← The Al Franken Podcast
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- [00:00]
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- [00:50]
Al Franken
Hey everybody, we got a great one today, you know, for a change, because this one is guest hosted by my friend and friend of the show, Heather McGee. You see, I'm taking a little break from the podcast. I've been doing this show for seven years and I deserve it. And also, nothing is really happening. Well, Heather can tell you more about that now. You might remember Heather from her previous appearances on the show, but in case you forgot, I'll tell you why Heather is so great. Heather is the best selling author, one of my favorite books, the Sum of what Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. We've covered a book on the podcast and you should go back and give that episode a listen if you haven't yet. Or better yet, read the book yourself. She even has an adapted version for young readers, so your grandkids can read it too. Or kids, I guess. Or your great grandkids. I don't know how old you are. One of the striking pieces of data from the Sum of us the average white high school dropout has more accumulated wealth than the average black college graduate. That's wealth, not income. But that wealth comes from owning a house. And last June, Heather joined us to talk about the Trump administration's attack on dei, where Heather made the very powerful case that diversity is our country's superpower. And of course, the Trump administration, the second one, has continued to take DEI head on. Heather truly is one of my favorite experts to have on the show. And today Heather McGee hosts the Al Franken Podcast. I can guarantee that this is going to be a great one, you know, for a change. So Heather, take it away.
- [03:00]
Heather McGee
Thank you Al, for the introduction and for having me on. I'm thrilled to be guest hosting the Al Franken Podcast. You know, listeners, I've been thinking a
- [03:10]
Adam Serwer
lot about the times we're in. Things can seem so bleak that it's hard to understand how progress is made against These odds, a ruthless regime backed by unlimited money and bottomless greed, who are dead set on repealing all of the progress of the 20th century. We know that it's only organized people who can take on organized money. But the cynical voice says, we've had so many mobilizations and movements over the past 15 years and look where we are. Occupy Wall street, the Dreamers, the climate strikes, Standing Rock, the fight for 15 Black Lives Matter. Me too. And now we just participated in the largest single day protest in history. The third no Kings protest. But students of history know that progress has never actually been linear. Movements create change because movements change people, people. Every time an individual wakes up to injustice and takes an unexpected action in solidarity with others, in the hope of making a difference, it builds a muscle. So we can't look at these mobilizations in isolation. They actually build on one another, changing strangers into neighbors and consumers into citizens who are strong enough and primed to act again. In Minneapolis in 2020, the murder of George Floyd ignited a justice movement that tamped down to embers, but it blazed again under ice occupation.
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Heather McGee
This is pretty amazing.
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Adam Serwer
In a country sold dehumanizing lies about criminal aliens, a city full of everyday citizens left the comfort of their homes in the middle of winter to protect their neighbors, donating money, encircling schools, buying diapers, and throwing their bodies in front of armed soldiers. In large part, we have overcome the apathy and the distrust, the self serving illusions that those less fortunate deserve it. Somehow we've overcome the someone else will deal with it. And so many of us have signed up to say, aye, I will do it. We are not the resistance. Trump and his fascists are the resistance to the America that's becoming.
- [05:46]
Heather McGee
I think all of that. But then, of course, I say to
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Adam Serwer
myself, trump won again, and he won the popular vote this time. But then I look at the actual numbers, right? So 75 million American voters chose Harris. 77 million chose Trump. 90 million eligible voters chose neither. Politics is not an indicator of where we are. It's an indicator of choices that are not what the people want. That's why I hate the term backlash to describe where we are right now,
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Heather McGee
because it sounds like something that's an
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Adam Serwer
upswell from the ground, something organic and natural. What happened to the consciousness raising forged by the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements was not backlash. It was attempted sabotage. A sabotage of something that had been built. It was political, it was coordinated. It was from above. As my guest and I are going to talk about today, everyday people can still tell wrong from right, even if big corporations and elite law firms can't. It's so important to learn about history because it teaches you that a self serving elite has always tried to break the bonds that tie together people who struggle. They've used the same zero sum lie. It's a lie that tries to convince me that if my neighbor succeeds, that's a threat to me. That if we welcome new Americans, it will come at our expense. Understanding history helps us see the lie when it comes and helps us see how movements build on one another. That's why I'm really thrilled to be joined by someone who's pretty great at connecting what's happening today to the lessons of history.
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Heather McGee
My guest today is Adam Serwer. He's an award winning journalist. He's currently a staff writer at the Atlantic. Author of the New York Times best selling book the Cruelty is the Point from One World Books. Adam's work on race, history and politics is prolific and incisive. He's one of the journalists that I always read. I'm excited for this conversation. It will be in some ways a continuation of a long one. He and I share a publisher. We first met 15 years ago when we shared an office when I was at demos and he was at the American Prospect magazine. Adam, welcome to the podcast.
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Adam Serwer
Thank you so much for having me
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and thank you for that kind introduction. And yeah, I guess it's been a long time now.
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Heather McGee
It really has. And we just keep getting better and better. That's the way I like to think of it. First, a little bit about you share with our listeners.
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Adam Serwer
Where did you grow up?
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Heather McGee
Who are your parents? Were they subject to the jurisdiction of the United States? Just kidding. Just a little Supreme Court humor.
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Adam Serwer
That is an interesting question.
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My father was born in New York. You know, he grew up in New Rochelle. My mother also grew up in New Rochelle, but she was born in Jim Crow, Florida. And my grandparents decided that they did not want my mother and her brother to grow up and go to Jim Crow schools. So they moved to New Rochelle. You know, the family lore is actually that my maternal and paternal grandparents met at an anti blockbusting meeting in Neurochel. So they were both, you know, very,
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I mean my, it's funny because my,
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my, you know, obviously my maternal grandparents were Republicans because all black people in the south were Republicans at that time. But they sort of met because they, they, they, they had, you know, both couples had integrationist sympathies. And, and then my father and mother met in school and you know, they started Dating on and off for a number of years. And then they got married and had me. My mother went on to be the chief curator at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and my father worked for the State Department, which meant that I spent a decent amount of time bouncing around the world while my father was stationed in Brazil and Rome and D.C. so I got a pretty weird upbringing, I suppose you could say.
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Heather McGee
As we're talking today, we are coming 24 hours after the oral arguments in the Trump v. Barbara case, which was the case considering the Constitution constitutionality of the 2025 Trump executive order that attempted to limit the Equal Protection clause's guarantee of birthright citizenship by excluding babies born to people who are in any way, sort of temporarily here. And I think you and I know, Adam, sort of what this is really about. And I think Trump knows what it's really about when he communicates about it on social media. He's talking about not about the technicalities of somebody's domicile or if they're subject to the jurisdiction. He's saying we're the only country stupid enough to let any people who want to come here and have a baby and become citizens. This is very much about defining who is an American and who isn't. And, of course, for them, it is very racial.
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Adam Serwer
And it's also not true that, you know, the whole Western hemisphere is like that. And the reason why it's like that, you know, you could think about it for five seconds and you realize it's because of the slave trade and the fact that these countries all are shaped by the Atlantic slave trade.
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It's not a coincidence.
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And I think the fact that Trump
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attended oral argument yesterday, at least for part of the arguments, he walked out in the middle of the opposition.
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But I think him going there, the first president to do something like that,
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like he's Frank Pentangeli in the Godfather, you know, trying to intimidate the justices.
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I just, you know, I think it
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tells you how much it matters to him.
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Heather McGee
Yeah.
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Adam Serwer
Garrett Epps in Washington Monthly highlighted this
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quote from Stephen Miller.
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But, you know, he's like, Stephen Miller said something like, we're the only country that has allowed a foreign labor class
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to come in and get citizenship and equal rights.
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And I'm like, well, A, that's not true, but B, it really is telling about how you're thinking about this, which is that your issue is not with, you know, a quote unquote, foreign labor class.
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Your issue is with that foreign labor class having the same rights as you and being considered as American as you are.
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And so, you know, it's just really not a coincidence because as you know,
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as you've written about and as you
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well know, we've been doing this tug of war, you know, since the founding about whether America means what it says about all men being created equal. And this is, you know, an attack
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on the principle of non racial citizenship.
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And they know that. That's why they're doing it.
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The Constitution is utterly clear.
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I don't know how many votes there are. I don't know what the Supreme Court is going to decide, and I don't
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know how lopsided in one direction or the other it's going to be.
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But I would say that I think
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the Constitution is extremely clear. This is the easiest case that has maybe ever come before the Supreme Court ever in history, and yet it's there. And that in itself is somewhat alarming
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that we are back to sort of
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almost antebellum levels of racism in believing
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that people like Stephen Miller believing that
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people who are not like them are not as American as they are, not as entitled to be American as they are.
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And it's a departure. I mean, if you remember, this is not how conservatism has to be. Ronald Reagan, for all of his personal
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racism, I mean, we can remember that phone call with Nixon where he's saying racist things about African representative at the U.N. but you know, he also said
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this is the only country in the world where you can come from anywhere and become an American. And he took a lot of pride in that.
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Heather McGee
And Adam, of course they took pride in it because so many, including Donald Trump, so many people who consider themselves white and therefore truly American are the descendants, are married to their children, are the children of immigrants. I mean, it is ridiculous. Let us be clear that part of the reason why what was quite a racist majority of the court in this case, the 1898 case that is being reconsidered in some ways today, decided in favor of of course, affirming that the equal protection clause meant birthright citizenship was cause they were worried about Irish immigrant children, they were worried about European immigrant children. This country was booming with immigration and most of it at that time was white. And so not settling the question of our children born here, citizens would have had a major impact on the soon to be considered white population. But I also want to have a little bit of like a family conversation about people of color at this moment, because I think it's really, that's where I think it gets kind of Juicy. So there was a study put out in the journal Demography by Jennifer Vanhook and A. Nicole Kreisberg that, you know, did the math. Right. So if this executive order is upheld, what would happen? What would be the implications? And they found that there could be about six and a half million children born in the US who would be without legal status. Right. Like a new class of undocumented children over the next generation. And interestingly, the study found that the most dramatic change in the undocumented population would be in the Asian American community.
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Adam Serwer
Oh, wow.
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Heather McGee
A co author said we would be creating an undocumented population of Asians out of thin air. And that's because the EO applies to people temporarily in the US and many of the children would be born to parents on student or work visas from countries like India and China. So this, to me, is very fascinating. It's fascinating for a few reasons. Obviously, because of the precedent. The case from 1898, Wong Kim Ark, on the courthouse steps, was a direct descendant of him. Wong Kim Ark was a cook born in Chinatown, San Francisco, who went abroad and was barred from coming back to the US under the Chinese exclusion laws. Yes, listeners, we had those. If you haven't read about them, please do. He was barred from coming back, and he took his case affirming his citizenship up to the Supreme Court. And that is the case that really established judicially the birthright citizenship. But what it says to me is that Even though about 40% of Asian American voters voted for Trump, he is coming for their rights. And there is something very deep about the relationship between the black freedom struggle and the rights enjoyed today by immigrants that are not primarily from the African diaspora. Right. So this is an inheritance. The civil rights, the equal protection guarantees that were won by and for black people is an inheritance that the Asian and Latino communities that they sort of ignore at their peril. And I think we keep getting these opportunities to sort of knit together, cross racial solidarity along the racial hierarchy of our society. And in some ways, I sort of. I hope that this court obviously does the right thing. But the conversation and the sort of drawing out of, hey, you know, this thing that you assume, which is that you come into the ladder of the American racial hierarchy and get your piece of the American dream. That's actually a constant struggle. And black people have been trying to tell you that for generations. Right. And so I just, I like the fact that we're having this sort of community conversation, that rights groups from the Asian American community and the Latino community are sort of Looking at things like the equal protection clause and recognizing the sacrifices that were created. And I just, I think it's an interesting layer to this conversation that otherwise could just be about the new Nazism of the Trump administration.
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Adam Serwer
There's a couple things that are really
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interesting to me about this.
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One is that, you know, the sort of thing that's driving this, this idea
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of great replacement theory of white people being quote, unquote, replaced by people of color.
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I mean, the theory behind it, that these people, you know, Tucker Carlson called them like, quote, unquote, obedient Third Worlders. I mean, that's nonsense. Okay, but the other thing is, like, we, as you mentioned, we saw in the last election, a lot of these communities voted for Donald Trump. And that hasn't changed their calculus at all. I think that's what's shocking. I mean, theoretically, having these constituencies of color, you would think that the Trump administration would moderate in order to appeal to them. You know, there are a lot of conservative people from Latin America. There are a lot of conservative people
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from Asia who come to the United States.
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That, you know, the idea that, you know, all these people are going to be automatic liberals or Democrats is just nonsense. But that doesn't matter to them. You know, what matters to them is the demographic composition of the country. You know, Stephen Miller, you know, talk
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about, you know, the black freedom struggle
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and immigrant rights in 1965 in the
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midst of the civil rights movement is
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when the nativist restrictions of the 1920s are repealed. And so these restrictions, just to explain them, these were restrictions that were meant to keep out Asian and African immigrants, but also eastern European immigrants and southern European immigrants, particularly Jews, Italians, Greeks, because the race science at the time held that these were lesser white people. It wasn't that they weren't white, but they were inferior whites, not like the
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northern European whites from whom the quote, unquote, Anglo Saxons descended.
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And Miller's belief is that this law,
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which repealed those racist immigration restrictions and set the stage for this influx of
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Asian and African immigration, ruined the country. And it ruined the country because it meant that again, white people aren't being replaced. There are more white people in America than ever, but it changed the percentage
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of the population that was white in
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the sense that more Americans were people of color. When you see that project, you can see that this is really about a sort of massive social engineering project to
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make the country wider.
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Before the Civil War, the Democrats, they were racist, but they were also anti nativist. Right? Because the naturalization law said only white people could immigrate could naturalize. And their view was, we need as many white people as possible to uphold this system of slavery. And so if you're a white man from Berlin or Dublin, that's okay, because we need you. Because otherwise, you know, we don't want these enslaved people to revolt, and we don't want our system of racial hierarchy to be disturbed by these crazy people, these crazy wokes up north who are talking about abolition. What we have now is, what's interesting is sort of despite the fact that a lot of these communities supported Donald Trump, they're still being targeted. They're still being targeted by ice. They're still being targeted by these policies that aim to make America whiter, even if it makes America poorer. And so, you know, this project is an ideological one. It has not been derailed by the support of immigrant communities or, you know, naturalized communities. For Donald Trump, it's. It's actually kind of extraordinary.
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Peter Ogburn
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- [22:15]
Alexandra Fedisoff
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Heather McGee
Let's keep talking about Those good whites. Right? Let's keep talking about the Nordic white folks. There was some rally where Trump said, you know, why don't we get more white people from Scandinavia?
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Adam Serwer
Really, it is old timey, 1920s eugenics, racism. It's really, like, incredible.
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Heather McGee
But we've got a real example.
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Adam Serwer
Right.
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Heather McGee
Cause a lot of those Scandinavian Norwegian folks ended up in Minnesota. And in Minnesota, you've got like, you know, some pretty quintessential Garrison Keiller white Americans. And as you wrote in your January 26th piece on the movement against ICE in Minneapolis, Minneapolis proved MAGA wrong. Your piece really helped readers understand what was going on at a time when it was. It wasn't clear to most Americans what was happening. My friends and colleagues who were on the ground in Minneapolis, you know, really felt like your piece did it justice. And so I want to make sure that the listeners today can take the right lessons from the extraordinary pushback that we saw there, mainly of exactly the kind of white folks that Trump would like to have more of. Right? Yeah.
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Adam Serwer
And there was a conservative pundit who complained about that. He was like. He was like, you see these. He was doing, like, race science on the Nor on like Scandinavians and how they're too tolerant, so they're too live for, you know, and that's why they wouldn't accept this sort of attempt to ethnically cleanse the immigrant communities of the Twin Cities by ice. Like, it's really sort of amazing. I don't know how many, you know, how many folks in the audience are parents, but it's almost like, you know, they think of people like Pokemon. You know what I mean? You're like a Fire Pokemon or like an ice, you know, and you just. You're like, locked into this path of evolution, and everything you do is just genetic determinism. But what they did not expect, and I think they didn't expect it for the same reason that the south did not expect the fierceness of the Union army, which is that they assume that these values are hypocritical, that these people who espouse these values of liberalism and tolerance and multiracial democracy do not believe
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Heather McGee
in them and wouldn't fight for them
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Adam Serwer
and wouldn't fight for them. And, you know, in fairness, that has turned out to be true for a big segment of sort of the elite leadership of the United States of America. A lot of those people folded immediately when Trump started pressuring them, and he assumed that the Twin Cities would be the same way. But it turns out that ordinary Americans really do have an incredible steel when it comes to their values. And the folks in Minnesota, they devised a strategy to resist this encroachment, this occupation of their community, and to protect
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and help their neighbors.
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And I think they just were not expecting that. They were not expecting the sincerity of
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these people's commitment to their own values.
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And that was a mistake that the south made before the civil war. And it's a mistake that Trump made when he sent these people into Minnesota and assumed that the population there would just would either fold or that they would respond with a kind of theatrical violence or a fringe would respond with
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a theatrical violence that would then justify a broader crackdown.
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And I think it's just. It is a lack of imagination, an inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. They could not imagine that people would be so sincere about protecting their neighbors, about defending their neighbors, that they would
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risk death to do so.
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That is a limit of their imagination. The possibility that people could really be sincere about these values just.
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It does not compute for them.
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Heather McGee
You know, I think there are a few layers that are important to. Name one is that Minnesota was about 90% white state not so very long ago that because of the Lutherans in the state, it became a refugee resettlement destination. And in the wake of the Somali civil war, there were a lot of Somali people who came in, made homes and communities that and more, various other civil wars, the Congo, et cetera. A lot of like African Muslim refugees and immigrants. Right. Like the triple threat. Right. Not just any immigrants, but the triple threat, black and religious, other refugees and immigrants came at a time and it caused, you know, the rise of Michele Bachmann and the Tea Party. I mean, I'm sure there are Minnesota listeners to Al's podcast here who know that for a long time I was talking to a great local organizer there and she was saying to me, who will remain nameless because of the threat right now to organizers on the ground. But she was saying that for a long time in the, you know, kind of early 2000s and 2010s, there was a sort of conversation among white citizens of Minnesota who, you know, were talking about school funding or they were talking about trying to get a light rail or a bus line and it would always turn back to race. Right. In this way that, you know, I write about in the sum of us, the sort of drained pool politics question. We're such a well funded state in Minnesota. We have all these nice things, but now there's this rise of the Tea Party in our state that says, no, we need to Cut government, because it's going to these other people, these unwelcome people, these undeserving people of color. And so they, like, really dealt with that question, like, can we still be sort of a generous state even in the face of a changing population? And then George Floyd, actually before George Floyd, and then Philando Castile, right in the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, after Ferguson and Mike Brown. So you had Philando Castile, who was in Minneapolis, and then, of course, you had George Floyd. And so one of the things I think we often, often don't give movements credit for is the way in which every moment that causes organizing, that causes people to be pushed out of apathy, it builds a muscle that then gets stronger and stronger. And so I don't think you have the incredible shutdown of Minneapolis, the fierce opposition, the general strike, the beautiful resistance without George Floyd's murder, without Neighbors for More Neighbors, which was an anti racially restrictive zoning law, basically campaign that moved to have more multiple family housing. And it was very much understood, like, oh, yeah, we have these laws in here that restrict these communities to single family homes, but that's because of racism. And we have an affordable housing shortage. And so we're going to have this campaign called Neighbors for More Neighbors, and it's going to really be about dealing with our racist history to solve an affordable housing problem for everybody today. Right. There were all of these campaigns that, you know, you could look at in isolation. But in fact, I think they really grew a muscle in that largely white community for solidarity and for understanding what time it is, for understanding our history. I just think that that is a piece of it. That is that, of course, you know, Trump and Maga couldn't have noted. They think, oh, this is a place where some Somali people were convicted of welfare fraud. Let's go in and further cleave that population. They're not going to have any sympathizers anymore because we're going to be able to use our old race baiting tactics. And they were wrong. And our movements are stronger and deeper than we often give them credit for.
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Adam Serwer
Yeah, I mean, I think just from
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a pure logistical question, a lot, you
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know, when I talk to people, you know, a lot of these people had
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these, like, you know, group texts that had been dormant since George Floyd that,
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you know, were used for like, hey, can I borrow a, you know, a power drill? That became, you know, once again revived
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for the purposes of organizing resistance to ice.
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So just from a pure logistical question. Yes, I mean, that is part of the story. And I think one of the things that I found really interesting about what went on in Minnesota and how Minnesota
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responded to Trump is just, they seem
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to not understand that repression creates communities. It forces communities together to resist that repression. When you think about the history of black people in the United States, like, you know, there's a time at the end of the Civil War where it's, it's, you know, in New Orleans, there's a reporter who's, you know, traveling the country writing about the aftermath of the Civil War, and he goes to a meeting in a library in New Orleans and he's like, I'm here for the meeting of upper class black people in New Orleans. And he goes up, he's like, yeah. And I asked this white guy standing there where the meeting was and he said, oh, you're at the meeting, right? And he's like, sort of shocked that all these light skinned people are there and they're all identifying with, they're saying,
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our fate is with the field hands.
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And, you know, that's not, it didn't have to happen that way. I mean, when you look at countries like Haiti and South Africa, there are, you know, there are incredible divisions between people who are considered to be, quote, unquote, mixed race and people who are considered to be black. But in the United States, that did not happen because of the specific kind of binary of the American color line forced black people together across lines of race, class, religion, skin tone. And that created a sort of, you know, a particular black American identity. And I think, you know, this kind of repression where Trump thinks these communities are going to shatter because he sends in a bunch of guys with guns and masks, instead what happens is the
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communities respond and it brings them closer
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together because they are resisting, you know, an outside enemy. And I think what's interesting about that is that this is, you know, the difference between that and Trumpian politics is that Trumpian politics deliberately chooses to people who are less powerful to pick on and create as an external enemy in order to create a political community that is large enough to seize power and say these, these are the people who are hurting you and we're going to destroy them. You know, it's the Somalis. He has made so many appallingly racist statements about Somalis in order to demonize
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them, in order to justify violence against them.
- [34:04]
It's backfired in the sense that when they go in to repress these communities, the communities respond by joining closer together. And they simply have not understood that in some ways they're creating their own opposition.
- [34:17]
They're training their own opposition.
- [34:20]
Because these people, they really believe in their own values and they're not simply going to give them up. They're not elite law firms or college presidents that they actually live their lives according to these values and they're not going to abandon them just because Donald Trump tries to intimidate them.
- [34:42]
Peter Ogburn
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- [38:26]
Heather McGee
Adam Donald Trump said something astonishing this week.
- [38:31]
Donald Trump
The United States can't take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up. But it's not possible for us to take care of daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection. We have to guard the country.
- [39:12]
Heather McGee
You know, the first line in the
- [39:14]
Adam Serwer
sum of us is why can't we have nice things? And here you have Donald Trump telling
- [39:18]
Heather McGee
us why he said we can't do
- [39:20]
Adam Serwer
Medicare, Medicaid, you know what I mean? Because we have to pay for this war. And it's like, nobody wanted the war.
- [39:28]
Heather McGee
We wanted daycare.
- [39:30]
Adam Serwer
They wanted daycare. And you told all these people that Biden was giving away money to the wrong people. But you were gonna fix it and you were gonna make sure that American. When I talked to Trump voters, they were like, they're paying for all this stuff for illegal immigrants and I'm struggling and that's not fair. And this is the old timey bait and switch, which is like, yeah, yeah, those people are getting free stuff and it's free stuff you deserve. And then like the second he gets in office, it's billionaire tax cuts and foreign wars. Like, you know, cuz he's a Republican, cuz that's what they've been about for the past 30 years.
- [40:05]
Heather McGee
It's not just billionaire tax cuts and foreign wars. It's half a billion dollar ballroom. It's him suing the IRS for $10 billion. It's. It's his net worth going up tenfold. He is literally taking it for himself while he strips the country for parts and then saying, we can't afford daycare, we can't afford healthcare. It's classic drain pool politics. It's exactly right.
- [40:29]
Adam Serwer
I mean, like, you absolutely nailed it. And I worry that the economic results of the war are going to shrink the pie and then rich people are gonna want the same size slice and there's gonna be much less left for everybody else. And then what they're gonna do is say, no, but it's the immigrant's fault, it's trans people's fault, it's black people's fault that you don't have things when it's because they keep taking everything.
- [40:56]
Heather McGee
I mean, you see this in New York right now, where the things that are so popular that Mayor Mamdani ran on everybody wants. In fact, people are leaving New York because they can't afford daycare. It's gone up 50% since 2019. It's insane. People desperately want this. They desperately want smaller class size. They desperately want the fast and free buses.
- [41:22]
Adam Serwer
Affordable housing.
- [41:23]
Heather McGee
Affordable housing. And right now it is a question about whether or not we're going to tax wealthy people for it. And ultimately you end up having these deficit conversations when the elites make these choices to enrich themselves. And it ends up being fighting about is the problem special ed or migrant services, when actually, of course, always look to the top.
- [41:49]
Adam Serwer
Mm, absolutely.
- [41:51]
Heather McGee
So speaking of Community opposition. We are coming on the heels of the largest single day protest in American history. Let's name it for what it was, no kings. On March 28, 8 million folks in every state on seven continents saw the visuals from Antarctica. I think we have a piece of audio from the record breaking no Kings rally in Minneapolis. Here's Governor Tim Walz.
- [42:20]
Peter Ogburn
When the wannabe dictator in the White
- [42:22]
Reverend Jesse Jackson
House sent his untrained aggressive thugs to do damage to Minnesota, it was you,
- [42:31]
Heather McGee
Minnesota, who stood up for your neighbors,
- [42:35]
Reverend Jesse Jackson
who stood up for decency, who stood up for kindness. And at this moment that we are
- [42:43]
Heather McGee
still in, when democracy itself seems to
- [42:48]
Reverend Jesse Jackson
be at risk, it was Minnesota who
- [42:52]
Heather McGee
said, not on our watch. Not on our watch. You know, you and I both have, I think, an affection for a word that given our age, we probably really first learned from Mr. Rogers, right, which is neighbor. You know, there's something so powerful about that word and Waltz is invoking it there. In your piece on Minneapolis, you say if the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it neighborism, a commitment to protecting the people around you no matter who they are or where they came from. You know, there's something so quotidian about the same parent group chats that are used to give away a pair of Crocs that have been outgrown than being the same group chat that becomes the one to distribute whistles and say ice on the corner and get people out there. And it really does come down to this question of who is an American who's in my community, in our multiracial, multi ethnic, multi origin country becoming ever more so by the day, that's gonna be people who aren't exactly like you. And we know that that's not what the right wing wants. Even though I wanna remind people all the time that these so called white people were a generation or2ago's UNW Immigrant. We really have a deep well of neighborism in this country that is stronger than they think. But you and I also both know that some people have been talking about that for a long time. And I want to end our conversation by bringing in somebody who was very important to me when I was growing up in Chicago. My mother worked for him. That's what brought us to dc. She became a leader in his youth anti violence project in the 90s. And that's the reverend, the late, great Reverend Jesse Jackson. I think, as I said, I always like to read what you write and your piece on the Reverend Jesse Jackson really did what I was hoping somebody would do. Which is speak to the cynicism that the coverage about him started to have in the latter half of his life and really sort of reclaim the boldness, the big heartedness, the visionary nature of his Rainbow Coalition. And we have some sound here from a very beautiful speech that he gave that spoke directly to cross racial solidarity and the community that should be, that could be among all those who struggle in America.
- [45:47]
Reverend Jesse Jackson
America's not like a blanket. One piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt. Many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the business person, the environmentalist, the peace activist. The young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt. Even in our fractured state, all of us count and fit somewhere. We have proven that we can survive without each other, but we have not proven that we can win and make progress without each other. We must come together.
- [46:43]
Adam Serwer
Yeah, I just, you know, that speech
- [46:46]
is, to me, you know, remains my favorite description of American liberalism.
- [46:53]
You know, that this idea of all these coalitions coming together, all these people who, these communities that are too small to protect themselves on their own, banding
- [47:03]
together, you know, to do something great. There's almost a direct line, you know, between that and Frederick Douglass's composite nation speech about how America is going to
- [47:16]
be great because it is going to
- [47:17]
bring all these people from all over the world and become this cornucopia of
- [47:22]
nationalities that are all going to blend
- [47:24]
together and make something wonderful.
- [47:27]
And I think that you could see that vision in how Jesse was talking. And to me, that's the essence of democracy. You know, that's, that's, that's what it can be. It's not always that.
- [47:41]
Sometimes democracy is ugly, as we've, you know, learned over and over again.
- [47:46]
But I think, you know, when people talk about Jesse Jackson, you know, I was in a city in Washington, D.C. and going to public school and just people were very sincere in their admiration for him.
- [47:59]
Like I said, you know, it was
- [48:00]
the kind of place where, you know, you'd walk around Howard University, Georgia Avenue, and you'd see people still have their
- [48:05]
Jesse signs in the window, like into
- [48:07]
the 90s, you know, because he was sincere. You may have thought he was like, corny or something, but he was genuine. He really believed this stuff. And he had become, you know, for the right, I think, and also for the mainstream media.
- [48:20]
I don't want to say it was just the conservative thing.
- [48:22]
It was this sort of belief that he was just like a cynical camera chaser. But that's, I think, you know, it's true that he liked being the center of attention.
- [48:31]
I think, you know, there's no point in denying that.
- [48:32]
But he also was extremely sincere. He showed up, you know, in West
- [48:37]
Virginia when white minors were protesting.
- [48:40]
He showed up with lgbtq. I mean, like his statement about gay and lesbian rights, that's the 80s, man. It's a different time. That is not the consensus statement that it is today, you know, and he was genuine about trying to help everybody on the margins of American life get justice. And I think whatever else you think of him, you have to remember that
- [49:06]
sincere commitment to a principle that I think everybody can admire.
- [49:11]
Heather McGee
And if that vision of a rainbow coalition shot through with hope that we have to keep alive even in the toughest moments is not the best way for us to think about the path ahead, I don't know what is. My listeners, thank you so much for being with me in this guest moment from the Al Franken podcast. Our guest here was Adam Serwer. Please subscribe to the Atlantic so you can get all of his writing all the time. Thank you so much, Adam.
- [49:43]
Adam Serwer
Thank you so much for having me.
- [49:45]
Heather McGee
Listeners, as we close, I want to leave you with a treat.
- [49:49]
Adam Serwer
A little more from the groundbreaking ahead
- [49:52]
Heather McGee
of its time and still relevant, Jesse Jackson's speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention.
- [50:00]
Reverend Jesse Jackson
Farmers, you seek fair prices and you are right, but you cannot stand alone. Your patch is not big enough. Workers, you fight for fair wages. You're right, but you're your patch. Labor is not big enough. Women, you seek comparable worth and pay equity. You are right, but your patch is not big enough. Women, mothers who seek Head Start and daycare and prenatal care on the front side of life rather than jail care and welfare on the back of the out of life. You're right, but your patch is not big enough. Students, you seek scholarships, you are right, but your patch is not big enough. Blacks and Hispanics, when we fight for civil rights, we are right, but our patch is not big enough. Gays and lesbians, when you fight against against discrimination and a cure for aids, you are right, but your patch is not big enough.
- [51:13]
Al Franken
Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kottke, the great Leo Kottke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.
- [51:34]
Alexandra Fedisoff
Let's be honest, buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy or low quality. That's why I want to tell you about Mood.com that's M-O-Ood.com Mood ships federally legal cannabis straight to your door. No medical card, no hassle. And here's the kicker. The quality is better than anything you'll find at your local dispensary. Yeah, I said it. Whether you're into edibles, concentrates, flower, or just looking to explore, you'll find it all at Mood. And it's not just the variety that makes them stand out. Every product is sourced from small, American owned family farms that care deeply about what they grow. It's cannabis you can trust, delivered discreetly and ready to elevate your mood. And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com that's M-O-Ood.com to get started.