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Frank Cappello: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to this week's bonus episode of LeverTime Premium, exclusively for the Lever's supporting subscribers. I'm LeverTime producer Frank Capello. This week I spoke with historian Harvey K and progressive advocate Alan Minsky about the unfinished business of Franklin Roosevelt's economic bill of rights.

During the interview, Harvey and Allen explain the origin of what has become known as FDR's, Second Bill of Rights, why political figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Bernie Sanders have advocated for it, and why we need a 21st century economic bill of rights now more than ever.

Thank you again for being a supporting subscriber and funding the work that we do here at The Lever. Now, here's today's interview.

All right. I am now joined by, , Harvey Kaye and Alan Minsky. Harvey, Alan, thank you both so much for joining me today on Lever Time.

Harvey Kaye: Thank you. This is a [00:01:00] pleasure and a privilege in many ways.

Alan Minsky: Great to be here. Thank you.

Frank Cappello: All right, guys. So, we're here to talk about, uh, the unfinished business of FDR's Economic Bill of Rights. So let's start with the original Economic Bill of Rights. It was FDR's 11th State of the Union Address in January 1944. So what were the conditions in the U. S. at that time, and what did FDR's vision of a second Bill of Rights look like?

Harvey Kaye: Yeah, that's a great question to start out. The first thing to realize to frame it is that if we look at FDR's record, When he ran for president for the very first time, back in 1932, he actually called for an economic declaration of rights. So from the very outset of his administration, he had in mind a transformation of, if you like, American public policy and political economy.

Um, in many ways, FDR's ambitions included overthrowing the Gilded Age. Capitalist order that had [00:02:00] led to the Great Depression. And as far as he was concerned, part of doing all of that meant empowering Americans with greater economic security and doing so by way of literally rights. First, he's thinking in this moment in 32 of the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Later, in 1941, he gave State of the Union address in which he projected for America and the world the imperative of pursuing and creating social order economic order characterized by four fundamental freedoms freedom of speech an expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Now, after 41, the U. S. enters World War II. So, many people expected FDR, he kind of said, I'm not going to be doing as much of the Dr. New Deal routine, it's now Dr. Wartime. But FDR [00:03:00] knew very well that Americans wanted more than that, than the rights that they had. Possessed in the past. He knew that they were anxious about the possibility of the return of the Great Depression.

And he really did want to empower them. He wasn't confident that if he called for an economic bill of rights that he would necessarily be able to secure them in the near future because Republicans and Southern Democrats were pretty clearly opposed these kinds of universal economic rights for all Americans.

But it was his determination at the outset of 44 to make sure it became part of the American imagination and part of the Democratic Party's. So in January of 1944, he went before the nation and he spoke first about the war effort and the need not to presume that they had, were near to victory, that there was much yet to be done.

But then he said, you know, basically [00:04:00] it's time to look ahead. And he said, We have come to the point in American experience where we accept, essentially accept, a second Bill of Rights. In other words, he didn't, this isn't something that just popped into his head. He saw it as fundamental to the American promise and that in the course of the New Deal it had been advanced to the point where Americans themselves believed in the possibilities that he was now going to lay out.

And I'll just point out that in 1943 he actually had what became the National Opinion Research Center, those kinds of folks. And it was a team of folks at Princeton who were asked to conduct surveys. And he commissioned surveys to ask Americans what they wanted after the war. And what he discovered was they wanted everything. They wanted... They wanted a right to health care, they wanted a right to education as far as their capacity, abilities could [00:05:00] take them, they wanted an assurance of good housing. What he found was that 83% of the American people wanted the right to health care. And there were similar numbers for education and housing and so on. In other words, they wanted the kinds of things that come under the rubric today quite often of progressive political economy, more to the point, social democracy.

So when he went before the nation in that State of the Union, with that State of the Union message, he lays out An economic bill of rights, he calls it a second bill of rights, an economic bill of rights. And this lays the groundwork, again, not necessarily that it was going to be enacted or turned into additional rights in the bill of rights.

But rather the idea was to get Americans talking about this and feeling confident that they could aspire to that.

Frank Cappello: quick follow up to that, Harvey. So FDR wouldn't pass away until a year later in April [00:06:00] 1945. So did he do anything to put his plan into action at that time, and was it simply derailed because of his death?

Harvey Kaye: Okay, well, and in one sense, he was, uh, clearly he was unable to secure an economic bill of rights, but one thing that he did secure, and it became probably one of the greatest public programs in American history, and even today, it's known by the shorthand of a G. I. Bill of Rights, and the G. I. Bill of Rights gave American veterans, those returning veterans, the kinds of things an economic bill of rights would have assured them.

All Americans. Education, educational opportunities, uh, housing, the capacity to secure housing, um, a host of, of, of things. It actually gave them, if you like, an ability not only to make more of themselves, but to make more of the United States. Now, I'll also note that FDR had told his advisors that if he could, he would make the GI Bill of Rights A [00:07:00] universal for anyone who not only entered into a uniform or taken up a uniform and fought in the war, but also for all of those workers who had gone into the defense industries.

He was always looking for a way of enhancing the possibility of guaranteeing the secure economic security of American life. Now, he warned in the speech in 44, he actually warned Americans that we must beware of rightist reaction. His point was, that we have to realize that there will be many. who will be vehemently opposed to this, and when he said rightist reaction, he didn't have in mind the likes of the Ku Klux Klan, or, you know, the sort of reactionary forces that we see around us today all too often.

He actually had in mind the billionaires, or the multi millionaires of the day. He said, he warned that the rightist reaction would come from the rich. And what that implied was the Chamber of Commerce. Okay, those kinds of folks who, and the [00:08:00] National Association of Manufacturers and the opposition to it actually did come from those quarters.

there was an effort. There was an effort to pursue the Economic Bill of Rights, even, even Harry Truman himself proposed it as a possibility. Tried to pursue it in a smaller fashion that would have been a grand fashion by way of national health care. I mean, there were those kinds of things. But the GI Bill of Rights itself is the legacy of FDR's vision of trying to make American economic life more secure for working people.

Later, it didn't die, however. The project did not die. So, Truman himself... You know, embraced it, though he lost the ability to do very much about it when Congress was, was won by the Republicans in 1946. In 1960, the Democratic Party platform was authored by Chester Bowles, who had been the [00:09:00] head of the, the Office of Price Administration during the war.

And he was, he was a new dealer. And in writing the 1960 platform, he includes in that platform, he actually frames the entire platform and lays it out in terms, blatantly in terms, of FDR's economic bill of rights. So it was pretty clear that that generation that had come through the depression, New Deal, and the war effort, still had That kind of idea or ideal in mind, um, in fact, his only worry when he put that kind of, uh, platform together was that Kennedy, John Kennedy, who became the candidate, might not be willing to embrace it, but Kennedy was eager, I think, to show Eleanor Roosevelt that she, that she could trust him and he embraced the platform.

Even then, though, Kennedy did very little in those terms. Lyndon Johnson himself pursues the Great Society [00:10:00] programs with pretty much the New Deal and the Economic Bill of Rights in his mind major flaws, like there was no job guarantee in the Great Society programs. In fact, there were no job creation.

There was no job creation. There were those who would not let it go, and in 1965, A. Philip Randolph, the great labor and civil rights leader, the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, he actually put together, by way of the Randolph Institute, a proposal for a freedom budget. And the freedom budget would be a ten year program, if you like, a real war on poverty.

And it was framed again in terms of FDR's Four Freedoms and the Economic Bill of Rights. Similarly, in 1968, before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. published, I believe it might have been in Look Magazine, somewhere like that, a proposal for an Economic Bill of Rights. And again, I won't drag this [00:11:00] out too long, but let's not forget That in the course of these last several years, we have heard about it.

For example, Bernie Sanders, both in 2016 and 2020, made it a point of raising the question of an economic bill of rights, sort of calling on FDR R'S memory, more recently, we'll get to it in a while, there have been political figures and political folks at the state level and national level who are, who are eager to pursue it.

Frank Cappello: So, the two of you have been advocating for a little while now for a, for an updated 21st century economic bill of rights. So, what does your version entail? How is it updated for the 21st century? And how does it potentially improve upon, uh, what FDR had proposed in 1944?

Alan Minsky: I think it's very important before answering that question to acknowledge the huge fact in this conversation which is starting with really [00:12:00] the Carter administration but becoming codified clearly with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980.

And then the embrace of neoliberal economics fully, wholeheartedly, by the next Democratic administration, you have what historian Gary Gerstle calls the establishment of the neoliberal economic order. We now have 40 to 45 years of evidence as to what that generates, and for most Americans, it has been largely disastrous.

We've seen the collapse of any sense of a person having a chance at quote unquote, you know, really having, making it, not living under economic duress their entire life. The vast amount of wealth that is generated by this very, very active society goes to the investor class and the 1%. And in many respects, we've arrived economically at a point very similar to before the Great Depression, the Golden Age.

That Roosevelt was also responding to, where the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few and the large [00:13:00] body of the population, the 99% as it were, overworks just to keep their heads above water, if they can keep their heads above water, and it is producing all sorts of endemic social, uh, crises, whether it's healthcare, you know, obviously we have mass incarceration has exploded in the course of that 45 year period, we have homelessness, we have greater levels of depression, worse healthcare outcomes, Across the board, you know, we have, uh, housing strains, uh, we have, uh, food crises in the United States of America, and we work longer for less than any other country in the world, effectively meaning working class people have had their lives stolen away from them hour by hour, working to make money for the investor class.

That's where we are economically in the United States right now.

Harvey Kaye: when Alan and I were discussing this, what we believed essential is that the Democratic Party had lost touch. Had lost touch with the Roosevelt tradition and the tradition that ensued from the New Deal and that, and that war effort. And that, in that, in other words, [00:14:00] that the Democratic Party had lost its memory. I would go so far as to even say it probably lost its mind at many a times along the way. And the point is that we thought an agenda in itself is not enough. Progressives have already proposed a whole host of things that would constitute an agenda. The time had come. If you like to cultivate the popular imagination, cultivate the imagination of American working people and imagination that probably carries with them a sense of what life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would mean.

And as a consequence, we said, let's redeem that economic bill of rights. So we open up by saying. A 21st century economic bill of rights will guarantee all people residing in the United States the right to the essentials of a good life, regardless of their income, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or country of origin.

A 21st [00:15:00] century economic bill of rights will establish that all 1. a useful job that pays a living wage. And if I could sidebar that, I want to say that FDR established during the course of the New Deal, the first minimum wage, but when he signed it into law, He said, no company should be allowed to operate in this country that does not pay a living wage. And here we are all these many decades later, and we have yet to secure that fundamental imperative for economic security.

The second right, a voice in the workplace through a union and collective bargaining. In other words, empowerment of working people in a democratic fashion. Three, comprehensive, quality. Healthcare for complete, cost free public education and access to broadband Internet. Five decent, safe, affordable [00:16:00] housing, six, a clean environment and a healthy planet. Seven, a meaningful endowment of resources at birth and a secure retirement. Eight, sound banking and financial services. Nine, an equitable and economically fair justice system. And ten, recreation and participation in civic and democratic life in the broadest sense.

Alan Minsky: also, Progressive Democrats of America, for people who do not know. We were the sole national organization to draft Bernie Sanders to run for president as a Democrat. We launched the Run Bernie Run campaign in 2013, and we were all by ourselves nudging the senator from Vermont to run. He was trying to draft Elizabeth Warren.

We were trying to draft him, We fast forward to an era where the Sanders 26 campaign is part of what transforms the American political spectrum, and after that we sort of have three political tendencies, [00:17:00] major tendencies, vying for control inside a two party system. You have the Trumpian reactionary right wing on the right wing of the Republican Party.

You have the neoliberal center in the rearview mirror of history, and I point people to the first debate between Romney and Obama if you want to see overlap. You have the neoliberal center running from the Romney wing of the Republican Party through the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. And now you have the progressives, okay?

there is a big effort on behalf of the right wing Republicans. To claim that the progressives are nothing more than like language Stalinists, right? And we don't represent anything except, you know, the imposition of woke culture, they'll say, you know, on the American people.

Absolute boulderdash. In fact, when you look at civil rights matters, there's not that much of a gap between the moderate Democrats. In fact, that's what distinguishes them from the Republican Party. Not that much of a gap between the moderate Democrats. We certainly support everything that the Republicans are attacking in their attacks on woke, except, of course, if they are attacking the idea that we shut people down for [00:18:00] instances of language use, that's not true.

We're very much for free speech in the progressive movement. What distinguishes us, overwhelmingly, from the other two groups, because the Trumpian right are, in fact, just a, again, almost like a proto fascist retrenchment on the politics of Gilded Age economics, or, if you like, on neoliberal politics, uh, economics.

Okay, look at the Trump tax cuts. It's a little bit of adjustment in terms of nationalistic trade policy, but minor adjustments really for what really is called for to have, you know, fair trade globally. The big difference is economics. And the degree to which the progressive movement does not foreground this economic message, it's going to lose touch with the base of the American population.

This is what propelled the Sanders campaign to prominence in 2016. And I think PDA is distinctive among the leading progressive organizations in the country in being adamant that this has to be our front and center position, okay? If we want to become a majority political movement in this country, we have to win control of the Democratic Party from the neoliberals, [00:19:00] and, as to paraphrase AOC, Josh Gottheimer and PDA do not belong in the

same party, and they're now, we're not saying we toss out all the moderates. I mean, if moderates want to sort of, you know, reconnect with their inner, inner front FDR and come along with us for this and recreate American society to be the society it can be. I mean, think about what these programs do. They basically call for the eradication of almost all poverty in the United States of America and all of the endemic crises associated with poverty.

That's not a program just to eliminate poverty, that is a program to build a prosperous, middle class society, which is what Americans want, okay? So, and by the way, are there ways in which it lifts GDP and lessens GDP? Well, Medicare for All, and by the way, on the point about healthcare, I think we're going to make one revision to that language, it will say now, free at the point of service.

We want to be clear, we're calling for Medicare for All, essentially, which I, Paul, and Sanders have called for. Okay, so. If we have Medicare for All, we all know that's going to take [00:20:00] about 5 6% out of the gross domestic product because it's a ridiculous escalation of cost in our healthcare system. We spend 18% of our entire GDP on healthcare.

No other country in the world is above 10%. So we're going to see a big deflationary pressure from that. However, people talk about the growth of the Chinese economy. There's no other industrialized, prosperous, technological, democratic society in the world, other than the United States, with 50 million people stuck in poverty.

We lift those people out of poverty, the GDP rises. We lift those people out of poverty, you don't actually have a crisis of balance in terms of taxes. I mean, yes, maybe marginally federal deficits will go up, maybe they'll go down. Because if you take 50, 60, 100 million people out of the place where they're not contributing to the tax base and put them into the middle class where they contribute to the taxes that are paid, you're not going to have a tax crisis at the federal level either.

But it's a very [00:21:00] significant shift away from the economic order that we have all been living in now for many decades. And of course, the powers that be are going to fight it tooth and nail. And we just invite everybody to join us. in waging this fight. And I know one thing that we do have sort of free floating through the lever in a lot of the discourse in the progressive media over the past year is this question about the use value of the Democratic Party.

I think people need to recognize there is an honest, progressive, left, social democratic, to democratic socialist, and honestly FDR legacy economic wing of the Democratic Party. We're organized in all the states in the country. We have progressive caucuses in the Democratic Party, these are barely mentioned in left media.

And PTA is very integral in the organization of those, of progressive caucuses in the Democratic Party. And so we invite everybody out there who really wants to make a difference. Who doesn't just want to sit, you know, and be armchair, Monday morning quarterbacks, complaining about the game, but [00:22:00] actually get in the game themselves.

Join us. We, we have, we have a world to win. We know who the barriers are, from the Republicans to the moderate Democrats. We understand the terrain institutionally. We can take over the Democratic Party, turn it back into an FDR, even, you know, FDR for the 21st century, right, obviously fully anti racist party, etc.

Uh, there are no Dixiecrats, and, and again, speaking to people across the entire country, we have to bring this economic message not to blue, just to blue districts, we need to bring it to red districts as well. This will resonate with working and middle class people across the entire country, and, you know, quite frankly, even on issues like the environment.

You can have no illusions about addressing the environment seriously other than the Sanders wing of the American political spectrum being fully committed to doing so.

Frank Cappello: That's a good segue to now. I would like to turn to How something like this gets implemented and I think We could talk about it on a few different levels. But first I want to start at the state level So there has been some movement, uh, for different state [00:23:00] legislatures to attempt to adopt some version of an economic bill of rights.

Can either of you go into a little bit of detail about which states have seen the most movement on this, where you're feeling the most hopeful, and what it entails?

Harvey Kaye: Yeah, I mean, I'd like to think that it's, it's moving as a legislative action, but I'll just start here in Wisconsin. We have had Republican control of the state legislature, really tight control of the legislature ever since the election of Scott Walker and the Republicans in 2010. However, within the Democratic Party Assembly, There are two or more, I know two in particular who have taken the lead in this, who have proposed a Wisconsin Economic Justice Bill of Rights.

And which, uh, they think of me as something of a mentor to all that. Because I belly ached about it for so long they finally said, we gotta do something. Now they've put one together which is a very, very handsome proposal and very much Similar to the exact proposal that we're making on a, on a, on a national level, and they've [00:24:00] got it inside of the caucus, and we're hoping that the caucus will embrace this, both in the Senate and the Assembly here in Wisconsin, and hope that it may be now that the Democrats have been able to, at a recent election, have been able to take back the Supreme, state Supreme Court, that we can get the redistricting done in a, in a more just and fair way, and that, in fact, Democrats will have a chance in, in the legislature.

At the same time, This pa uh, it's almost a year now. The Massachusetts Democratic Party in convention embraced the economic bill of rights that we proposed. Um, in West Virginia, there is a progressive initiative to take control of the State Party, and they've been very successful thus far, and some of the leaders of that effort want to make the economic bill of rights.

Fundamental to the platform in West Virginia. Let's not forget these states that too, too readily are seen as Republican, you know, strongholds were for many, many years [00:25:00] Democratic strongholds, but the Democratic Party turned its back on the FDR tradition and the whole, if you like, aspiration of the Economic Bill of Rights, and I'll just say that this Economic Bill of Rights is intended to give the progressives Because the progressives have not fully embraced it.

Let's be clear about that. The Progressive Democrats of America organization has, but not the progressives in Congress. If they would come to embrace it, this would afford them a story and a vision that would bring people to the left and might, and remind them of the American story. That empowers it. Okay.

Similarly, there are folks in various legislatures around the country who have reached out and are interested in New Hampshire and other places. At the same time, we see evidence of, in his recent book, Ana mentions the Economic Bill of Rights, uh, Marian Williamson, who as we know is running for president and fully embraced this economic bill of rights [00:26:00] and has made it pretty much placed it at the very forefront of her campaign.

Similarly though, unfortunately, she lost Nina Turner. Had reached out to us and worked with us, actually, on preparing this Economic Bill of Rights, and then she herself ran on that. But, of course, the, the billionaire corporate Democrats made sure she didn't get elected.

So, anyhow, the point is that there is this interest around the country. And the other important thing, and I'm going to hand this back to Alan on this question, is that Amer is that the dimensions of this Economic Bill of Rights, those ten Items on the roster, Americans have already indicated in poll after poll that they want it.

And the progressives in Congress and many a legislature have advanced items that echo this Economic Bill of Rights, but they have yet to bring it together to provide the story and the vision.

Alan Minsky: Well, quickly, we are in dialogue with a very, um, quite influential progressive member of Congress for [00:27:00] the possible introduction of a 21st century economic bill of rights resolution. Um, Representatives Barbara Lee and, uh, Pramila Jayapal in their 3rd Reconstruction Act did cut, cut and paste and put into this Congress version of the 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights.

So tacitly, there is endorsement. We have, uh, state Democratic parties in Massachusetts already passing it. We have West Virginia, Arizona, and California. The largest Democratic party in the country. Polls to pass a resolution to include it in their party platform. Now, party platforms and how much influence they have, we all know that's not as great as it could be.

Data for Progress ran polls from March 22nd to March 24th, 2023, on an Economic Bill of Rights. And the results showed support at, I believe, a very, very high clip among Democrats for everyone. Among independents. It's a majority support, again, for every measure in the Economic Bill of Rights. And in Republicans, high enough support [00:28:00] that it meant all were supported by the majority of the population in the Data for Progress poll.

And final thing on that data for progress poll. There's a final question. And when I read through the results, I'm like, wow, who are these people asking? How do they find this, this kind of support for this across the general public?

Is it a skewed poll? And the final question is which party do you think handles the economy better? And if you know, if you're, if you're familiar with the standard answer to that question over the past few years, it was exactly like that. The Republicans, outperform the Democrats, I think 38 to 35 in that poll, which is exactly what you get in the general population.

So it was a fine cross section of the population. The 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights is supported by the American population. This is an achievable thing and progressives need, if progressives are serious about wanting to transform the United States and to build the type of society that I think the vast majority of Americans want to live in, I think they have to foreground these economic [00:29:00] issues, and the 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights, uh, you know, that, that Harvey and I have worked on, and a number of other people and economists have worked on, is a perfect framing device for getting that message across to the

American public.

Frank Cappello: And I'll make sure to link to that poll in the episode description if our audience wants to check it out for themselves. guys, my last question would turn it to more, and we've already touched on this, but the, the, on the national level, on the federal level, is a 21st century economic bill of rights something that you see that could be passed or implemented in some way on the federal level?

Do you see this as more of a fight within state legislatures, state by state? And if we're talking about Congress, progressives, I know you've alluded to it a little bit, but what would you like to see more from progressives that you are not seeing now on this issue?

Harvey Kaye: I would like to have seen. I'm frustrated by not having seen this. I would like to have seen the progressives, not simply the so called squad, but the progressives [00:30:00] issue a manifesto reminding people of the story that we've laid out From Roosevelt to the 60s with A.

Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, and so on. We'd like to see a manifesto framed by that story in which the progressives project an economic bill of rights for all Americans. That's what I would, that's what I've been frustrated that, I've actually been outraged. that the Progressive Caucus has kept its distance from this kind of idea.

It was placed on the agenda by Bernie. We brought it back. There are folks who are national figures who have raised it again. What is, what we are waiting for, and perhaps we'll see it very soon, is for major progressives in the caucus to make it A vision of the Progressive Caucus to push the Democratic Party in that direction.

Let that, I think, this year especially, with the campaigns underway, [00:31:00] it's the right time.

Alan Minsky: Uh, Progressive Democrats of America will include this in our next, uh, candidate questionnaire that'll go to every Democrat in the country who's running for Congress in the Senate and the House, and they'll be asked to support a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights. Um, we intend to, uh, pretty much only be supporting candidates to support a 21st century economic bill of rights.

We didn't do it universally in the 2022 race because we got it in late, because Harvey and I wrote the, um, articles in, uh, February and April of 2022, and so there were only a few of the races that were left where the candidates hadn't already received questionnaires. When we added it in, every single candidate we endorsed, and they were the people you'd expect us to endorse as PDA.

Uh, supported it. So we're gonna be holding people's feet to the fire through that process. But at the, at the federal level, I just wanna say this, we did receive some pushback from a few offices saying, well, we have the Green New Deal. Okay, folks, we at P D A consider ourselves a radical environmental organization.

We support the Green New Deal. Here's the polling from the [00:32:00] American public. A different poll than Data for Progress, but across the board in the most recent stretch of American history, except probably for a few months at the very beginning of the pandemic. The top polling concern for the American public, as it has largely been since the 1970s, again, with a few exceptions, like the top of the pandemic, the months after September 11th, has been economy.

Okay? And when you look at the things that are lower down, because sometimes they're broken down, it's like healthcare, or cost of healthcare, or housing. It's all about the economy. Sadly, tragically, no doubt sadly and tragically. The environment is down around one or two percent, including this past few years.

Okay, you want to win elections? You want to win power? You have to foreground economic concerns to the American people. And anybody who says that they should lead with the Green New Deal and not this, is basically just jumping up and down and saying, we want to have some kind of purist vision, we don't want political power, because we don't want the mass of people voting for our agenda.

There is no [00:33:00] turnoff for working people, including Republican working people, when you lead with the ideas of economic justice. And tragically and sadly, and again, this is a, this has to be considered something the environmental movement has to do better, the environmental movement is largely seen by swaths of working class Americans as an elite concern that does not consider their economic welfare.

Okay? Now that's really unfair to the Green New Deal. I know that. Because they talk about a just transition. They highlight it. We certainly do too. But, you gotta win elections. You gotta reach people where they are. They're hurting, they're hating working 60 hours, 70 hours a week. Okay? We have to speak to them where they are, and we will not bend on our environmental positions as well.

So, folks, embrace economic messaging, embrace the 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights, and we can win elections across the country. There's really no other way of doing it. Okay? In terms of, by the way, addressing the environmental concerns, as we know, we can't leave that to the market either. [00:34:00] We need to be a political formation that wins state power, the federal government of the United States, and then state governments and local governments have to be controlled by people who actually have the best interests of working people in mind, and the planet's health in mind.

Harvey Kaye: As

A sidebar to that, I just want to tell people, the first New Deal of FDR was, in its day, a dramatic, if not radical, Green New Deal.

Frank Cappello: No, no, I think that's a good, I think that's a really good point, pointing out that historical context, because I think, you know, as a younger person in the 21st century, I just grew up being taught that the New Deal was a thing that came along that was, you know, it was to be expected, and it was normal, and it wasn't radical.

It helped a lot, but you know, It wasn't a massive deviation from the political economy that had existed for the previous, you know, centuries. Um, so I think, I think pointing that out is very important, especially to skeptics.

Alan Minsky: it saved, it saved our

Harvey Kaye: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I should have thrown that in the very beginning, [00:35:00] actually.

Frank Cappello: yeah, and if the stakes weren't high enough, just let you know, this will save democracy as well. Um, well, thank you both so much. Harvey Kay is an historian and professor emeritus of democracy and justice at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay. Alan Minsky is a progressive activist and journalist and the executive director of Progressive Democrats of America.

Harvey, Alan, thank you guys so much for your work on this. Thank you for your advocacy work and thank you for your time with me today.

Harvey Kaye: Thank you.

Alan Minsky: Thank you, Frank.

Frank Cappello: That's it for today's show. Thank you again for being a paid subscriber to The Lever. It's true, we really could not do this work without you. If you like this episode, feel free to pitch into our tip jar. The link to that episode description in your podcast player, or at levernews.

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It's hosted by David Sirota. Our producer is me, Frank Capello, with help from Lever producer, Jara Jakangmayor.