2516 - How Gaza Exposed The West’s Moral Rot; NYC’s Left-Wing Uprising w/ Omar El Akkad, Chi Ossé

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder
Episode 2516 - "How Gaza Exposed The West’s Moral Rot; NYC’s Left-Wing Uprising"
Release Date: June 11, 2025

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Introduction

The Majority Report with Sam Seder delves into pressing political and social issues with insightful guests each episode. In Episode 2516, released on June 11, 2025, host Sam Seder explores two critical topics: the ongoing conflict in Gaza and its reflection of the West’s moral decline, and the burgeoning left-wing movements in New York City. The episode features two prominent guests: Omar El Akkad, author of One Day. Everyone will always have been against this, and Chi Ossé, a New York City Council member advocating for progressive policies.

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Segment 1: Gaza and the West’s Moral Decline

Guest Introduction: Omar El Akkad

Omar El Akkad, an award-winning journalist and novelist, joins the show to discuss his latest work, which intertwines personal narratives with broader geopolitical analysis.

Gaza as a Mirror of Western Moral Rot

El Akkad articulates how the prolonged conflict in Gaza serves as a stark indicator of moral decay within Western liberal societies. He emphasizes the systemic indifference and complicity exhibited by Western governments and institutions.

Notable Quote:
"The complicity, right? My tax dollars are doing this, right? I'm killing those kids. That's me." [16:13]

This statement underscores the personal moral struggle faced by individuals in the West who recognize their indirect role in perpetuating violence through governmental policies.

Personal Journey and Moral Awakening

El Akkad shares his journey from Cairo to Qatar, then to Canada, and finally settling in the United States. His transition highlights the stark contrasts between authoritarian environments and Western liberalism, shaping his critical perspective on Western policies.

Notable Quote:
"For the majority of my life in this part of the world, that was enough. I could deal with the racism, I could deal with the petty indignities because I had that." [27:17]

This reflects his initial perception of Western societies as safe harbors, a sentiment that eroded in the face of witnessing prolonged suffering in Gaza.

Critique of Western Media and Double Standards

El Akkad criticizes Western media for its inconsistent portrayal of conflicts, highlighting how narratives often downplay or distort the severity of atrocities unless they directly impact Western interests.

Notable Quote:
"I think that Palestinians are not sufficiently human, and how is that... [they] are good, how has that conditioning made itself manifest in the West?" [36:03]

He challenges the audience to reconsider ingrained biases that dehumanize marginalized populations, leading to policy decisions that sustain cycles of violence and oppression.

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Segment 2: NYC’s Left-Wing Uprising

Guest Introduction: Chi Ossé

Chi Ossé, a New York City Council member representing Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights in Brooklyn, discusses his efforts in local politics, focusing on progressive reforms and community organizing.

Elimination of Broker Fees: A Progressive Victory

Ossé highlights the recent passage of legislation banning broker fees in New York City, a significant win for tenants facing exorbitant costs in the housing market.

Notable Quote:
"The broker calls you to give you the code to let you in so you can see the apartment yourself and then they want $7,000, $8,000." [62:28]

This comment sheds light on the predatory practices within the real estate industry, emphasizing the necessity of regulatory reforms to protect tenants.

Role of Social Media in Political Activism

Ossé attributes much of his success in passing progressive legislation to effective use of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. By mobilizing young voters and encouraging community participation, he significantly increased attendance at city council hearings.

Notable Quote:
"I've been utilizing short form media not only as a tool for entertainment, but as a tool for political organizing." [60:41]

This strategy not only democratizes political engagement but also empowers disenfranchised communities to influence policy directly.

Addressing Gentrification and Housing Affordability

Ossé discusses the multifaceted approach needed to tackle New York City's housing crisis, including rent freezes, social housing, and eviction protections. He emphasizes the importance of building more homes to alleviate pressure on the housing market.

Notable Quote:
"We have to be creative in many different ways in order to solve what's happening with the affordability crisis." [69:21]

By advocating for comprehensive solutions, Ossé aims to create an inclusive housing environment that safeguards existing communities from displacement.

Endorsement of Progressive Mayoral Candidates

Ossé expresses optimism about the potential election of progressive mayoral candidates like Zoran Mamdani, who advocate for economic populism and robust community-focused policies.

Notable Quote:
"I'm feeling hopeful. They're reaching a lot of people who've never been reached before, and I think that's what's going to get them past the finish line." [75:04]

This endorsement reflects a broader shift towards progressive politics in urban centers, driven by grassroots movements and effective use of digital platforms.

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Segment 3: Comparative Analysis and Broader Implications

Intersection of International and Local Politics

The episode draws parallels between the international conflict in Gaza and local political upheavals in New York City, suggesting that moral failures on a global scale are mirrored by systemic issues within Western democracies.

Notable Quote:
"This is not just about protesting ICE. This is about how we need to stop ICE from doing what they are doing in people's communities..." [04:38]

This underscores the interconnectedness of global and local struggles for justice and human rights.

Critique of Western Liberalism

Both guests critique Western liberalism for its inability to consistently uphold democratic and humanistic values, especially when it conflicts with national interests or ingrained biases.

Notable Quote:
"How do the same people who say we should be slashing the gov, the military... are both stoking this violence and exaggerating any violence." [20:30]

This critique highlights the selective application of liberal principles, revealing underlying hypocrisies that perpetuate injustice.

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Conclusion

Episode 2516 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder provides a profound exploration of the moral and political challenges facing Western societies today. Through the insights of Omar El Akkad and Chi Ossé, the discussion navigates the complexities of international conflict, systemic injustice, and progressive activism. The episode underscores the urgent need for coherent and compassionate policies that align with the foundational values of democracy and human rights.

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Key Takeaways:

• The Gaza conflict illuminates the West's moral shortcomings and complicity in perpetuating violence.
• Effective use of social media is transforming political activism, particularly in urban settings like New York City.
• Progressive policies, such as banning broker fees, are pivotal in addressing systemic inequalities in housing.
• There is a critical need for consistency in upholding liberal values both domestically and internationally to foster genuine justice and equality.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "The complicity, right? My tax dollars are doing this, right? I'm killing those kids. That's me." – Omar El Akkad [16:13]
• "I've been utilizing short form media not only as a tool for entertainment, but as a tool for political organizing." – Chi Ossé [60:41]
• "How do the same people who say we should be slashing the gov, the military... are both stoking this violence and exaggerating any violence." – Chi Ossé [20:30]

For more detailed discussions and insights, listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode available on Majority.FM.

Transcript

[Emma Vigeland]

You are listening to a free version of Majority Report with Sam Steder. To support this show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to majority SM please.

[Sam Cedar]

The majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is Wednesday, June 11, 2025. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar and this is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Omar El Akad will be with us to talk about his book one day. Everyone will have always been against this. Later in the show, New York City Council member Chi Ose joins us to talk about Zoran broker fee ban and the insurgent left here in the city. Also on the program, last night LA imposed a downtown curfew as Trump pours in Marines and National Guardsmen for a taxpayer funded display of force. Guantanamo Bay is back on the table for migrant detentions as Trump floats south sending 9,000 people including people from ally countries like the UK and France to the infamous torture prison off the shores of our country. MSNBC reports that ICE is creating tactical units to deploy the five blue cities being described as an authoritarian power grab over local governments. A grand jury indicts New Jersey representative Lamonica McIver for protesting at an immigration detention center. Trump's interim AG Alina Haba unfortunately went to my high school. I'm not going to talk about that. What are you doing indicting a sitting congresswoman? Well, it's because the King, the king said so.

[Matt Binder]

It's a watchword maybe.

[Emma Vigeland]

Elon Musk apologizes for some of his attacks on Donald Trump. I know those come downs can be real tough.

[Matt Binder]

Calling him a.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay, a Jeffrey Epstein files. He said some. I wonder what, what side of the ledger that one's on. Mikey Sherrill handily wins the New Jersey gubernatorial primary and the well funded APAC darling Josh Gottheimer barely cracks double digits. What a joy to see the abundance Democrat. Yeah, we're the popularists now, baby. A poll finds that 64% of Israelis think there's no need for the news to highlight the suffering of civilians in Gaza anymore. Okay. House Republicans get queasy as Trump and Russ vote float, illegally clawing back funding from the last spending bill already approved by Congress to fund their tax cuts. An appeals court keeps Trump's tariffs in place for now as he says he and China have a deal. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard admits she fed classified JFK assassination files into an AI program. Dozens of workers at the CDC walk out in Atlanta calling on RFK Jr. To resign. And lastly, that same HHS just cut nearly a thousand suicide hotline services for LGBTQ youth. All this and more on today's Majority Report. It's an emmajority report, actually, on a Wednesday, which you don't typically see, but Sam and I are switching days because I'm going to be off Thursday and Friday for, you know, that whole wedding thing. Number 13 writes in correcting me, it seems. Jesus Christ, y' all. The congresswoman wasn't protesting. She was performing an oversight visit. Apologies. Some of the articles call it protesting, so it can be a little bit difficult to keep track. But thanks for the correction. Regardless, they're targeting lawmakers who are protesting too. So it just, it's, it's sometimes.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, I mean, it is a good point, though. The protest gets over applied Melissa. Jira Grant had a good piece in the New Republic about how this isn't just about protesting ice. This is about how we need to stop ICE from doing what they are doing in people's communities, like taking nine year olds and sending them to Honduras. Like, it's disgusting and it's the resisting. It is. It's not just about, like protesting it and letting our voices be heard. I'm glad when I hear that. This is Tom Holman say this is making it harder for us to take away people that just want to put in tiles at Home Depot. Yeah, the community's pissed off at that. That's, that's why, like, they have to say, I'm sorry to go off on this, but like Tom Holman saying, we're not actually going after criminals and who cares that they don't have records? Well, DHS has been on Twitter the last and ICE has been on Twitter the last couple of days saying, look at all these criminal. And it's not just that they're here illegally, but they're also doing drug trafficking and stuff like that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, I mean, it's insane. Habbo says the two counts that she's being charged with carry a maximum sentence of up to eight years in prison. I mean, it's just, this would not be happening if Donald Trump wasn't inserting his loyalists into these positions of power in ways that are really breaking convention. Honestly, speaking of that guy Donald Trump, who has infected every element of our lives and is constantly giving us anxiety. I mean, we, we try to alleviate it a little bit with mockery, but the images that they're coming out here of this Fort Bragg speech are a Bit concerning. I feel like if you've been paying attention to politics long enough, you'll see why this is not. This is very atypical. Right. It's not a shock that sometimes that in most countries in the world, military personnel sometimes lean right wing and that's why you can have elements like in Ukraine, like the Azov Battalion that have right wing views. But that is often used as like a right wing justification here to cut off arms to Ukraine. It's not necessarily, I think, the strongest footing to put your argument on. Um, but Trump is going a step further and inflaming the politicization of our armed services. Like the. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but it doesn't make me feel super comfortable to see uniform troops cheering on explicitly political speeches, especially when those speeches are fascistic in nature and there should be some confidence in our society that our military is not going to be politicized in this manner and that it's going to put its oath to the Constitution over the political movement of the commander in chief at one point. But Trump is actively trying to undercut that notion. So on Saturday, it's his birthday. It's not even the exact alignment of the 250th anniversary, I think, of the US army, but they're doing that to celebrate the Dear Leader at the same time. And he's been ramping up to this. You've seen tanks rolling into Washington D.C. for this ostentatious display as Trump is justifying cutting grandma's Social Security access under the auspices of trying to make the government more efficient and less wasteful. The numbers on this military display are as wasteful as it gets. And it's just to flatter his ego. Here he is talking about what's happening in LA during this speech at Fort Bragg.

[Sam Cedar]

And before going further, I want to say a few words about the situation in Los Angeles, California. Have you heard of the place where I've deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to protect federal law enforcement from the attacks of a vicious and violent mobile. And some of the radical left, they say, oh, that's not nice. Well, if we didn't do it, there wouldn't be a Los Angeles. It would be burning today just like their houses were burning a number of months ago. Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and Third World lawlessness here at home. Like is happening in California. As commander in chief, I will not let that happen. It's never going to Happen. What you're witnessing in California is a full blown assault on peace, on public order and a national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country. We're not going to let that happen. Remember, millions of people were allowed to come into our country totally unchecked and unvetted by stupid people or radical left people or sick people. But regardless, open border policy, the dumbest policy yet. I would say even dumber than men playing in women's sports. Transgender for everyone.

[Emma Vigeland]

Great. All right there, he's got the through line with that.

[Chi Ose]

Can I just say there's a joke.

[Emma Vigeland]

We don't have to play it.

[Chi Ose]

But there is a joke he makes a little later in that clip where he says, you know, something about like.

[Emma Vigeland]

I forget what point he makes.

[Chi Ose]

And he asks if they agree with it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Flag burning. Oh, that's what it is. Making it illegal to up to one year in prison, which he said on the campaign trail, to burn the American flag. This has already been ruled on by the Supreme Court that it's protected free speech, expression.

[Matt Binder]

Speaking of the American flag, Emma said all the nice stuff about, you know, how it'd be nice to think better of our troops and stuff like that. Google Fort Bragg and yeah, ask yourself if you're surprised by this and ask yourself if maybe the people who say we should be slashing the gov, the military and maybe, maybe the founding fathers were right about a standing army. It's not compatible with democracy, which you just saw behind that guy.

[Emma Vigeland]

And there this, let's do three here just to give people a sense of like, this is not a, this is not an invasion. The National Guardsmen, they don't even have anything to do. And now police in LA are being reassigned to protect the National National Guardsmen who are protecting federal buildings that are not under attack. This is a video taken by Aaron Burnett or at the very least published by Aaron Burnett of cnn, showing what it actually looks like here. We'll talk over this a little. But you see the National Guardsmen in riot gear all lined up in a row outside this federal building, just kind of standing around. Burnett's caption says there's no protests here. They'll pan out in a bit, but go ahead, Matt.

[Matt Binder]

Mexico, the guns in Mexico, for any so called invasion, they would come from America, right? This is actually a point of contention. Our Supreme Court unanimously, including the liberals, said that our gun manufacturers aren't responsible for say arming the cartels, despite marketing to them the same way. They said you know, they're liable for marketing towards Sandy Hook.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

Even though the marketing is exact same sort of thing.

[Emma Vigeland]

All you see there is some explicit language criticizing Donald Trump spray painted on the buildings. I didn't realize that vandalism was such a national concern that the National Guards have to be sent in. But the right wing got its marching orders. This was so. It's so obvious. Like I gotta, I wonder who they're actually speaking to directly. If it's a group or if it's someone in the Trump administration. Stephen Miller, directly. It could be Matt Walsh, Charlie Kirk all tweeting out the same thing at the same time. Basically yesterday, June 9th, within. I mean, Walsh and Kirk, within an hour of one another.

[Matt Binder]

Just copy paste.

[Emma Vigeland]

Ban all third world immigration. Matt Walsh says legal or illegal, there should be a moratorium on all immigration from the third world. We've reached our capacity. We cannot be the world's soup kitchen anymore. Charlie Kirk. It's time to ban the world's soup kitchen.

[Matt Binder]

As if the people here that were at Home Depot are like building these people's houses.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep. For sub minimum wage.

[Matt Binder]

You know, can that. Could we just do a little bit of time to play this news?

[Emma Vigeland]

We do, but I just want to highlight like how. Well, let's do that in a sec. It's time to ban third world immigration. Legal or legal. It's almost exactly word for word. He just put it in front of it. We've reached our limit and we have huge cultural blah, blah, blah. Jack Posobiek. It's time to ban third world immigration. Legal or illegal. Copy paste. Copy paste. This is a coordinated propaganda outfit. And I want to emphasize this stuff with the tech. Right, which is putting images, the most inflammatory images, including the burning cars, including the guy standing on the hood, that are not at all representative of the rest of the protests. And that's the worst they can get. By the way. They're putting them to the top of everybody's feed and they're coordinating with right wing influencers to manufacture consent that allows for this authoritarian crackdown. Go ahead, Matt.

[Matt Binder]

People are right to be mad. And anything that you see that seems excessive in the streets is provoked by this absolute lunatic white supremacist policy that we're seeing. And this is a news story, just one of many, like this Tom Holman saying actually they're rioting because we're taking rapists and drug traffickers is such a heinous smear against the entire people of Los Angeles or any of these immigrant communities. They're Upset because they're taking their brothers and fathers and sisters and wives. And let's just play this.

[Emma Vigeland]

An update tonight on a nine year old Torrance boy and his father who were deported to Honduras away from family and friends. Tonight they are speaking out. KTLA's Lindsay Pena has more.

[Omar El Akkad]

Martio Garcia Lara and his father Martio Garcia Venegas are now back in Honduras after being deported from the US just days ago. Now in a small town, the nine year old is trying to get used to his new reality. He says.

[Chiyose]

I was scared to come here.

[Emma Vigeland]

I wanted to stay with my brother.

[Omar El Akkad]

We first told you about Martyr and his father after members of the Torrance Elementary PTA reached out to ktla. Martyr has attended classes there since the first grade and members of the school community were concerned about what had happened to him and his family. The pair were detained and separated after attending an immigration status hearing in downtown LA back in late May. Federal officials, father and son had been ordered to return to Honduras back in 2023, but remained. Martyr's brother Kevin is still in the US though.

[Emma Vigeland]

He's grown now.

[Chiyose]

But Kevin was with me my whole life.

[Emma Vigeland]

I want to see my friends again. I miss all my friends.

[Omar El Akkad]

The elder Martyr saying he had a feeling things would end up this way and believes.

[Chiyose]

They'Re being cruel to people.

[Matt Binder]

Now maybe there's people that are listening to this, I hope not that think that they would take this standing down if people in their lives had them completely severed from the people they grew up with and loved and sent to a foreign country. Maybe you would accept that standing down, I expect or I basically have a different view of humanity that you view that as an unjust encroachment, that you'd send this kid and his dad away from their brother and friends to start a whole new life somewhere. What, because Stephen Miller isn't happy with the fucking demographics? Because all in these, in these images here about the Soviet Kirk. Whatever. Notice the first thing they say. We have a huge cultural thing. That's all it is, the educational stuff. Now we can deal with that. George H.W. bush knew. We can deal with that. We could educate. Even undocumented kids can be in schools. Housing. Who's building the housing? Are you kidding me? Financial? Who do you think? I mean these are ridiculous, but it's ultimately because all these guys are white supremacists and they're in power right now.

[Emma Vigeland]

I actually just got this book and we've had, I believe that we've had this, this guest on before the author of Hate Monger Steven Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda. Gene Guerrero. I'm going to read it soon, actually, because there's some backstory to Stephen Miller I feel like hasn't been discussed enough, including the fact that he grew up in the LA area. And there were reports in Guerrero's book about how when he was in high school in Santa Monica, he would clash with the students there who were speaking Spanish and he would tell them to speak only English at the time. His level of resentment towards immigrants, legal immigrants, goes back to his childhood. This is a very small man motivated by deep racism, anxiety, self and outward hatred wherever it begins. Chicken or the egg situation.

[Matt Binder]

He's been disowned by his family. And yeah, the vice did a video on that where he's saying, yes, make the. Make the. And everyone knew who the janitors were. Make the janitors pick up your trash, throw it on the ground, who cares?

[Emma Vigeland]

He was disowned by his family in part because he, he grew up in a Jewish household. And the Trump administration is so anti Semitic, if I recall. So this is somebody who has a lot of cruelty in his heart. But this is why it's so important to back off even the concept of legal immigration as a framework for, for analyzing this moment, because think about the word legal. Just think about it a little bit more deeply when you're trying to apply it to an action or a process of legal or illegal immigration. And then when you apply that to a human being and you put people's humanity within the context of outside of state acceptability, which is illegal, and inside it, then the state gets to define who is more human than the other person. And with a white supremacist, fascistic administration in place, we see how this is manifesting in practice. Aoc, at a great point on Blue sky, we can end with this, but I just want to show that, like, there's a way to respond to this that isn't capitulating to the right like we're seeing from way too many Democrats. She writes, it is 100% carrying water for the opposition to participate in this collective delusion that Democrats, for some reason need to answer for every teen who throws a rock. Rather than hold the Trump administration accountable for intentionally creating chaos and breaking the law to stoke violence, they are in charge. They are both stoking this violence and exaggerating any violence.

[Matt Binder]

And I'd also say Democrats need to get their cops under control so they don't help provoke these and instigate these things into bigger problems like they've been doing. It's not just the National Guard being sent in, it's police departments that frankly we haven't brought under control as they need to be.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's a failure of liberal governance in cities which is being exploited by the right right now. But that's in part because liberal governance obviously preferable to right wing governance, but it's had these failures where police departments have completely gone off the rails and are wagging the tail of Karen Bass as opposed to the other way around. And it's what makes this race here in New York City so important. Because it's time that true left wing leadership comes back to our cities, not this. In a moment we'll be talking to Omar El Akkad, author of One Day. Everyone will have always been against this, but first, a word from our sponsors. Some of this is one of my favorite sponsors. Naked Wines People know I have a weakness for cold glass of white wine red in the winter. Honestly, it's all pretty good and Naked Wines becoming our sponsor was pretty exciting for me. This podcast is sponsored by naked wines. It's 2025. Do you still shop for wine like it's 2005? Well, you shouldn't because there's all these markups, there's all this stuff and extra money added on top that you shouldn't be having to deal with anymore. Naked Wines modernizes this process. It's a service that directly connects you to the world's finest independent winemaker so you can get award winning wine delivered straight to your door. Use our code Majority for the code and [e-mail] to get their incredible deal of six bottles for just $39.99. Here in New York City, that's like two cheap bottles of wine. You get six for $39.99. And how do they do it? Well, Naked Wines connects winemakers and wine drinkers directly, allowing for vineyard to your door delivery at up to 60% off what you would pay in store. By cutting out the traditional retail middlemen, costs and markups, winemakers can pass those savings on to you without skimping on quality. Naked Wines has been around for over 15 years and funds over 90 independent winemakers all around the world. With no commitments or membership fees, you can enjoy Naked Wines hassle free. And don't forget that you can pause or cancel at any time. So just because you've got a trip coming up does not mean that you can't enjoy Naked Wines before or after that much needed vacation. I had a read from there maybe back when I was, you know, I'm taking some time away from wine right before the wedding. But I had a read from there and it got like great reviews. I think I brought it to a party. I'm excited to get started again. But I don't need to worry about it because I can pause my subscription back at it in July. Now is the time to join the naked wines community. Head to nakedwines.com Majority Click Enter Voucher and put in our code Majority for both the code and password for six bottles of wine for just $39.99 with shipping included. That's a hundred percent off your first six [e-mail] Majority use the code and password majority for six bottles of wine for 39.99. This will links below in the podcast and YouTube description. And lastly, Trust and Will. Sam has talked about this before. It can be a daunting process to create a trust or a will. Where do you start? Where you even ask? Well, take this task off your already busy hands with trust and will plus get 20% [e-mail] Majority I have Sam has talked about this before. He's encouraged me. I'm getting on board. It's really easy. It's something nobody wants to think about, but it's something everybody has to do and it gives you this peace of mind knowing that Trust and Will is designed by attorneys but customized by you. Each Will or Trust is a state specific, legally valid and customized document to your needs. Trust and Will has made estate planning easy and affordable. Their simple step by step process guides you from start to finish, one question at a time. All your documents in one place with bank level encryption. Live customer support is available through phone, chat and email. It can be confusing and you are maybe putting it off, but you have a family want to make sure that they're protected. Trust and Will is where you got to go. An overall rating of excellent and thousands of five star reviews on trustpilot. It's used by hundreds of thousands of families and counting. Stand up and protect what matters most to you in minutes with Trust and will go to trustandwill.com majority to get 20% off. That's 20% [e-mail] majority again 20% off trustingwill.com majority this will be down below in the description. Quick break and when we come back we'll be joined by Omar El Akkad. Sam, we are back and we are joined now by Omar El Akad, award winning journalist and novelist Author of his latest, One Day Everyone will have always been against this. The title is pretty self explanatory. But, Omar, thanks so much for coming on the show.

[Chiyose]

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course. First of all, I can promise you that this would be the first, maybe the first one of your only media interviews on this book, that you won't be asked to condemn Hamas. So I think, you know, you're in good hands here.

[Chiyose]

I had the statement ready. All right, fine. I guess we'll make do.

[Emma Vigeland]

We'll make do. So you were born in Cairo. Your book kind of interweaves your personal story, coming to the west as a teenager, coming to Canada, where you've, you've been in both worlds, right? And you can, you had like this shift in your world, but you had the mental clarity, being an older kid at that point, to kind of see some of those differences in coming to the United States, like, or, sorry, to Canada. Just tell us a little bit about that transition, how your, what your conception of Western values were versus how you experience them when coming to the United States.

[Chiyose]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's, it's.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, the Canada. I keep saying United States.

[Chiyose]

I mean, I ended up in the US eventually about 11, 12 years ago. So it's, it's a bit of a circuitous route. Right, because I'm born in Egypt. My dad has to get the hell out of Egypt when I'm five years old. And so we moved to Qatar, which, you know, pound for pound is the richest place on earth. And if you've never been, it's, it's a very relatively surreal lifestyle. You know, if you're, if you're not among the migrant laborer class who are treated like absolute dirt, if you're sort of middle class and up, it's the easiest life in the world in large part because you're stepping on the necks of the folks who actually sort of built the place. But if you're not sort of born into a Qatari family, you can't stay in Qatar permanently. You're always in a kind of precarious situation where your visa could be revoked or, you know, so on and so forth. And so we had planned on that happening, and my dad had decided to start the immigration process to Canada. At the time, he couldn't point out Canada on the map. It was just sort of the next destination because once you leave your home, that's kind of the life you live. You're looking for the next harbor. And the way I thought of Canada, specifically the U.S. the west generally was as a kind of harbor to me. It wasn't so much a place as a kind of negation. When you grow up in a place like Qatar, everything is censored. For example, you know, I have these formative memories of holding up copies of Newsweek to the light to try and see past the black ink that the sensor had used to block off whatever was, you know, deemed too dangerous for me to read. And so my first impression of the west was essentially just a negation of that. I don't care what this place is, but at least I can go there and I don't have to deal with this. And for the most part, that is what it was for me when I first show up to Canada. You know, I go to the library and I can ask for any book I want and I don't have to worry about the possibility of getting deported if it's the wrong thing or, you know, that sort of thing. And for the majority of my life in this part of the world, that was enough. I could deal with everything else. I could deal with the racism, I could deal with the sort of petty indignities because I had that. And I think the book in large part is about the moment where that trade off wasn't something I could do anymore, where the price I was paying for that became too high for me to bear.

[Emma Vigeland]

And that threshold was that crossed in the environment after October 7th. I mean, what was that feeling like for you to kind of see? We experienced it covering it on the show. The immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack.

[Chiyose]

Was.

[Emma Vigeland]

This whole display of this ramp up of what the genocide was going to look like. And I, I think we all foresaw that it was going to be a genocidal slaughter. I don't know if we could have foreseen it being a year and eight months long and us having basically no idea, being completely in the dark at this point about how many are dead. I mean, it's in the hundreds of thousands and yet there's still this Western narrative that it's, oh, it's 58 or it's 60,000 people. Like the, the, the slaughter that were, that we've seen, it was quite obvious. And that's what the title of your book is, a version of a tweet that you put out that went viral. It was quite obvious in the weeks following.

[Chiyose]

Yeah, I mean, I think for me, the way I've been describing it is in terms of this break, at least personally. For me, I've been describing it the Same way that sort of Hemingway's characters went bankrupt, you know, little by little, and then all at once. I was a journalist for 10 years, and there were things that I saw that if I was a less cowardly person, would have probably brought me to this break much sooner. You know, you go to Afghanistan and you see the local soldiers being put on the front lines of every forward operating base, such that if the attack comes, they're the ones who die, not the NATO soldiers. You see the hierarchy of human life. You go to Guantanamo, you see this ad hoc legal system in violation of all normal sort of legal modes designed purely to get these convictions. And in every case, I was able to compartmentalize and to say, yes, there's something kind of rotten here. But it's just this moment and it's just this situation. It's unique to this. And I think what has happened over the last 20 months is that my ability to compartmentalize has, has imploded. You know, I keep coming back to the same three factors that make this different for me, and those are sort of intimacy, impli. Intimacy, immediacy and complicity. I wake up every morning and within moments of the horrible thing happening, I see it. Little kids starving to death, toddlers torn apart by the, by the force of these bombs. There's an intimacy and there's an immediacy to it that if I was a perfect human being, probably shouldn't matter, right? What's wrong is wrong, regardless of how immediate or intimate it might be. But it does matter that I see it so closely. And then thirdly, there's the complicity, right? My tax dollars are doing this, right? I'm. I'm killing those kids. That's me. And so it becomes impossible to ignore in the way that I so successfully ignored these things previously. That's what's changed for me. And it's not like these currents weren't present before. You don't even have to look to Afghanistan or to Guantanamo Bay. You can look to Gaza itself. This place has been an open air prison for years and years and years and nobody cared. On October 6th of 2023, a report came out detailing how deadly a year it was for Palestinian children. That's never the starting point of any narrative around this, but it existed and I was able to ignore it. And that's a function of the kind of human being I am. That's a function of the obliviousness that largely carried me through my existence in the west and has largely fallen apart now.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I think, you know, it's it's not moral failing. It's more just what's engendered in us as a part of being in the West. We have an ivory tower kind of view of the other parts of the global south and the Middle east that we exploit. But it's the other part that's so striking in your book is like, even in the title, when we're talking about this moral rot of Western liberalism, which I want to get into even more specifically. But just the idea that people can't see historical parallels or feel this immense guilt about being on the wrong side of history. Your analysis of this moment, can you speak a little bit more about the inconsistency of things like, you know, how we speak about the Holocaust and never again. And then the silence of some of those same people as this genocide is not being done. We don't read about it the next day in the newspaper. We see it every day on our phone.

[Chiyose]

I think for me, to the best. The best I've been able to answer that kind of question has to do with the sort of reward and punishment equilibrium, with respect, like. With respect to something like the suffering of the Palestinian people. Certainly where I live, I live out on the West Coast. I think this is true of most of the United States, if not the Western world at large. There is essentially no consequence to pretending none of this is happening. You know, I wake up every day and I open my computer and I see evidence of the worst things human beings can do to one another. And then I go about my day and it's as though none of this is happening. You know, and there's emails that need to be replied to and there's bills that need to be paid and there zoom meetings that need to drag on endlessly and you need to do the stuff. And in fact, not only is there no consequence for the vast majority of the people that I'm around at any given moment to thinking about any of this, there's an immense punishment waiting. If you do think about this too much and if you do talk about this too much, I mean, I was on. On tour for this book for two and a half months. And at virtually every event, somebody would come up to me afterwards and say, this is the first space where I've been able to sit with this, where I've been able to think about this. Because if I talk about this at work, I might get fired. If I talk about this with my friends, they might stop being my friends. And it's not, you know, they're not there at this event because they love me or they love the book. They don't care about any of that. It's just a place where you can feel like you're not losing your mind. And so I think a lot of this makes perfect sense. If you have conditioned yourself to believe that Palestinians are not sufficiently human, and how is that you're good, how has.

[Emma Vigeland]

That conditioning made itself manifest in the West? I mean, there's a lot of discussion about antisemitism in this country. Anti Jewish hate is a real thing. But a great majority of the instances that are cited are protests against Zionism and the genocide. And I can name dozens of think pieces that I've seen just in the last month on that very topic. And yet Islamophobia, which, you know, even in the word right it sounds like you're afraid of spiders. But Islamophobia is the most pernicious and widespread bigotry in our country right now. And it crosses traditional political lines where when we're talking about Western liberalism, there's this kind of hollowness of performing virtue and doing so in basically an explicitly domestic context about groups that have been marginalized historically in this country. But when that looks outward and expands to the consequences of capitalism and imperialism, of which the Gaza genocide is both why is that analysis failing and why is it in the end so racist in outcome with so many of these people who would balk at that idea if it was applied to black people here, domestically, Latino people, et cetera?

[Chiyose]

I mean, there's a couple of things that come to mind. First and foremost, I mean, we live in an incredibly anti Semitic part of the world. The current administration is rife with raging anti Semites. I mean, I know that it's sort of been buried under God knows how many scandals and outrages now, but it wasn't that long ago that we were sitting around trying to discern whether one of the central figures in this administration was actually making a Nazi salute or not. I mean, this isn't subtle stuff. I think that is separate from a patently disingenuous effort to conflate criticism of a state that is currently engaged in an act of genocide with anti Jewish hatred. I think that is a patently bad faith effort, but it doesn't change the fact that we do live in an incredibly anti Semitic part of the world. I think with respect to, to Islamophobia, one of the reasons that it has essentially no effect is because it can have no effect. The consequences of this country or this part of the world genuinely caring about anti Muslim or anti Arab hatred are too immense to ponder. Because the second we decide that these human beings, of which I am one, are sufficiently human, such as to warrant actual response to this hatred, we're not just contending with the random stuff that's like yelled at me every now and then on the street. We're not just contending with angry comments on Twitter from Freedom Eagle 1776 at hotmail or whatever. Right? We are contending with wholesale slaughter. Right. Which is happening right now. And how do you go about sort of admitting to yourself that this is the consequence of the thing you've allowed to fester? I think just at a societal level, at a governmental level, once you start thinking of these human beings as being sufficiently human to warrant condemnation, the thing you have to condemn is so overwhelming and so all encompassing and so all indicting as to essentially require something much, much bigger than a statement of apology or, you know, some declaration of regret or something. And so I think that's part of it. And honestly, part of it is proximity to whiteness.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Chiyose]

Like, you know, I know full well that I get very different reactions depending on whether the first thing someone hears about me is this accent or whether they read my name first. Those are two entirely different human beings, primarily because this accent has a proximity to whiteness and this name doesn't. I know I have to live with that. That's the calculus of my existence in this part of the world. And that's not going to change overnight.

[Emma Vigeland]

Let's. This is a good way, I think, to transition to this poll I saw. Curious about your take on this, Omar. Yesterday, Haaretz, the Israeli paper posted or wrote about this article, this study that was conducted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. So this is universally done by the university. The Zionists will say Ahar, that's so liberals, right? Nope, they're just reposting what the study found, reporting on it. And you can't count on other Israeli media to do that. So 64% of Israelis see no need for more reporting on gaze and suffering is what the poll found. Now, we should say that this includes Arab Israelis in this total. So in terms of Jewish Israelis, it's higher than 64% who see no need to cover Gaza's suffering anymore. If we could go to the other, the paragraph, according to the survey conducted by Dr. Boaz Shirki and Lee Aldar, 64% of Israelis believe that the local media's reporting on Gaza has been balanced and there is no need to present a broader picture regarding the situation of Gaza civilians. 89% of the people that support the Netanyahu government have that view. But the other question is if we could scroll down a little bit more here. This is good. 41% of all respondents said that the news on Israel's two mainstream commercial stations, channels 12 and 13, are biased in favor of, of the population of Gaza. So that is the plurality opinion, but scroll down even more because that's insane. But there's even more. Okay, here we go. Actually, no, down a little bit more. Thank you. Here it is. Another question asked in the Acord poll was to what extent respondents agreed with the statement that there are no innocent people in Gaza. 64% agreed with it to a large extent, describing their agreement as between 4 and 6 on the scale in which 1 is total disagreement and 6 is complete agreement. So this is the top 50th percentile in terms of strength of response. 64% agree with the statement there are no innocent people in Gaza. And then the last piece of the poll that I think is important is on the here, this paragraph. When it comes to Israeli's views of foreign media outlets, which for the purposes of the polling referred to CNN and the BBC, 69% of respondents said they were biased in favor of Palestinians in Gaza. Even when asked about Fox News, which is identified with the American right wing, half of Those polled and 67% of voters for coalition parties said it was biased in favor of Gazans. I just want people to sit with that for just a second. 69% of overall Israelis think CNN and BBC's coverage and here in the United States were intimately aware with CNN's coverage and Dana Bash and Jake Tapper pushing the pro Israel narrative over and over and over again. 69% of Israelis think they're biased in favor of Palestinians and half of Israelis think Fox News is biased in favor of Palestinians. What do you make of those numbers? What does it say about the west and Israeli society's role in it?

[Chiyose]

I mean, honestly, there's, there's something refreshing about it because there isn't this sort of attempt to hide behind a narrative that clearly has no connection with reality. One of the ironic things about that study is that if you were to try to, to essentially write a news story about that and run it in most of these Western publications that are considered too biased in favor of Palestinians, you either wouldn't get it on the air or you get fired for it. It would be considered too inflammatory. And this is true of a lot of stuff that runs in Israeli media and runs plainly without any real controversy that would be considered far too controversial to run, to run in the Western world. I mean, one way to think about this is imagine living in Israeli society right now and not holding those views. How, how incredibly frustrating an experience that must be. This is, this is essentially a viewpoint that is in line with the reality of what is happening, obviously in the most overt way over the last 20 months, but also over the last 70 plus years. The non existence of the Palestinian people is central to a particular narrative of Israeli life. And again, if that sounds controversial, fine, but it's in line with the reality of the situation.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's an ethno state maintained by violence and domination. And some people, a majority of Israeli society, wants the violence and domination to continue to maintain the ethnic purity of the state.

[Chiyose]

And I mean, look, if all this stuff, you know, makes your viewers or your listeners uncomfortable, fine, ignore Israel entirely. Name me one colonial outpost in history that was able to maintain its colonial narrative while simultaneously maintaining a narrative in which the indigenous population that had to be displaced or eradicated was of equal value. Their lives were of equal value. It doesn't exist. It does certainly does not exist in the United States. It only exists in hindsight. It only exists one or two hundred years later when, you know, the Obama administration can issue this declaration saying sorry about all the genocide. And you know, my book is titled what is titled for a reason, Right, because we're going to get around to that place. We're not there yet. And so to me, you know, first of all, this isn't the first poll of its kind. This is obviously sort of incredibly heightened because of the moment we're in. But there's a very long history of these kinds of opinions being in place and they sort of have to be right. There's no way somebody can imply that a situation in which quite literally millions of Palestinians live in open air prisons where their every movement is subjected to control by the Israeli military, where they have to carry different ID cards and travel down different roads and take different buses. There's no way somebody can imply that that is an equal landscape from which to build peace. That just doesn't exist. And I think honestly, it's sort of refreshing to just see that statement outright instead of hearing some State Department spokesperson talk to me about the desire for equal peace and equal justice, as all the while my tax money is funding this incredible glaring asymmetry.

[Emma Vigeland]

And this is why it has to come from the outside, like it had to do in South Africa, in Rhodesia. And the differences, I think in those instances are one, the level of militarization and bombing is not anywhere close. But two, white people were definitely demographic minorities. The anxiety too within Israel is the idea that it's more like 50, 50 if you were to incorporate Palestinians into official statehood, not just under occupation and control and as third class citizens that they're now slaughtering. So I guess that's a good way, I think, for us to wrap. Wrap here. We're in this place right now. The Mamdani campaign here in New York is very exciting. And he went on TV and he talked about, when being asked about his views about Israel, he they said, do you believe as a Jewish state that you support it? He said he supports it as a state of equal rights. And this is, I think, a really important divergence from liberalism which has been maintaining this two state solution myth for longer than my lifetime. And it's so untenable at this point. But our politicians on the national level have completely not caught up to it. Can you speak about the contradiction of liberalism's support for Israel as an ethnostate, especially when you compare it to like the multicultural values these same people espouse domestically?

[Chiyose]

Yeah, I think there's something patently exhausting about trying to maintain a sort of liberal approach to this because you essentially have to take every other value that you claim to espouse in every other case and carve out a little exception for it. You know, segregation is wrong, except in this case where it's good and necessary. Apartheid is wrong except in this case where it's good and necessary. The sort of visceral emotional and psychological reaction you feel when you hear about people being forced to take only certain roads, for example, has to be set aside and over time that that is damaging. Right. And I think what you're seeing right now is, at least for the first time in my lifetime, an actual political consequence to this kind of incredibly disjointed mode of liberalism in which you hold on very vocally to a certain set of views and principles. Except in one case, if you had told me two years ago that the suffering of the Palestinian people would factor in any way in the results of a U.S. presidential election, I would have thought you were out of your mind. And now it can be argued that at least to a certain extent, this factored in the last presidential election, that means something. There is someone who, you know, maybe he doesn't win, but has a serious shot at being becoming mayor of maybe the most important city in the country who is finally calling out this glaring Hypocrisy again. If you told me that two years ago, I would have thought, you're out of your mind. And so what you're watching, I think, is a level of change. But politics, particularly sort of federal politics in this country is a trailing metric. It takes a very long time to catch up with what the population is thinking, what people are demanding. And so, as sort of heartened as I am by just seeing the most basic acknowledgement and the most rudimentary changes, it is depressing in the sense that I think of, you know, how many bodies between this moment and when we reach political calculus that acknowledges it, something is changing. It's just very changing very, very slowly.

[Emma Vigeland]

And the Israelis are counting on that. It's why they're killing every journalist that they can find. It's the deadliest conflict. I hate calling it that, but that's the metrics used for journalists in history. And they've killed all the record keepers. They've killed them. And so we don't. They want to use this period of darkness both journalistically and in terms of Gaza's capacity to count the dead and their hospital capacity to kill as many as they can in this period of time where they're doing in somewhat secret.

[Chiyose]

I mean, look, the moment a US Presidential administration makes the phone call and lets it be known that there's actual consequences to any of this and that it needs to stop, it will stop. I mean, fundamentally, this has happened in the past. This happened under Reagan, very famously. None of this happens without my tax money. None of it. And the second a solution is imposed by the United States, and I use the word imposed very deliberately here, it will come to fruition. But we have had administration after administration, year after year, decade after decade, of some White House or State Department spokesperson coming up to the podium and saying, we're so flustered and frustrated, we don't know what to do. They won't listen to us. And. And it's patently nonsense. And everybody knows it's nonsense. Everybody knows that the second that there are actual consequences and there's actual pressure to not engage in what is effectively wholesale slaughter, that will all come to an end. It's just a matter of waiting on whether there's enough domestic political pressure such that enough politicians make the calculation that it is in their favor or in their personal interest to consider Palestinians human, we're effectively waiting on that date. Every other argument is an attempt to employ a level of pragmatism and political calculus onto something that, at least to my mind, is as clear a moral issue as has existed in my lifetime.

[Emma Vigeland]

Absolutely. Well, everybody should read one day. Everyone will have always been against this. It's a beautiful book. Omar, thanks so much for your time today. We'll put a link to your book below, wherever people are listening to or watching this. Thanks so much. And at Majority fm, thank you. Thanks. All right, folks, quick break and when we come back, we will be joined by Chiyose, city councilman here in New York. Sam, we are back. And we are joined now by Chiyose, New York City council member representing Bed Stuy and Crown Heights in Brooklyn. He's also been campaigning with mayoral candidate Zoran MAMDANI Ahead of June 24th Democratic primary early voting starts June 14th. I will be early voting next week. I cannot wait. Chi, thanks so much for coming on the show.

[Chi Ose]

Oh my God, thank you so much for having me on.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm so glad to see you because I've been sending around your videos to family and friends for people that don't follow you on social media. You've been doing this series, what's it like? Why Shit Doesn't Work, or what's it called?

[Chi Ose]

Exactly, yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

Why? Can you explain that? This is just, you're a kind of this younger generation of Democrat that actually knows how to use social media. And they seem to all be coming out of New York. So pride for us, I guess.

[Chi Ose]

Yeah, I mean, I've been. I'm a child of the Internet, right. And the second language that I speak after English, is the language of the Internet. And I utilize this tool of social media within my. My job as being a city council member. This arose a couple of years ago when the New York City Rent Guidelines Board, which is a board that's appointed by whoever the mayor is, was voting to increase New Yorkers rents from 8 to 16%, which was completely outrageous, you know. And I arrived at a hearing at a rent guidelines board hearing to protest against what the board was proposing. And There were about 16 people, you know, in the audience that was, that were, you know, advocating for the rents to be lower. So I took to my phone, you know, spoke to TikTok, spoke to Instagram reels, like, edited a really short video telling people to pay attention to the rgb, tell them to show up to the next hearing. And the video went viral. People were saying that they were going to bring their friends. And, you know, at this next hearing, you know, instead of 16 people, that first hearing, over a thousand people showed up. And we were interviewing people on the line and they were like, we came here because of your videos. We came here because of your videos. And at the end of that RGB vote, instead of it being from 8 to 16%, it was 1.2 to I think about 2.5. So ever since then I've been utilizing short form media not only as a tool for entertainment, but as a tool for political organizing, which helped me pass a bill recently that would ban forced broker fees in New York City. And then also just it helps me get my values out there. That incorporates a lot of people into the political process who have been disengaged prior to that.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's encouraging because we just had Taylor Lorenz on like two weeks ago, just about. Her thesis is that since the pandemic, the bridge between the Internet world and the real world in terms of political communication, they've come together. And I think there are a lot of Democrats who are behind on the technical aspects, but also the messaging, which is the more important thing. Right. Because this is when we're talking about policy and housing is so important here in New York City. We'll get to like the, the Mamdani campaign, his proposals, some of the abundance stuff in just a sec. But you mentioned the broker's fee ban which takes into, takes effect today. Can you explain what brokers fees are here in New York City and why this is such a big deal that as of today, a judge denied the request from this real estate board to stop the, the stoppage of brokers fees being offset on to the prospective tenant. How does that work and why is it so important that New York City got rid of it?

[Chi Ose]

Of course. So prior to today, if you were a prospective tenant in New York City and you're looking for an apartment, whether through word of mouth on street, easy, maybe from a friend, you are consistently finding that you are being forced to pay this broker fee that ranges from 10 to 15% of your annual rent to a broker that your landlord hired. And whenever you showed up to a listing either sometimes the broker wasn't there either. The broker was rude, you know, very unprofessional. And this is, can I just say.

[Emma Vigeland]

My personal experience is that I've had proposed brokers fees of like 7 to $8,000. And they, the broker calls you to give you the code to let you in so you can see the apartment yourself and then they want 7,000, $8,000.

[Chi Ose]

Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous. And that's not an isolated story. Right? We've, we've heard this from thousands of New Yorkers and we as New Yorkers prior to this bill, just took that as, you know, a fact, you know, when we were spending thousands of dollars to someone that we'd never met. Right. Or just gave us a code to a lockbox. So a couple years ago, I introduced this bill called the FAIR act, which would require that whoever hires a broker within the city of New York would pay the broker fee. And the real estate lobby was pissed about this because they wanted to, to force tenants to pay a broker fee. They spent a lot of money and lobbying against the bill. They defeated it once, you know, when there was another council member who was blocking it from moving forward in the legislative process. But again, we were utilizing social media, TikTok, Instagram Reels and telling people online to call their council members, to call the speaker's office, to show up to city council hearings and advocate on behalf of this bill. And this was attempted in the past to prevent, you know, broker fees from being forced onto tenants. But we were able to be so successful because we dominated the communication strategy about what this bill was trying to do. We were telling people simply that in what other transactions you hire something and order something and then force the other person to pay for it. And we got the bill passed last November. The bill goes into effect today. The real estate industry of New York is pissed off, but, but we successfully beat them in that pursuit. And we're going to save New Yorkers thousands of dollars. We're putting more bargaining power into the hands of tenants. You know, we're, we're showing, you know, this, this lobby that's been able to squash tenants rights over the past couple of years that, that we're here to fight, and we're here to fight in a different way.

[Emma Vigeland]

Can you explain that to people? How this elimination of forced brokers fees on the tenant will put downward pressure on rental prices? Because I think the default is going to be okay. Well, the brokers have to make money some way. That means that's just going to get baked into people's rent.

[Chi Ose]

Yeah. So, you know, I think that's bullshit when the real estate lobby says that it's going to be baked into, you know, people's rents. And also the fact that the Real Estate Board of New York is now concerned about increasing rents is completely outrageous. 44% of the housing stock in New York city, that's nearly 50% is rent stabilized. So it would be illegal for landlords or brokers to bake the fee into the rent in those cases. In addition to that, you know, rents are set by market forces not by what landlords could charge. You know, if your landlord could raise your rent, they would have done so yesterday. And in addition to that, you know, this will put a downward pressure on rents because it gives tenants more bargaining power when it comes to their renegotiating of their lease. You know, instead of having to pay a broker fee and moving into a new apartment, they won't have to pay a fee. The landlord would have to pay a fee to replace them as a tenant. And that would put a downward pressure on the rents in the city.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's exciting and also showing, I think, a little bit some more results. And I'm wondering what your take is on this of really since 2018, it feels like there has been a, an effort and a successful effort to replace so many of these Democrats that were do nothing or corrupt or complicit with Andrew Cuomo up in Albany with the idc. Basically, for people that don't know they were Democrats that had D next to their name so people would vote for them and they caucused independently with the Republicans. And Cuomo kind of gave them a bunch of gifts and favors because it helped kill progressive legislation. We're now at this point right now where like, the city is primed for a progressive mayor because the City Council, there's a bunch of you guys there that are doing great work like this. Like with your endorsement of Zoran and this left wing, almost insurgent movement in the city. Do you see this as a really exciting opportunity for the City Council to finally not have an acrimonious relationship with a mayor and one that could finally change the tides of high prices and everything here in New York?

[Chi Ose]

Absolutely. And, you know, just to hammer and uplift one of the points that you made, I don't even think it's about progressivism. I think it's about economic populism. Right. We are really, many of us within the council are putting forward legislation that is tangibly helping the lives of New Yorkers. And we've seen that in the past session in terms of the passing of this bill. And it will definitely yield way for Zoron to be elected as the next mayor of New York City. It would be so amazing to have a mayor that is not embarrassing and destructive to the city of New York like Eric Adams is. It's been really rough over the past four years trying to navigate the corruption that exists on the other side of City Hall. And I think New Yorkers deserve a mayor that will work with the City Council who is. Is who are doing some really amazing Things around making the city more affordable, like the bill that, that I recently passed.

[Emma Vigeland]

What when we're. Housing is so central to national conversations around the Democratic Party right now. It's never been more unaffordable to buy a home or rent one. Rent is now, I think crossed the average threshold, if I remember reading. And nationally around one third of people's income, which is supposed to be the high watermark for what you're paying on housing when you're budgeting for yourself. And that's just like it's baked into the cake at this point in terms of people's cost of living. We're seeing a record of credit card debt. There's a lot of people that are just putting it on the card. And we, we're in a really precarious economic situation right now. There's a very well funded centrist movement nationally within the Democratic Party called Abundance that says a lot of this is the problem of zoning and zoning deregulation, which Zoran's campaign includes. But it kind of leaves out some of the other things that are commodifying our housing and gouging it to such a degree. What's been your take on this national conversation about rent and housing and how it looks like in practice on the city Council here in New York?

[Chi Ose]

Yeah, you know, I think that's a really good question. And I try to stay out of, you know, those quarrels that exist online. You know, I've always said that my response to our housing crisis and unaffordable, unaffordability crisis within the city is yes. And when it comes to housing, and I think sometimes people get, get stuck with, with one type of solution over the other. But I think there are a myriad of ways that we as legislators, as people who work for the government can address our housing crisis. Yes, we need a rent freeze. Yes, we need social housing. Yes, we need good cause eviction. And yes, we need to build more homes. Right. New York City has a vacancy rate at 1.4%. We're seeing still thousands and thousands of people come from around the country and around the world, you know, seeking new jobs in this city, which puts a pressure on our housing market. Right. It's very competitive to find a home. Listen, I represent Bed Stuy and Crown Heights, which are, you know, it's a predominantly black community still, but it's seeing a lot of displacement and gentrification over the past 10 years. I saw the largest displacement of black people in my community compared to any other community in the city. And it's because folks who are moving here, you know, working, you know, on Wall street or in tech jobs, are competing for the same homes as people who are working for the MTA and other city jobs. So the only way, and one of the many ways that we can address, you know, that specific issue is to build more homes. And, you know, that is some market rate homes. That's affordable homes, that's low income homes. I do believe the answer to our housing crisis is yes. And I think sometimes people can get stuck in, you know, one camp or another camp and, you know, be very passionate about their beliefs there. But we have to be creative in many different ways in order to solve what's, what's happening with the affordability crisis.

[Emma Vigeland]

You mentioned gentrification, and it's really important, I think, to talk about this more because I feel like five, 10 years ago, when that word was thrown around, it was usually like, it kind of sometimes used in our social, cultural context to talk about, oh, like white people moving in, taking away people's homes. Sometimes it was a bit of like a joke or. But for people on the ground, it's something that people are experiencing in real time, but it's not like a fight between tenants. It shouldn't be. Right. And I think that was how it was framed maybe 10 years ago, but now there's this understanding that like, like the, what's driving it is those same people can't afford homes where they used to be, and so they've got to go to areas and push other people out. And real estate developers and landlords capitalize on that because they can make more money with people that are willing to pay maybe $500 more a month than the person that was already living there. So, like, what, how, how do you, as a politician, make the gentrification conversation politically productive?

[Chi Ose]

Yeah, I think my response for the past couple of years now is I think it's easy to get caught up with the color of gentrification being white or black. But I do believe the true color is green. Right, Green. In terms of the unaffordability crisis that's happening across the country, that's pushing people out of some states, maybe coming to another, you know, developers and sometimes landlords who get greedy and hurt people with rising rents and displacement. I believe that New York City has been a city for all people. I believe that those who grown up in the city should be able to stay. But I also do believe that we should make room for more people by building homes. And I do believe that in order for us to address you know, this, this issue of displacement, you know, it's, it's not. I don't want to create quarrels from, with, with one, one type of group and another type of group. I again, want to create space for, for everyone. I think that's very hard for, for people to grasp. Grasp sometimes. I think displacement and gentrification is a very emotional. Again, as someone who's grown up in Brooklyn, I've seen, you know, my community change immensely. But as someone who's now in a position of power and is learning more about how we, we can address this, this problem, you know, instead of, we can't create a ban in New York City to prevent people from coming here, that will never happen. We just need to make more space for those who do want to come here.

[Emma Vigeland]

Vacancy tax. Is that the kind of thing that the city council is looking into?

[Chi Ose]

The city council isn't currently looking into it, but I'm such an advocate for vacancy tax. I do believe we need a vacancy tax, especially on some of the warehoused apartments that exist within the city. I hope that, you know, under the next Mamdani mayorship, that is something that we could work together on a peer to tear tax, you know, for, for some of the oligarchs that own, you know, large, large homes and apartment buildings within our district are also taxed as well. But that's something that I'm, I'm, I'm an advocate for. I don't think the council's working on that right now, though.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, well, we'll put a pin in that one. Lastly, just because you've mentioned the Mamdani campaign you endorsed, you've been campaigning with him, your assessment of the race now that we're just days away from early voting and less than two weeks away from election day.

[Chi Ose]

Yeah. Zoron can, can win. And I do believe that we still need a robust ranked choice voting strategy in terms of ranking five candidates and not ranking Cuomo in order for us to get there. I'm really excited about some of these polls that we've been seeing in this race, you know, looking neck and neck. Also something that's unaccounted for within these polls is that in my personal experience, there are so many friends of mine who are changing their registration to New York City to vote in their first elections. So many young people who are not accounted for within this polling who are actually deeply excited about this movement that Zoron and his team have created during this campaign. I think there's going to be a lot of people that have currently been unaccounted for that are going to show up in droves in these days of voting. So I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. You know, I think Cuomo, you know, he's, he's, he's a political juggernaut in many ways, but, you know, Zoran and even some of these other candidates have really put up, mainly Zoran have really put up a really great fight, you know, in terms of how this race is going to turn out. So I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm feeling hopeful. They're reaching a lot of people who've never been reached before, and I think that that's what's going to get them past the finish line.

[Emma Vigeland]

True. Last question here is because of the success, regardless of the outcome and Rank Zo Run 1 Rank All 5 Don't Rank Cuomo getting that out there. But the, the Citi campaign matching system, to me, I feel like this has been such an unmitigated success. And, and when we're talking about campaign finance reform, I feel like there should be efforts to expand, honestly, our matching system here in New York City. Do you see that as possible if Zoran wins this campaign? And honestly, this should be taken more nationally. Matching systems for campaigns, because it removes the incentive for Cuomo to say, like, hey, doordash, give me a million dollars or whatever.

[Chi Ose]

I mean, I love our matching fund system. Would love to see it expanded, not only within New York City, but across the country, especially in some of these congressional races. Love to see for there to be a matching funds program so that folks can compete in races where APAC is funneling or any, you know, any pack is funneling a lot of money into the race. So I really hope to see this program expanded. I'm not sure how the CFP or what, where their head is at in terms of expanding the program that is sometimes a bit out of, you know, our control or my control, as fair enough, but would love to see it expanded. It's definitely helped. It helped me get elected in 2021, is still helping me in my reelection race right now and will hopefully be one of the big reasons that we beat Cuomo on June 24th.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, well, from your mouth to God's ears, how can people support your reelection effort? Chi. And also just, you know, some of the work that you're doing over at the city council.

[Chi Ose]

Absolutely. So if you live in bed, Sigh. And Crown Heights, please vote for me. Early voting starts on June 14th. Election days on June 24th. Right now, the best way that you could Help me is going to Zoron's campaign and volunteering while also spreading what the great people of the Working Families Party have been saying. And that's ranking all five candidates and not ranking Andrew Cuomo. I love this city. Would hate for Cuomo to destroy it again. And I really do believe a better future is within reach if we keep him away from City Hall.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, really appreciate your time today. Thanks so much. Chiyose, New York City Council member representing Bed Stuy Crown Heights. We'll put a link to the canvassing and all that you're talking about down below, wherever people are listening to or watching this. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Of course. All right. With that, we're going to wrap up the free part of the show, head into the fun part of the show where we will take your calls, read your IMs. Getting a good amount of IMs in and we all re. I don't know why I'm doing the Trump voice. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning?

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, Left Reckoning. We had a big show last night, Stephen Semler on talking about the big beautiful bill and the amount of money that oh, just so happens that when troops started coming home from Iraq, our police department started getting militarized in a way that's easily viewable in graphs. Kind of like all he left was saying the entire time I've been sort of conscious of politics that it's weird how all this stuff has just come true, including the Nazi stuff about demographic anxiety. So yeah, good show last night. And two Nation writers on talking about the new edition of the Nation magazine which is 160 years old. And I mean that's a long publication history for anything like even in, even outside the United States. I don't know how many things have been publishing that long. But interesting discussion there. So they did. They have writers from all 50 states talking about this United States of America. So check that out.

[Emma Vigeland]

Patreon.com left reckoning all right, folks, also wanted to congratulate since I won't be here tomorrow, but I don't think he will be here either because he's got better things to do. Our friend Matt Binder is now a father of three.

[Chiyose]

That's what it means to be a.

[Emma Vigeland]

Mighty man of Val. Oh yeah baby. Really, really exciting news for our friend. We'll give him a shofar celebration. Congrats, Matt Bender. Also check out our merch shop, majorityreportradio.com you can get those trucker hats including the baby blue which is available for pre order. We've also bought, brought back the virgonia. And if you want to be a part of the Max left, you can get your max Left. T shirt shop. Majority report. Radio dot com. All right, guys. See you in the fun half. Okay? Emma, please. Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the Majority Report.

[Unknown]

Wait, look, Sam was unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure.

[Chiyose]

To welcome Emma to the show.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is Thursday.

[Matt Binder]

I think you need to take over for Sam.

[Chi Ose]

Yes, please.

[Emma Vigeland]

No, no, no. I'm. I'm.

[Unknown]

I'm going to pause you right there.

[Emma Vigeland]

Wait, what?

[Unknown]

You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. Someone offered a tour. Sushi and poker with the boys. Twerk, sushi and poker with the boys. Boys who was offered a tour? Sushi and poker with boys.

[Emma Vigeland]

What?

[Unknown]

Twerk, sushi and poker.

[Emma Vigeland]

Tim's upset.

[Unknown]

Twerk, sushi and bulker with good boys was offered with twerk, sushi and that's what we call biz. Twerk, sushi and bulker. Boys.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Unknown]

Twerk, sushi and bulker.

[Emma Vigeland]

We're going to get demonetized. I just think that what you did.

[Chiyose]

To Tim Pool was mean free speech.

[Unknown]

That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about him. I think you're responsible.

[Emma Vigeland]

I. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here.

[Unknown]

Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God.

[Chiyose]

Wow.

[Unknown]

Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my mind. Someone's offered a tour.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Sushi and poker with the boys. A little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Had this debate 7,000 times. A little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. A little kid. Think I'm like a dick. I'm losing my mind.

[Matt Binder]

Some people just don't understand.

[Unknown]

So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the US should be providing me with a wife and kids.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's not what we're talking about here.

[Unknown]

It's not a fun job.

[Chi Ose]

That's a real thing. That's that real thing. Real thing.

[Unknown]

Willy Walker.

[Chi Ose]

That's a real thing. That's that real thing. That's a real thing. That's got a real thing. Real thing.

[Unknown]

That's a real thing that's offered. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again.

[Chi Ose]

That's a real thing.

[Unknown]

Oh, I think he might be blowing it out of proportion.

[Chi Ose]

Real thing. That's that.

[Unknown]

Poker with the boys.

[Chi Ose]

That's a real thing. That. That's poker.

[Emma Vigeland]

Let's go, Joey.

[Unknown]

Twerk, sushi and poker.

[Emma Vigeland]

Boy, take it easy.

[Unknown]

Twerk, sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker with the boys. Sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on live.

[Chi Ose]

YouTube.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sam has like the weight of the world on his shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore. Anymore? It was so much easier when the majority were. Before it was just you.

[Unknown]

Let's change the subject.

[Emma Vigeland]

Rangers and Knicks are doing great now. Shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts.

[Chi Ose]

About this show business.

[Emma Vigeland]

Pro killing podcast.

[Unknown]

I'm thinking maybe it's time to bury the hatchet.

[Emma Vigeland]

Left his best Violet.

[Chi Ose]

Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me.

[Emma Vigeland]

And don't the way Emma has.

[Chi Ose]

All of these people love it.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it. Oh, you wrote an honest thesis. I guess I should hand the main.

[Unknown]

Mic to you now. You are to the right of me on foreign policy.

[Emma Vigeland]

We already fund Israel.

[Chiyose]

Dude.

[Emma Vigeland]

Are you against us?

[Unknown]

That's a tougher question.

[Emma Vigeland]

I have an answer to. Incredible theme song. Hi Bumbler. Emma. Vin. Absolutely one of my favorite people, actually. Not just in the game like period.