there anything else to add that you think is important about your time organizing, your time in theater, your time on the radio and its relationship to our right to speak up, our right to stand up, to speak our voice and to push for a better America?

MARC STEINER:  I go back in my head to what happened in the South and the Civil Rights Movement, which was a terrifying moment and a moment of absolute oppression. The battle for free speech that took place in the South, as I said earlier, there’s no mistake that the people who launched that battle on the West Coast were civil rights workers first and brought that idea and intellect to the movement. And we’re facing a moment again, and it’s a little different. I think we’re politically facing the most dangerous moment in my lifetime politically where the right is seizing power across the country and the racist right is seizing power.

And that now the battle for free speech is more critical than ever. We cannot let them take it away, and we have to stand up to that, tell the stories we have to tell, put it out there in every medium we can find and fight for the right to speak our minds which will be taken away from us if we don’t. That’s what we face right now. Trump is not the problem. It’s those around him that created this monster that are the problem. 

So, now from the street corner to work at Real News to other places around the country, this is where the critical work is being done. The right to speak our mind is a fundamental right in this country. We can’t let it go. We can’t let it be taken away. We can’t be pushed into a corner to fear standing up to tell the truth and to speak out.

This is Mario Savio and free speech movement on steroids, what we face at this moment. The reason that we started the underground newspapers in the ’60s where we had the Washington Free Press, where we had all the other papers around the country, was because we pushed free speech to its limits, which we had to. And we have to do it again.

Look, I’m old. Who knows, I mean, when you hit 80, you can be here a year, six months, 10 years, 15, who the fuck knows. Pardon my French again. But we have in this battle is to save this future for our children. We can’t let our freedom of speech be taken away from us. It’s at the heart of all of our freedoms. 

I did a lot of work writing and research years back on the founding fathers of this country and writing the Constitution. And it dovetailed, unknowingly to me at the moment, with my relationship with the Indigenous world. When you read some of the stuff from the 18th century, a lot of the belief in democracy did not just come from England or France, from right here, among the Iroquois, among the five civilized tribes that were the most democratic nations on the planet Earth just about. They’re the ones who taught the white colonies what it meant to be free, what it meant to be a democracy, and what it meant to let people speak their minds and say what they had to say without being ridiculed. 

And I think that’s an important lesson for us to learn that authoritarianism was brought to us by some crazy people from overseas in Europe and other places, but the fundamental basic fights for freedom are here, and they’re based on the fights [for] the abolition of slavery. All those are the roots of our freedom of speech. And we have to be really strong to stand up, to fight, and keep that freedom and push back the oppressors who are at the door.

MICHAEL FOX:  Amazing, Marc. Thank you so much, my friend.

MARC STEINER:  Always good to talk with you, man. I really love doing stuff with you.

MICHAEL FOX:  You too.

MARC STEINER:  It’s always great.

MICHAEL FOX:  It’s fantastic.

MARC STEINER:  Your work, everything else. Yeah. Always.

MICHAEL FOX:  Hi, folks. Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox. That is all for The Battle for Free Speech. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and I hope you enjoyed this series. It’s been such an honor and a pleasure making it. Thank you so much for listening and caring about this podcast. You can show your support by subscribing, leaving a comment or a review in your podcasting app, and by telling a friend. It really helps to spread the word about the show and the state of free speech in the United States today.

Before I go, let me just say that we will be rolling out some incredible bonus episodes in the coming weeks. Please check those out. We’ll be bringing you some full interviews with people who I featured in this podcast as well as some more on-the-ground reporting which I just wasn’t able to fit into the official series.

If you’d like to find more about The Battle for Free Speech and my work on other podcasts, you can find me at patreon.com/mfox. There you can also support my work, become a monthly sustainer, or sign up to stay abreast of all the latest on this podcast and my other reporting in the United States and across Latin America. You can find links to more of Marc Steiner’s work in the show notes or just search for The Marc Steiner Show. He has a ton of content out there from over his many years of journalism.

As this is the final episode of this series, I want to thank everyone who sat down with me over the last year and everyone who I spoke with on the streets. I am grateful for your insight, knowledge, and understanding. A huge thanks to all my supporters on Patreon and everyone who kicked in over the last year to help fund my reporting for this podcast and my other work. In particular, Judy Hughes and Michael and Mary Anne Fox. You are amazing. Many thanks to my musician friends, Jordan Klein and Daniel Nuñez who helped me to create the theme music for this series. Other music was from Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. Many, many thanks to my intern and research assistant on this podcast, Ben Schweiger. He just graduated from the University of Colorado. If you are listening and you need research support, please hire him. His LinkedIn is in the show notes. 

To the team at The Real News, y’all are amazing. Tremendous thanks to Stephen Frank for his excellent sound design and production work. Huge thanks to Kayla Rivara, Max Alvarez, Jocelyn Dombroski, and also Heather Geis for your stellar editorial support. David Hebden and Cameron Granadino in the studio, you guys are amazing. Rosette Sewali, James Daley, and Ryan Johnson, thank you for everything online. Jonathan Keen, thanks for believing in my work and this project. 

In particular, I want to send a special shout out to my co-hosts who joined me over these episodes including Taya Graham, Mansa Musa, Max Alvarez, and Laura Flanders. It was incredible to speak with each of you. Thank you so much for taking the time and for all that you do. 

And above all else, thank you Marc Steiner for joining me on this endeavor. It’s been a pleasure to develop this idea into fruition, and it’s been an honor to work with you on this series. I’ve learned so much. 

The Battle for Free Speech is a production of The Real News. Please make sure to sign up for The Real News Network’s newsletter so you never miss an episode. You can find that at therealnews.com. Thanks for listening. Please keep an eye out for those bonus episodes. See you next time.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Welcome back to the Real News Network. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. The 2026 World Cup is now officially over after Spain defeated Argentina in the final match on Sunday. And for many of us around the US and around the world, the World Cup was a very welcome distraction from the ambient awfulness and doom and the daily delugion overwhelm of relentless war, corruption, fascism and disaster. But the games were also an uncomfortable reminder that no matter how much we love sports and the global spectacle of the World Cup, no matter how much we want them to be an escape from politics and the pain of living in a broken society, there’s just no way to truly escape those things. And the manufactured illusion that sports are somehow an escape from political reality is just that, an illusion. So what do we do with that? How do we square our love for sports and all the beautiful things and experiences that we get from sports with all these gross, exploitative and societally destructive facets of sports today?

Hat does it mean to love sports in a disenchanted age of authoritarians, war and climate catastrophe? These are the kinds of questions that I got to dig into with legendary sports writers, book authors and real news contributors, Dave Zyron and Jules Boykoff at a live event that we hosted at Chilo’s Bar in Brooklyn, New York, just days before the World Cup final. And what you’re about to listen to is the audio recording of our discussion for that live event.

The name of this event is Loving Sports in an Age of Authoritarians. And we’ll get to the authoritarians by way of this first question, but it’s so much bigger than just any one authoritarian. How do we continue to love sports and the other things that we love when everything that we know is burning around us literally? We had to move this event inside because the fires in Ontario that literally wiped a First Nation off the map are making the air toxic to breathe. So how do we continue loving sports in a time like that? Dave Zirin, softball to you.

Dave Zirin:

Well, first of all, I wasn’t told there would be science at this event. Second, very quick joke my grandfather once told me that tries to answer that very heavy question. Guy goes to visit a buddy. Buddy opens the door. His buddy is naked wearing a top hat. And he said, “Dude, why are you naked?” And he said, “Nobody visits me. ” And then he says, “Then why are you wearing a top hat?” And he said, “Someone might visit.” And that’s how I feel about sports and the environment.

Let me make that leap for a second. It’s because we are in trouble. Dude is naked. Everything is out in the open. We can’t breathe outside for goodness sakes. And yet sports presents this face like everything’s okay. Look at these incredibly fit young people running around the field, loving the fresh air on the greenfield and then off the field you have environmental catastrophe. And we need to be able to reckon with that because honestly, we’re not going to have outdoor sports. We’re not going to have winter sports unless we do something about this environment. And frankly, I think that’s a way to reach sports fans is to say to them, if you really care about sports, then you’re going to care about climate change. If you really care about sports, then you should care about fossil fuels. You should care about the World Cup and the kind of footprint it puts down on our world just by the wealthiest of the wealthy flying their private planes into these different cities.

So I think it’s really important that we have one eye in the environment of all time and not just to save humanity, but actually let’s talk to sports fans and say, if you really want to save sports, you’re going to be on this side of the question too. And so that’s the top hat, that’s the naked guy. I don’t think I made the connection, but we try.

Jules Boykoff:

Love it, love it, love it. So on the topic of climate change and this World Cup, a couple quick facts. This is the most polluting World Cup in the history of men’s World Cups or women’s World Cups. And that’s because FIFA decided to hold it in three countries and include 48 teams, which is more than ever up from 32. And also because one of the countries, the United States, just doesn’t have a good train system to get people around. So everybody, if you want to get from Kansas City to your next game in San Francisco, you basically have to fly. So the lower end estimates are like nine million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and that’s a low estimate. Meanwhile, we got Giannian Fontino out here on his private jet crisscrossing North America. Yeah, thank you. Big boo for Giannian Fontino. And he even went to Qatar for a funeral the other day and then zipped back.

So the leadership is very much not coming from the top. But to build off what Dave was saying, I’m really interested in this idea that we can be more politically effective sometimes by being less explicitly political. And we’re living in a moment where we sort of have two models of that happening simultaneously. In New York City, since we’re here, I’ll mention Zoran Mamdani. Where was he watching a football match, soccer match yesterday or the other day in a local prison? And opening up conversations about kind of what that means, what’s the life of an incarcerated person? How can we bring sports into their lives as a positive? Then you have on the other side, one of the big topics of my book, which is Donald Trump and how he is the president in the United States that has used sports to his political advantage more than any in the modern era.

So we have two models of using sports toward political aims while not necessarily being explicitly political. And the last thing I’ll just say on this question is I’m wearing a Bosnia shirt. I was in Bosnia recently. I spent more than a month in Sarajevo and it was an exciting time to be there because the team had just qualified for the World Cup for the first time in a long time. The energy was really good in the city. And when I was there, I went to the Genocide Museum. And what struck me about the place was that there were so many exhibits at the museum that talked about the importance of soccer. There was one that literally was titled Soccer Saved My Life. There was another that talked about people in Shrebanitza that were huddling around a black and white television during the 1994 World Cup watching Roberto Baggio and getting this glimmer of joy in an increasingly difficult time for them.

So if they can do it in Bosnia and stick with sports and figure out how to use sports to their political advantage, and they’re definitely doing that in Bosnia, we can surely come together to attack the issue of climate change through sport with everyday people and talk about how it affects their everyday lives.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah. Two quick thoughts or a thought and a question. Thought because I couldn’t agree with you more, Jules, about we can be more politically effective by being less obsessed with politics. And I really identify with what you said there because this is a question I get all the time as someone who goes around interviewing just regular working people across the political spectrum around this country every week. And people come up to me, they’re like, “How do you do it? How do you talk to people? ” I’m going to answer that question for all of you right now. Just be a person. Just don’t be weird. Just be chill. Just be interested in other people. I don’t know how to explain that. It’s just like you don’t got to beat people over the head with politics. Just talk to them as human beings, connect on what you connect on and go from there.

And for a lot of us, that is sports. I have some of the deepest political conversations with my buddies that I grew up with back home who live very different lives than I do or like the guys I worked in the warehouses and factories and restaurants with than I’ve had in academia. Because you start with sports and then you get into some real heavy shit real quick. So I couldn’t endorse that more. And to get spicy for a second, because again, this is a live bar debate. I want to push you both on the question of sports and climate because everything you said really resonated with me. But sports is also one of the most important cultural dream manufacturing or false dream manufacturing mechanisms that we have in society. And sports is where people are being trained to see that you can just build a dome and play in freezing weather or blazing heat.

So what do you say to someone who says, “Hey, we could have a World Cup in Qatar. It doesn’t matter how many brown people die to make it happen, but why don’t we just do that? “

Dave Zirin:

That’s a great question. I would say to the person, first of all, you think we’re having a sports conversation? We’re actually having a politics conversation Because you’re talking about a set of political priorities that are not in the best interest of the people in Qatar or on the world if you think that that’s the way sports is going to be sustainable. I would say to them that what you are promoting is an incredibly elitist view of sports where the only people who really get to play are the super professionals who are in this climate controlled atmosphere because they can produce profit while the rest of us just become watchers. And honestly, we have too much of that in this country right now.This is the statistic I hate the most. 60% of kids who play youth sports quit by the age of 12. And when they’re asked why they quit at the age of 12, it’s always because they’re told that they’re not good enough to keep playing when they’re 13, 14, 15.

And so then they become either the watchers or they become alienated from things like exercise, community, frankly, some of the things that make life worth living. And so sports should never be the province of experts. It should never be the province of the super skilled. Sports should be for everyone as a baseline for what we’re arguing for in this country. Sports for all. And so people who make the climate controlled argument are actually arguing sports for few. So I would be calling them out. You’re actually making a political argument that is actually not only dooming humanity, but it’s dooming our kids to a life of actually being alienated from what makes life worth living.

Jules Boykoff:

Yeah. Absolutely. So I think that the sports world needs to grapple with this idea of the mega. We’re now living in the era – Not the mega.

And that too, actually. Okay. But the mega, M-E-G-A. What I mean is we’re living in this moment of the VVIP, this new thing, the very, very important person. We’re also living in the era of the mega, mega sporting event. And the truth of the matter is this is not at all. It’s like an oxymoron to call it mega event sustainable. It’s just never going to be that. And so we need to have conversations about how do you reduce the size? Gianni and Fontino talked about making the next World Cup 64 teams instead of 48 teams, which will just make worse what we’re talking about right now. And they’ll come back at us when we say, “Oh, well, how about just going back to 32 or at least just keeping it at 48?” They’ll say, “Oh, but we’re trying to include more teams.” And of course that’s true, but right behind it is bubbling their cauldron of money and that’s all to their benefit to have more teams, more games, more $30 million per game went into FIFA coffers at each one of these games just from tickets alone.

So the truth of the matter is that they’re kind of actually giving an argument that’s both weak and somewhat trying to seem like they’re not racist, but actually are racist. And here’s what I mean. They’ll point to teams like Kate Vaird who was wonderful. If you didn’t watch the World Cup, they were one of the most exciting stories. And they’re like, “Oh, do you want to not include Cape Vaird at the World Cup now after these wonderful stories of all their triumphs?” Cape Vaird finished first in their group. They were coming to the tournament, whether there was 32 teams, maybe even 24 teams. So don’t tell me Cape Verde wasn’t qualifying. They’re a legit team. A lot of soccer people weren’t at all surprised. So thinking about how do we both make it more of a public good sports, but also shrinking it and moving some of the money from the shrinkage to what you’re talking about, addressing the fact that so many kids drop outs too early because that’s a tragedy.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, let’s stick on that for a second. I love the sports for all in sports is a public good. So sticking with the bar debate theme, in the socialist utopia, what is the world of professional sports going to look like? Are sports teams going to be publicly owned utilities? What is the better version of this shit look like that can still retain the things that we love, but isn’t draped in all this awful shitty stuff that makes us hate the things we love?

Dave Zirin:

Yeah. I mean, for sports in a socialist utopia. I mean, first I’d be so happy in the socialist utopia. I’d be like, “Oh yeah, there’s sports on. Cool.” Which would be sort of like the opposite of my current life, which is, “Oh, there’s sports on. Good. The world is burning. Ah, sports is on. ” So I think it would take that and sort of stand it on its head, which would be nice, I must say. But I think more than anything, I mean, there are things that are wrong with the sports world now that I could say in even a democratic, socialist, capitalist country, we’re going to do away with the public funding of stadiums and saying like, “Look, you’re a billionaire, James Dolan. You want refurbishing a Madison Square Garden? Find the money between the cushions of your couch and take care of it.

Don’t ask the taxpayers to do it for you. ” So real demands like that. Second of all, if even $1 of public money goes into a sports team or a stadium, guess what? That team becomes $1 public. So it’s like the more public money that goes in, the more we own the teams. And if they want all the money for their stadiums, guess what? Your team has just become the most effective public utility in the city of New York. Congratulations, you’re making the city billions. Our schools are now funded. All is good. And I’m so sorry, James Dolan, you only get one yacht, but somehow I think you’ll survive. James Dolan’s son, by the way, 32 years old, is now in charge of the New York Rangers. I think that makes him the first grand Nepo baby in doing that. So horrible people. Just the worst.

And one other thing I would say is I think this idea of sports for all, we can be very specific for people right now of what that means. It’s not just about ability. It’s an anti-racist argument. It’s an anti-sexist argument. It’s an anti-anti-poor people argument who are denied sports, denied physical education in so many public schools. We would have full funding for physical education throughout the country. And I think this is very vital. We would never in any sort of just society tell our transgender family that they have no place on the playing field, which is the official position, by the way, of this government and the International Olympic Committee. So there’s so much we can do. And this could be the sort of thing where we have on a whiteboard behind me with a pen, with a dry erase, be like, “What actually do you hate about sports?

Hat makes it hard for you to love sports? And what about the corporate control do you hate? What about the bigotry do you hate? Native American mascotry, let us know. ” And those are actually the things we can begin to check off and say, “Let’s have a better sports world, sports for all, sports in the name of justice and sports in the name of fun.”

Absolutely.

Jules Boykoff:

Absolutely. And now is a perfectly opportune time to try some of these things where you have owners of football clubs, soccer clubs in places like Vancouver, Canada that it’s rare that you see an owner advertising their own lack of skills saying, “I can’t possibly run this club unless I get a huge infusion of public money.” At a time when you’ve got people like Avi Lewis in Canada, political leader talking about re-nationalizing some industries, this is a perfect moment for doing that with a football club. Why not experiment? We tried to do this in Portland, Oregon where I usually live. When the owners of the team, a guy named Henry Paulson, former treasury secretary under George W. Bush and his son, Dave loves this, his name is Merritt Paulson.

Dave Zirin:

He’s like, “That’s made up. Come on. Son of a billionaire is named Merritt. Come on now.” Yeah,

Jules Boykoff:

It’s –

Maximillian Alvarez:

Just like meritocracy’s made up.

Dave Zirin:

Yeah, that’s a great point.

Jules Boykoff:

So many years ago when Portland got a major league soccer team, they were asking for $85 million in public money to refurbish the stadium. $85 million. That was going to come out of the budget where we fill our potholes. Some of it was going to schools, homeless services, you name it. And a lot of people fought back. Actually, Dave Zyron came to town and fought back next to us. And we didn’t totally win the struggle. They didn’t get $85 million. Instead, they got $12.9 million from a special tax from the Portland Trailblazers. So it was like sport to sport. But we did have a good conversation about what a publicly owned team could look like. And I just cannot wait to get fully behind the city that decides to go for it. I think Vancouver’s a possibility, but anywhere that happens, I want to be there trying to do what we can to help.

Hell

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah. Hell yeah. I love this. And we’re doing good on time so far, but I did want to give everyone their mandatory. FIFA is requiring that I let you know that this is your hydration break. So please go to the bar, stay hydrated, stay safe.

We’re going to get to and zero in on the World Cup, the authoritarians and the stink of Trump on the Knicks NBA finals victory. But by way of getting there, I want to focus in on again, another aspect of the sports for all discussion that really doesn’t get talked enough about, especially in leftist spaces, but I don’t think at all. Because the only time we’re talking about youth sports these days is when a bunch of weirdos obsess over the genitals of some of our children who are playing them. And that’s not what youth sports was to me. It was my life. It was like the place where I found my motivation, where I learned to work on a team where my dad coached my brothers and then he coached me. It was like youth sports so much a part of me and will always be a part of me.

And the older I’ve gotten and especially after I blew out my knee playing basketball and I lost basketball, the thing that I had played three to four times a week every week for my whole life, like countless hours in the driveway with my dad and my brothers was gone. And I’ve realized since that a huge chunk of my life was gone after that. Where else in my life do I walk up to strangers and say, “Hey, you got next? Can I play with you? ” And then you play with people that you don’t know. You have to learn in a finite space with rules quickly what everyone’s strengths and weaknesses are accomplishing a shared goal or not. It’s such a rarefied space and experience that I think so many of us need, whether it’s in organized sports or just more play. And so I wanted to throw this to you guys because I don’t think I get to hear you talk enough about the human good of sport beyond just the professional sports world and capitalist shit show that most people see on their TVs.

Dave Zirin:

Oh man. So what I love about sports, I mean, oh man, I had to give a toast for my dad on his 80th birthday. And I was trying to think of what do I possibly say about this 80-year-old guy who’s had such an impact on my life? And the first thing that came to my head is like, when did my dad ever mean the most to me in my entire life? And it was like, when was this moment? Because my parents were divorced. I saw my dad like four days a month growing up. So it’s like where was that real spot for us? And it was game six, 1986 World Series, Mookie Wilson, Ground Ball, Bill Buckner’s legs. You’d say to a baseball fan, game six, that’s all you have to say. And they know what you’re talking about. My dad took me there and I still have the ticket stub.

It says $15 to go to the best World Series game. And he got that ticket not by getting on his phone because back then phones were these mammoth contraptions attached to walls, but he got it by waiting online at Shea Stadium. And we got to go to this game and then we got the game of all games. And when that ball went through Bill Buckner’s legs, I went from being happier than I could ever remember being to being terrified because that stadium got so loud and grownups got so crazy. And that was before they stopped selling beer after the seventh inning. And we’re in extra innings at this point. And my dad just put his arm around me and held me close. And it was a moment where I never felt both more imperiled and then more safe in a moment. And I feel like there’s something about…

And that kind of hooked me for life on sports. Playing basketball for the New York City fighting Quakers in high school is also an experience unto itself. You didn’t want to mess with the fight in Quakers. And me being a five foot 10 inch center for that team.

Maximillian Alvarez:

They called you white chocolate thunder?

Dave Zirin:

They called me, why the hell is he here? The one story I’ll tell is I was playing one game against a freshman for Rice named Felipe Lopez who went on to become the number one recruited player in the country. He was in ninth grade. I was in 11th grade. That was their JV. They were playing our varsity. And I shot the ball and Felipe blocked it to half court, literally to half court. And the whole crowd goes. And I hung my head. I was so embarrassed. And he put his arm around me and walked me to half court and was just like, “It’s okay, man. I do that to everybody. Do not take it personal.”

And I met him as a sports writer. I met him 20 years later and I said, “Yo man, you blocked my shot to half court and then you put your arm around me. It’s a memory I’ll never forget.” And he looked at me and he said, “Yeah, I don’t remember that at all. ” And I was like, “Oh.” And he said, “You got to understand, I just blocked a lot of people. ” That was kind of my move. And I was like, “Okay, all good still.” So that’s why I love sports. I chose to show rather than tell. I love it. I love it. But you give me a good moment in a rocky relationship with my dad or a great moment and you give me Felipe Lopez blocking my shot, couldn’t be happier. That’s amazing.

Jules Boykoff:

So I’m really interested in when creative people who don’t necessarily consider themselves athletes engage the space of sports, bringing their creativity to it. And one of my favorite places for this is roller derby in Portland, Oregon where I live, where from the names that people adopt that are freighted with beautiful politics and fight back in them to the very format of the event and to the very nature of its inclusion, because trans folks are always included on the skating rink in Portland, Oregon. It’s a really big part of the culture. Not only that, it’s also a great chance for fundraising for those kind of causes at the local level. So I’m always about how can we use creative people’s minds to come up with new ways of doing things? How can we have the soccer fields open in New York City all night long, which has been happening recently during the World Cup?

Maybe the World Cup is just an entry into having that be something that we do more often. We’ve heard about midnight basketball. I love this idea of midnight soccer as well. So I just think that to build off what you’re saying, this is a really fruitful area where we can all come together and think collectively and make some really magical things happen for sure.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Hell

Dave Zirin:

Yeah. Jules, how do you not say that you played pro soccer? I was

Maximillian Alvarez:

Going to say you’re bearing the lead, bro.

Dave Zirin:

Just give everybody your resume. I said I played basketball for the fight in Quakers. I’m not saying you can total that, but you should try.

Jules Boykoff:

No, it’s true. I did play soccer for a big part of my life. And honestly, that is one of the many reasons why I think it’s worth fighting for. I had a nice professional soccer career and I also played for the US under 23 men’s national soccer team. Although before you get too excited about that, the last international match that I played for the US national soccer team at the U23 level was literally against the Soviet Union. But yeah, I mean, I’m not proud necessarily of who I was back then because I was an absolute maniac in ways that weren’t always good for me and the people around me, but it is definitely part of my life.

Dave Zirin:

But you stuck it to Khrushchev. And for that, America, thanks you, sir.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Thank you for your service. Well, I really appreciate you guys going with me and sharing that because I thought that was so powerful and again, made me feel closer to you in a way that our discussions about politics haven’t. And I think that’s kind of the point of why we’re all here. But I think it’s also really important to share with others out there, even those in our lives who don’t get why we love sports. And it’s not because we just are okay with ignoring all of the military jets flying over or Donald Trump’s bulletproof bullshit, a booth at the Knicks game. It’s that this thing we’ve loved for so long and have carried into our love for watching it and others do it. We’re holding onto that while it’s getting shrouded in so much crap. And that just makes it complicated for I think a lot of us.

But let’s sort of take that into the vibe and time that we’re in now where a lot of us are struggling with that, be it this great city during a game that was so special to it that Donald Trump put his stink on or folks around the world who loved the World Cup and have now know what that stink smells like and so much else. So let’s talk about the big title of the event here.First, how do we carry that love into sports today, especially the World Cup in a time like the one that we’re living in now?

Dave Zirin:

Wow. It’s a great question. I mean, the number one thing I say is like, look, the Knicks were ours long before they were the property of the Dawn family. That’s our team, not theirs. At best, they are renting it. It’s our team, not the team of somebody who got married at Mar-a-Lago, whose kid got married at Mar-a-Lago, who’s trying to change the name of Penn Station to Trump Penn Station and who’s given Trump millions of dollars throughout his political career. And even the worst indictment of all counts Donald Trump as a close personal friend. So these are all reasons to say, wait a minute, you’re not part of what we just want. And something you didn’t really get on TV during the parade, which I was at, I mean for the Knicks, by the way, Knicks in five, just throwing that out there, is that it was so raucous.

People were so incredibly pumped and enthused. And Mayor Mamdani, he gets up there and he does a sports speech that rivals like the Al Pacino speech in any given Sunday where he’s like, “Your claw for that inch.” The Pacino, your fingers plead for that inch. And here’s Mamdani up there. He’s saying like, “They gave us a 0.4% chance of winning when we were down 29. That’s what the statistician said. Well, guess what? You tell New Yorkers they have a 0.4% 10% chance they say, “Why are you giving me a head start?” I mean, I’m hearing this and I’m like, “Yeah, let me bash my head through the TV screen right now.” And then James Dolan gets up there and it was the only time of the whole day they cut this at people booed when he got up there. Here’s the Knicks winning the championship and people booed the owner.

And he gets up there and he says something completely snarky about Mamdani and it just didn’t fly. But that’s just to say it shows his alienation from the vibe and mood of the city. And if he wasn’t alienated from how this city was really feeling, he would never have invited Donald Trump to be there at game three when we finally had a home game in a finals at MSG in 27 years. That’s when you invite Donald Trump so it can be all about him and not the people themselves. Give me a break. And of course that’s the one game they lose in the last three rounds of the playoffs. But what’s so amazing about it is that people sort of get that. And then when he doubled up with the US Men’s World Cup team and tried to rig things for them, it’s that stink that he brings to the table.

My buddy calls what Trump does, he calls it athletic fracking environment. He doesn’t like sports at all. He wants to drill into it, destroy it, destroy everything around it if he can just get a drop of political benefit. So athletic fracking would not exist in a socialist utopia of a society. And frankly, in any sort of utopia, whatever you want to brand it, Donald Trump and the Trump family wouldn’t exist either. Or at the very least they’d be, shall we say, put in their place. But just one thing before I pass this to Jules, I got to tell a story about a very quick conversation I had with Lev in the back in the orange shirt, just to give you an idea about what sports could mean. If I could, he’s in the orang shirt.

And I’ll be real quick. I’ve been having a difficult year, if you will, or a decade, whatever you want to call it. And I was sitting with Lev the other day and I said to Lev, I said, “The last couple of months have actually been a lot better. I’m feeling really good. I don’t know why that is, but I’m just really doing better.” And Lev’s silent for a second and he just looks at me and he says, “The Knicks.” And I realized he was fucking right that having this run had this animating effect on so many other things in my life. And that’s, I guess in some ways that makes me just a weirdo, a diehard fan, somebody off the beam, whatever you want to call it. But I think it also kind of made me feel human for a second because it’s like I felt connected with the city in a way that I hadn’t, honestly, since nine eleven, but instead of it being this moment of abject tragedy, it was a moment of joy.

Jules Boykoff:

Wow. That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And Jules, if I may, just to throw a little extra bit of sauce before you hop in, it’s not just Trump, right? It’s Kash Patel jumping around like an idiot with the men’s hockey team. As someone who you wore that jersey, does that piss you off? I mean, we don’t ever get to hear from your side of that.

Jules Boykoff:

Yeah. We often don’t get to hear from the athlete side of things despite the fact that they’ve got social media at their fingertips. There’s often a hesitancy to push back at things like ash Patel. And I think you make a good point, although the Trump curse is very real. I mean, talk to Harry Kane about it. He went golfing 18 months ago.

Dave Zirin:

And people were blaming Trump for them

Jules Boykoff:

Losing. Well, then he didn’t score after it was about the golf. I’m saying the Trump curse has many, many forms there. But yes –

Maximillian Alvarez:

Dave calls it the reverse Midas Touch. Absolutely. And that it is.

Dave Zirin:

I tried calling it the Trump Taint, but for a lot of reasons, not just… My editor at the nation was like, “No. We’re not doing that. “

Jules Boykoff:

Yeah. Very good call. Very good call. By the way. But you do make the really important point that it’s not just Trump himself and the Trump curse. It’s the Trump administration that is really doing this sort of athletic fracking that you’re talking about. The Cash Patel’s a really good example from the recent Olympics and the hockey team and sort of attaching themselves like a barnacle on the side of the ship that won that gold medal. But I mean, you’ve even seen during this World Cup a number of instances that maybe aren’t as high profile. Everyone knows about the Fuller and Balagun red card that President Trump made some phone calls to his BFF over at FIFA, Gianni and Fontino. And lo and behold, the thing gets overturned first time during a World Cup since 1962. The predecessor using that rule was Christiano Ronaldo a few months ago so that he could play in the World Cup because they wanted him even though he has credible allegations of rape in the United States against him.

So it was a horrible thing there all around. But what I’m trying to say is that it’s not just Trump, it’s also the administration. Think about the Department of Homeland Security during this very event. After the United States beat Australia, they went on Twitter, DHS did, and they posted two really interesting and terrifying tweets. One of them had three of the players on the tweet, a picture of them. And then behind them it said one homeland. It was basically short of just saying blood and soil. And it was like total pure fascism. And experts in fascism jumped up and said, “Wow, that sounds like a lot like a phrase that Nazis would’ve said.” And then they actually traced it out and it was very similar to a phrase used during World War II by Nazis. And I think it’s really interesting for a number of reasons and obviously disturbing for a number of reasons.

But if you’re going to talk about sportswashing, and I do talk about sportswashing in the book and more widely, and so maybe I should just define my term really quickly before I go into it for a sec. But sportswashing for me is when political leaders use sports to try to deflect attention from chronic social problems and human rights woes at home, to try to look important or legitimate on the world stage and to set themselves up for political, economic, sometimes diplomatic advancement. And a lot of people don’t like the term because of the way it’s been used in the past, which quite frankly has been done in an ethnocentric, if not xenophobic fashion where they say it’s those countries over there, Russia, China, Qatar that engages in sportswashing, but we are a democracy so it couldn’t possibly happen here. So part of the argument in the book is that even places that consider themselves democracies can very much engage in sportswashing.

But what is Trump doing here in terms of is he trying to… Does sportswashing work? When people talk about does sportswashing work, a lot of times they mean does it work on an international audience? And the truth is Trump has very little interest in having sportswashing work on an international audience. He makes it clear with his actions. He doesn’t care what Europe thinks, Africa thinks, Asia, Latin America. He doesn’t care what they all think. But that sometimes misses the key audience of people in this country who I think are the prime audience for Trumpian sportswashing and for the DHS tweets. And when Trump keeps the Somali referee, Omar Abdul-Kadir Artan out of the country, he doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks and they very much didn’t like it. But he likes the fact that the MAGA base sees a guy sticking it to a Somali person who, as you’ll know, he talked as trash and garbage in the past.

So when all these things are happening, if you look at it through the lens of Trump trying to cater to people here in this country ahead of a key election, everything starts to make a lot more sense through the lens of sportswashing. And so I think it also gives us this incredible opportunity to see things with clarity and to also kind of figure out how we’re going to push back against these things.

Dave Zirin:

Very nicely said.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah. Beautifully, powerfully put. And as we sort of make the final turn here, I want to end with looking ahead to Sunday. But by way of getting there, let’s look back on the path to this Sunday with the World Cup finals. There’s been a whole lot of… Again, the theme of the night is how do you hold onto the thing that you love when the stink is all around you and everything is corrupting it? The whole world has been asking itself that question over the past month as they’ve been dealing with the Ronaldo stuff, the bracket like stuff, and the very fact that the two teams in the finals now were like sort of, it was impossible for them to face each other until now. And that feels in retrospect like kind of shady, the Egypt game.

Jules Boykoff:

There’s

Maximillian Alvarez:

So much that people have had to sort of work through with that stink, including the Donald Trump, the infamous Donald Trump call. So let’s take a look back at that really quick. And I wanted to ask you guys your hottest takes on the hottest controversies of this World Cup that have sort of brought that stink that we’re dealing with here in the US to a full-blown international scale.

Dave Zirin:

The hottest World Cuptake that I’ll have, first of all, is rooting for Argentina because of Diego Maridona, which was 40 years ago. It’s like, come on. That can’t be your reason for rooting for Argentina, is Diego Maridona. I think I want Argentina to lose. There are rumors that Jewels is pro Argentina.

Maximillian Alvarez:

You got to save it. That’s the

Dave Zirin:

Final

Maximillian Alvarez:

Question. That’s

Dave Zirin:

The final statement. I won’t go there. Then I won’t go there. I’m just going to say I love doing that to you. I’ve known Jewels a long time. But my number one hottest take from this World Cup is anybody who says that if the US’s best athletes just played soccer, like if LeBron James played goalie, then the US would win every World Cup I think is incredibly insulting to people who actually play soccer. The reason why the US doesn’t do better straight up is that the pipeline is a country club and it costs so much money to play youth sports. In this country does it different than every other country? The reason why a country of 300 million people that has a large imigrant population that is sports obsessed can’t field a halfway decent World Cup team. It’s because the way we do it in this country is pay to play.

You want to be trained at the top clubs? You better have minimum 10 grand on the table for your kid. And Lord knows how much under the table to make sure your kid gets those positions. As long as that’s the case, this country will always suck at soccer. So the next time someone says to you, “Why doesn’t the US do better at soccer?” Y’all would just look at him and be like, “Because of the way this country practices capitalism.” And if you’re not practicing soccer as a democratic socialist exercise, your team is going to suck. And that’s why the US sucks.

Jules Boykoff:

Do you want to argue for Argentina or for Spain though? Do you want to give your argument? No, go.

Maximillian Alvarez:

No,

Jules Boykoff:

That’s

Maximillian Alvarez:

The last

Jules Boykoff:

Question. Oh, that’s the last question. So I recently had the good fortune of interviewing this man named Timu Furulhom. Timu Furlholm played for the Finnish national men’s soccer team. And the thing that’s interesting about him is that after his career, he’s now become a member of the National Parliament in Finland as a leftist. He’s part of the Left Alliance. Now you’ll know that soccer has a pretty notorious history of soccer players turned politicians that are right wingers, including your buddy Romario from Brazil who started as a socialist on the left and kind of eked his way over and finally endorsed Bolsonaro at one point.

Dave Zirin:

My dear friend.

Jules Boykoff:

Your dear friend Romario. And so I was talking to him and we were talking about sort of the system in Finland and how the soccer system there was so different and how it was bricked into society in a way that’s not the country club soccer circuit that Dave so nicely described. And I was asking him about Finland is the happiest country in the world year after year. And instantly I could tell it was a bad question. He’s like, “Oh God, I’m so sick of hearing about that. ” And he said, he goes, “The thing about Finland is that we don’t try to take the moon from the skies. We want everybody to be able to play sports at whatever level they want. We want people to be able to go to music concerts and experience culture for free and easily.” And he also added, “We also want people to be able to take a one week trip to the Canary Islands every year,” which I thought, “Okay.”

Maximillian Alvarez:

Throw that in

Jules Boykoff:

There. That’s fine. Yeah. But I’m just saying there are models out there. I mean, Finland is not at the other end of the universe. And I do think that they provide some ideas for how we could move forward and how we could just have a whole different way of thinking about life and how soccer and culture and soccer’s a big part of culture, how it all kind of fits into one bigger hole. And by the way, before I have to defend Argentina, I just want to say I’ve been backed into a corner, but I’m going to do my damnedest here in a second. Thank

Maximillian Alvarez:

You. Jewels drew the short straw because we were like, “We got to debate. You can’t both root for the same team. So yeah, give it up to Jules for defending the Argentina side of our final celebrity death match here. But we’ve all been watching the World Cup. We got the final coming up on Sunday. None of us are all that excited. It’s Spain versus Argentina. Okay, but let’s make the most of it. So in our final round, which is going to be a genuine debate and the crowd is going to decide who won.

Dave Zirin:

Oh my God.

Maximillian Alvarez:

But again, we’re recognizing that Dave’s got a 0.4 second head start. So as principled leftists or people of conscience, who is the right team to root for this Sunday?

Dave Zirin:

Well, Nixon five, of course. That’s what you say in New York. Get a good response. Look, here’s the thing. I get asked sometimes, why are you always trying to make sports political? This is our escape. This is our fun. Why are you trying to make sports political? And the answer is you can say you don’t believe in gravity when you fall out of an airplane. It doesn’t really matter whether you believe in gravity or not. You’re falling out of an airplane. Whether I say sports are political or not does not change the fact that they are political. It’s just whether we’re going to be quiet about it or not. It’s just if you’re pointing at a building and saying it’s on fire, that doesn’t make you an arsonist. And so to take it to this particular thing, and Jules is going to win this debate because this is soccer.

I’m a visitor on his field here. But to take it this, it’s like the World Cup is political whether we want it to be or not, not just because it’s like nation against nation or whatnot, but this is the last thing that we have that the whole world watches. And that gives it a tremendous amount of power if that can be steered in one direction politically or another. And every single World Cup, at least since the 34 World Cup hosted by Mussolini in Italy, has attempted to use this particular event to steer people politically in one direction or the next. And we have a particularly fraught political battle coming this Sunday because think about it like this, whether Spain wins or whether Argentina wins, the leader of that country will get a boost in the rarest commodity in all of politics in 2026. And that’s hope.

People feel better in a very difficult time. People feel hopeful in a difficult time. Ask Mamdani what it meant to him to have the Knicks win. It actually does make a difference if you have that collective sense of we’re really doing something here. The direction we’re going really matters. So if you agree with me up to that point, then let’s take a quick look at what we’re dealing with. In Spain, the leader is a guy by the name of, I believe, Pedro Sanchez. Pedro Sanchez is a social Democrat. He’s the leader of an organization called the Socialist Workers Party there. They believe in a much progressive stance on immigration. They believe in mass social spending and having a social safety net. And most importantly, they have earned the undying hatred of Donald Trump because they refuse to let their bases be used in the war on Iran.

And the leader of that country, Pedro Sanchez, has called out Israel’s genocide in Gaza and he has refused aid and fuel and military aid that were preexisting contracts to Israel. He pulled because of what was happening in Gaza. So you have to think… Oh, and also he’s in a very polarizing situation where the country loves him, the country hates him. There’s all this going on there. And so you think, okay, what will it mean to this individual if Spain wins? Then you go to Argentina who’s running that place. Good Lord. Good Lord. Someone who genuinely looks like a Muppet named… And I love the Muppet. So that’s the nicest thing I’m going to say about him. Named Javier Miley and Omilei here. If you don’t know him, he’s a good friend of Trump, billionaire. And Israel loves him so much that when Benjamin Netanyahu was asked who he was rooting for in the World Cup, he said Argentina.

And they asked him because of Messi. And he said, not because of Messi, Milei. He’s the superstar. And he is also somebody who’s in a huge corruption scandal. His popularity is plummeting. The country is very polarized. And so then you think what it would mean to Miley if Argentina wins the World Cup. If nothing else, I think if Argentina wins, you’re going to see Miley on the field with Donald Trump holding up the trophy. If Spain wins, Donald Trump will find him. It’ll be probably swimming at the bottom of that algae belching reflecting people in Washington. Have a better time there than at the World Cup if Spain wins. So I say root for Spain because I want to see a world as far away from the vision that Javier Milay has for this world as humanly possible.

Jules Boykoff:

That’s good. That’s good. Really good. Really, really convincing argument. But it could be even more convincing because I have a few other things I want to add to that. No,

Dave Zirin:

You can’t. Get him.

Jules Boykoff:

Well, for starters, there’s a guy on Spain by the name of Lamin Yamal. Magical left foot, beautiful player, and by all appearances a beautiful human being. 19 years

Dave Zirin:

Old.

Jules Boykoff:

19 years old. And his dad’s family’s from Morocco. His mom’s family’s from Equatorial Guinea. And he’s sure to represent every part of his heritage and background in creative and beautiful ways. He also recently, he’s on Barcelona Football Club as well, which recently won La Liga. And at the celebration afterwards on the team bus, he was on the top and he was waving a Palestinian flag. He’s a Muslim man who’s been very outspoken for Palestinian rights. So how do you not like Lamit Yamal? He’s just a lovely human being. On the flip side, over on the Argentina side, there’s a guy named Enzo Fernandez. You might remember him most recently for scoring the first goal against England to equalize 1-1 off an assist from Leonel Messi. That was about the best thing he’s probably done in his life. He’s done some terrible things after the Copa America Tournament recently after they beat Columbia for the title.

He was caught on the bus singing racist songs and singing anti-trans songs right there on the bus.

Dave Zirin:

This is the best debate I’ve ever had. I’m

Jules Boykoff:

Killing it right now. Sorry, go ahead. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. I’m just trying to help you. I’m just trying to help you. Keep cooking. Keep cooking. Because you need a lot of help over there. Keep cooking. Keep coking. So there are so many reasons if you start going down the roster, but there is one reason why you might want to slow down or two reasons why you might want to slow down and have a little bit of sympathy for Argentina. One is the one that Dave just preemptively nixed going after the Meridana factor. I don’t think we can just skim over the surface of that that easy. I mean, this is one of the all time legends of athlete activism in the history of football. Dave, you yourself have written wonderful work, columns about this man. So I don’t think we should just get rid of him into history.

I actually like, unlike some people, I like having history present in a contemporary moment. Diego Meridana. And the other thing is I do have some sympathy for Leo Messi. 39 years old. He’s going to set a record for the most steps walked on the field in a World Cup. He does not run that much. They do not make this man play any defense whatsoever. It’s fun to watch in a sense because he’s just like kind of walking. Then they feed him the ball. It’s not a very complex offensive structure that Argentina’s working with here, especially for a World Cup final. But he’s 39 years old and in some ways an inspiration in that regard. I know he took a bunch of Saudi Arabia money for their tourism. I’ve wrote about that plenty. But I got put in this difficult position of trying to make Argentina look good and I just can’t do it.

Okay? Fine. Those things.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s give it up for Jules Boycott and Dave Zauer and everybody.

Dave Zirin:

Yo, give it up for Max Alvarez and the Real News Network. Kayla Rivera

Maximillian Alvarez:

Too. Where’s Kayla? I don’t even see her. And last, give it up for Chelos Bar again for hosting us. Thank you so much Chelos for having us. Hell yeah. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Real News Network Podcast. Thank you to everyone who came out in person for this incredible event. Thank you to the good folks at Chilos Bar for hosting us. And thank you to Dave Zyran and Jules Boycot for this incredible and incredibly fun and meaningful conversation. We are absolutely going to be doing more in – person events like this in Baltimore, Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York and more. So make sure that you are following us on social media and that you’re subscribed to our newsletter so you don’t miss the next one. And if you want to hear and be part of more important conversations just like this, then we need you to become a supporter of The Real News now.

Share this podcast with people in your circles, your friends, your family, your coworkers, and go to therenews.com/donate and become a supporter today. I promise you guys, it makes all the difference. For The Real News Network, this is Maximillian Alvarez signing off from Baltimore. Take care of yourselves and take care of each other.

A transcript will be provided when ready

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Time is running out to save the life of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital who was abducted by Israel’s military and has been held for over 18 months in Israeli detention without charge and was last seen showing visible signs of extreme torture and medical neglect. His family has issued this plea to people of conscience around the world. Take a listen.

Speaker 2:

My father was unable to breathe. My father was unable to speak. His face was disfigured from the marks of torture and pain, especially after the last court session held in Jerusalem at the Supreme Court. We still call out plead and appeal and beg to all the free people of the world and to everyone with an atom of humanity in their heart to save my father’s life before it’s too late.

Maximillian Alvarez:

The rogue state of Israel has repeatedly ignored the demands and desperate pleas from around the world to free Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. And with us today to tell you what you need to know and what you can do. I’m grateful to be joined today by Dr. Nidal Jboor and Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle, co-founders of the group Doctors Against Genocide. Thank you both so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Can you please start by telling our audience what we know and what we don’t know about the current state of Dr. Abu Safiya and the other doctors and medical workers who are also being held captive by Israel right now?

Dr. Nidal Jboor:

Yeah, I thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for helping us speak about this important topic. And yes, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is one of the greatest human beings that we knew. We consider him a friend. He used to come on our webinars every week to report on the situation in his hospital and on the children that he was treating and trying to protect and save their lives in the hospital. So we consider him one of our own. We know this guy, we can vouch for him. He’s not just a number, he’s not an abstract. He is part of us, part of the medical community and a close friend for us. And he appealed to us and to the whole world to come and save him, save the children, save the other doctors, save the patients in the hospital many times before he got abducted. And we tried our best to share his voice, his appeal.

One of his appeals was even to President Trump just after he got elected before he assumed presidency. But unfortunately we all failed him. We failed the children, we failed the other doctors and they were raided, they were invaded. He was abducted along with many other doctors and nurses and healthcare workers. Many of them got shot. One of them got murdered during that raid. Many of the patients got killed. The others were forced to flee. They also abducted many patients. And since then for more than 560 days now, he’s been enduring the most horrific conditions you can imagine. He lost more than half of his weight. He’s being tortured, he’s been held in solitary confinements for long periods of time. And we have been speaking to everyone trying to help him. But what made this call even more urgent is almost a week ago and after long delays, his lawyer managed to see him and he could not recognize him at all.

He didn’t know that this is the person that we know. He witnessed, and that’s the lawyer testimony, severe signs of torture all over him. And his head, neck, behind his ears, all over his body with fresh bruises, active bleeding. He was not able to sit in the chair to finish the interview. His consciousness was on and off. He reported to the lawyer that they have been beaten him with batons, with hammers, with metal objects, and they are intent on killing him. He’s been there for solitary confinements for more than a few weeks since the Supreme Court of Israel refused to take his case. And the last thing he shared with the lawyer is that I don’t think you’ll see me next time. I don’t think I’ll survive this. They’re killing me. And we sit here as doctors, healthcare workers, human beings all over the world.

Watch a human being being tortured in front of all of our eyes. We failed him once. We don’t want to fail him again. This is not acceptable for any doctor, for any healthcare worker, for any human being. There are all types of absolute prohibition of torture under all international laws, international humanitarian laws, Geneva conventions. And even here in the United States as a medical community, we have all our major organizations, the American Medical Organization, the American Psychiatric Organization, the American Psychological Organization. All of them have resolutions and codes of ethics that absolutely prohibit torture under any circumstances for anyone anywhere, regardless of their chart, regardless of their crime, regardless who they are. And these resolutions have been enacted and passed in the last decade. So in light of this, we will not sit down and watch him being killed. We don’t think any human being deserves to be tortured regardless of who they are, especially someone that we know personally.

We know he’s innocent. We know he did not commit any crime other than refusing to abandon the children he was taking care of. And we are calling upon our major medical organization who are unfortunately until now completely silent on this. They’re betraying their own ethics, their own ethics and codes of conduct that they are imposing on us. And we are demanding that at least to live up and asking them to live up to their own codes of ethics, not anyone else, and to speak up and to issue a statement and to reach out to the Israeli Medical Association. And they do have power, they do have leverage, and we know that if they move, we can save at least the life of Dr. Hassem along with his other colleagues. Yes,

Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle:

This is pretty much where we stand. As doctors again, genocide, our mission is to mobilize the medical community and to speak up against war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. We have many members, have thousands of members all over the world. And we have heard the call from Rasda, the physician syndicate in Raza called for a standout for acts of solidarity with them and with their colleagues who have been detained by Israel in torture camps and torture prisons. So the medical syndicate in Raza is calling on the colleagues, the medical community, the medical community in the rest of Palestine, in the West Bank, in Jordan, all over the world. We are calling on our members to take a stand. We have dedicated an hour of our day today to make all the people with conscious to take action. The action could be calling the elected officials.

We have placed thousands of phone calls to the Senate, to the Congress, to the Parliament in Canada, to different politicians all over the world. We have been calling our medical associations. We have been taking stances with protests and standouts and visuals and all our actions are coming through with social media and our members’ communications. And our goal from that is to mobilize, to raise awareness, not to be silent. We understand that silence in situations of torture and abuse is complicity. It is against our medical oath. It is against what we stand for as humans and as doctors, as healthcare workers. So we invite all our colleagues to not choose comfort and not choose security over doing the right thing. Doing the right thing means that we stand for each other, especially when one of us or many of us are being tortured just for taking care of patients within the context of a genocide.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, thank you both so much for that. I really appreciate it. And I wanted to ask if we could also tell viewers and listeners right now where things stand with the current efforts from within Israel and from around the world to free Dr. Abu Safiya, because obviously time is of the essence here.

Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle:

We are optimistic. We have been seeing a positive response from our elected officials here in the US where we live and all over the world. We have seen a tremendous amount of mobilization. Everyone knows the story now. Every phone call to elected officials, they have heard it before one of us calls. We are hopeful that this coordinated pressure will bear fruits and we will see our colleagues released and we will see their health restored to them, their dignity restored to them. All they want is to be able to take care of their patients and to see their family members and to have human dignity. What we have experienced is the removal of human rights and human dignity from people who deserve the best.

Dr. Nidal Jboor:

And his lawyer sent another urgent appeal to the court to allow independent medical evaluation of Dr. Hussam because we think he might be suffering from an intracranial bleed after all these beatings. That’s why he was not able to sit. That’s why his consciousness was variable during the interview. Unfortunately, they did not respond yet. We’re waiting on that. And actually his appeal includes that one of the judges, one of the Supreme Court judges go there and verify for themselves the situation of Dr. Hussam. We are also working closely with a group called Physician for Human Rights Israel. They’re already appearing on behalf of Dr. Hussam and another 16 doctors who continue to be held unlawfully in Israel and all of them are being tortured. There is a total of more than eight healthcare workers who continue to be enduring these conditions there and a total of more than 9,500 Palestinian hostages.

All of them are being detained illegally with no charges, with no protections. Even the International Center for International Red Cross appealed the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Israel ordered the state to allow the Red Cross to visit and verify the situation and the treatment of the prisoners and the state is refusing their own Supreme Court order. Can you imagine this? Even the International Red Cross is not able to go in there and check on them, at least make sure they’re being treated in human conditions and not enduring torture. And we cannot emphasize enough the absolute prohibition on torture under all international laws, Geneva conventions and here in the United States. There was something called the Hoffman Report. The Hoffman Report is a report that was made on behalf of the American Psychological Association, I think in 2005 or 10, because some psychologists at that time were complicit with the Bush administration in torturing those that they took from Iraq and from Afghanistan.

They were treating them badly at detention centers Guantanamo Bay. And that was a very lengthy report, detailed report, almost 500 pages that showed some complicity of some psychologists and medical employees in the torture of those detainees. And the recommendation with the report and the resolution that the American Psychological Association took after that is there is absolute prohibition of torture for anyone anywhere under any circumstances, even if they’re terrorists, even if they’re guilty. If you have someone charged with a crime, even if they are criminal, you’re not allowed to torture them. There is absolute prohibition torture. And this is a code of ethics that we as a medical community cherish and we insist to live up to and we cannot stay silent while one of our own or any human being undergoes these conditions. So we are really appealing to everyone. So far we have few elected officials, few Congress people and senators did speak up on behalf of Dr. Hassem, but there are too many.

We are hoping we are appealing that many more of our politicians appeal on his behalf to save him. And we do know that they do have the leverage on Israel. This is the country that the US supports with billions of dollars in weapons and impunity. So our Congress stricted officials, they do have a say. They can save one life if they use their leverage with the state department, with our embassy in Israel, with the Israeli ambassador here. Our medical and mental healthcare organizations, they do have leverage if they speak up. Again, this is regardless of your politics, regardless of where you stand, this is a humanitarian call to save human life that is being taken away in front of our eyes and we should not have any controversy about it. Regardless of our positions, this should not be controversial. This is a humanitarian call, a universal call, and it’s a very, very urgent call.

We don’t think he will survive until the end of the week. So the call should be immediate and urgent. We urgently appeal. Every human being, wherever you are, do everything in your power. Reach out, call, use every leverage you have to try to step in and do something to save the life of our colleague, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and his other colleagues too.

Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle:

I appeal to all my colleagues, especially pediatricians. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is a pediatrician just like all of us. His fault was that he stayed in the pediatric hospital in the north of Gaza to take care of the children who are sick in Razda and he could not bring himself to leave them without medical care. For that he was punished by being taken hostage. I appeal to every doctor, every nurse, every pediatrician, especially to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Take a stand. Do not stay silent while one of us is being tortured. And to all our colleagues, follow us on Doctors Again Genocide. We have a lot of information that you can use to become more active in advocacy against what is happening to our colleagues, advocacy against torture and advocacy to be a more responsible medical community. And thank you so much for hosting us.

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners just like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and today we’re talking about an urgent crisis and a scourge that is affecting working class communities around the country. Today, we’re talking about data centers. And we’re talking about what it means for you and your community when one of these loud, polluting, energy and water guzzling behemoths comes to your town. And we’re going to be talking with people who are experiencing this firsthand right now, but we’re also going to be talking about how we talk about data centers and the communities that they’re affecting.

Because recently I was scrolling on Instagram and Facebook and I saw this viral clip from a news report that was going around with a recognizable face at the center of it. Now the clip was from an MS Now report and just take a listen to it for yourself.

Speaker 1:

A quarter mile away, Cheryl Shadden says the noise is as loud as ever.

Cheryl Shadden:

It’s like living on the edge of Niagara Falls or you’re on a runway next to a jet that’s taking off, but this jet doesn’t take off.

Speaker 1:

Morning, noon, night, she even hears it in her bedroom and it’s changed everything about how she lives her life, including her politics.

Cheryl Shadden:

Red or blue, if you vote against data centers, we vote for you.

Speaker 1:

A lifelong conservative, she’s so angry, she refuses to vote for Trump backed Attorney General Ken Paxton, who clinched the GOP nomination for Senate Tuesday. Instead, she’s all in for James Talarico, a Democrat seeking to flip a seat controlled by Republicans since 1993. You’re willing at this point to forego basically every conservative issue and let the Senate fall into the hands of Democrats if that’s what it takes to kill data centers.

Cheryl Shadden:

Yep. My entire community’s going to break rank. Everybody. All of us. We’ve had enough.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Now, as you guys heard from that clip, the original report named the woman being interviewed there, but in the viral post with that clip in it, the woman was simply named as a “Republican voter.” And that just pissed me off. And the kind of comments that people were leaving on these posts by the hundreds and thousands were just so absurd and gross and so stupidly and unhelpfully partisan. So many folks seem to think that the explosion of data centers is only happening in one type of community and that those communities somehow deserve it if they voted one way or another. But listen, how people respond to this crisis in the next election cycle will be very important, but we also need to get it through our skulls that this is bigger than what happens in the next election. And data centers are not just red state or blue state problems.

This is a working class problem and we all need to take it seriously. And when I was seeing that clip going around, all of the discourse around this has been especially gross and infuriating for me because we actually know the so – called Republican voter in that news segment. Her name is Cheryl Shadden. She’s a human being, not a quote unquote, Republican voter. She’s a registered nurse anesthetist and a resident of Granbury, Texas who lives right next to the site of a massive Bitcoin mine. And we’ve had Cheryl on this show before, and we’ve spoken with her and other members of her community about the hell that they are living through after this giant, loud, environmentally destructive Bitcoin mine moved into their neighborhood and more data centers are now invading their area. And I’m really grateful to be joined today again on the show by Cheryl and more of her neighbors from Hood County, Texas.

But we are also joined today by folks who are living here and fighting against data centers here in our home state of Maryland. So let’s meet our incredible panel of guests and I want to shut up and ask y’all if you can start by introducing yourself to the audience here.

Cheryl Shadden:

Hi, Max. I’m Cheryl Shadden. I live in Granbury, Texas. I’m a certified registered nurse anesthetist. I live in a rural area. I am also born in Maryland. I was born in Bethesda, Maryland. I lived there until I was in my 20s. And so I remember Maryland quite well and I remember Texas quite well before this happened to all of us as well.

Karen Pearson:

I am Karen Pearson. Thanks Max for having us again on the show. I appreciate you and your passion. I am a licensed professional counselor. I live in Granbury, Texas too. Actually, Cheryl is my neighbor. I live about 800 feet as the crow flies to Marathon Bitcoin. And then just a little bit further right next door to it is Wolf Hollow Gas Power Plant. I live out here on 12 acres with my parents. They have been here 30 plus years and I’ve been here 21 years. Most definitely this has come in and really just unraveled our peace out here, shaken us as far as what it means for our rural area that we invested in retiring at. Also too, just water supplies, noise pollution, vibrations, things that it also has contribute to as far as health-wise. So it’s definitely something that in this area, I say it’s more like environmental euthanasia that we are experiencing.

Definitely a concern, especially with more in our future that is moving in right on top of us here.

Craig Jackson:

I’m Craig Jackson. I live in Granbury, Texas as well. Actually seven miles from Karen and Cheryl, but I’m also 300 feet from a proposed data center that’s going to be on 2,000 acres in the city of Granbury. I’m actually listed as a plaintiff on a lawsuit against the city for Breaking Open Texas Meetings Act as well as several other violations. But as far as this whole situation, it’s been a full-time job fighting this and along with all my other neighbors that have been battling the Bitcoin mine, we’ve actually started a homestead and lost several animals due to the infrasound and noise that’s been produced off of it. And you wouldn’t think seven miles would have that effect, but we can get more into that conversation later. But all of this is basically it disrupted our way of life and why we moved out here to be away from the city and to start a homestead in the process.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

I’m Dr. Shannon Wolf and I’m also the precinct chair in the community that Karen and Cheryl live in, and that’s how I met them three years ago. And so I live in Granbury, Texas. Part of what I’ve looked at over three years is a lack of awareness by so many people at just the devastation that the Bitcoin mines can cause, often cause and then the data centers that are coming in. There are eight or nine data centers coming into a very small community or very small county rather, and there seems to be no way of stopping them. And I don’t know that Hood County is a lot different than any other county in America. I hear reports of the same kinds of issues happening in Oklahoma and in Mississippi and in places up north. And so I think it’s going to take all of us working together to stop the onslaught.

Micaiah Lloyd:

Hi everyone. Thank you Max for being here. Thank you all for inviting me. My name is Micaiah Lloyd. I’m a resident of Charles County, Maryland. A data center was proposed in my neighborhood November 17th of last year. And me and my county have been fighting tirelessly to make sure that they don’t even have the zoning rights to be in our neighborhood. So that’s where we are in the fight in Southern Maryland. I’m just a girl. I’m 24 years old. I’m trying to build my own wealth. I’m trying to build my own career. And I talk about generations a lot because I feel like my generation is in the fight for our lives right now. I feel like we’re in the fight for our future. I used to coach little kids. I played soccer my whole life and I coached four, five and sixes. And I’m also fighting for them right now.

We’re fighting for them. We’re fighting for them to be able to grow up and breathe clean air and not be surveilled and to drink clean water. I don’t know what the future will look like in about four years if data centers take over this nation.

I’ve been an activist my whole life. When Trayvon Martin was killed, it really radicalized me and I’ve been in the streets protesting since I was about 15. I’ve always been wondering what is it going to take for the working class to unite? What is it going to take for us to come together? What’s going to be that one issue? And I know that data centers are that issue, so I’m very happy to be here. I’m very happy to be networking, especially with people who could possibly be red and who could possibly be very different from me, but we’re all human beings and I think this one issue will really connect us. So I’m very excited about that.

Hillary Gonzalez:

Hi everyone. My name is Hillary Gonzalez. I am an eco poet and author. I’ve lived in Maryland for the past 10 years now, though I originally am from Southern Virginia. For the purposes of this interview, I’m going to let my accent slip. I’ve been fighting Johns Hopkins DSAI Institute, which is their Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Institute for the past three years now. I can step outside of my front door and literally look at where they’re constructing it. And from the very beginning they told us, “Oh, this is going to be so good for your neighborhood, so good for your community.” I have yet to see that. I’ve only seen environmental harm that their construction has caused. And now we’ve learned from the Baltimore Business Journal that they’re also planning a data center for East Baltimore. So my fight has switched from fighting just DSAI to now fighting for the entire city because I don’t want this in any part of the city.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, my God, thank you all so much for being on this panel together. It is really incredible to have you all here together, even if it’s just for an hour. And I want to make the most that we can out of that hour. So I wanted to go back around the table and ask, starting with our neighbors in Granbury, if y’all could give our listeners and anyone out there listening now a sort of quick and dirty reminder of what the hell has happened to your communities in these recent years with these Bitcoin mines and data centers? How is it affecting people? What does it look like over there and how are you living your lives when these behemoths are coming into your communities?

Cheryl Shadden:

I’ve lived here in my home for 35 years. It was nice and quiet. I could walk outside of my home at any time of the day or night. You could hear birds chirping, you could see your animals outside, and it was just a quiet, peaceful environment. Now sitting here in my office, I can hear the crypto mind churning through my walls. I myself personally have had permanent conduction hearing loss. I will never get that hearing back. We have motion sickness, dizziness, nausea. We don’t sleep at night. Even trying to go to sleep with a TV on or a radio on and fans on high, you can’t go to sleep, you can’t stay asleep. This noise, sound and infrasound, it travels through your walls, through your windows. It shakes your home. And this is just the noise from the crypto mine that’s turning into a data center now adding two more hyperscale data centers.

This doesn’t include the gas plant that they’re powered into. This doesn’t include the explosions from their valves when they can’t carry a load. This doesn’t include a third gas power plant coming here and building and traffic twenty four seven and literally 5,000 trucks per month.That doesn’t include the dust clouds. This doesn’t include the air pollution. Here in the state of Texas, because Texas so special, we only test air pollution and they don’t really even test it. They model it. It’s modeled in isolation. So even though the gas power plant that’s directly across from my home, even though their pollutants go right to threshold like 0.4 from being above a dangerous threshold, so that power plant is looked at individually versus the power plant that’s right next to it that rolls out acid rain and all of that. That’s looked at individually as well. And so even though both of these two power plants operate right at threshold, they’re not looked at in combination.

And now a third gas power plant is coming in here that we fought hard against, and they’re going to be an eight-turbine gas power plant. They’re going to roll out some acid rain as well. And this doesn’t even begin to account for the water use. Right now, just the two power plants across the street from me use 1.5 million gallons of water per day off of our lake and our river and spit it back out. When they spit it back out, it’s minimally treated. It’s still hot water, so it’s causing problems in our lake and in our rivers. And that flows on down from here. So the pollution here in Granbury, the water is actually cleaner up above Granbury. It becomes seriously polluted right here at Granbury where we have three gas power plants that are pulling off of the water sources here and dumping back in.

We’re going to have four. And so if you calculate the water usage, even though you’ll have the crypto mine and the data centers telling you we’re not using water, we’re not using water. You are using water by proxy if it’s taking two and a half, three million, five million, 10 million gallons of water to provide you power. So they are using water even if not directly. And if you look closely at all of these hyperscaled data centers and they’ll tell you they’re closed loop water systems, well, that’s like saying your car is a closed loop water system. You do have to flush the radiator out in your car and you have to refill it. That’s not closed loop if you do that. And if you look at all of these hyperscaled data centers coming in, they all have retention ponds behind them. That’s basically a big septic tank.

A retention pond does not mean closed loop. It means we’re going to let this nasty water sit here and draw mosquitoes and every other problem known to man. And that doesn’t mean we’re going to protect the rivers and the tributaries and your health. So air pollution, light pollution, water pollution, erosion, and it doesn’t just affect Republicans, it doesn’t just affect independence, and it doesn’t affect just Democrats. It affects us all, all of us. And

Maximillian Alvarez:

I got to tell any of y’all listening, those types of retention ponds filled with toxic stuff, they are all over this country, baby. Whether it’s coal ash tailings ponds that have toxic heavy metals in them, whether it’s lagoons full of hog waste that has so many nitrates in it that it causes massive algae blooms. You don’t want to know how much of a toxic soup we are all living in, but it’s our job to try to educate ourselves about this. And so please, folks from Granbury, keep educating us. Let’s toss it to Karen. Tell us more about how this has affected you guys and your lives.

Karen Pearson:

Thank you. Yes, I probably want to speak more towards my parents than anything. They’re both 83. And for anyone who has been out here, everyone knows that their front porch is a gathering place. I enjoy sitting out there watching the birds, the deer, just a menaseri of wildlife. My mom’s a big bird watcher. And so many of those animal populations that were thriving out here at one time are not so much anymore. A couple of other things, and Cheryl mentioned this, balance issues, the noise pollution. So again, on our porch, sitting out there and having conversation in the evenings with my parents, it’s very hard to do. My dad’s lost about 70% of his hearing and we can’t sit out there and just have a typical conversation like what we used to without him either not hearing any of it or constantly having to repeat.

I think some of the other issue is because of the noise at night, and if the wind is blowing just right, especially if there’s a south wind, it is like at megaphones over to our place. So my parents don’t sleep and they have an upstairs, their bedroom is upstairs and it’s kind of eye level with the plants.

It’s a megaphone. I mean, it’s so loud in their bedroom at night that they don’t sleep. And so then obviously during the day, that causes a lot of fatigue. I think mentally on them, it’s extremely hard to think about what their future looks like. This is not what they planned for retirement. It’s hard on me to watch what they go through because they’ve invested everything into this property. This is where they though that they would live out the last parts of their life, which has been my commitment to them is to help them with giving them the best quality at the end of their life. And so I feel pretty helpless a lot of times. I can’t help them. I can’t make the noise go away. I can’t help them sleep better. I can’t help them. And so being in the fight with my neighbors, with Shannon and government, trying to just have people to understand what this is doing to us on a personal level.

What this do? And man, it’s like you can’t get anyone to understand that. You can’t get anyone to, I don’t want to say anyone, but as far as government and stuff, it’s like there’s no empathy. On a daily basis, no one sees the mental decline of my parents. No one sees that they can’t sleep or why. And that’s just real hard. It’s hard to watch them go through that. So that’s where, I guess again, I go back to that environmental euthanasia. And I feel bad for my neighbors who really don’t speak out for themselves because they can’t for one reason or another, maybe lower socioeconomic purposes. But this is in their backyards in their back bedroom. And so I know I’ve talked to them how the impact is on their lives. They don’t sleep. There’s other health issues. I don’t want to labor all the time for that, but there’s just so much on a personal level that it ruins lives.

It really does. And it’s not what you expected. It’s not what’s being talked about. There’s no transparency about how this impacts personal lives. It’s just not there.

Craig Jackson:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think if anything, this whole battle’s not just pissed off a bunch of people, but brought a whole bunch of people together. So speaking on the Bitcoin mine, we noticed in 2024 we moved into our house at the end of 2022. So we got immediately, my wife’s dream’s been ducks and chickens. So we got ducks and chickens, set everything up. All of a sudden more eggs than we can get rid of. In 2024, marathon takes over the Bitcoin mine and we noticed production decreasing and chickens dying and ducks dying. And slowly, and then one morning we woke up and it was almost like a massacre because we had micro chickens and micro ducks. Within 24 hours, all of them had passed away. And what we discovered was that the infrasound coming off the Bitcoin mine that Cheryl and Karen and everybody else in the area is hearing is actually traveling with the wind.

But also when we have heavy cloud cover, it creates a sound barrier wall that is basically just bouncing off. And low frequency sound bounces differently than high frequency. Low frequency actually travels and I’m actually uphill. So it just really, as sound waves get tighter and tighter, if anybody can visualize it, it just literally we hit it and there’s nights I hear it and it’s like a whale that is outside just moaning and it’s in spurts. And there’s been several nights. My kids, they’re five and eight and we have a elementary school just a mile down the street from me, a high school two miles away. And so there’s kids in this entire neighborhood. I’ve talked to other parents that are like, “Man, my kid’s just not sleeping through the night or my kids are having a hard time sleeping.” Turns out that whale sound is what they’re hearing.

And so fast-forward January of this year, we discovered New Year’s Eve night that there was a data center being proposed for our city. And lo and behold, it’s 300 feet from my house. And so literally from the corner of my property to where it meets the fence line, the Dallas Cowboys could play and they might lose that game, but they could play there. And so either way, what’s been frustrating for us is my entire life now revolves around research, which I do in my job daily anyway for other people, but now I’m doing it for something that is literally threatening our way of life. And so not just we have a community well and so one small tap in the wrong direction, our wells dry and we’re going to be Meta in Georgia all over again. Turns out this is a Meta-funded data center project, Patriot, which as more information has been coming out, we have been seeing the audacity and arrogance and maybe even some ignorance from our city council or city manager, city attorney.

It’s been nothing but propaganda coming from the city side as well. So all this positive benefits about data centers and they couldn’t even get our own state representative to say something positive. They had to get the state representative from Fort Worth to say something positive. And he said, “Well, data centers are how your alarm clocks work. That’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard. My alarm clock lives internally on my phone if I use my phone.” And it just shows the audacity and how far they’re trying to propaganda all of this to the point where we as a community have been coming together and now I’m listed on the lawsuit against the city. One of those things I never thought I would have to say that as a county resident, I am suing a city that is affecting my everyday life. Now my home and neighborhood is a county island.

I don’t vote for these people. I don’t even get a say in what these people do, but they’re affecting my home. And so we’re fighting back and we’re even doing a recall. Hopefully we get enough signatures by that deadline, but we’ve done as far as signatures for no confidence in the city manager and city attorney. And every time we turn around, we’re just met with arrogance or just careless attitudes of…

People can go back, look at the city of Granbury, excuse me, city council meetings. And you’ll see on the January 6th meeting, it was literally everyone in that room was frustrated because we were told specifically only talk about the dirt when it came to annexing this property. And that was the shot heard around the entire county of like, okay, this fight just became personal for all of us.

Karen Pearson:

I was at that meeting and that’s where we also heard the city manager, I guess that’s what he is, saying that he did not care about us and something along those lines. So yeah, I heard all of that at that meeting and it was mouth-dropping.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

Yeah, I think what he actually said was I’m not scared of you, is what he said. Karen, I think you and I were sitting next to each other.

Karen Pearson:

We sat next to each other. We sure did. Yeah.

Craig Jackson:

And to add to it, we have so many emails from the city manager, from the former director of development, about meetings at a data center where all the city council members were there, all of them in the same building, same time, same place. How they all got there is a different story, but we have all of this data and all of these trails and all this communication that shows all this was premeditated. And we’re seeing now other cities are fighting this. And so one of the things, our hope and prayer is not just to undo the annexation, but just undoes all of it. But if we can establish that, hey, this is how business should not be done, hopefully we can help other towns in this fight as well.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

So as I said before, I’ve been in this fight for about three years, maybe a little more than three years. And I met Cheryl when I was running for precinct chair and she asked what I was going to do about the data centers and I had no idea what she was talking about. And so I went to look at this data center that was causing so much grief. And I had this aha moment because I thought there was a train track near my house that I just hadn’t found yet. And I could hear it really well in the wee hours of the morning or sometimes really, really late at night. My husband and I would talk about, where is this train? Because it was this rumbling that we heard. And my husband and I drove past this Bitcoin mine and we had this light bulb moment.

We don’t have a train. We have a Bitcoin mine. And Craig was talking about waking up around three, somewhere between three and four o’clock in the morning on some mornings. And I will have a migraine just all of a sudden I will have this migraine headache from this Bitcoin mine. And so we’ve been fighting this thing for about three years. Cheryl and I with just some other people have even gone down and spoken at the state capitol to a subcommittee. We have written letters. We have had town halls. I can’t even begin to list all the things that we have done to raise awareness. And I would say for the past two and a half years, Cheryl, I can’t talk for you, but it feels like I’m beating my head against the wall. It seems like people say, “Yeah, that’s tough, but that’s not me and I’ve got my life to live.” And they go on and do their thing.

Well, now that it’s all of Granberry, people are waking up. Now I don’t blame them. People have lives to live. But now we have eight to nine of these hyperscale data centers coming into one of the very smallest counties in the state of Texas. We are very small and these hyperscale data centers, one of them is about the same size as a small city. We’re talking massive data centers taking over ranches. They’re taking over areas where they There is protected wildlife. There’s one area that they’re trying to industrialize where we have bald eagles nesting there and we can’t even get EPA to pay attention to them paring down the trees and displacing these bald eagles. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. So with these hyperscale data centers that are coming in, we’ve realized that our county does not have the, or we thought our county didn’t have the right to zone or to protect ourselves from them.

And I think that there have been some people that have truly dropped the ball in elected officials who have truly dropped the ball in this and they have not protected citizens.

I see things happening in my area that I think it’s going to change this beautiful, beautiful area. And I think there’s no coming back from that. And we’re talking about endangered species that live here. There’s a species of bird that lives here that’s endangered. And I have no idea why people who are supposed to be protecting don’t protect. And that Cheryl brought up the gas power plant and when your listeners are maybe facing some of these things coming in, you cannot separate these data centers from their power source. Those two things are two parts of the very same conversation. So the data centers in our area are having to bring in their own power source. And so they’re building gas power plants, but they are using the very bare minimum of standards in protecting the environment from any type of pollutants. And so one of the other things that Cheryl was mentioning was that these, I’m sorry, gas power plants, the permitting entity in Texas only looks at each individual power plant and not take into account the cumulative impact of multiple data plants.

I’m sorry, multiple power plants. So for example, in Tarrant County, which is Fort Worth, Texas, it’s pretty large. They have one gas power plant inside Tarrant County. And right now in my very small precinct, which is five, six miles square, we have three gas power plants with another one coming in. So that’s four gas power plants now. We have two battery energy storage systems, which are the best plants or facilities. We’ve got a solar farm that is coming in and all of this has been happening within just a very short period of time. And the residents are trying to stop it and we have no way of stopping it. So that’s what we’re facing. But I’m hearing people from across the nation say the same thing.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and speaking of which, Makaya, Hillary, that’s how I met both of you is because you two are both folks in communities here in Maryland fighting these things coming in. So could you tell us more about how you got involved in those fights and what’s actually happening in your communities with these data centers?

Hillary Gonzalez:

For DSAI, it’s been a roundabout fight to get me into the data center fight. I’ve always been against them, but for the longest time, Johns Hopkins was claiming DSAI isn’t a data center. And so we have been fighting them by saying, “Well, you can’t study AI without a data center being involved. So it’s the data center. Where are you going to build it? Where is it being planned for? ” And as far as the construction itself, you’ve seen massive stormwater events just constantly every single time it rains. And I think when people hear stormwater runoff, they think like, “Oh, who cares? It’s not that big of a deal.” Except that we are located directly next to Stony Run Park, which is a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. So everything that goes into Stony Run eventually goes out to the Chesapeake Bay. And stormwater is very harmful because it has pollutants in it like diesel, oil, microplastics, a lot of sediment, which can eventually kill a riparian area like Stony Run, one of the few green spaces that we have in Baltimore.

Actually, just this evening because of the storm, we have what we call on our block the storm watch where if it starts raining, if it starts storming, everybody waits and they go outside and they take photos and they take videos of the runoff that’s coming from the construction site. And then we send in our 311 reports to Baltimore City. We send them into the Maryland Department of the Environment. We send them to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. And it’s just exhausting to have to do this every single time it rains. And we’ve met with city leaders. We’ve met with city officials. We’ve had them come out to the site to see the stuff that’s still there after it rains, to see the pollutants. We have videos of it going directly into Stony Run. And one such meeting, we actually had our city council president Zeke Cohen come out to the site and we told him, “Hey, this is what we’re experiencing every single day.

And these are our very real environmental concerns. The city spent $10 million of taxpayer money repairing Stony Run so that we could have a healthy water system in Baltimore City so that we could have a healthy harbor eventually as well.” And he basically heard all the concerns and he basically said, “I don’t care. We’re going to aprove this project anyway because I think that this is going to be good for Baltimore.” So this whole project has really just opened my eyes to what the city is allowing Johns Hopkins to get away with and what they have in the past as well. Ultimately, I had to help found a nonprofit in Baltimore City so that we could sue Johns Hopkins to try to stop this project. But ultimately this isn’t just about one data center project. This is about our governor wants to ramp up data centers in Maryland, which is really scary because we unfortunately have all these rural communities who are facing terrible consequences of these data centers.

And we have them as examples for what we don’t want in Baltimore. And we have so many communities that are at risk that we know that they’re going to try to build these data centers in. And I don’t care that this is being built in my neighborhood. I do care, but what I’m saying is it’s not just that this is affecting my neighborhood. I don’t want a project like this in any neighborhood in Baltimore. It doesn’t belong in any community while you fall under regardless of what your economic station is in life. It doesn’t matter. This is truly something that can unite all of us and it’s something that we should all be fighting against.

Micaiah Lloyd:

I’m absolutely distraught hearing about what you guys are going through and I’m a crybaby. I’m also a crash out. And my messaging and my militancy in my area, I get a lot of critiques on it, but it’s because of stories that I hear like this where these people just do not care. And I just don’t know what it will take and how many cuss words I have to spew out of my mouth to get these bozos to care. And I am so spiritually connected to the earth. It’s part of my mental health practices, how you guys talk about just wanting to sit outside with your family and sit outside with your parents. I’m with my baby boy right now and all we do is just sit outside while I crochet and I sit outside, I sit under my tree. I know I saw your baby too.

I was trying to say hi.

About the dead chickens and the dead ducks, it sounds so dystopian. And if this is my future, I don’t know what to do. And all I know is to fight like hell. And what we have been told, there’s this district commissioner, he’s the district commissioner of district four in Charles County and we were at a district, I think it was a town hall meeting. And members of my coalition, I don’t know if they directly addressed him, I don’t know. But basically he said that we have funding issues. He’s made a metaphor, a stupid metaphor about a barn. This is the barn we’re trying to build and if you don’t want to build the barn but this thing, we’re going to leave you behind and stuff like that. Just nonsense, ridiculous nonsensical bull crap. And then eventually he said, what has stuck with me is you’re going to have to stay in fight.

That’s what he says as it relates to data centers. He said, you’re going to have to stay in fight. This man is running unopposed in my county and our governor Westmore endorsed him. Westmore didn’t say it himself. He was supposed to be here in Charles County. I made a call to action about it. Excuse my language. He pussied out. He canceled it for unforeseen circumstances. And then just minutes before we start this call, I see that he had a private event in our county and spoke to some of our district commissioners and Ralph Patterson, the man he endorsed, and Ralph Patterson’s mother, Edith Patterson, who was a dinosaur elected official in this area. And yeah, it’s just been a fight. It’s a lot of political manipulation. People have data center money in their campaign contributions, but they want to tell us they’re not going to put a data center in our community and people believe them and people still vote for them.

And it’s just very frustrating. I’m very frustrated. I’m very emotional listening to you guys talk about what’s happening. And I would hope if people who didn’t look like me listen to you guys speak, they would take your concerns seriously. And I really hope that they do because it’s so dystopian what I’m hearing. And I have neighbors who have chickens. I’m a mile away from farmland and that’s what I love about this area. That’s what I love about Charles County. I feel like a country girl next to a city 45 away from DC. It’s really weird and I love it and I love that I can play both sides. So yeah, it’s a fight and it’s a lot of political manipulation and I just hope that people don’t listen to it. Right now, my biggest issue is being a lou, audacious Black woman speaking on behalf of the issue and people not wanting to take me seriously and my concerns seriously.

And that will be the detriment of our community.

Karen Pearson:

The chicken thing, I had totally forgotten until Craig mentioned it. My parents also had chickens and oh my gosh, we had so many eggs, more than we could give away. And then all of a sudden they just stopped laying one day. We quit getting eggs and we had several to die too. And it’s like, can you really believe this stuff? Is that really what happens to the animals and stuff like that? And then you start hearing others say the same thing and we don’t know each other. I didn’t know Craig. I didn’t even know he had this issue till this call. And I had forgot that we had the same thing. So my parents had to get rid of their chickens. So a lot of things like that out here have also happened. Domestic animals dying. Cheryl can talk about this too. Again, it’s some of those things that you don’t really realize.

And I think Craig spoke to some of this. The levels of the noise that are just not noticeable as we talk and communicate, it’s that decibel level that you don’t hear. And there’s another doctor, I believe she’s in Lesbon, and she’s done research on the vibrations and what those types of vibrations do to your inner body and the way it calcifies cells and stuff like that. And I haven’t even gotten into my mom’s health issues that have evolved over the last three years, but all of this didn’t were fine. All of this just happened in the last three years. And so you just cannot tell me that it’s a coincidence. There’s too many of us that have the same going on.

Cheryl Shadden:

So when infrasound hits your body and it doesn’t matter if it’s an animal, it doesn’t matter what living being it hits, it starts causing tissue damage to soft tissues. And so it can be noise that’s not even audible to the human ear. When one of my dogs started ripping her fur out until she was a bloody mess, I tried everything under the sun, worked with my vet, and I finally had to let go of her life. And when you see this happening with your friends and your neighbors and even people in California or Maryland or Texas, it’s heart-wrenching. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a young woman raising hell in Maryland or you’re an old lady in Texas raising hell, it’s still not okay. It’s still not okay to be harmed like this. It’s just not.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and I hate to pile the misery and horror on, but I mean I have to also mention that I hear these kinds of stories in so many other parts of the country that we keep calling sacrifice zones because it’s just areas where people are being left to live in conditions that threaten life itself. So you know who I heard working class people like yourselves talk about this kind of thing? People in East Palestine, Ohio and in the surrounding area in Ohio and Pennsylvania when they blew up the five cars of vinyl chloride in those trains. And then they told everyone after that big toxic death plume blasted them all with toxins, they said, “Okay, you’re fine. Go back home.” And it was because everyone’s chickens and cats and it started dying that they were like, “We’re not fine. The fish belly up floating down the rivers.” They said, “You’re telling us that’s fine?” They do this everywhere.

And this is why I always tell people, I feel like I’m investigating a serial murderer because I hear the same stories coming out of the mouths of working people in so many different communities who are being polluted by this crap, who are being killed by this stuff. And we’re all being set up for sacrifice whether we voted for one party or another. So it’s kind of like, what do we do about this as working people? Can this be what y’all have been mentioning on this call? Can this be one of those things that really gets us to get over our differences and forces us to work together to fight this scourge that is coming for all of us? Let’s talk about that in this final round. Because we have an incredible panel of folks who are fighting data centers and Bitcoin mines in Texas that are already there and new ones that are being proposed.

You folks here in Maryland who are seeing these data centers go up in Virginia and around the country and you’re trying to fight them in your area. So what can we learn from each other? And I guess going back to that central message in the introduction, what do we need to learn so that we don’t fight this the wrong way? So that we don’t get caught up in the, you’re on the red team, you’re on the blue team, you’re in this state, so you deserve it, you’re in that state, so you don’t deserve it. How do we get past that crap and actually fight this and win this? So let’s go back around and any sort of advice that y’all want to offer each other or anyone out there listening who may be dealing with this now or soon in the future.

Cheryl Shadden:

When I started on this battle plane, I never once went up to somebody and said, “Are you a Democrat or are you Republican? And I need you to listen to me. ” This is a humanity issue. It’s a humanity issue all the way across this nation and into Europe. And so like we had talked about before, if my next door neighbor, and I don’t care who you are, if you come to me and ask me for help, if somebody’s invading your home and you need me to come and help you, I’m coming to help you. I don’t care what your politics are. I don’t care if I have a big dog and you have a little dog. I don’t care if you drive a red car and I drive a green one. I don’t care. I’m coming to help you because that’s a humanity thing you should be doing is caring about other people.

And what the governor of Maryland is doing is the same thing that our politicians are doing all around the country with very few exceptions is you’re not listening to your constituents remotely at all. Excuse me.

Hillary Gonzalez:

You’re so right. And I come from a small rural town in Virginia and really the only reason that I’m here today is because of mutual aid. Because we had to talk to our neighbors. We had to ask our neighbors for help whether we needed clean water because our well at one point was infected by Eli. Whether the food stamps run out, so we had to have one of our neighbors bring over some place for us. And I think we’re living in a time where people are afraid to talk to their neighbors, but I know every single name of my neighbors in my neighborhood, every single person. I knock on their doors all the time. I ask them how they’re doing. I’m like the unofficial mayor of Remington at this point. They come to me with every single issue and I listen to them and it doesn’t matter what side of the board they’re on.

I’m disabled, I’m queer, definitely leftist. But if you come to me and you need help and this is a humanitarian issue, I will help you. And I think that this truly is something that can unite all of us because this isn’t just a human issue, this is a land issue, this is a water issue, this is animals, this is our environment, this is trees. It’s everything. And that’s something at the end of the day that we can all be united on.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And it’s also our energy bills, right?

Hillary Gonzalez:

It’s also our energy bills. That’s right. Yeah. But also on the flip side of that, I’m sure that our governor in Maryland is going to say the same thing and Makaia can probably attest to this as well. They want to start building many nuclear reactors with these data centers, which is just absolutely insane.

Cheryl Shadden:

Little baby nuclear reactor.

Hillary Gonzalez:

Yeah, that’s insane. It’s completely untested tech. So I think another thing that we all need to start working on is when I see these data centers and the politicians who are approving them, what keeps connecting itself for me is that all of them are receiving APAC money. And I think we desperately need two individuals who are not accepting any funds from APAC.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And you know what else we got to throw on here is we need to ask ourselves as working people, what is the payoff here? What are these data centers and Bitcoin mines giving to our communities? How are they helping us? Are they providing all these jobs beyond a few construction jobs for the people who are building them? And then what happens to them afterwards? I mean, we get all these data centers and the payoff is that all of our newsfeeds are filled with fake AI slop, that AI is in all of our electronics surveilling us, taking people’s jobs, that they’re using AI to bomb people in Iran and other parts of the world. Hat the hell do we want that for? And is that worth sacrificing our lives and communities and environment too?

Hillary Gonzalez:

I think overwhelmingly, the first question that people have started asking themselves when someone proposes a data center for their town, the first thing that you’ll hear these politicians and these developers say is, “This is going to be so good for you. This is so good for the future.” A future for who? Who is that future for? And the second people start asking that question, the whole thing falls apart because it is not a future for us. There is no part of this that we have a future in. This is a future for them.

Craig Jackson:

I would invite anybody to look into the Project Stargate in Abilene, Texas. It’s about half the size of two of the proposed data centers for our Hood County Grayberry area. It’s 1100 acres. The one going next to me is 2090. The one further down the street across from Dinosaur Valley State Park, which has dinosaur tracks in limestone that will erode away due to acid rain over time is going to be about 2,100 acres or so. Anyway, that one is interesting in itself. And then next door to that is going to be one for Black Mountain Energy. And so as far as Project Stargate’s concerned, there have been so many interviews with the sheriff, with locals that have proven that infrastructure, whether it’s Texas, Maryland, wherever, we can’t handle the construction infrastructure. Not only the construction infrastructure, the infrastructure for hotels, for rental, for housing. It’s just not there.

And we’ve been seeing over the past generation that home affordability is out through the roof. Rental affordabillability is out through the roof, and that is coming for our town if we don’t fight and stop it. And so something that somebody proposed to me is just run, run for office. That is one way we can fight this is if you have an open election coming up, run. Because there are so many people that have recently been elected on this issue, whether you’re red or blue that are winning. We have an ag commissioner nominee that’s a Democrat that is killing it because of this whole issue. And I am proud to say that yes, I am excited to see somebody young regardless of what party they stand for, that is standing for the beliefs that I believe in. And so that’s one huge way. But the other thing too is anybody is questioning this, look at Abilene because it is a perfect example of prime going through the roof.

These are not just temporary construction jobs. These are jobs that are going to last three to five years. And then with those jobs, you’re going to bring in all sorts of people that are looking for work, all sorts of backgrounds. The dust is going to be a huge issue. They spend about, what is it, a hundred million gallons a day just spraying water to keep the dust down. And so traffic is a nightmare. It’s abysmal. And so we’re inviting this into every single neighborhood that has a proposed data center right now. There’s so many other issues we can tap into. I know we’re restricted on time, but ideally, if there’s something that we’ve been learning is learning your state’s laws, if you have an open meetings act, anything you can use because the Bible says your sins will find you out, numbers 23. Anyway, have found so much dirt behind the scenes that we are using the courts for our advantage for.

And whether our elected officials want to listen to us or not, at some point it’s going to court. And we already have two of the data center campuses that were proposed that are now suing our county that they’re going to lose because of how they’re trying to use a warp and distort the law. And then the other thing, follow the money. Greg Abbott, our governor, has received over $500,000 in donations from one single tech entity and a tech pack. And so it’s disgusting how much money tech is putting into whatever party will follow them and allow them to do this to us.

Hillary Gonzalez:

It’s so interesting that you bring that up because after one of the last hearings that we had with the Board of Estimates in Baltimore City, they approved a big part of the project for DSAI. And then I think it was a few weeks later after that decision, we saw campaign money from Johns Hopkins officials flowing into the pockets of the Board of Estimates people.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

One thing that I would like to add to this is I have worked a little bit with a petition to recall the entire city council and the mayor except for one council member. And I have seen Republicans and Democrats working shoulder to shoulder on this issue. And I think that’s what it needs to look like. We’ve talked a bit about politics here and there are some pretty bad people that are in office and they’re pretty good people that are in office. And I want to say that just like the people that might be listening to this, they don’t always know the details about how bad these data centers really are. And I want to give them time to learn, but they better hurry up because we don’t have time to wait for them to eventually figure this thing out. I don’t want this to be a Republican Democrat thing.

I think that too much of our country talks in terms of politics. I really wish it would be more of we’re neighbors, we live in the same community, let’s work together to make this thing happen. I heard Cheryl say that before, not today, but I’ve heard her say before, as a nurse, she doesn’t ask somebody their political affiliation before she helps them in an operating room. It doesn’t matter to her. And when I look at another human being, it doesn’t matter to me. If you need help, I’m going to try to help you. I don’t care which side of the aisle that you’re on. Now, I wish that this would be one of those things for everybody, that it just doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you’re on. It’s coming for all of us. And if we don’t all wake up and work together, we’re lost.

Micaiah Lloyd:

I am radically black, black, black, black, black, black, black, black black, black, black, black. Talk about everywhere am I going? And my parents never talked to me about race for real when I was a little girl. They just let me, because I was just so whimsical. I have stars tatted on my face. They’re the Neverland stars because I just love Peter Pan. I don’t ever want to grow up. And the world just beat me up. The world just beat me up. I played travel soccer, like I said before, so I was mostly an all white environment. So I didn’t get confidence until maybe my freshman year of high school. My racial self-esteem was low, just a whole bunch of things. So when I look at the world, it’s not that I’m trying to see racism, it’s just what I see because I’m looking for myself and I never see myself.

So me entering this organizing space, I blew it up. I blew it up. And it was after I was at a planning commission meeting and they said, “Let’s put all the data centers in the heavy industrial zones.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s where all the Black people are, isn’t it? And it was. And so I went in my coalition chat and I’m just like, “Y’all, I’m about to blow these people up.” I told them everything I was about to say. I said, “I’m doing this on my own platform. I’m just letting you guys know. ” And it hasn’t been good since. There’s been a huge divide in our county, unfortunately, between people of the more Southern part and people in the Northern part of the county. So I would say if you’re entering an organizing space, sometimes it is best for your mental health, just so many tears have been shed and it’s been a waste of time trying to get people to understand me and my point of view.

So sometimes you have to protect yourself and you have to organize with people who align with you more. But in terms of regular day-to-day conversations, no one who would talk to me would know about all of this crazy stuff I got going on in my head. I am a very personable person. All of my jobs have been more so blue collar. So I’m in the service industry a lot. I love elderly people. I don’t care what color you are. I love all people. And when I talk to people, I talk to them as if they’re the only person in the world.

So you need to go out and you need to talk to your neighbors. One of my neighbors, I’m looking at their house right now, he voted for Donald Trump. I don’t care. I didn’t even know he voted for Donald Trump until a year ago, but I’ve looked at this man face-to-face for 23 years of my life and I wouldn’t even have known. He’s always very nice to me. When I walk my dog, he lets my dog poop in his grass as long as I pick it up. It’s just like you need to go out and you need to talk to people and we have to find common ground and we have to be able to listen to people. And class solidarity is so important right now. And there are poor white people in this area who have been silenced and who have been bamboozled into voting for people consistently who do not care about them.

And I really hope that this issue wakes people up that all of these politicians lie and we need to follow the money. And if they have weird people in their campaign contributions, you should probably pay attention to that and you should stop making excuses for people.

And like Mr. Jackson said, we need to start running for office. Regular everyday people have to be in office. We have to clean sweep our government, our local governments. After God willing, I really am praying that we will ban data centers by November. I’m praying we can bully us more collectively into banning data centers. And if that happens, we’re clean sleep in the government. All of our local governments just need to be investigated because how did you allow this to happen? Why are you so susceptible to corruption? Why do you have an affinity for selling out your constituents? Why do you have an affinity for looking us in our face with attitude and lying to us and not taking our concerns seriously? Everyone has to leave. Everyone has to go. Everyone needs to be fired, as Donald Trump will say. All of them, you’re fired.

Everyone has to go. So I would say in terms of advice, get your boots on the ground, get out, talk to the people you know, get out and talk to the people you don’t know. Start showing up to planning in district commissioner meetings, go to your local government meetings, look these people in their face. These politicians, I can tell they’re scared when I walk in the room because they know I’m about to insult them. Start bullying these people. They really need to know that they work for us. And a lot of people don’t like my language, but at some point you have to stop caring and you have to really start embracing your own radical Black politic and start crashing out. And that’s my advice. I feel like if we would all crash out, they would not act like this. We need to start put…

And I don’t want violence to happen to anybody, but what they’re doing is violent to us. The stories that I’m hearing, it’s violence. It’s terrorism to me. It’s domestic terrorism. That’s what I hear.

Cheryl Shadden:

That’s what it’s like living here. It’s like living in a war zone. It absolutely is.

Micaiah Lloyd:

That’s what I’ve heard. I listened to you guys’ podcast about two times and just so I could really understand everything. And this sounds like just a horrendous… I’m sorry, I know it’s a beautiful place, but it sounds like a horrendous place to live. It sounds horrendous.

Cheryl Shadden:

It is.

Micaiah Lloyd:

I’ll be damned. If that happens to my beautiful… I’ll be damned. Oh my God.

Cheryl Shadden:

And people tell us all the time, just move. Well, my home and my property are paid for. I couldn’t sell my home or property if I wanted to. And so what do we do? You stand and fight.

Micaiah Lloyd:

That’s all you can do.

Craig Jackson:

Yeah. And to follow up with Cheryl, I have to disclose there’s a data center coming next door to me if I decide to sell my home. And we have a neighbor, their house has been sitting because it has to be disclosed. So you don’t have a choice. I mean, the worst case scenario for me is Airbnb my house to data center employees, but where am I going to go? Because I grew up in Houston and so I lived next to the highway. I know the highway noise. It’s embedded in my DNA at this point. And that’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s like you’re living next to a highway that just will not stop. And there’s nights, there’s not a car on the road. I’ve literally walked over to the highway. I say highway, Texas highway. There’s not a car on the road, but you’re hearing that droning constantly.

And the only way we are going to stop this is to not just educate politicians, but we need educated people to run for this. We need to stop just believing. So one of the things we’ve come across in our area is developers making false personas and going on Facebook groups to hype up all the positive benefits of data centers or people who are invested in data centers going on and playing the positivity side. And as neighbors, one, you know your neighbors, you know who’s true and who’s not, but the reality is we can only do so much on social media, but we need to be the louder voices in all honesty. We need to be the voices of reason. And one of the things we see all the time is, well, you’re on Facebook, you’re using a data center, you’re on TikTok, you’re using data center.

And part of that education is there’s a difference between an enterprise data center and a hyperscale data center. And what’s coming in our areas is hyperscale, which is what we don’t want. We’ve been using enterprise data centers for years. I used to work in a building that had its own data center within, and the room was constantly kept at 70 degrees, but you couldn’t hear the fans because they sound walled everything. It didn’t disrupt anything. It didn’t use any water. It was all air cooled by air conditioning. This is an entirely different beast that we’re fighting and that’s where the education outlet comes in. So if we just have smart people running, if we do more education, do what we can be the voice of reason, not just the voice of opposition at the end of the day.

Karen Pearson:

I think the level of secrecy and deception, I guess, I mean, I’m not a naive person. I deal with all sorts of people and I love people too. I like to get to know different people. And I mean, I feel like we all bleed the same color red. And our skeletal makeup, we have many things in common as far as color, race, none of that matters language. For me, one of the things that has been the most shocking is how people have just so easily lied and deceived and a lot for the sake of money. There for a long time we said out here that we were kind of the redheaded kids of Hood County because, and again, me and Cheryl, some of us have talked about this. There’s quite a few of us that are in this fight that are very highly educated.

But what they’ve done to this community is because of lower socioeconomic. I think Mikaia mentioned this about the industrial part in the city, that’s a lot of Black people there. Well, out here there’s a lot of Hispanic people in our community and they’re not going to speak up for themselves for various reasons. I don’t care if you’re here illegally or undocumented or whatever. I have some wonderful neighbors across the street that I would go help in a heartbeat. The deception to pile this onto the communities like that and to think that you can get away with it, it is, like you said, that sacrificial zone. It’s showing me that there are some of us who are worth sacrificing for a dollar. There are some of us who regardless of, “Oh, let’s look at that community. It doesn’t look like it’s very well-deserving. Let’s put it all there.” And I don’t know, I guess just the way that other human beings treat human beings is beyond me.

I don’t think that way. My heart is not like that. And so it’s just really hard to comprehend the deception and the lack of transparency and how so easily we can lie and how we can sacrifice another human being for the sake of money. I cannot wrap my head around that. And that’s part of why I want to keep fighting.

Micaiah Lloyd:

These are called the paths of least resistance, these specific neighborhoods, and it’s a microzoning and it’s redlining. So for the audience, if there’s a data center being proposed in your community, it’s probably in a community that would have the pathway of least resistance. If we’re in a state like Texas and we’re worried about ICE, probably Hispanic people aren’t going to speak up for themselves because they’re scared. So yes, let’s put it here. So we do need to pay attention to not only Black and brown people, but poor people as well because they don’t have the resources to fight for themselves.

Hillary Gonzalez:

100%.

Dr. Shannon Wolf:

You are right about that. What I have found recently is that I think even middle-class people are no match for these data centers because they have really deep pockets and they can litigate for forever. And I think a normal everyday person is not going to be able to fight that because they’re going to take it to court and they will tie you up in court and they will take everything that you have and then some. Cheryl, I know that with yours, they were asking questions that they had no business asking you. So they were wanting everything and the paperwork was just nonstop. So that’s been my experience with these data centers.

Craig Jackson:

We can also say it’s expensive. We had to retain a lawyer which costs 10,000 upfront and it’s not even probably the lawyer we’re going to go with at the end of the day. There’s several other communities that have gotten lawyers that it is expensive. So if there’s any lawyers listening that want to help, we would appreciate the help. But at the end of the day, what it really is coming down to is money. And just anybody that wants to take five seconds to Google Marathon Digital Bitcoin, they sold off a lot of Bitcoin and made a lot, a lot of money at the profit of this neighborhood. And it’s frustrating because we don’t receive any of that, but our property taxes go up, our electricity goes up, our water bill, everything else goes up. We’re fighting just for daily life, but yet they’re profiting off the backs of our health.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guests from Granbury, Texas, Cheryl Shadden, Karen Pearson, Craig Jackson, and Dr. Shannon Wolfe. And I want to thank our guests from Maryland, Hillary Gonzalez and Mikaya Lloyd. This was such an important discussion and this is such an important issue and I’m so grateful to all of our guests for being part of this panel and for everything that they are doing to fight back for their communities. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring about this. We’ll see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots reporting that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle.

Check us out across our YouTube channel, our podcast feeds, our website, and our different social media pages and help us do more work like this by going to therealnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves and take care of each other. Solidarity forever.