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David Sirota 0:00
Hey everyone, welcome to lever Time episode four. This is the show where we try to talk about politics without losing our goddamn minds. I'm your host David Sirota on today's show, we're gonna be talking about Republicans favorite hobbyhorse cutting entitlement programs and how a defeat in the midterm elections might lead the Biden administration into joining them, then, we'll be joined by the levers Andrew Perez to discuss his amazing new story about how after Joe Manchin blocked a Medicare expansion in his home state of West Virginia, a free medical clinic popped up to provide health services for the state's low income residents. Andrew actually traveled to West Virginia to report on that clinic. Also the levers, Julia rock reports on some successful climate organizing campaigns in New York, but also about how Democrats in that state legislature recently killed a major renewable energy bill. What a surprise. And this week, our paid subscribers will get to hear a bonus segment reviewing the huge elections in Latin America and France elections, where the left actually one big reminder for our free listeners to head over to lever news.com To become a supporting subscriber giving you access to our premium podcast feed, which includes those bonus segments plus much more. As always, I'm joined here by producer Frank, what's up, Frank?

Producer Frank 1:34
Not much, David, I'm I'm feeling actually pretty good today about the show about the state of things. You know, it's a lot of it's a lot of heavy topics. But there's there seems to be a silver lining and all of the stuff that we're talking about which you know, we don't get those that often. So I feel pretty good.

David Sirota 1:50
No, there is some good news in this. And I think that I mentioned the Latin American election results and how they revolved around climate change is actually a particularly good piece of news considering all the bad climate news about what's going on in the actual environment right now. So that's, that's actually I'm psyched to get to that. It's it's a really, really important set of stories. And you're right, I mean, I cling to any shred of good news, even if it's far outside of our own country. So I'm like, we're in a good news drought. So I'm thirsty for good news.

Producer Frank 2:26
Yeah, the slightest, the slightest drop of good news feels like I'm bathing in an oasis right now.

David Sirota 2:33
Exactly. Now, before we get to that good news, I think we should have to first go to some not so good news. Today's first story, we're going to be talking about so called entitlement programs. During a debate with Senator Bernie Sanders last week, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham signaled that Republicans are hoping that the Biden administration works with them after the midterm elections, to try to cut Social Security and Medicare. That's what Graham telegraphed. Now, we've all heard some version of this before. It's literally one of the very few things that the Republican party still does well, they are still very good at cutting social programs that benefit the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. I mean, they're so good at it. They've successfully rebranded the positive term social welfare, into the vulgar terms, entitlement programs. The idea is that how dare lazy moochers feel entitled to basic services like health care, and making sure seniors don't live and die in poverty.

Producer Frank 3:49
You know what, David, I learned once that before Social Security, three quarters of American seniors lived in poverty, that's a real fact about life in America before Social Security, and I will never ever forget that.

David Sirota 4:02
It's it's incredible. And then there are similar stats about seniors and access to medical care before Medicare and get every couple of years in Congress, the media. The center of the political debate is about whether Social Security and Medicare, two of the most popular programs in the history of the country whether they need to be cut, and the Democrats have fetishized cutting Social Security and Medicare. Since the Clinton administration, there have been these commissions where Democrats, Democratic politicians who want to look tough, who want to show themselves to be supposedly courageous statesmen, who can, who can disconnect from the Democratic Party's base who can shove it to the Democratic Party's base. They tout themselves as being willing to have tough discussions about cutting Social Security and meta care when in fact what they should be doing. And what the public supports is an expansion of those programs to help break down all of this and what happened this week, and what it may signal for after the midterm elections. I'm now joined by Alex Lawson. He's the Executive Director of Social Security works. It's an organization working to address the retirement income crisis by protecting and expanding the Social Security system. Hey, Alex, what's up?

Alex Lawson 5:30
Hello, how are you?

David Sirota 5:31
You know, things seem pretty dark right now. And one of the things that seems pretty dark is the prospect for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Last week, Lindsey Graham had this to say about what the Republicans would try to do if they win the midterms. So entitlement reform is a must for us to not become Greece. Alex, I know we've all heard this before. But how concerned should we be that if Republicans take control after the midterms that they'll actually do so called entitlement reform, which, of course, is code for cutting Social Security and Medicare? How real Do you think that is?

Alex Lawson 6:14
It's always real. They just never stopped coming for our Social Security or Medicare, or earned benefits. It was sort of surprising that Lindsey Graham wanted to just come out and say it, they usually pretend that they don't want to do that, and then hide behind some sort of, you know, bipartisan commission, like the one that Senator Romney has proposed. In the Obama era. It was the Bowles Simpson Commission, the BS commission. That's all very real. I think I might be more optimistic than you or have some some good news. I think we're better prepared to fight against that than we were when President Obama pivoted to an austerity agenda after the midterms in 2010. A lot has changed since then, on the makeup of the Democratic caucus, and especially on the momentum behind expanding Social Security benefits that we're seeing from the Democrats, Representative John Larson in the house, and Senator Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, others in the Senate. So they're gonna try for sure. That's what they always do. And there are factions within the Democratic Party who fully support things like the the Bowles Simpson commission. I mean, I know, you know, the former executive director of the commission is in the Biden White House.

David Sirota 8:01
Let's just stop there for a second because that was the thing that I sort of, was half encouraged by and half kind of grossed out by which is this. Lindsey Graham comes out and says this entitlement reform is a must. And the DNC, the DSCC of the Democratic Party's apparatus expresses outrage. How dare Lindsey Graham say this, and this is proof that if the Republicans try to wait, if they win the election, they're going to try to cut Social Security and Medicare. And to my mind, Lindsey Graham just said, what the Obama administration and let me rephrase that the Obama Biden administration said 1011 12 years ago, when the Republicans took over that they wanted to move to entitlement reform. In other words, what Lindsey Graham said 1011 12 years ago, was Democratic Party orthodoxy. So I guess I would ask you, how much of a change you think there has been? Or is that just a short term tactic, this this expression of outrage? Is it just a short term election tactic to kind of pretend that's what the Democrats are outraged about? When in fact, it's likely that Joe Biden will reach out to Republicans if the Republicans win the election and try to do another commission to cut those programs?

Alex Lawson 9:21
So I think it's a really important question and one that, you know, we should be asking, I think that what where we are right now, is, is fundamentally different than where we are where we were in 2010. I think that let's just go into a second of what it is that we're talking about, like what Democrats are, like, supportive of it or like formerly, the establishment position was a so called Grand Bargain, right? So the Democrats actually weren't at Were for cutting Social Security benefits. They accepted cuts to Social Security, in exchange for increased taxes on the rich. And the idea is, you get the two parties behind closed doors unaccountable to their voters, and they make a deal, the so called Grand Bargain. And you know, if you talk to establishment dems, they at the time, they would, you know, swear up and down that, you know, it's not them who wants to cut Social Security, it's the, it's the Republicans who want to cut Social Security. And that in and of itself is true. But well, we were like we were and what we expose Social Security works, we were formed to defeat the BS Commission, which as you know, David was just one of like a series of them after we defeated the BS commission, you know, they'd come out with another one and another one and another one. And we had to defeat all of these fast track attempts at the so called Grand Bargain. And there were little pieces that got through that did real harm. And also it ate up the entire rest of the Obama, White House, right, six years of these fake cliffs and crises, and all of it was focused on getting the so called Grand Bargain,

David Sirota 11:35
right. And my fear is, my fear is that Joe Biden is somebody who doesn't believe very deeply in much of anything, but he does believe in a few things pretty deeply. And I look at Joe Biden's career and I may be in the, you know, top 99th percentile of people who know who actually truly know Joe Biden's career have reported deeply on it. And he has, he has up until the 2020 election, he has portrayed himself as a Democrat who was willing to Gore sacred cows in his own party, a Democrat who's tough enough to stand up to his party's base and push things like cutting Social Security. And my fear is that after an election shellacking, like there was in 2010, if there's another one in 2022, the Old Joe Biden, that Joe Biden, not the Joe Biden of 2020, but the Joe Biden, who spent most of his adult life pushing for Social Security and Medicare cuts, freezing funding, giving Senate floor speeches, touting himself as being a great hero for being willing to, to talk about so called entitlement reform, that old Joe Biden will be back Is that is that a ridiculous fear?

Alex Lawson 12:48
It's not at all the optimism I have is not in Joe Biden, per se. I think that what Joe Biden is, is one of the best homing pigeons or beacons of where the center of the Democratic Party is, at any one time, he puts his finger in the air and finds it. So as you noted, like, if you go through his speeches, you'll find things that from today, you're like, I cannot believe that he was advocating for that. But it's a good friend of mine, Melissa burn, always points out, she fights to cancel all student debt. One of her like, amazing sort of things is she's like everyone should go and just watch clips of Democrats from the 1990s to truly understand how terrible they were right that the party was absolutely in an entirely different place than they are today. And it's not saying like, Oh, so therefore we won. But it is to recognize that we have shifted the landscape, incredibly to the left. And I do think that Joe Biden recognizes that. But more importantly, I think that even if he does go for it, and the wheels of elite establishment DC are entirely what you said that the most dangerous setup for Social Security is a democratic presidency, that loses the House and the Senate and then is left with the Republicans being able to hold the debt ceiling against him right or all of the levers that they use to create these crises. And it's in that setup, that it is most likely to yield something like a grand bargain, but I know you Remember this you're one of the few who like reported on it, you remember that the only person and it was me with a camera before live streaming was like a big deal. I stood in front of the closed door of the BS commission, that they hidden the Congress and just live streamed the closed door. Until, you know, the mainstream media, the New York Times, you know, like picked it up like the weirdest thing going around DC is these two hour live streams have a closed door. And I feel like

David Sirota 15:31
I feel like that is Joe Biden's dream that Joe Biden has in his mind that the great good old days of Washington was the days when we could all get into a smoky back room close the door shut the press out shut the you know the public out and come come up with a great deal a these grand bargains, the so called grand bargains that give something to one party give another thing to the other party and they all have to go out and lock arms and basically tell the public that the public is screwed. I feel like Joe Biden thinks that that was the good old days. And in my view, that was not the good old days. That was bad. I mean, certainly some things can come out of it that are okay, from from a process but in general, that is not a great process. So how do we prevent that? That dream aka that nightmare from happening if the Republicans win? So

Alex Lawson 16:28
I think a we have a much bigger apparatus on the outside. So organizations are much more first of all, there's they don't buy it, right. So like the beginning of those smoky backroom deals, there has to be people saying and, you know, believing like, oh, no, they're not talking about cutting Social Security in there. They that's what they kept saying to us during the BS commission. And they're like, you don't know what they're talking about in there. And I'm like, I know that's the exact problem. We don't know what they're talking about. But

David Sirota 17:04
and to be clear, that is what they pushed. That is what they ultimately came out with, which was Social Security cuts.

Alex Lawson 17:09
And you remember that what blew it up was Alan Simpson came out he was annoyed with that New York Times article and he gave me an impromptu eight minute swear filled diatribe against me where he's like, hell yeah, we're talking about cutting Social Security in there. That's what grownups do young whippersnapper, it was an you know, it blew it up, because now it's like, that's what this is about. We don't even need to go through that as soon as something is impaneled, I'll have hundreds of activists coming to DC outside the room with me. And sort of more importantly, in the way that, you know, it would look if the Democrats lose in the house, especially the losses come from the right side of the party first, right. So like, in an enormous wave, it could take out like, you know, a whole bunch of everybody. But in anything other than an enormous, enormous wave, the losses are going to come from the right side of the party, the the caucus would become smaller, lose the majority, but much more progressive. And I think that our champions in the house, you know, I can name a bunch of them, John Larson, who who's not like a CPC firebrand, but he would definitely be outside the room with the activists, right. But of course, like Pramila, Jayapal, and AOC, and Corey Bush, who all can bring a level of communications firepower that we just didn't have when we defeated the Bowles Simpson commission. And that's just on the left, because I also think an important part of this is that the on the right, I don't think that they're, you know, like the Magga caucus or the crazy side of the right wing. I don't think that they would be into this either. So

Unknown Speaker 19:05
well, that's a good, that's a good point. I want to talk a little bit about that very quickly, which is that I do sense that the Republican Party is also somewhat divided in a way that they weren't before, which is to say that, I think 1015 years ago, the Republican Party was a purely, almost purely a country club Republican Party, a Republican Party of business and financial elites who didn't even pretend to care about the working class of this country. I think now the Republican brand is much different. I think the Republican brand is constantly portraying itself. The Republican leadership is constantly portraying itself as more in touch with the working class than the Democratic leadership. Now, I think obviously, the Republican Republican leaders are very closely connected to to the biggest of big money donors. I think it's more brand They're working class idea, the idea that they're working class party is more of a brand than actual reality. But it is to say that I do wonder, Where do the Maga Republicans, that branch of the Republican Party? Where does that branch of the Republican Party come down on cutting direct payments to, to seniors? Right. I mean, it was Donald Trump, who proposed the PPP program. It was Donald Trump, who proposed a bunch of programs that were just about getting money out to regular people. And I'm not touting that. But I'm saying that is a reality of Republican politics. Now, where do you sense the Republican party is on the idea of a so called Grand Bargain? So I

Alex Lawson 20:38
think it's there are factions within the Republican Party. So I don't think you can say, with clarity, where the Republicans are, you can say exactly where Mitch McConnell is right? Like that dude wants to destroy it. Where Rick Scott is that guy wants to destroy it. I also think they're, you know, where most of the House Republicans are, they're going to do what their donors want. In the sort of Trump planned, it gets more complicated because you remember Donald Trump, he knew the political power of Social Security. He was the Republican who got on stage and pointed at the other Republicans and said, they're all going to come cut your Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. I'm not, that's the bit he ran against the other Republicans on protecting seniors, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, protecting everybody's, but that really gives like the Trump plan Republicans, there's two things one, we would be able to pressure them. And you know, that we would hold up Donald Trump now in, in fairness, because it's obvious that this would happen. Donald Trump then you know, turned right around in power and work to undermine and destroy Social Security. He just came at it through, you know, from the side and then lied about what he was doing. But also the Trump land are not like into just the idea of working with the Democrats for a so called Grand Bargain or anything, right, like that. ETHOS is not in the Trump land, and I don't know what is except for like, you know, white nationalism, a bunch of chaos.

Unknown Speaker 22:30
Right. That's a really good point that that Donald Trump, you know, even being part of that generation, that kind of idealizes this, you know, this politics of Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill, Donald Trump and his movement don't seem at all interested in they don't fetishize bipartisanship. They don't fetishize comedy, and working together in the way that Joe Biden and the Democrats constantly fetishize the idea of coming up with a grand bargain press conferences where both parties are, are present. I feel like Joe Biden wakes up in the morning and goes to sleep at night, dreaming of having a press conference with Mitch McConnell, where they're locking arms to cut Social Security and Medicare and show that the government can work in a bipartisan way. I mean, in my view, I don't care what's partisan or bipartisan, I don't give a shit about that. The only thing I give a shit about is the end result. What is the end result of the policy? So that gets to the final question here, which is, what kind of organizing are you doing is Social Security Works doing now in anticipation of this? What can people who are hearing this podcast do if they're worried about their social security benefits after a Republican win in the midterms, if that happens?

Alex Lawson 23:49
So I think the most important thing that happened between 2010 and today is it started with Senator Tom Harkin. And and the torch has been carried from there. As I noted before, we're no longer just fighting against cuts that outside, right, so real people are fighting to expand benefits and the Democratic Party for the vast majority of them have come along with that. So fighting to expand Social Security is the best way to protect against cutting Social Security. And so anything that moves that ball forward, and so this is the actual answer is right here. John Larson's bill in the House has 202 co sponsors on it. It is that that's, you know, just inches away from being able to pass with just original co sponsors. We need to get that bill to a vote and its leadership at Speaker Pelosi who's standing in between that bill and a vote, but we are making progress to get that Bill what's called marked up in Ways and Means, and that would move it on to where we could get a floor vote on expanding Social Security. That's the number one way we can protect Social Security is make these politicians vote on it in the sunlight, never let them go into that backroom, put them on the record. And once the Democrats are voting to expand Social Security, it's almost impossible for them not impossible, but almost impossible for them to turn around. And, you know, work to compromise with cutting Social Security.

Unknown Speaker 25:42
I mean, look, I certainly agree that having a vote right now ASAP to at least get as many Democrats on record as possible on expanding Social Security is is incredibly important. And you've laid out the politics of this. I mean, you've got Joe Biden as president who's pushed for so called entitlement reforms for most of his adult life, the executive director of the Simpson Bowles commission that tried to cut Social Security is now working in the White House, you've got a current house speaker, who says all sorts of nice things about Pete Peterson, the billionaire who has funded the movement to cut Social Security. So all of this is in play. And I completely agree with you that at least getting these politicians on record, in a vote, to see where they stand on expanding Social Security. By the way, a very popular idea when your opponent is so popular, right? That getting them on record is hugely important. Very quickly, Alex, where can folks find your work to know how to engage, you can

Alex Lawson 26:41
find us at Social Security works.org or on Facebook, just search Social Security works on Twitter. Access works? And yeah, it's the moment is the moment to get involved. And we should use the fact that it's so popular, and then Democrats are scrambling for a political lifeline. And we're like, This is it. This is the most popular policy you could go for, run on it. And you know, people are picking up what we're putting down there. So if we can increase the volume, it is entirely possible that we get a vote before November on expanding Social Security and show people Republicans want to cut Social Security and Democrats want to expand Social Security. And that's a fight that every Democrat should want to take because the people aren't soundly on the side of the Democrats in that in that showdown. Alex Lawson thanks so much. Thanks, David.

Unknown Speaker 27:40
Okay, it's time to get to our lever story for this week. So last year, Joe Manchin, aka Senator Kohl from West Virginia, he helped block a Medicare expansion which would have provided additional health services to 1000s and 1000s of seniors in his state, including vision and dental care. As a result, West Virginia has seen some of the worst health outcomes in the entire country. Now an organization providing free health care services to low income residents across the country has set up shop in West Virginia. The Levers Andrew Perez traveled to Charleston, West Virginia to report on one of these pop up medical clinics and the incredible work they're doing right in Joe mansions backyard. Andrew, thanks for being here. Thanks for chatting with us about this.

Andrew Perez 28:28
Absolutely. Thanks for sending me there.

Unknown Speaker 28:30
Thanks. Thanks. Thank our readers are paying subscribers for funding, the kind of journalism we do to make a trip like that possible. So again, this comes after West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin helped kill that Medicare expansion last year that would have benefited some of the folks that you visited with down in West Virginia, the clinic you attended was held by the Remote Area Medical otherwise known as RAM. Generally speaking, let's start out with with asking, what exactly is a ram clinic and why is there one in West Virginia right now?

Andrew Perez 29:06
Sure. So RAM holds free medical clinics, usually two or three day events all over the country where people can come and get medical, dental vision services at no cost. And you know, services kind of varies. Sometimes they're only offering dental because that's the most popular service. But you know, actually in the in West Virginia, they were patients could only actually get choose dental or vision because they were in really in demand. And anyway, Reem has been holding this clinic in West Virginia, annually, though not during not not at the start of COVID. And they've been holding it in West Virginia because they know that there's a need and a local community health group invited them. They've been partnering with West Virginia Health right there since 2017, after the state saw some historic flooding.

Unknown Speaker 29:57
When was the ramp program first Cree data, how are they funded?

Andrew Perez 30:01
So Ram was first created in 1985. It was initially designed to help provide medical services in remote locations overseas, including in the Amazon rainforest. They quickly started receiving requests to hold clinics here in the US. And you know, as far as I can tell, that's what most of their work is now. And so they they, you know, rely on individual donations, foundation donations, and some corporate partnerships. The truth is that they're, they're pretty small, they raised a little more than $6 million in 2020. So they have a small staff that these events and they've rely in large part on volunteers, including volunteer medical professionals, you know, physicians, dentists, doctors, and you know, they do not go everywhere, they're only picking where they go based on invitations from local community groups that are then helping bring in volunteers and helping bring in doctors and medical professionals to

Unknown Speaker 30:56
so you mentioned in the piece that the clinic was set up only a few miles from Joe mansions riverfront home, give us a little detail about mansions role in blocking his constituents, the people that you met on this trip, a little detail about what mentioned did to block them from accessing more medical services and healthcare.

Andrew Perez 31:18
Also mansion last year blocked the build back better bill the you know, President Joe Biden's agenda bill. And he'd already kind of worked to significantly scaled down but one of one of his chief problems with the bill, one of the main sticking points for mansion was that it he opposed expanding Medicare to include dental and vision benefits for seniors arguing that we just can't afford it that the government can't afford that. And you know, his stance was a big giant victory for the private health insurance industry, which makes huge profits off of privatized Medicare Advantage plans. So Medicare doesn't include dental and vision benefits. Medicare Advantage plans generally do include those benefits, but they're usually really thin. They're kind of worthless. And so the benefits that are proposed that were proposed by Democrats would have been an upgrade over what insurers currently offer. And what that meant was that, you know, some people might then choose to stick with Medicare. And so the private plans look, why would you go privatized, if you can get better coverage just through Medicare, it would have also meant that insurers would have to spend some money to keep up with the new benefits. So they oppose the plan and basically demanded that Congress pay them more money to help cover the cost of providing services that they already kind of supposedly do. And it's why they ran a bunch of ads in West Virginia and including in Arizona but in West Virginia. You know, they ran a lot of ads thinking mentioned for protecting the Medicare Advantage program saying that seniors rely on Medicare Advantage. It was it was a really you know it actually our colleague Julie rock did a did a report on that whole industry spending spree and it was really really dirty. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll

David Sirota 33:03
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Unknown Speaker 35:07
welcome back. I'm here with the levers Andrews Perez. We're discussing his recent piece for the lever about the RAM medical clinics and his trip to Joe mansions backyard. He went to West Virginia to report on the healthcare situation in that state after Joe Manchin has blocked and expansion of Medicare as dental and vision, and the like, while you were at the clinic reporting this, you spent a lot of your time near the dental services area in specific, which you report is by far the RAM clinics most sought after services. Why is that?

Andrew Perez 35:39
So rams clinic manager told me that 65% of patients generally come to these events for dental with vision being second. Medical is the smallest by far and you know, part of that's probably like you're not going to these clinics to get surgeries, right? Like they're kind of identifying problems, maybe they'll give you prescriptions on the medical side. But the real driver is just that a lot of people do not have access to dental care. Part of that's like dental care is expensive. Some some areas of the country are called dental deserts, where people don't have really any option to get professional dental care, including in a lot of rural areas. You know, dentists are not setting up shop in areas that are that are, you know, overwhelmingly poor or that just don't have very few people. It's just it's, they just don't do it. So people's dental issues tend to pile up and get much more severe. And, you know, there's the cost issue. dental care is expensive. And if you need dental services, it's going to cost you money. Even if you have insurance outside of like a traditional, you know, annual cleaning. So Medicare doesn't cover dental Medicaid plans usually only cover extractions for emergencies, private dental insurance plans and the medical Medicare Advantage plans that do cover dental, your plan is going to involve significant cost sharing, it might also have an annual maximum or a cap of $1,000 $2,000, maybe more, where you're responsible for everything after

Unknown Speaker 37:08
I want to play some excerpts of some audio to really illustrate the dental crisis that you encountered down in West Virginia. Here's one clip of you talking to a man named Charles combs who was there to have a several teeth extracted. I've been doing most of my sales.

Andrew Perez 37:26
How long have you been pulling out your own teeth?

Charles 37:30
I'm knocking them out with a hammer.

Andrew Perez 37:35
I'm sorry. How long has tha t been going on? Okay, listen read now let's buy it. How long? Has it been since when I had to slash and hold the coffee $400 That's true.

Unknown Speaker 38:02
Then there was another person you encountered named Robert, who had this to say about the dental situation there

Robert 38:11
a couple months ago or $33,000 and I'm on disability search security and I don't know why I freaked out and one of my tools broken in the back and it's cutting my job. So my doll really bad this is part one made it

Poppy 38:40
without an opportunity like this. What would you have done to take care of your dental needs

Unknown Speaker 38:55
Hi, I have no way of breaking up like bills, rent, car insurance gasoline to save a heart every day my feet hurt every day. Well.

Unknown Speaker 39:28
Andrew, my question to you was what was it like reporting on this? What do you think people outside of West Virginia or who aren't experiencing this don't understand about the depths of this healthcare crisis in general and the dental crisis in specific

Andrew Perez 39:46
well so I knew that some some patients at the this clinic we're going to be living in like serious distress like I definitely knew that going in. I was not ready for someone to tell me that they were removing their own teeth with a hammer. I just can't imagine that I couldn't have imagined that going in. But you know, I think so what you're hear from Charles like that, that was I thought pretty stunning. No one on on earth should be forced to live like that, you know, what a one in the wealthiest country on earth. I think you know what what Robert says really illustrates the failure of like this The our social safety net, you know, he's on disability, social security, and he needs all of his teeth out. And he has, you know, if not, for this clinic, no option for doing it, which, which means that he lives in chronic pain. You know, he was told that it would, it would take $3,000 to remove his teeth. And he absolutely needed one out immediately, because he said it was broken, and it's cutting his jaw. And so it's, you know, I think what it shows is that people are, you know, living in really, really serious distress, you know, might be getting some help from the government, but really not enough and not covering what are what are essential services to Right. Like so much of our health care system treats, you know, teeth and vision as if it's like, just completely detached from people's health. And it's insane. And it has, it has a huge trickle down effect. That just puts people in absolute misery and pain until, until hopefully, they end up at a ramp clinic best case scenario.

Unknown Speaker 41:31
I mean, it's it is incredible that Medicare and the way Medicare is written, apparently the eyes and the teeth are not part of the human body. I mean, it's just, it's so frickin dark to think about that the law was kind of written in that way to pretend parts of the body are not parts of your body, I want to end on on a kind of a positive note in the sense of what the RAM clinic folks are doing. There's audio from a patient named Melina, that you met who had this to say about the health care services that she was able to get through this clinic, everyone was

Andrew Perez 42:06
cleaned to everyone, it I just have never seen people treat indigenous people in particular with as much care and regard and decency. They just treated us like valuable human beings and deserve good care. And I had chosen the dental and I was scared, I was just so scared. And they started they even had a portable X ray machine, like could X ray my mouth on site so that they could do it. And they just, it was painless for a tooth extraction. The way they handled my job, the way they cared for everything they did, it was like a family member was concerned about my comfort and my well being and they made it almost as strange as a word, you know that it is for for a dental procedure.

Unknown Speaker 43:13
And here is another clip of a ram clinic worker named Poppy talking to Molina

Poppy 43:21
a lot you know,

Unknown Speaker 43:24
you better

Poppy 43:26
everyone matters. We care about you. We are grateful that you trusted us to come into your life and to do the smallest thing we all need medical care about we are cared for as long as we were kept as long as we can load up a truck down the road. We are here. Okay, Rob, you've proven it. You're part of the family.

Melina 44:11
Well, I tell you what, I get everything else fixed. I'll come back to

Unknown Speaker 44:17
Andrew, it really seems like the folks you talk to just are not used to getting any kind of basic medical care at all to the point where they're surprised to be getting decent medical care. I mean, is that was that the basic attitude down there?

Andrew Perez 44:30
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think some some people were walking in being like, I don't really know what this is right. Like they they kind of had no idea what it was. But, you know, I think Molina really, really kind of framed what the what the real issue is here, which is that like, people who are living in poverty are yet really not used to being treated as human. They're used to being treated as a as $1 sign and one that does that, you know, is not too substantial. So, you know, I think if I was, you know, listening to this audio again, I was like, really, really encouraged by the stuff that Poppy was saying to Molina, you know, just just making clear that like, you know, you are, you know, human you matter. And not only do you matter, but you're part of our family. And like, you know, I think I think like you saw that there, that people really, really did appreciate the efforts of this clinic.

Unknown Speaker 45:25
Andrew, great work on this story. This is the kind of on the ground investigative reporting that is funded, as I said, by our paid subscribers. So if you're interested in supporting independent journalism like this, if you're listening to this podcast and you like what you heard, head over to lever news.com To become a subscriber to help us do more. Andrew, great work. Thanks for Thanks for doing it. Thank you. Okay, for our final segment today in the wake of the Democratic Party recently killing a renewable energy bill in the New York State Legislature. We'll be sharing in the interview here between the levers Julie Iraq and New York climate organizer Pete Sikora, peach, an organizer whose practical tactics have proven very effective, including a campaign which successfully banned gas pipelines in new building constructions in New York City. Julius spoke with Pete about what happened recently in New York's Democratic legislature, as well as the realities of climate change organizing in the Big Apple.

Julia Rock 46:24
Okay, Pete, thanks so much for joining us.

Pete Sikora 46:27
Oh, thanks for having me on.

Julia Rock 46:29
So you, you work with the New York advocacy group, New York communities for change where you're one of the campaign directors, can you tell us just a bit about how you got involved in New York communities for change? And what got you into climate organizing specifically?

Pete Sikora 46:42
Sure. Well, NYC is organizing in black and Latino communities to fight for economic, social and climate justice. And I was working as a political and mobilization coordinator for a labor union. Several years ago, when I got really freaked out about climate change. After reading stuff by Bill McKibben. It's all extremely scary. And it was a wake up call for me that I should start working on this issue.

Julia Rock 47:09
I think, you know, it's probably true for a lot of our listeners that climate change is, you know, terrifying. It's a top priority, and yet, it feels just insurmountable. But But you seem to have a very sort of pragmatic nuts and bolts approach to climate organizing, that's been very effective. Can you can you lay out sort of what that organizing strategy is?

Pete Sikora 47:28
Well, that's so nice of you to say, I mean, we are, what we're trying to do here is run hard hitting multiracial organizing campaigns for very specific objectives that are big goals that some decision maker or an elected official or corporation can do. So we're trying to put pressure from a multiracial base on a targeted elected official, to do the right thing. And so that's what we're trying to do. And we're using a mix of tactics, from lobbying to direct action, protests, all of those things to make that target feel pressure to do the right thing.

Julia Rock 48:06
Got it. And I think one thing you've sort of tweeted and written and spoken pretty extensively about is that that this is a somewhat unique approach in the US climate organizing landscape right now. Or at least a lot of the big, you know, national, as well as New York based climate groups aren't aren't really willing to sort of criticize Democrats take an adversarial tack. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

Pete Sikora 48:31
Well, you know, there's like in climate land, you know, I discovered early on, there's like a lot of like technology and white papers and nerdy policy talk and like, I enjoy that stuff, too. But the really important thing here is to win tangible objectives, and force elected officials to do that. And so, in New York, this is a very blue state, it's a super blue city. And so what we have to do is to get Democrats to live up to their rhetoric on these issues, and actually pass the kind of transformational policies that slashed pollution and create good jobs. And that's what we're aiming for a green new deal here. But that's a lot of very tangible items to win.

Julia Rock 49:11
Got it? Well, and so one great specific example is the the gas free buildings campaign in New York City. Now is a campaign that you're working on at the state level. Can you talk a little bit about how you won the the gas ban in new buildings in New York City and sort of what those efforts look like at the state level now?

Pete Sikora 49:32
Sure. Well, you know, in fact, on the west coast, starting in Berkeley, a few of the municipalities took this transformational step of just ending gas use in newly constructed buildings, no more oil, no more gas for those boilers in those furnaces. Instead, buildings are going to be powered and heated and cooled with heat pumps and energy efficiency, and that's now practical and cost effective. So we saw that as a really good idea for New York City, which is a really big place that uses about 5% of the gas burned in buildings nationwide. So we wanted to pass that as a policy. And so that cleans up our air, it fights climate change, and it creates good jobs and clean energy in New York City. So to win that we had to overcome the opposition of the oil and gas industry and the real estate industry. And so to do that, we formed an effective coalition campaign with a few different groups to bring pressure from all across the city, on the City Council Speaker to pass the legislation.

Julia Rock 50:33
And why was the City Council Speaker sort of the target in that campaign? You know,

Pete Sikora 50:37
that's such a great question. I think for a lot of activists, you have to the first thing you have to do is think about, well, who what am I trying to get, and who is the decision maker on this issue. Oftentimes, you could say, well, the city should do X, or the federal government should do Y, but really got to talk about a specific person who is democratically accountable in our system. And the speaker of the city council controls legislation moving through the New York City Council, and the law starts in the City Council, and the city council has the power to pass laws. So it can be the driving force, and the speaker is the most important figure within the city council. So we ran a campaign to get speaker, Cory Johnson, to move this legislation. And to his credit he did. And

Julia Rock 51:22
it seems like in New York City, and maybe especially at the state level, where we're now you're working to pass a gas ban statewide, you're sort of trying to get the ear of lawmakers that you know, maybe the real estate industry and the fossil fuel industry are also trying to win over. So what does it mean to sort of, you know, divorce, divorce these lawmakers from from their donors and get them to deliver on, you know, big popular policies,

Pete Sikora 51:48
you know, you have to bring bone crushing political pressure to win, you got to just crush here. So, in order to do that, right, you have to mobilize enough grassroots pressure on the targets to make them feel like this is the thing that they should do. You know, it's we're all very keen to be right about the issues. And it's incredibly important to push policy, that is the right policy. But at the end of the day, you don't win, because you're making a good argument or you're morally righteous, you win, because you assemble the political power to then go over the top on the opposition, which in all of these cases, ends up being deep pocketed corporate special interests, who just want to preserve the status quo. So you have to overcome that opposition. And that's, that's a hard thing to do. But it's a very doable thing to do, if you get with a bunch of groups and a bunch of activists and run an effective campaign. So that's what we encourage people to do to win on these issues and take chunks of the problem of climate change paths, the policies that are needed to solve it. And if we're doing that, worldwide, that's how we're going to overcome this problem. And in the process, build a fairer and more just society. One thing

Julia Rock 52:59
that was really striking to me about the the gas ban campaign, and I think about many New York communities for change campaigns, I remember, I was standing in front of my laundromat a few months ago and saw some massive March come down the middle of the streets that I think your communities for change had helped organize regarding rent hikes, but how do you get that much people power behind something like, you know, banning gas in new buildings?

Pete Sikora 53:23
That's, you know, that is the key, right? How do you mobilize people first, I want to say, you don't need to mobilize like 20% of society or 50% of society or 100% of society, right? Like people have this stereotype of movements as like this all encompassing thing that everybody must be part of, you know, the civil rights movement, you know, things like that, but, but in fact, the number of people actually taking action in these movements is vanishingly small as a percentage of the total population, you know, we need a small proportion of people to actualize the otherwise encoded public opinion, that won't translate into policy, unless there's people actually pressing. And so that number of people needs to be there. But it doesn't necessarily need to be 1000s. In a city of New York, it can be hundreds. And that's what it was for the gas band campaign. So our organization has a base of volunteers. So do the other organizations that we worked with on that campaign. And together, we mobilized our membership basis to events and activities and to lobby and lots of people came out, but it wasn't 1000s of people, it was hundreds of people. So that's the kind of scale to win a big campaign in New York City that you need. And so if you are in a smaller place in New York City, dozens of people ought to be enough in a bigger place. 1000s of people are necessary. So but I do want to stress one other thing, which is that in a multiracial place like New York City, it's not enough to just have sort of white progressives out there arguing for something and look, I'm a white progressive. I think that's a great thing, right? Like white people should do the right thing. However, To win in a multiracial place like New York City, you have to build a coalition to be to maximize effectiveness. So what we do is we combine our base at New York communities for change in communities of color with predominantly white progressives who are active on climate, and then combine those bases to push a specific target. And in a blue city or in a blue state, that combination of white progressives and communities of color is a dominating political coalition. So if you can actualize that political coalition for a specific objective on an ambitious politician who wants to remain in office or move to a higher position, that's how you can win. And the same thing, by the way applies to corporate campaigns.

Julia Rock 55:42
Got it? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a striking vision for organizing. You've written extensively about how Democrats in New York love to, you know, tout their climate plans and their commitment to tackling the climate crisis, without much follow through as a member of York's Climate Action Council went so far as to say, we're good in New York at writing press releases, but we're a little less perfected at the art of implementation. That sounds depressingly similar to the Biden administration, he loves to tell us about the amazing things they're going to do, but have done very little. You know, do you think this is an establishment Democrat problem? Is there something unique in New York that's halting progress, what's going on here?

Pete Sikora 56:22
I think it's the same in almost every word, local, state, federal. On the one hand, we have the Republicans who are ruthlessly marching to destroy progress, and wreck civil society take us backwards on a range of issues. And on the other hand, we have the Democrats who left to their own devices sort of tread water, and don't really do a whole lot in one direction or another. So it's up to us as the people to actually mobilize the pressure to win. And in blue places like New York, the federal government, right now, the Democrats are in charge. So they're the ones to pressure, you know, the kind of formula I'm describing of white progressives plus communities of color, that wins in a blue place, it doesn't necessarily win in a red place, right. But with the Democratic Party, we can get a lot of big results. But it is hard, and it is an uphill battle. And it's got to be focused and hard hitting and serious.

Julia Rock 57:19
Got it well. And to a sort of recent example, here was the build public's renewable Act, which died a few weeks ago in the New York State Legislature, the bill would have affirmed the New York Power authority's ability to build publicly on renewables and set a deadline for closing the state's fossil fuel plants. The Democrats who again have a supermajority in the state legislature killed the bill, they also of course, killed the ban on gas and new construction statewide that York communities for change was pushing for what exactly happened? Why'd they kill it?

Pete Sikora 57:52
That is, the depressing story from this New York legislative session is once again, the New York State Legislature led, like you said, by a supermajority of Democrats, a Democratic governor did not pass the kind of policies necessary to deal with the climate crisis. And those are the two hugest examples. So in both of those cases, the industries that are threatened by those pieces of legislation mobilized very serious campaigns of lobbyists, campaign donors, targeted at the leadership and the rank and file membership in those legislatures, and we did not bring enough power to overcome that opposition. So you know, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but what you need to do is fight. And so if you bring enough pressure, you win, and that's how we won at the city level. And next year, we're going to win at the state level, like I don't want to be like Joe Nemeth here, you know, like kind of guaranteeing victory. But, but it is true. If we come back with a really strong campaign to pass the gas ban next year, we will win and it is the same thing. For every other issue. It's about mobilizing enough pressure. And that is really the only way to do it. There's there's no other shortcut. In a democracy. We don't write the kind of checks where we can actually just hire the lobbyists by the access, promised jobs, fund networks to do super PAC expenditures, do all of those things that take colossal amounts of money. We can't do that. The only thing we've got is people power. And but that's a lot.

Julia Rock 59:26
And so on this issue of mobilization to wrap up, for people listening to this, if they if they want to get involved in the work you're doing in New York, or they're in other places across the country, and they want to be involved in climate action. You know, what's your advice to them?

Pete Sikora 59:40
You should look at the groups in your local area and see if they're reflecting the kind of stuff that I'm talking about here. Are they out there in the streets pressing a specific decision maker for a specific result? join that group. Don't try to do this on your own. It's better to do it inside of an resisting group or with other people. That's how you really can make change by linking up with existing organizations, and then bringing those kinds of multiracial, hard hitting campaigns for specific objectives targeting specific decision makers. And that is a formula that that wins.

Julia Rock 1:00:19
Great advice. And what if they want to follow you? Where can they find you on Twitter online? What's what's the best way to do that?

Pete Sikora 1:00:26
Oh, New York communities for change is ny communities.org. At NY change. I'm at Pizza Cora one. And, you know, there's email lists you should sign up for. And there are lots of wonderful organizations nationally, my personal favorite on nationally is Food and Water Watch, which just does wonderful work in fighting fossil fuels in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and nationally. So they're a fantastic group to get involved with. But there are many, many others as well. And I would urge you to go to a local organization, and find those kinds of hard hitting campaigns where activists are getting together to press a specific decision maker for a specific result.

Julia Rock 1:01:05
Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining the podcast.

Pete Sikora 1:01:08
Oh, thank you so much for having me on. This is really great. And such an important topic. I really appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:13
Okay, now our bonus segment just for our paid subscribers. This week, we're going to be talking international politics. Specifically, we're going to be talking about the really big elections in France and Latin America, we talked to Cole Spangler, a France based journalist and lever contributor who covers labor and politics in Europe. We're also joined by theory and Franco's a Providence College professor and the author of resource radicals from Petro nationalism, to post extractivism in Ecuador. Here's our discussion. Thanks to both of you for being here.

Thea Riofrancos 1:01:45
Thanks for having us.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:46
Yeah, thanks for having us. All right, let's start with what's been going on in Latin America. There's been a lot of victories against conservative governments in on the continent. Theo, why don't you tell us what the overview of what's gone on? And whether what's going on in all of these different countries in Latin America, whether you think they're related, there's there's some through lines?

Thea Riofrancos 1:02:10
Yeah, so there's been a real sweep of, of progressive and left wing governments across the region. Over the past year, year and a half. There's been a lot of comparisons now to the prior so called Pink tide, which began with Allah Chavez is rise to power in 1999. And the kind of one after the other left wing governments then and so we're kind of seeing a parallel situation now. So just for listeners, we have left wing governments in Andorra, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Colombia. As of Sunday, we have upcoming elections in Brazil in October, where Lula has a pretty strong lead, that would mean that some of the major economies several of the major economies of the continent are under left wing leadership. Right. So it's a big shift. And you're you're right to sort of ask like, are there things in common? I mean, they're always country by country, contextual factors. But I do think that we see a few, a few through lines. One is that, you know, and lots of or I guess, all of these countries prior to the left coming to power recently, there were conservatives, in some cases, you know, really right wing governments and power, those governments presided over the combination of the still ongoing pandemic, as well as the worst economic recession in the region, for you know, a couple 100 years, right. So Latin America, for various reasons, was particularly vulnerable to the economic effects of the pandemic combined with lock downs. And that resulted in a lot of really obvious discontent, especially because those effects, those economic effects are very unequally born right, Latin America is one of the most economically unequal regions of the world, right. So we had a combination of, you know, kind of punishing the incumbents, we might say, but also, I think, with a more specific lens of just the social and economic injustice that has proliferated under these right wing governments during a public health emergency and also amidst a climate emergency. Right. So So I think those are some of the three lines. One other piece that I'll just mention, you know, at the outset is that we also see a kind of punishment of establishment political forces, right. So in many of these cases, not all of them but in many of these, you know, a sense to power of left wing governments. We see that obviously the right did badly, but especially the right establishment did badly and also, the center left kind of establishment parties also fared badly in some of these we see that, as you know, very clearly in in Chile, where Gabrielle Bowditch is not from, you know, a sort of centrist left establishment party, but rather from a parties that are linked to social movements. You know, similarly in Colombia on Sunday, we had a face off between a kind of Trumpian anti establishment right wing finger for You're and then Gustavo Petro, of course. So I don't want to just reduce to being just like simply a left populist, I think his political trajectory is even more complicated than that we can get into it. But regardless, there, there's been a devastating blow, I think, to the Istat more establishment and neoliberal parties across the political spectrum in Latin America,

Unknown Speaker 1:05:19
the climate question, I mean, and this is a rudimentary understanding of it. But the previous left wing winds of 1015 20 years ago in Latin America, brought to power, if not leftists, who wanted to invest in extractive resources, but certainly I mean, Chavez, you know, Petro state and the like, does what's, what's happened now, recently, you see, in Colombia, the winner of that election campaign against more oil extraction and for a serious climate policy, I guess what I'm asking is, is one of the differences between what happened before and what happened now is that climate is more central, a more progressive outlook on climate more central to the new governments in the continent.

Thea Riofrancos 1:06:09
I think, absolutely, that the current crop of left wing governments are really inflected by the rise of kind of mass consciousness around climate change. And also maybe a little more specifically, the rise of environmental justice and indigenous movements that can test specific extractive projects, right. So in many of these countries, there are large oil, gas and mining sectors. And over the years, including under prior left governments, those projects were the sites of really radical direct action and resistance on the part of directly affected and often indigenous communities. And that was a real fault line in those first crop of left wing governments that we were discussing earlier in the in the so called Pink tide, where, you know, it was a real challenge for governments to have the revenues to address social services, social needs public infrastructure, without kind of reinventing this model of extractive development. And they sort of took that Devil's bargain, we could go country by country, but overall, there was a kind of doubling down on resource extraction, and using that, certainly to fund massive social spending, and so that that can't be denied. But the environmental and social impacts of that extraction are real. And I think in this current wave of left wing governments, there's a lot more consciousness of that. I would actually say, following on your question that Gustavo Petro is perhaps seems to evinced the most consciousness about that, like in his victory speech and his acceptance speech, I was really moved by how much he directly critiqued extractivism as this basis of economic development, how much he's pledged to create this alliance of anti fossil fuel governments around the Americas right. And he actually posed an interesting challenge to fellow progressives and other countries like will you join me in really transitioning away from this, you know, centuries and centuries old model of extraction and doing something new for Latin America? Because economies that that would be basically a just transition to renewable energy?

Unknown Speaker 1:08:03
All right, cool. I want to turn to you about what happened in France, and then we'll we'll discuss it all in one larger discussion in France, why don't you lay out for us? What exactly happened? And if you can give us a sense for those who don't understand it give us a sense of where the different political players match up, or what their equivalent would be in the United States. And we just heard from Thea about the Columbia election about how there was a candidate sort of of the left kind of a Bernie Sanders ish, and I'm being a little bit overbroad, and then it kind of Trump ish candidate. So just give us a sense when you're telling us what's going on where the different players sort of fit onto the ideological spectrum?

Cole Stangler 1:08:44
Yeah, I mean, I, I think what we saw happen in these legislative elections, reflects, I think, the the breakdown of French politics into now into essentially three different political camps. For the first five years of Emmanuel Macron, his presidency, he's basically, you know, been been running the show with an absolute majority in parliament.

You know, we can we can discuss how he was able to have a sort of outsized margin of victory, because if people opposing the far right but but essentially over the first five years, he had this big majority in parliament, and it was essentially, you know, sort of rubber stamp. You know, I'm exaggerating a little bit but but but a rubber stamp parliament for Emmanuel Macron, this sort of centrist center, right, pro business, neoliberal leaning, although it's more complicated in France president so that's Emmanuel Macron, who just won his reelection in April to another five year term. And typically what happens in France, especially since they move to legislative elections to take place stress after the presidential elections is that the newly elected or reelected will not do the newly elected press Didn't wins a clear majority in parliament that was part of the calculation of changing the electoral calendar to sort of reduce the risks of political instability. So you have this legislative election that takes place just after the presidential election. And what this legislative election has shown is what I was just saying earlier, this sort of breakdown into these three forces. So to give you the three of them, you have a manual might call the president who whose party has the most seats, though not an absolute majority in parliament, you have on the on the far right, nothing the pen, who was the presidential candidate last again for the second straight time, against Emmanuel Macron in April. And then you have Joni Mitchell Sean, who is sort of the head figure of enough consensus amis, which sometimes it gets translated to France Unbowed, I don't really like the translation in English is sort of the left left populist candidate and political force. And so what we saw at these elections is the sort of left flank, which was, I think, you know, currently represented by middle show and the presidential race actually was able to win a significant share of seats in this legislative, Ms legislative election. So you have a situation now where, like I said, for the first time since France has moved the legislative elections after the presidential vote, you have a president who does not have an absolute majority in Parliament, which means that it's going to be trickier for him to get his agenda across much, much more complicated. So McCrone is to give you one example, his one of his big promises, one of the big things he campaigned on, is sort of a strange political decision on his part, but it was big things he campaigned on was to raise the retirement age to 65 years old, that looks a lot more difficult when you don't have control of Parliament. And so now people are discussing, you know, how's this going to work? Are they going to have to maybe rely on, you know, the center right party to kind of get some votes? Are they going to have to try to peel off some votes from the left? Are they going to have to even turn to the far right, maybe to get some support? We saw one of my Crohn's legislators suggest that an interview recently on television, so a lot of uncertainty, but I think that, you know, the big takeaway, I think, is macro is now going to be much more weakened for the next five years of his presidency. So a weakened president who does not have his rubber stamp Parliament anymore. You have, I think, critically, the left, which is in a much stronger position than it was in the first five years of MK on the left is the biggest opposition force in Parliament, the round with around 140 seats. That's our big takeaway. And I think just a couple of other quick things, I would say are, you know, I don't want to exaggerate it because the media, I think, in some cases can can can hide overhype it, but the far right did significantly increase its share of the vote surprising even a lot of the people on the left in this new left Alliance that is that is, you know, united to them in order to increase their share of the vote. So the rise the far right. And the last factor, I think that that's just important to keep in mind is the very low levels of turnout. In France, they tend to measure it's interesting, I think in itself, French people talk about abstention as opposed to participation. The idea being in theory, people participate in elections, they measure the abstention rate, which is the opposite of what we do in the US. The abstention rate in the legislative elections was at its second highest level, only beaten by the last legislative elections in 2017. So low, low levels of participation, political disillusionment, the breakdown of McDonald's Monopoly, but I think if you're looking at it, you know, I'm sort of the bright side. For the listeners here would be the emergence of the left, which is obviously the return of the left to the national political arena as essentially, you know, running I think it's unfair to say one of the three main political forces and a sort of backing back into the arena after being essentially absent or really confined to the margin for the last five years.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:54
I mean, theologian mentioned what what was going on in Latin America, which is the sort of the center left and the center right. Were essentially rejected had been rejected in that region. McCrone seems to be somewhere in the center, right? Center ish, that mushy kind of pro business policy kind of politic, politics and politician that the United America frankly seems to be uninterested in increasingly, and that Latin America seems to be rejecting. So I guess my question is, is is McCrone in a situation now, where the center cannot hold, if you will, and what is what is that pivot on? Is it anti immigrant sentiment? Is it something else on the left? Like, what, where does he stand and Is it is it perilous?

Poppy 1:14:44
Yeah, I mean, I think certainly, you know, I was mentioning his his during his campaign. I mean, I don't know who had this idea that it would be a good idea to campaign on raising the retirement age to 65 years old.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:59
Well, you know, brocco bomb Alma did that in in 2010, with his commission to try to cut Social Security and it really didn't work out all that well for him in that election.

Poppy 1:15:08
The other the other big item in macro really did not put forward many plans in his reelection campaign. But the other big item was overhauling a popular welfare program that's aimed at the most low income people in France that that have been long term unemployed. So he wants to overhaul that to essentially put more work requirements and state oversight over who's getting this this aid. So that was the other that was the other plank. And I think, you know, if you look at his economic policies, I think that's obviously the big weakness. You know, it's sometimes hard, I think, to translate for, you know, for American or British audiences, where the, the welfare state has been so eviscerated and public services or been so cut over the years, France is different, because we never really had, you know, the same sort of, you know, Bragin or Thatcherite revolution, taking place overnight in France, what you've had is a sort of slow, long term kind of, you know, chipping away at the state and public services. And so McCollum has very much presided over that and we saw the yellow vest, you know, rebellion, protests, in many ways at the declining quality of public services, the sense that they've been abandoned people been abandoned by the state. So I think, you know, if you look at just the state of public services in the country, you know, the hospital system, the Trent, the transit system, the school system, things that, you know, used to be, you know, really sources of pride, really, for the French model have been underfunded over years McCrone was presiding over that he's also had tax cuts for the super rich. You know, he's also reformed labor laws to make it easier to lay off workers, I think all these things, you know, earned him the title president of the rich, and I think that image, you know, is sort of driving a lot of the a lot of the discontent. He's he's, you know, micro at this point is really representing the sort of the party of order in France, he's sort of the just willing to take anything that that I don't think he has too much of a, you know, personally ideological vision, he's someone who wants to stay in power and will take whatever, you know, it takes to borrow items from different from different camps and people in order to stay in power. So I don't know if he's got, I don't know if, well, you know, I think you know, at the end of this five year term, I mean, things are really up for grabs, I think I'll just, I guess I'll just maybe end on that for over the next five years. See,

Unknown Speaker 1:17:34
I want to turn back to you and talk a little bit more about Latin America in the context of what we just heard. I mean, it again, it sounds like that what has gone on in Latin America is a kind of rejection of the kind of politician that McCrone is over over in France. What do you think that I guess means for the future? What do you think is a sort of legitimate set of expectations for these new governments? Because I think a lot of people think about the past leftist uprisings in Latin America. And and they haven't gone as well as, as they've, they've hoped, in the past. What do you think, is potentially different? And are there things that give you hope that it? Will it will be more successful this time around?

Thea Riofrancos 1:18:24
Yeah, it is? It's a hard question to evaluate. Because on the one hand, we'd have to think about, you know, what is the legacy of the pink tide? And how would we evaluate the success of those governments, you know, on a one level, I think they were undoubtedly successful in lifting millions out of out of poverty and reducing inequality on the you know, as I said, in the most unequal region in the world, and those are real material successes that change ordinary people's lives. But you know, on the other hand, those successes were built on an unsustainable base. And I mean, that literally and figuratively, right? They were built on these extractive sectors that aside from their environmental and social implications are tied to these really volatile commodity markets, right? We're seeing this commodity volatility around the world right now with energy and with a bunch of metals kind of going, you know, into skyrocketing territory and then crashing. And so, you know, we have that that evidence right now with how volatile these markets are. And so, in 2014, there was a big commodity bust, right, all of these commodity markets went bust that that sort of followed after the financial crash, and also this sort of end of China's like, mega growth period. Right. And so, right now, you know, to now fast forward to the present. You know, I think the lessons are clear, on the one hand, like social and public investment works to bring people out of poverty, right. But on the other hand, if that investment is tied to sectors that are kind of fundamentally and only more and more so volatile, it that's going to mean that that governments are not going to have revenues when those sectors crash. And so I think it really is the task and the historic task right now, the left to kind of think about what What are different bases of the economy look like? And that is a really weighty question because Latin America entered global capitalism through, you know, violent colonial conquest that was tied to mining and agriculture, right. So it would be, it's a huge task to undo that. But that's exactly what I think some of these presidents are talking about, and especially what the movements that you know, they come out of are really are really confronting right now, you know, how to undo that, that legacy.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:26
And it's really, it's really perilous in the sense that if they're not successful, we already know what kind of of leaders can be elected in, in a kind of counter revolution. I mean, Bolsonaro in Brazil, is I mean, I mean, not a direct necessarily counter revolution. But when the public is mad and willing to then, you know, mad at a leftist government, it's willing to put in basically a fascist, a fascist who, who controls the regulatory regime over the lungs of the Earth, the Amazon jungle?

Thea Riofrancos 1:20:58
Absolutely. And I just, I was literally just gonna go there to say that I think, you know, part of the in this mix is the fact that, you know, on the one hand, you know, making things perhaps complicated for the current governments, I was just saying how there is a new consciousness about needing to move, you know, beyond this attractive model of development, but But what are their challenges in doing so, on the one hand, you know, voters expectations are really high, they're high, in part because of the some of the successes of the prior left governments, right. So now that we know that public welfare investments matter, and can change things, especially again, amidst both a pandemic and a severe economic recession, voters rightfully want like fast action to improve the material well, being ordinary people, right, so the pressure is on these governments, you know, on the other hand, two other hands. One is that the commodity markets, again, that their economies are still tied to, in an a particularly volatile state, Given Russia's invasion of, of Ukraine, and all of the rattling of global commodity markets that we've seen recently, and supply chains. And you know, we won't get into all of it. But that puts commodity exporters in a tough place where like their high prices, we want to export these, but we know they might crash. But also many of these governments are importers of key commodities. So they're sort of a kind of push from both both ends. And then the last piece has to do with the right and this is something that David Adler and I wrote a bunch about in the New Statesman, just the way that the right has gotten much savvier. Right. It's not just about like military, coos, and you know, outright use of force. It's about using the legal system, the procedural system, the judiciary, to kind of limit what the left can do once they're in office to sow the seeds of so called parliamentary coos, meaning coos that happen through kind of legal channels, right. And so the left is is, you know, between voters with rightfully high expectations and economic conjuncture that's very volatile, and then also a right wing that's much savvier at getting the left out of power on through kind of procedural mechanisms.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:52
That's a good good segue to the final question I have for coal, coal, Bernie Sanders, after the French elections, wrote, given the choice between progressives who want to increase taxes on the rich or right wing extremists who are viciously anti immigrant, the pro business centrist party of McCrone just couldn't make a choice. There's a lesson to be learned here. And I think what he was alluding to is this danger that if the center doesn't hold the right will, essentially, the far right, the anti immigrant right will be able to ascend to power much like Donald Trump did. Just a little bit about tell us a little bit about the danger that you see there. And to theists point about the right becoming more savvy in Latin America, you wrote a New York Times op ed, about what you call the Americanization of the French discourse, the French media. So how does that all factor in? Tell us what you mean by that?

Cole Stangler 1:23:48
Yeah. So I think I think on the on the Bernie Sanders tweet, which is interesting, I mean, I've heard that was people were people were talking all about that in France, the tweet came out, but I think the, you know, what's happening in France is in some ways, why don't know, let me I'll try to think about, you know, for perhaps for an American audience, I think what's interesting is that if you look at, you know, one of the one of the strategies that McCall has taken, or part of his strategy, I think, for dealing with the far right has been to essentially, it's can seem sort of contradictory, but it's two things. It's one saying that I'm the only person who can stop you from from the far right, it's us, it's, it's me versus them, these are the two options on offer. And it the second part of that strategy is involves basically adopting parts of, if not the worst parts of the discourse, at least focusing on on far right, historically far right themes of concern, because he sees that as a way as of sort of undermining their base showing that he you know, take some of their if not, you know, immediate concern seriously understand sort of the, you know, what's pushing them to vote for the far right and Sivan more concretely it means that what we've seen, you know, in the last five years is a lot of focus on on a lot of talk about immigration, about is about the dangers of, of Islamism. A lot of talk about security, focusing on security issues, sort of these these classically, sort of far right. areas of concern. And we've seen, you know, his his his own his own ministers. In some cases, you know, parroting I think far right? Rhetoric, there's a very famous case in which the interior minister was in a debate with Marine LePen, in which he accused LePen of going soft on immigration. So, you know, we saw this the strategy of essentially trying to, you know, adopt parts of the far right discourse, and what's the result of that after after five years, we've seen a mainstream education of the far right, where they're becoming more and more just normalized, and we're seeing it play out in the election results, where I think one of the most need to go back directly to the tweet. One of the most I think, sickening dynamics of this election was you had a number of McCrone candidates in races refuse in which they have been eliminated after the first round, because the French election system for the legislators are two round elections. They have been eliminated in the first round, the second round between the left and the far right. You had McCrone candidates not willing to endorse or tell people to vote for the left wing candidates. You had even the former education minister adopt that strategy under Maccon. So this sort of demonization of the of the left, putting them on putting them on the same playing field as the far right, I think backfired, as well. So I think you know, that the takeaway here is that the strategy of trying to, you know, adopt far right talking points, or at least take steps in their direction does not work. What it does is it normalizes their discourse. And I think that's something that we see maybe more in France than then the US, but I think you could probably point to cases of it, of course, and in the US as well. And I think, you know, to maybe make the, you know, last point tying into the essay that you referred to about the Americanization of politics. And this, this sort of ties into ties into it as well is, you know, we've seen, you know, there's one channel in particular, that is directly just taken the Fox News model and tried to apply it to France, which is called see news, where you see a lot of these, you know, you have pundits come on and, and, you know, these talking heads that only know how to be talking heads on television that just debate these, you know, the same set of basically five or six themes that the far right loves to talk about Islamism, immigration, national security, you know, the secularism, but under their far right lens, so all of this, and in the end, you know, to tie it to the last point, government ministers have gone on see news as well, this this, this fox news like channel to sort of show that they're listening to, you know, listening to voters, and so you have this sort of spectacle that will have been really difficult to imagine just just five or six years ago, where you have government ministers, you know, going on going on, you know, far right TV channels in Far Right media outlets, talking about immigration, and Islamism. And look, I mean, we've seen the results of it in the legislative elections, the far right has never been at a higher level in Parliament ever, you know, since at least since then, since the since the creation of the Fifth Republic. So I think that's it's a losing strategy. And

I don't know what my call is going through now, for the next five years. He may, he may even I don't want to get too dark on here. But he may even end up you know, trying to rely further on on the far right, we saw a government. As I alluded to earlier, we had a legislator, who was just reelected on national television, Monday night in France say that, you know, because they're gonna have to try to find majorities to govern on each of these texts, which is part of the trickiness of having this this lack of an absolute majority, they might ultimately try to get support from the far right to vote. Some of these devote some of these texts. So a lot of uncertainty. What's clear is that this this strategy is, it's been a losing strategy. It does not work to stop the far right

Unknown Speaker 1:29:24
call, Thea, thank you so much for taking the time from breaking this down. For us. It sounds like a lot of things are in flux. And I'm sure we will come back to you and ask you to come back on in a few months to find out what else is going on and how things are going. Thanks to both of you.

Thea Riofrancos 1:29:38
Thanks, David.

Cole Stangler 1:29:39
Thank you. Thanks so much.

David Sirota 1:29:41
That's it for today's show. As always, thanks a ton for being a paid subscriber to the lever. We could not do this work without you. If you particularly liked this episode, please pitch into our tip jar. The tip jar link is in this episode's description, or at lever news.com/tip jar Every little bit helps us do this journalism. Oh, one more thing. Be sure to like, subscribe and write a review for lever time on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, I'm David Sirota rock the boat

Transcribed by https://otter.ai