← Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy Radicals
Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy Radicals
"Just no place for street fighting man.." How Dems Shun Street Politics (G&R 412)
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Welcome to Green and Red Scrappy Politics.
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For Scrappy People, a regular podcast on radical environmental and anti capitalist politics. Brought to you by Bob Pizantho and Scott Parkins.
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Welcome to the Silky Smooth Sounds the Green and Red Podcast. I'm your co host Scott Parkin in Berkeley, California today and as always I.
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B
Am joined by, from Niles, Ohio, Bob Bozenko. Scott, what can a poor boy do except for singing a rock and roll band? Because in sleepy London town there ain't no room for a street fighting man. And that's what we're going to talk about today. What's going on in the streets, whether we could do more in the streets and all kinds of big questions like that. I want to start with little vignette. In 2002, I happened to have had a year before that, who had graduated, a student who had been from Venezuela and he'd gone back home and he was working in the Foreign Office. And then if you recall, in early 2002, there was a US supported, sponsored, directed, whatever you want to call it, coup against Hugo Chavez that looked like it had succeeded. But then Chavez and his party and the grassroots community groups and the labor unions put out a call to the entire country to march on the palace. And they did. And within 24 hours or so, Chavez was restored to power. And that's something that as socialists or Marxists or radicals or whatever I think we're familiar with, if you follow anything like this over the years, Castro, Otman, whatever, people, power is essential. Mobilizing people en masse is essential. And so we have a lot of stuff going on today, obviously, and we have a lot of people in the streets. We don't have a lot of people at these higher levels mobilizing them. So we're going to talk about that today. Just an examination of what's happening, what's going on historically, what's been done and so on. So we're going to start because you're connected to a lot of these folks, a lot of these folks who are doing these kinds of things in places like LA and in D.C. and in many other spots, right? So you can just talk about what we're seeing today and then we can just riff about what kind of stuff is generally done in American history, what kind of mobilizations have occurred elsewhere. Just talk about it generic or even using examples in more specific ways.
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A
The one thing I want to say about the Hugo Chavez thing is there's a great documentary that came out about a year after that happened called the Revolution Will Not Be Televised, where a film crew was with Hugo Chavez when the coup took place. And so I do want to encourage people to check out that doc because it's a great. That was a great film.
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B
And if I may blow my own horn a bit, this is one of my proudest things, actually, because I was talking to my friend who called me and he said, hey, Chavez is going to be back in power by the end of the night. I said, what? And so I burst over to KPFT and there was a jazz show and I forget the guy's name. He was really nice. I said, hey, can I have 10 minutes? And I went on and I called him. And so we actually broke the story nationally. Right. I broke the story nationally. So that was my Edgar Edward R. Murrow moment.
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A
There's many. You have over 400 episodes on the Green and Red podcast.
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B
Yes, my career here has been far better than my career in Pacifica. You know who I respect about as much as Fox News.
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So, yeah, there you go. At least they're not paying you with a potato shit bag full of cash, Bob. That's all I'm saying.
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B
Not that I would oppose to it. All right. If anybody wants to hand us potato chip bags with cash in it.
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Yeah. Just make sure it's just for Green and Red podcast.
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It's for good.
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Yeah, you know that, because that's. That was also a lot of cash to a media outlet as well.
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B
So it was like, it was a hundred and some twenties. Like you bribed somebody with $200. Really?
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A
New York politics continues to amuse and amaze us. I just, I'll just, I'll leave it there. Yeah. So just to go back to your question, which is because I've actually been, I've been thinking. I've been thinking, I think about, I've thought about this question for many years, but I've actually been thinking about it more recently with what we're seeing, what's been happening in the country. And there's like, there's opposition that goes on to Trump every day. And sometimes it's small protests, sometimes it's just a community running ICE agents away from their Metro station in Columbia heights in Washington, D.C. and then. And then sometimes there's bigger marches happening, bigger actions happening this past. Like last weekend, there was actually a huge Gaza march in New York organized by a bunch of Arab groups as well as, I think, the psl. And so there are things happening all the time. What we're not seeing is these sort of this more institutional players actually playing A role here, which is a little bit of what we're going to get into. And I do want to contrast this with actually what the Republicans do, because this is actually what Trump did on January 6th. There was a lot of. First thing I'll say is through 2020, during the pandemic, there was a lot of encouragement of, by Trump of more right wing thinking groups.
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Militia, liberate Michigan, liberate Virginia.
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Exactly. Like a lot of anti mask stuff that was going on during this period of time. And when those people would act to do something in support of Trump or his people or policies, he was, he, he's not afraid to reward them. The best example of that, the biggest example of that is the people who stormed the Capitol. The like six or seven hundred people who have been prosecuted, some of which went to prison. On January 6, like day one, he came in and pardoned all of them. And so I just want to like also flag and he's given some of them positions in his administration that is also happening. And so I just want to say that Trump, I don't think the Republican establishment understands that or whatever do that, but I think Trump and the MAGA people understand that and they do that. No one on the Democratic side really does that. Not even like the quote unquote progressives. I do think that the, particularly in the progressive sphere, they spent a lot of time connecting with organizations and people who do organizing, including labor, including community organizations, things like that. But you never really see this institutional backed opposition. You may see Democratic politicians speaking at a big rally. Yeah, that's not unheard of. Or you may see Democrat politicians going and trying to visit an ICE facility in New Jersey, for example. But you don't really see this outcry. It's like you don't see Gavin Newsom right now saying people should turn out in Los Angeles to, to put a stop to ICE or to be disruptive to the National Guard doing patrols. You're not really, you're not seeing that with Democratic politicians in Washington D.C. right now. The mayor, you know, left the city. Maybe that was a way to avoid some sort of process. I didn't follow it that closely, but it should.
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B
She had a family obligation in the Hamptons.
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Yeah, she had a family obligation in the Hamptons.
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B
We can all identify with that, right?
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Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Maybe she went to Cuomo's fundraiser, I don't know. But we're not really seeing this sort of institutional level of support. In fact, what we see, and this is something we've talked a lot about on the Green and Red podcast is that the policing of more people making a lot more noise, people with more radical politics. It isn't even necessarily coming from the Republicans. The crackdowns on student protests on campus last year were from the administrators during the McCarthy era. It was moderate administrators who cracked down on communists. It was moderate union bosses who cracked down on communists in the unions. And so it's also. It's really important to note that, too. But the Democrats are no more interested in any sort of real building up a real street presence, other than having people go knock on doors for their corporate centrist candidates than the Republican establishment. Trump, he's. We always say he's a different cat, but I do want to put that out. That being said, there is a lot of opposition going on in the world right now or in the country right now to Trump, and we can talk about that more.
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B
Yeah, I think these are really important points to go back because. And I hate talking about things happening in the US and using other countries as examples, like Venezuela or Vietnam. The Viet Minh were brilliant at that. They would travel around, they called with, they called propaganda units, and they would mobilize people and they would have these kind of large local meetings. And they weren't like, directed in their minutia from the top Trump, Poe or whoever from the Pollen Bureau. The word would come down and these mobilizations code, and then local people would organize and direct them, which I think is the model both of us would probably love to see. But what we're seeing here in everyday examples of opposition and resistance, which at least personally keep me going, because if not, man, I'm just ready to throw in the towel. And we certainly. The thing is, it's not like we don't want the Democrats or the unions to do this. It doesn't matter. We know they won't. And I think that's what we're getting at. We don't have these mobilizations. And what you're seeing in D.C. now is being organized locally. And you've talked to people who are part of that. What we see in la, we've talked to people in LA who are part of that. These are immigrant groups and local groups and community groups and so on, which are really critical. And when in Trump's first term, in 2017, when he instituted the Muslim ban, people just went to the airports. Nobody told them to. There wasn't any direction. And in fact, you know, what we see time and again is that the Democrats actually resist this and they discourage people from Doing that. And they make. They're very proud of writing strongly worded letters. And I know that's become something of a caricature and a meme, but look it up. That's what Hakeem Jeffries said about the resistance in Washington, D.C. you know, the mayor of D.C. wrote a strongly worded letter to Trump. So that's where we are.
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And Schumer said it a couple months ago. I think Schumer was the first person we heard it from.
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It. Yeah. No, I mean that that's a common trope with them. Most of them say that. And we've done a lot of shows over the course of five years now about. On. On theme similar to this. And you can't really reinvent the wheel because it's still out there. But I think it's worth also discussing. I guess one of the things that, you know, when we talked about doing this, one of the things I had in my mind and I get in trouble. This isn't something I've just said for the first time. I've said a lot. I always get a lot of blowback from it. I'm a lefty historian. I had a long career in it. And Howard Zim was an icon to me, absolutely inspiration. Knew him a little bit when communicated with him, and he was a great, great support. So I'm certainly not in any way dinging him, but I think his book, People's History and a lot of stuff that he and others like him did have given a lot of lefties a very romantic notion of American resistance. And it's important to understand that these instances occurred, whether they be slave rebellions or Bacon's rebellion or Shays rebellion or Doors rebellion, or the great strike of 1870, Haymarket Homestead, you name it, there's a million. Blair Mountain, actually, that's interesting because we don't know. And that's something we'll get to because these things all happen, right? But at the end of the day, the state used immense levels of force against them. To go back to Bacon's Rebellion, that was like, really became a motivating factor for Southern planters to institute racial codes, essentially because their fear was that white indentures and black slaves and Native Americans were going to join together and kill them all because they outnumbered him. Right. And so we have these instances of resistance which are really critical to understand, but we forget that they don't really work. They're important. And we can argue that maybe they did create, like we talk about the sit down strikes and the New Deal and so forth. But at the end of the day, I think we romanticize it and idealize these things and by themselves it's important to understand as I storm I taught that for many years, over 30 years, I talked all those things. I've talked about them all the time.
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Right.
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But at the same time, look at where we are today. This has been a right wing country. Always, always been a right wing country. You had these few blips like the New Deal. There's a lot of great stuff there, but never rejected capitalism or anything like that. Today we are far to the right way to the right wing. So I think what that suggests to me is that the old way of doing things and really worked and we got to figure something out. And maybe unfortunately looking abroad at these kinds of mobilizations and mass resistance would matter.
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A
Yeah. And the other thing I want to say is that we are seeing, and as someone who's been involved in organizing for 25 years, this is not uncommon to see mass mobilizations happen with permits by the state on the weekend. And I do think there's a, there are, there's importance there. And I think the, I think them being able to turn out millions of people. I think the no Kings rally was like one of the biggest rallies in like US history. But it was like a weekend mobilization that was led by groups which were very aligned, if not backed by the Democrats, like indivisible and move on and things like that. And I do think as an organizer there's some pretty important. I see them as a gateway drug. Often it's a place to recruit, it's a place to get people involved for more radical action. But it's also. That is not what is going to shift. You're talking about Vietnam. When I traveled in Vietnam about 15 years ago and I went to this one museum in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. And it was a history of the war in the South. And one of the interesting things is that it talked a lot about the sort of guerrilla war that was happening in the jungle or the back country or what have you, but it made a really important point about how the National Liberation Front actually backed all of these mobilizations that would happen in cities. And I'm not talking about like underground terror cells blowing things up or assassinating people. But they would have big protests and rallies and which would challenge the South Vietnamese state. And it was very much done hand in glove with what the NLF was doing and what was happening with in the north and things like that. And I think that was a really important moment for me. It doesn't. It reminds me a lot of what happened with Chavez in 2002 during the coup attempt as well, which is he mobilized the masses. The, the coup leaders moved in and a million people took to the streets to surround the presidential palace to protect.
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B
Him in Venezuela, in Vietnam, in Cuba, in many places. Left. That's a core value of these left groups where you have these committees or community organizations. And in the United States, we've these great stories of resistance generally occurred quite often spontaneously. 1877 strike was spontaneous. It was a wildcat strike, basically. Right. Haymarket, these are anarchists who were called terrorists at the time. Right. They're anarchists, they're socialists who were striking for an eight hour day and then protesting an attack on John Deere workers who had been on strike. Right. So we don't have that kind of organization here, which has long been a problem. It's something that if you're on the left, we've talked about forever. Way before I was born, they were, I was reading pamphlets and ideological arguments about this kind of stuff. Right. We don't really have that much of that. And by contrast, I think if you look at the civil rights movement, that's one of the impressive things about that.
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Right.
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King and others organized those kinds of groups. So whether you were in Albany, Georgia or Montgomery or Little Rock or wherever there was a local group who was ready to go. And quite often he's organized in the churches and you did have some union organization later in the civil rights movement, but that's not typical. So in Cuba, and I realized that this is a sore topic for people even on the left.
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Right.
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The Trotskis and others, they have, they have committees for the defense of the revolution all over Cuba, right. In the neighborhoods. And they have signs up there, like in the window and stuff like that.
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Right.
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And people said this is repressive and it's surveillance and all that and Cuba has security. Absolutely. But at the same time, this is a way, these were created after the revolution because they knew that the United States was coming after them. And this is a way to also to have this communication where you have these committees in the defense of the revolution and he's talking to these people locally and they can also communicate at higher levels on a state level or even a national or anything like that. And I know people are going to blow a fuse. Oh, the community say he's, he's a communist, he's invoking that he's a Stalinist or whatever. But the Fact is, you have to talk to the people. Have to talk to people and the Democratic Party. Gavin Newsom, right now, I get a kick out of his trolling. I think it's freaking hilarious. And it's a good way to get to Trump. Right. What was about a month ago, we Talked to Sophia McClellan, who writes about satire. And that's a good point. Right. You make fun of the guy and it gets under his skin. I think that's great. Right. But at the same time, Newsom is sending state troopers out to beat up protesters. So is Karen Bass, the mayor of la. We don't have that. The unions have been. I mean, there's local unions and you can talk about this way better than I can in California. But nationally, Liz Shore, head of lco, has done very little. Sean Faint hasn't done much. Even Sarah Nelson once in a while says we need a general strike. You don't hear much more than that.
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And it's about what Fain does, too.
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Yeah. We don't have and this is another. And I remember our second interviewer with fantastic brilliance, Thought and Lynn, like, we don't really have a terribly radical labor tradition in the United States, despite all the stuff we read. We really don't, as you pointed out. And when we talked to Ellen Schrecker, which is another Shreker and McCullen you should listen to if you haven't. But the unions participated in these McCarthyite purges, right. They got rid of people who they considered communist or subversive or radical. And I mean, the idea that these folks are somehow going to change their stance, this isn't going to happen. The Democratic Party, like at this point, you have Rashid Pleb and Ilhan Omar and maybe a few others who I really do value. But we are now in this dystopian Rod Serling type environment where Marjorie Taylor Greene has become the moral compass on, on Israel, on Gaza, more so than all. But for Democrats like Omar and Rashid, Rashid Kleban. But this is where we are, where Bernie Sanders, who Jacobin's patron saint, right, refuses to use the word genocide and continues to this day to call it Netanyahu's war. Blame everything on Netanyahu. And that's not just the sectarian quibble. How do you raise resistance if you're going to blame it on one guy? And that ignores everything that happened 75 years before Netanyahu. Bernie Sanders, I like. He's talking about the oligarchy. That's important. But he's. It's horrible. It's Counterproductive as Bernie Sanders calling people into the streets, by the way, that's a serious question.
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A
Not that I've, not that I've seen. He's definitely, they're definitely calling people out to their rallies and lots of people are going, but it's not mobilizing in the streets. And they're to be real. What, what they're doing is they're building up this anti, they've been doing this anti oligarchy tour. They're doing it in red states and red districts and purple states and purple districts. And where they are pushing people is into more electoralism, which is, that's what for anyone who's like, for most people who like identify with the big D Democratic Party, that's going to be the, that's going to be the solution. Right. There may not be elections in 2026 or they may be very stacked. The system may be very stacked as we see redistricting about to go wild. But that's what, that's where they push people to. And they have a class analysis. I'm, and I don't disagree with their class analysis, but their method of change differs from mine. And I'm also one, I believe in a holistic approach here. I think there's a lot of things that we all can be doing. And I also think people should, we should meet people where they're at. But I also think that we're going to need disruption and we're going to need non cooperation and we're going to need mass mobilization beyond the weekend. And God bless the labor movement for giving us the weekend. But there's a reason that they passed the Wagner act right, in the 30s is because there was actually so much disruption coming from a more radical labor movement. Correct?
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Yeah, that's part of it, sure.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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And then 11 years later, they passed the Cap Harley Act.
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So that's true.
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Yeah.
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They just, they wait. There's a long game with the capitalists, for sure. Except for maybe Trump. I actually don't believe he has a long game. I'll never believe him.
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No, no, but he made it. Like, I think the most important point, like if anybody understands this playbook, it's the crazy right wing. It's MAGA, right? January 6th. That's a horror, a horrific thing. And I'm not supposed to say this, right, but if we lefties had done that, I'd be cool with it because we're not triumphant, we're not in charge. When you're facing this repressive regime, you have to do certain things, which is why I admire the hell out of a lot of these people in LA and DC and Chicago and a lot of other places. They're confronting ice. They're getting in their faces. Right. They're setting up these community groups. They're tailgating them. They're going to the hotels and banging pots and pans. Right. That's not Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass. They're against. Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass are sending their cops out to work with ICE to beat the shit out of people.
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Because we'll call them the community groups that sort of bigger. That more grassroots community mobilization. They're also putting pressure on Bass and Newsom to as much as they can as well.
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Yeah. And haven't some, like, local California unions been involved in that, too?
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Yeah, the president of SEIU California got arrested while I swat he. And he was watching ICE when they arrested him.
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Yeah.
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And so it's mobilized a lot of California labor. And if you look at D.C. we haven't talked about. And so we've also have this. We have this series that we do on State of the Resistance, where I talk with. I talked to him about a week or two ago, and there's a lot of community mobilization going on in D.C. it's being led by this one particular organization called Free dc, But it's a bigger coalition which includes the DC Metro AFL Labor Council as well. And so, like, we're seeing, like, lots of local labor get involved in this, but we're not seeing it at the national level. The national levels, just at the national level. They're just too conservative, in my opinion. That's my opinion. But still.
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And I mean, that's. We are on loop on this because we talk about it so often, like, Democratic Party isn't going to rescue you. Organized labor is not going to rescue you. Waiting for the midterms in 2026 ain't going to rescue. There may not be midterms. Trump's not planning on leaving. You don't do the renovations he did at the White House because you're going to get out of it. And what we're hearing is the Oval.
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Office does look like Liberace's toilet these days. We could.
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He could flush documents down that toilet. That's maybe that's what John Bolton should have done, Right? Yeah. Talk about another Rod Sterling world. Like, I don't really. I don't feel sorry for John Bolton, but it's outrageous what they're doing to this guy, too. Can you imagine, like, any left, any Democratic President Biden, Obama, Clinton going after a political enemy that way. Oh, hell no. They go after the left that way. Don't like they'll send the FBI or the IRS after left advocates, but they would never touch political enemies.
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A
And they are indeed doing that. It's not getting as much media attention, but lots of people who are doing anti ICE organizing are getting FBI visits to just about that or worse.
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Oh, the media has just been horrific. And that's another point of it, right? The media. And if eight months ago somebody had said, Trump's going to do this and this and the media is going to let him get away with it, I think you and I will both say, yeah, but seeing it happen in real time is like pretty fucking makes you aghast by just seeing it at like it's not a shock. Like we know how bad they are seeing it emerge. Trump wants to put everybody in jail. Is that a good idea? Or people say Trump's gone too far. Are they right? Jesus, slavery for and against Holocaust. Was it good or was it bad?
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A
We're not talking about the good parts of slavery. I think we're talking about the good part.
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B
Yeah, I'm tired of going to these museums and coming out feeling bad about America. We're not going to sit here and listen to you bad mouth.
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A
The United States of America.
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B
Is the Otter principle, right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
The other part of this that I think is really crucial is that. And this is the part again, we say all the time, like, Americans are actually on our side. Like 80% of Americans now have a positive view of immigration in the United States. I forget what the numbers are, but a pretty big majority are opposed to the way ICE is just grabbing people. Support for Israel is just falling out. It's gone, right? What is it, 8% among Democrats now support Israel. It's insane.
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A
Right.
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B
For years it'd be like the Democrats have to move to the center. What is the fucking center? Right to me? Being against Israel, being against blowing up kids in school with guns, being in favor or being against ice, that's the center. That's just reasonable shit. Left. There's not much of a left in the US but we're not even looking for that. We're settling for less because people's lives are literally at stake here. And I think we're on our side.
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A
Yeah, I think you said earlier that America was a right wing country. And I think it's really worth noting that it's the institutions that are right wing when we say that. But because when you look at The, I think the number was like 78 or 79% of people are supportive of immigration, particularly after what we've been seeing happen around the country, particularly in Los Angeles. The poll, the sort of quick poll the Washington Post did. Over 80% of Washingtonians oppose federal law enforcement and federal troops patrolling their streets. Why do they need 120 FBI agents dealing with street crime and fair evaders on the Metro in Washington D.C. is my question. Million dollars a day. Right. And then the other thing is the soaring popularity we're seeing of Zoran Mamdani, of Omar Fettah. I think that's all worth noting too. And those are. Both of them are Muslim. But that's also. And both of them are immigrants. But it's worth noting that both of them are not afraid to say the genocide either. I think that's important too. And they're scaring the establishment. Right. I, I actually haven't seen any polls around the Minneapolis mayor's race. Mom, Donnie, no matter what happens, he seems he even beats Cuomo one on one. So it's just. Even though all the establishment is like backing Cuomo, even if Schumer. Jeffrey's not endorsing. Mom, Donnie actually shows that they back Cuomo.
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B
Yeah. And who else backs Cuomo? Trump.
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A
Right. And the Clintons.
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B
And the Clintons. Right. They got Clinton and Trump on your side. And look at an Rx state of Texas. Right. You had the Texas legislature flee the state. Right. Now you knew that was performative bullshit. And they raised a lot of money on Beto. O' Rourke was doing ads send money for this. This is the epic battle of our day. How long were they gone? A week. And they're all back there now. And now they have to sign permission slips. They're being locked in. They're not allowed to go to the bathroom.
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A
Police escorts everywhere.
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They're children. And like when they left this was inevitable. They weren't gonna like when it happened. Oh, look at that. They. Oh, that doesn't mean a thing. They've done it before. They did several years ago during a special. Like they're pathetic and they remain pathetic. And this. Whoa. Because one of the polls came out, I think you may have sent it to me with. On all of these issues, like overwhelming support for what would be considered a left of center liberal, whatever you want to call it, position. And I showed it to a few people and their basic response was we'll get them in the midterms in 2026. That's a year plus away. And there might not be midterms and who the hell knows? Like Texas, you know, whether. Even if Newsom's redistricting pans out, would that be voted on by the. When would that be voted on by the California people?
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A
November.
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B
This year?
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A
Yeah.
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Okay.
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Like in three months, two and a half.
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B
Can you imagine the money that's going to come into the state for that? Oh, my God. That's going to be immense.
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A
Yeah. And when we start playing that re. I just. I'm not. I think fighting fire with fire is good, and it's nice to see some Democrats who are at least rhetorically fighting and they're doing this. But at least in the short term, I believe when they start adding up all of the, like, red state redistricting and all the blue state redistricting, that the Democrats actually come out behind is. I think in the longer term, I think in the longer term, it plays out better for the Democrats. But my understanding is just in the next couple years, it doesn't.
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B
Yeah, that's math. And math is. Math is hard for me, but they're going to do it anyway. And I think that's. The Democrats for 50 years have been saying, we can't do this because Republicans will do this. They did it anyway. Right. Being nice to Trump has never, ever gotten him a fucking thing. Not a single thing. Like they keep saying, Trump is transactional. Oh, transactional was quid pro quo. Right. You do something Trump, you do something for him, and he just takes it and then continues to fuck you in New York.
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A
It'll be quid pro cuomo if.
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B
All right.
- [29:14]
A
Hey, can I say one other thing about Texas really quick, which is talking about the Texas Democrats, is that the interest, the interesting thing here, and this is just enough. This is like a microcosm of what we're talking about here, is that we're actually seeing street action in Texas, like in the blue cities of Texas. And it's not a. It's not the safest place right now for people to be doing protesting. But this week in Houston, 27 people got arrested trying to start an encampment at the Israeli consulate in Houston off the Southwest Freeway. And yet there's nothing. There's no coordination going on with the political powers that be of the Texas Democratic Party.
- [29:47]
B
There's also a lot going on in Austin, too. There are. In. Even in red states, there are certainly pockets of resistance. And these are organic. I keep saying spontaneous organic's a better word. You know, there are people doing things right, and they're organizing, they're Forming food banks and resistance and legal aid and first aid and stuff like that, which we've seen before Hurricane Katrina in the summer of 2020 and so on. And that's really vital. Summer of 2020 is a good template. And briefly there was a moment there where even like Democrats and corporations joined in. Right. Because they saw the country falling apart and instability. We've talked about this how many times. Instability is crucial. That means it's okay to destabilize the system. Right? Trump destabilizes the system all the time. In the summer of 2020, people in the streets destabilize the system. And even on Wall street they realize this isn't good. They turned on Trump, they turned against Trump. And that can be done. Like bitcoin. Big things. Like we've talked a lot about these big events. Like I, I don't think they're going to solve the world, but I don't like a lot of lefties will come out after the no kings thing just ripped it. I don't agree with that. I think anything that gets people out there is a good idea. Whatever you can do, whatever you're capable of doing. Hopefully it's more than sending a tweet out or whatever. But whatever you can do is okay. 80 year old people can't do the same thing as 25 year old people and wherever you are. But it's okay. But, but clearly there are people capable of doing more than that. I keep going back.
- [31:09]
A
The elderly white people who are the real communist threat in this country.
- [31:13]
B
The hippies.
- [31:13]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:14]
B
According to Stephen Miller, which is funny.
- [31:16]
A
For him to go after them since the most of their base are elderly white people.
- [31:22]
B
It doesn't matter. Right. Anyway, I don't want to get into generational politics and also I'm a baby boomer. But let's say, I don't know. But one thing, like I used to teach the first half of the US History class right up colonial period to the Civil War. And I never, I stopped and I had done that for 20 some years, but I really enjoyed that class. And one of the things I really like to talk about was this issue of resistance. Right. And I haven't focused on like communal resistance or labor resistance. And one of the coolest examples occurred like in the colonial period, which in many ways was class based period. Right. Stockton Lynn's famous work put them on the map. The war, the class war at home or who should rule at home. The war was about who should rule at home. Rule and who should rule at home. So There's a class war element. Anyway, one thing that became common because you had economic problems because of British mercantilist policies. Same thing, similar happening today. Right. Inflation today.
- [32:12]
A
Right.
- [32:13]
B
And that was happening.
- [32:14]
A
Right.
- [32:14]
B
So a lot of these merchants were raising the prices on bread or withholding bread from the market. So you would often have what were called bread riots. Right. And people refer to this as the moral economy. Right. The economy to them wasn't about markets and supply and demand, all this. It was about what's fair and what's right. And so there are. The colonial period is full of examples. Colonial press is full of examples of people like going to a granary and just taking the wheat. They went in there, they would push up, push away, physically push away the people guarding it, push away the granary owners and they would take whatever and then they would leave what they considered a fair price, a fair amount of money. They would. Was called setting the price. And this is happening all over colonial America. And this is being done, you know, and word spreads, of course, and it's. It really bonds and links people together because everybody had to buy bread, everybody had to pay for bread. Even rich people joined in a lot of these protests because they had to pay for bread. It can be done. There are the Baker's Rebellion when you had slaves and indentures on the same side fighting against the Virginia aristocracy. But if you're waiting for Chuck Schumer or a King Jeffries or Lee Schuler or even Sean Fade or Bernie or any of these people to say to the barricades, it's not going to happen. You need like full on Bullworth here. And Newsom has picked up the media part of that. Right? Which, whatever, anything that makes Trump crazy, that's okay. But it can be done. And I think we would all be shocked if somebody genuinely did that. If somebody genuinely went Bulworth and said, we're not going to send any more money to Israel, we're going to get these ICE people out of the street. We're not going to send National Guard into your cities. We're going to do something about guns so second graders don't get blown up at school. Right? We're going to do something about health care. Look at how popular Luigi was. Look at how popular he was.
- [34:08]
A
Look how popular it's been that the mass shooter in New York accidentally shot the CEO of Blackstone's real estate wing. Right?
- [34:16]
B
Yeah.
- [34:17]
A
Media didn't want to report on that because they saw what happened with Luigi.
- [34:20]
B
I talked to people and it's different. Like Ohio's different than it used to be. I grew up in a working class community and I talked to people, but. And many of them here aren't. They don't have the same politics they would have had 30 or 40 years ago. Like it used to be heavily unionized area. But even people I talk to today who don't really talk about politics a lot, they bitch about rich people. They really, they're pissed off about it. And how do we live in a world where freaking Trump can talk about rich people screwing you? How Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton can pretend they're champions of working people, like it's insane. But people like that resonates. The Democrats won't do it. Democrats won't talk. They talk about healthcare and they freak out.
- [34:57]
A
They just completely killed Medicaid, right?
- [35:01]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [35:02]
A
And no one did. I guess the Democrat, the Democrats in the Senate voted against the big beautiful bill.
- [35:08]
B
They didn't do anything. But did they mobilize people? Did they say, go out to this meeting, they do this, do that, go hassle this person, go hassle this senator. They don't do any of that.
- [35:17]
A
No.
- [35:18]
B
Again, I live, I lived in Texas and I live in Ohio, two very red states. And over the past. What's that?
- [35:24]
A
Go ahead, go ahead.
- [35:25]
B
Now for five or six years now, I've told you this many times, right? For five or six years now, constantly, the Republicans, national Republicans, will be running ads, local ads in Texas and Ohio, whether it be like a Supreme Court appointment. Right. Make sure you call your senator to tell him to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to stop the radical left right in Texas. You think Cordyn and Cruz are going to vote against her in Ohio? You think JD Dancer, I forget it was before him, is going to vote? No, they're not. But they did that. Right now in Ohio, they're running ads saying, make sure you vote. You write, call Senator John Hasta to thank him for his vote saving Medicaid. Hess that voted against it, against saving Medicaid, voted for the bill which doesn't save Medicaid. And yet they're on the fucking TV all the time doing this just bullshit lies that you could, like in 20 seconds you could debunk. No one's going to do it. Democratic Party doesn't do anything like that.
- [36:17]
A
You know, civil society people have been disrupting town halls and things like that. Yeah, yeah, but, but it's coming more from civil society than it is from the Democratic Party.
- [36:27]
B
Well, they're doing in Nebraska, they're doing it in Florida, they're doing red states. But again, you don't like. And in a sense, we're bitching about Democrats for not doing something that they're congenitally incapable of doing. They're not mobilized. Well, of course not. They wouldn't be the Democratic Party if they were mobilizing people. They've never done that. Never.
- [36:46]
A
No, it's important. It's important. It's. That's an important, it's an important distinction to make. And when we, a lot of people throw out this word, the quote unquote left, and sometimes they're talking about Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, and sometimes they're talking about antifa. And sometimes. And the. It's like that meme. Right. It's like when I think about the left, it shows like Marx. And then when they think about the left, they show Hillary Clinton and then when what it really is Jeffrey and Schumer. But it should also be an important to note that a lot of people who are the left are these, like, community groups who are like, mobilizing people to resist Trump's occupation of LA or Trump's occupation of DC and it's a really, it's a really important thing to note is that Wall street backed New York Democratic politicians, like the Senate leader backed by Wall street, from Wall street, the House leader, the House minority leader from Wall street, backed by Wall street. Really important. The people who are in the streets in New York who are fighting for Mahmoud Khalil and fighting for Gaza and fighting against ICE and things like that, they are not the same as the Democratic leadership.
- [37:54]
B
No. And this is where we are there. There's so much anger and dread and fear and hatred out there, and the Democratic Party is tamping it down, whereas Trump is always throwing more gasoline on the fire. I remember in Covid, he was encouraged, like the Michigan State House, they're in the Michigan State with AK47s and. Which is outrageous. Right. The Democratic Party is discouraging people from basic protests, nonviolent protests. Right.
- [38:28]
A
I do want to say, I do think it would behoove people on the left who I consider the left, like community groups and things like that, to actually think about different strategies and like the different approach to mobilizing people. And that is happening. But why are we not do it? Like, how can we get a bigger effort behind, like, counter recruitment to the military, to military resistance within the military? How do we get behind that? There's all these civil servants who are still within the federal government who could like be very disruptive and non cooperative and not leave their jobs, whatever. I also don't want people to lose their livelihood if they don't have to. But still, like, how do we create more? How do we organize civil, federal civil service to be disruptive and not cooperate in this moment? And maybe that's happening. Maybe just the hero has not emerged, I guess you could say. But to be an example of that. But we need more of that. We need to not just be getting people to go march on a weekend. We need people to like be actively disrupting and not cooperating with the current apparatus a little bit like Mario Savio said about being the wrench in the gears. Yeah.
- [39:32]
B
Throw your body under gears. There comes a time when it makes you so sick at heart. A couple months ago, we are in that moment.
- [39:37]
A
We are in that moment where I feel. I think many people I know who listen to this podcast feel sick at heart in this particular moment.
- [39:45]
B
Yeah. You can't participate. You can't even passively. When we talked to him, was it Zach from About Face? That's important right now. We should be doing everything we can to support military people who are resisting this. This. There's a lot of these guys are gung ho about it. Right. I would think a lot of these people, especially National Guardsmen, they don't feel real good about being out in the streets with guns in their own communities looking at people who look like them. Now, maybe some of them get off on it, but we're not talking about cops. Cops are very different. Military people and cops, I think, are very different. And there's a long history of military people rejecting these kinds of ideas. Cops, not so much. And we need to be supporting them. And you will never ever see the Democrats vote for fucking resolutions praising ICE for their civil service. In North Carolina, the Democrats just joined. There's bipartisan. There is bipartisanship in America when it comes to funding ICE or the COPs or the military. Then everybody.
- [40:42]
A
Israel or Israel or Israel.
- [40:44]
B
Right. Back many years ago, there was a Simpsons episode where they were like the Smithsonian or something and they were talking about how the government cuts funding for everything except something. The NRA and Israel.
- [40:58]
A
Even the Simpsons knew it back then pretty much. I think the NRA would be against the great expansion of ice, but maybe they're not as anti authoritarian as they. To make you think.
- [41:07]
B
Yeah, they. For all these years, they said we need our guns to resist tyranny. And when tyranny comes, they're like, we're okay.
- [41:13]
A
Hey, the last thing I want to dig on and we need to do some shows, some more shows on the media and media complicity and all this. We've done. We've. We do that some. But I do want to flag for, like, left media, which, like, there's a pretty big left media presence out there. Is that left media a little bit, just tries to mimic corporate media. Right. So they want to be their own pundits. They sometimes I think they're like sort of minor league team waiting to get to the majors to go on CNN or MSNBC or things like that.
- [41:46]
B
Ms. And msnow.
- [41:48]
A
Oh, Ms. Msn. Right.
- [41:50]
B
Msnap.
- [41:51]
A
And doing a little rebranding there. But I. I do want to. And I'm not gonna go into this too much, but I do think this sort of like faux punditry on the. In the left media is problematic. They should be lifting up organizers, they should be lifting up people in the streets, and they. They at least play, pay some lip service to it. But it really needs to be happening more and more. And there was a quote from Marx that I pulled for today, which is the philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it, which I believe is like a little bit of what we've been talking about today is if we're gonna epitaph at the high gate. Yeah, it's not. It's on a tombstone on the high gate. That's true. And so it's. I just think it's an important thing to think about is that we don't need to be. We don't need analysis and we don't need interpretation. We need opposition, fierce and compassionate resistance.
- [42:44]
B
You can get your analysis from Green and Red podcast.
- [42:48]
A
Well, on this show, we spend a lot of time pumping up the organizers, too. So we do.
- [42:52]
B
And that is a big, I think, a big problem. I have talked to people who were present at the creation of a certain democratic socialist rag out of Brooklyn. I'm not going to name names. I'm not going to say who it is or anything like that. Named after French revolutionaries, but we would never do that.
- [43:07]
A
Have a number?
- [43:08]
B
No. You know how I feel about. I think Jackman. I have real issues. I think it was ironic Jackman put out an article criticizing Gavin Newsom for this redistricting response to Texas. Now, I don't think it's great. At some point you got to do something, right? And a lot of people I know who were there in the early 2010s said that they walked away because they weren't really interested in like doing that, platforming activists or really participating in that world. If you read Jackaman, they have stories about it. They have tons of stories about theory and industry and all that kind of stuff. Some of it's not bad, some of it is just a party line and they tend to platform people who I would not consider kind of intellectual leaders of the left. But yeah, you've got to go out there and like actually change the world. And we do. That's one of the things when we first talked about doing this, we have a lot of people on who don't get a lot of media time. And that's unfortunate because they're doing way, way more, way more than these pundits are. So on the other hand, if Ms. Now comes and offers us a big check, what are we going to do?
- [44:12]
A
I'm going to happy to leave you a pundit to talk about activism on Ms. Now, do you think maybe we'll.
- [44:17]
B
Get in a bidding war between them and Soros?
- [44:20]
A
Yeah, exactly. I'm still waiting for those Soros checks. Yeah, I think we should wrap it there. Folks, you've been listening to the Green and Red podcast talking about mass mobilizing, organizing, organizing strategy. We have lots of guests talk about this and we'll probably have more in the near future. But we also like to throw out our own thoughts and knowledge and experience out as well. If you like what you're hearing, please check us out on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and Bluesky. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. If you're listening to us on audio platform, give us a rate and review. And if you really like us, if you listen to every episode or you hang on every word of political insight and historical knowledge that we put out there, please consider becoming a donor. Go to greenandredpodcast.org and hit that support button or become a patron@patreon.com backslash greenred podcast. Bob and I mostly do this out of our own pockets and the little bit of money that we get from our beloved donors and patrons. So definitely please support us and keep supporting us. And until then, as always, make trouble and misbehave and we'll talk to you again soon.
- [45:53]
B
Sam.