Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 4: Welcome back to Breaking Points. Crystal and I are so
Speaker 4: excited to be joined right now by my Counterpoints co host,
Speaker 4: Ryan Grim, who happens to be the author of a
Speaker 4: brand new book. It's out on December fifth. You can
Speaker 4: start getting it in bookstores the Monday after Thanksgiving. It's
Speaker 4: called The Squad, AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.
Speaker 4: It's fantastic. There's so many nuggets in our joant Yes, yes,
Speaker 4: thanks for joining us here.
Speaker 3: Ryanks on hand love to talk about the book.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: It ended up being extra timely because obviously the arc
Speaker 1: of the Squad is just important in American politics and
Speaker 1: for you know, people left of center in general.
Speaker 6: But there's also a.
Speaker 1: Lot in the book about the way that the you
Speaker 1: know that a PAC and their spin off, the Democratic
Speaker 1: Majority for Israel, has aggressively tried to shape the you know,
Speaker 1: democratic caucus, who gets in, who gets out, what their
Speaker 1: views are.
Speaker 6: So it ends up being extra timely because of that piece.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I have a line in there that finishes the
Speaker 7: first chapter that kind of introduces AOC where that arc ends.
Speaker 7: If you remember a couple of weeks after she wins
Speaker 7: her primary, you know, she's soaring, her stars rising, she's
Speaker 7: crushing every interview, she's becoming a global celebrity. And then
Speaker 7: she does an interview where she gets asked about Israel Palestine,
Speaker 7: and it's just like, I mean, it's.
Speaker 1: Just clear she doesn't really she knows it's a tough topic,
Speaker 1: she knows she doesn't know enough about the topic, and
Speaker 1: she just it's the inexperience is very clear in that moment.
Speaker 7: And her instincts are that she supports Palestinian rights, in
Speaker 7: Palestinian dignity, and she says the word Palestine in the
Speaker 7: interview and an occupation, right, and I think occupation, yeah,
Speaker 7: And the interview, which is somebody who is more schooled
Speaker 7: on the subject will be like, yeah, that's what I
Speaker 7: call the region and there is an occupation like that's
Speaker 7: that's what's happening. But the interviewer is like, did you
Speaker 7: say Palestine, Margaret Hoover, Yeah, And you can see AOC's
Speaker 7: face be like, oh God, did I did I hit
Speaker 7: a third rail?
Speaker 3: I'm not like it.
Speaker 7: It's the feeling where because you know there are third rails,
Speaker 7: you know there are land mines everywhere, right, and you
Speaker 7: just you've put your foot down and you heard a
Speaker 7: click and you're like, is that about to blow up
Speaker 7: or not? Because I don't because because I don't know
Speaker 7: and she and she finishes by saying, look, I'm not
Speaker 7: an expert on geopolitics.
Speaker 3: This isn't something that we talked about a lot at.
Speaker 7: My bronx, you know, dinner table growing up and just
Speaker 7: and it's very unusual for somebody to like admit on
Speaker 7: TV that you don't know much about something like that.
Speaker 3: It's very rare.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 7: And then she as I reported the book, should they
Speaker 7: pull her off interviews for a while?
Speaker 3: Ago, Okay, let's like relax for a little bit.
Speaker 7: And then the line that finishes that chapter she knew
Speaker 7: it was going to be a big issue, but she
Speaker 7: never could have guessed how much she underestimated like it
Speaker 7: became and nobody could have seen. I don't think it
Speaker 7: coming how a movement that was built around medicare for all, hirement,
Speaker 7: own wage, you know, basically economic populism and a Green
Speaker 7: New Deal would end up being just consumed by.
Speaker 3: This question of Israel Palestine.
Speaker 7: And that's because the fight was kind of brought to
Speaker 7: them immediately after they got to Congress. The pro Israel
Speaker 7: groups just stand up, these super packs just that start
Speaker 7: spending millions of dollars against them alphabet And the.
Speaker 4: Cool thing about the book is that you go behind
Speaker 4: the scenes of some of these huge moments, like, for example,
Speaker 4: the Margaret Hoover interview, you're like right there with AOC
Speaker 4: talking about how her team is handling it. You have
Speaker 4: information from behind the scenes that makes all this really fascinating.
Speaker 4: I want to ask how the squad sees itself now
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty three. First of all, how do they
Speaker 4: kind of define themselves? You have Justice Democrats, then you
Speaker 4: have people that are sort of broadly recognized as members
Speaker 4: of the squad. How self aware are they in Congress
Speaker 4: as they're working together or not working together. It's heavily
Speaker 4: female obviously you have Jamal Bowman on the book cover,
Speaker 4: but it does seem almost like a sisterhood.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they and I think as the book shows, they
Speaker 7: sort of struggled with that question of what is the
Speaker 7: squad or kind of is the squad? Like several of
Speaker 7: them at different points would say there is no such
Speaker 7: thing as the squad. So the first role of the squadquy,
Speaker 7: it doesn't exist that there is a squad. And in
Speaker 7: many ways they were right, like it was a media
Speaker 7: creation built on there, but they played played along with it.
Speaker 7: It came from an Instagram kind of post that AOC
Speaker 7: put up. It was just a picture of the four
Speaker 7: of them and she just wrote squad and that was
Speaker 7: That was during the kind of rise of the kind
Speaker 7: of uh you know, femboss like feminism, like a girl power.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 7: They did a you know, there was a cover with
Speaker 7: them in Nancy Pelosi, which obviously they were not a
Speaker 7: squad at all, and she's.
Speaker 4: Like, we should get that framed for the studio.
Speaker 10: If you had that iconic.
Speaker 7: That was that And that was a media effort to
Speaker 7: like kind of strip ideology away from what was fundamentally
Speaker 7: an ideological movement. Omar says at one point there is
Speaker 7: no squad, you know, no such thing. But of course
Speaker 7: there also is a thing, because if you are getting
Speaker 7: attacked as a group, it kind of forms you into
Speaker 7: a group, and so you're kind of forged by fire
Speaker 7: in that sense. And when Pelosi and whether it's Pelosi
Speaker 7: in twenty nineteen Donald Trump in twenty nineteen saying send
Speaker 7: them back. One kind of funny little detail I realized
Speaker 7: when going back through the history was when there when
Speaker 7: at Netroots Nation, which is you know, the liberal Bloggis
Speaker 7: sphere kind of conference. Oh, I've been there, you go,
Speaker 7: that's that's that's where she did leave and Elanomar said
Speaker 7: some things that got Trump mad and got him to
Speaker 7: start saying send them back. Pelosi would love to buy
Speaker 7: them ticket to send them back. Deb Holand was on
Speaker 7: stage with them. She was the It wasn't the squad,
Speaker 7: it was it was those three plus deb Holan literally
Speaker 7: native American, like the last part, like forget the fact
Speaker 7: that arrest are American citizens and you're not sending them anywhere.
Speaker 7: She's literally a Native American saying center, center back. But
Speaker 7: I don't think Trump cared about that. But so I
Speaker 7: think that that effort to kind of attack them kind
Speaker 7: of pushed them into being a group. But at the
Speaker 7: same time, as Iona Presley told, uh, told the squad
Speaker 7: you vote alone, and so you know, you vote alone
Speaker 7: and you vote for your district. And they would often
Speaker 7: talk about how they were voting for their district. And
Speaker 7: in some ways I think they resented this like insistence
Speaker 7: that they were supposed to lead a vanguard at the left,
Speaker 7: like and there was a marriage of convenience in some
Speaker 7: ways between Justice Democrats and the Squad members, like that
Speaker 7: Justice Democrats was useful to some of these Squad members
Speaker 7: to separate themselves, particularly in Iona Presley's case, you know,
Speaker 7: from like why why do you need to throw out
Speaker 7: Michael Capauana And then well, I'm Justice Democrat.
Speaker 3: I'm like AOC.
Speaker 7: I'm like so that's you know, that becomes the rationale
Speaker 7: for it. But then you're like, uh, you don't. They
Speaker 7: didn't really have the sense of like, well, I'm going
Speaker 7: to like.
Speaker 3: Lead a movement here.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and they never teamed up with Bernie in a
Speaker 7: way that became kind of mechanical.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because right now, in this present moment, with
Speaker 1: Israel's Warren Gaza, they have actually acted more like a squad.
Speaker 1: You know, they've been some of the most outspoken critics
Speaker 1: of the Biden approach of the indiscriminate bombing in Gaza,
Speaker 1: calling for a ceasefire, leading these letters and so talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about how actually the amount of money
Speaker 1: and the amount of attacks that they received in their
Speaker 1: primary and as being members of Congress coming from the
Speaker 1: pro Israel lobby actually kind of hardened them into these
Speaker 1: positions and unintentionally made them leaders on it.
Speaker 7: It could because if AOC never gets let's say, AOC
Speaker 7: never gets pressed further on the question of you know, Israel, Palestine, Gaza,
Speaker 7: her focus is going to continue to be climate change,
Speaker 7: you know, raising the minimum wage, and broadly trying to
Speaker 7: pull the Democratic Party left and kind of advance the
Speaker 7: agenda that Bernie Sanders ran on first time in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 7: twenty sixteen. But if you force the question in a
Speaker 7: similar way to the way that kind of Karl Rove
Speaker 7: did in two thousand and four by putting marriage equality
Speaker 7: on the ballot on all of these states around the country,
Speaker 7: that forced Democrats to pick a side, because they would
Speaker 7: have been happy to say that civil union marriage between
Speaker 7: a man and a woman leave me alone.
Speaker 3: I don't want to this is icky. I don't want
Speaker 3: to think about this.
Speaker 7: But when you force the Democratic Party ta take a
Speaker 7: stance on a fundamentally civil rights issue, eventually they're going
Speaker 7: to have to They're going to be forced by their
Speaker 7: base to.
Speaker 3: Get on the right side of it.
Speaker 7: And I think particularly with Israel Palace and the more
Speaker 7: people as you study the history, as you study what's
Speaker 7: going on, as you visit the area. Jamal Bowman went,
Speaker 7: you know, with Jay Street to see it, and he
Speaker 7: was bizarrely like protested by you know, some some people
Speaker 7: associate with DSA. How dare you like go with j
Speaker 7: Street to Israel? But seeing it firsthand, seeing the occupation
Speaker 7: up close, you come back changed, like you can you know,
Speaker 7: once you move past the propaganda around it and you
Speaker 7: see it firsthand and you really understand what's going on,
Speaker 7: you can only wind up on one one side if
Speaker 7: you're a progressive Democrat.
Speaker 3: So I think that.
Speaker 7: That is what is effectively happened. Also, as Summerlee told me,
Speaker 7: she's like, I was like, did you consider you know,
Speaker 7: moderating your your views on this the way that a
Speaker 7: lot of other candidates did, and she was like, well, no,
Speaker 7: but only because that wouldn't have worked, right.
Speaker 3: They were coming for me either way.
Speaker 7: She did say that, like it's in her head, Like
Speaker 7: she admitted, like that the millions of dollars have spent.
Speaker 7: It does get in your head and and you like
Speaker 7: think two or three times before you say something.
Speaker 3: But she's like, but she's like it.
Speaker 7: In the end, it doesn't matter, because they're coming for me,
Speaker 7: and not just because of two tweets I had about
Speaker 7: Gaza in twenty twenty months, because I'm out because of
Speaker 7: my broader kind of left wing, multi racial working class
Speaker 7: agenda that is in opposition to the donors, to a
Speaker 7: pack and to DMFI, like they have other interests as
Speaker 7: well besides just Israel Palace time. Yeah, they want to
Speaker 7: keep their tax loopholes and keep their taxes low and
Speaker 7: all that's fight back against unions and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 6: Yes, of course.
Speaker 4: So my last question is something you get towards in
Speaker 4: the end of the book about the kind of attempt
Speaker 4: to make an apples to apples between the Squad and
Speaker 4: the Freedom Caucus, which isn't you know, a dumb comparison.
Speaker 4: There's some interesting points of comparison there. And something I
Speaker 4: thought that was interesting in your reporting was that there
Speaker 4: is some awareness actually of how the Freedom Caucus has
Speaker 4: flexed their muscles over the last ten years. Among members
Speaker 4: of the Squad. There's a hilarious conversation about Lauren Bobert
Speaker 4: between with Aocisi has some really funny thoughts on Laura
Speaker 4: Bilbert and that's an interesting Yeah, who among us. But
Speaker 4: that's an interesting sort of question for the squad is
Speaker 4: how they do they force the vote?
Speaker 10: Do they?
Speaker 4: I mean, how has their thinking evolved on using their
Speaker 4: numbers to force some of these conversations?
Speaker 7: I think it, You know, they have definitely heard the
Speaker 7: criticism and it's something I think that they're that they're
Speaker 7: sorting through. I think when it comes to some some
Speaker 7: issues like I go through force the vote a little
Speaker 7: bit in there, and.
Speaker 4: The page guys love to talk about forcing them.
Speaker 7: About thoughts on We're just going to do force to
Speaker 7: vote every day for the entire show for the rest
Speaker 7: of the rest of our lives.
Speaker 3: On that, they're like, no, that wasn't it.
Speaker 7: But they do get the idea, like they are into
Speaker 7: the idea that that they want to build their leverage,
Speaker 7: and you know, toward the end of it, AOC is saying,
Speaker 7: you know, now that we're approaching ten to twelve, like
Speaker 7: that's that's a place where there's power that can be
Speaker 7: leveraged and.
Speaker 3: In a way that won't be annihilated.
Speaker 7: And there was there was there was a sense of
Speaker 7: weakness that I think that contributed to something as well
Speaker 7: as like a sense of being new and not really
Speaker 7: having a sense of how this.
Speaker 3: Is all going to end.
Speaker 7: At the same time, though, will there still be ten
Speaker 7: or twelve at the end of this next election cycle
Speaker 7: or will they'll be two?
Speaker 11: Right?
Speaker 7: Like, you know, it is quite possible that a lot
Speaker 7: of them could get wiped out by APAC and dmf I.
Speaker 1: Money, which just announce the're going to spende hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars against them.
Speaker 3: Sort of.
Speaker 7: The sourcing on that was a little yeah, it's like
Speaker 7: I think it was sourced to people who are watching
Speaker 7: or something.
Speaker 3: However, this is a threat.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the one hundred million dollars is plausible because if
Speaker 7: they're spending five million and twenty races, that gets you
Speaker 7: there right right away. And it's not it's not implausible.
Speaker 7: But a pack hasn't quite come out and said they're
Speaker 7: going to do that.
Speaker 3: They haven't.
Speaker 7: They haven't confirmed or denied. They're going to spend an
Speaker 7: enormous amount of money. That is whether like last time
Speaker 7: they spent like forty collectively between the PROS groups, So
Speaker 7: it wouldn't be insane to see one hundred.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, Well, the book is fantastic. I'm almost through it.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to do a talk with you at where
Speaker 1: are we doing it Politics and Pros on November twenty sixth.
Speaker 6: It's going to be.
Speaker 7: Great twenty seventh Monday.
Speaker 1: That I don't know the name of where we're doing
Speaker 1: it or the date we're doing it.
Speaker 6: It's fine.
Speaker 10: Your calendar then you go.
Speaker 3: That's all there is.
Speaker 10: I'll be there.
Speaker 6: I'll be writing rock. The book is fantastic. Congratulations on it,
Speaker 6: Ryan as great. You all right, guys.
Speaker 1: Very excited to be joined this morning by James Johnson
Speaker 1: of Jail Partners. They of course see the wonderful focus
Speaker 1: groups for us, and James just took another trip back
Speaker 1: to Georgia where he spoke to quote unquote double disapprovers
Speaker 1: who are not impressed with Trump or Biden, of which
Speaker 1: I think many of us.
Speaker 6: Relate to, to.
Speaker 1: See how they are feeling about this election as a
Speaker 1: great report in the Washington Exammer headline is in Georgia
Speaker 1: swing country, Trump baggage and all has an edge over Biden.
Speaker 10: Great to have you, James, thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, So talk to us a little bit
Speaker 1: about how you selected these people and what the overall
Speaker 1: vibe was when.
Speaker 12: You talked about yep, So this wasn't just me roaming
Speaker 12: around Georgia coffee shops. So we we actually texted by
Speaker 12: SMS thousand people in two counties of Baldwin and Washington counties.
Speaker 12: These are places that voted for Biden in twenty twenty
Speaker 12: in Georgia, but Brian Kemp the Republican in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 10: Interesting the key to this.
Speaker 12: So we texted people and then we got them to
Speaker 12: fill out the survey and if they matched our aut
Speaker 12: what we were looking for, which are people who disapproved
Speaker 12: of both Trump and Biden and are now undecided or
Speaker 12: a bit on the fence about how they might vote
Speaker 12: next time, then we selected them.
Speaker 1: So we spoke about people suburban.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 12: So it's abount ninety minutes drive southeast out of Atlanta
Speaker 12: and Baldwin County has Millageville in the middle. It actually
Speaker 12: used to be the old capital of the Confederacy in Georgia,
Speaker 12: the Confederate Georgia for a while. It's a university town,
Speaker 12: but it feels like a suburb despite being in the
Speaker 12: middle of rural Georgia. And so that's an interesting dynamic.
Speaker 12: And then down the road in Washington County a lot
Speaker 12: more rural, not many towns or connovations at all. Is
Speaker 12: interesting because there's nothing that makes these counties particularly more
Speaker 12: volatile in terms of voter's mines. These people aren't just
Speaker 12: aren't more swinging in terms of their votes. It's because
Speaker 12: they're quite divided. So they're about fifty to fifty black
Speaker 12: and white in terms of ethnic mix, and there's also
Speaker 12: a mix on education and other political views as well.
Speaker 4: It sounds actually almost like what you're finding confirms with
Speaker 4: The New York Times, Siena Paul found recently, especially among
Speaker 4: perhaps black voters, that people who are undecided Biden might
Speaker 4: be losing support among them. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about what some of those fault lines are with the
Speaker 4: double disapprovers that may have them swinging towards Trump. When
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty they swung towards Biden.
Speaker 12: Yeah, absolutely, so I think that's the big dynamic happening
Speaker 12: in Georgia. Non white voters are going off of Biden.
Speaker 12: I spoke to a man called Gabriel in mixed racer
Speaker 12: man who lives in Tinill And Georgia. It's this little
Speaker 12: railway town literally at the end of the line. It's
Speaker 12: right on Sherman's March the sea, you know, so tearing up,
Speaker 12: you know, rightwayway lines, et cetera. He's still sort of
Speaker 12: very sort of alive to lots of racial tensions today.
Speaker 10: And Gabriel that he spoke to.
Speaker 12: Me and he sets me down in a coffee shop
Speaker 12: and he said, African Americans are waking up. They're moving
Speaker 12: away from Biden and the Democrats, and they're becoming more
Speaker 12: open to Trump. And his main reason was that they
Speaker 12: were sort of recoiling to some of the more left
Speaker 12: wing parts of the Democrat agenda. He spoke about transgender issues,
Speaker 12: he spoke about the sort of what he saw as
Speaker 12: the political persecution of Trump. He also spoke about seeing
Speaker 12: that Democrats were swapping African American voters for white women,
Speaker 12: was how he described it. So he got this feeling
Speaker 12: that there was a gap between them, and that was
Speaker 12: echoed a lot across my journey through these through these
Speaker 12: swing counties, and then the people who were in the
Speaker 12: state who were more pro Democrat and African American, there
Speaker 12: wasn't that enthusiasm there. There's almost this sort of you know,
Speaker 12: irony really, and that people feel more relaxed by politics
Speaker 12: over the last few years. There's less drama compared to
Speaker 12: the Trump years. One woman I spoke to even said
Speaker 12: she went on too well boutrin because because of the
Speaker 12: Trump presidency, she was so stressed out every day.
Speaker 10: They say that they're not like that anymore.
Speaker 12: And actually that's had a sort of ironic effect because
Speaker 12: it meant that it's meant that they're actually more disengaged now.
Speaker 12: And people spoke to me about how black people in
Speaker 12: Georgia didn't come out for Stacy Abrams even in twenty
Speaker 12: twenty two, and they doubt whether they'll come out for
Speaker 12: Biden again. So I think that's a huge dynamic happening
Speaker 12: here with a non white vote.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the gentleman Nicholas, who voted for Biden
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty and says that if Trump is the nominee.
Speaker 1: He's going to go Biden again, but if Republicans pick
Speaker 1: DeSantis or potentially someone else, then he's going to vote Republican.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 12: So his big problem with Trump was January sixth and
Speaker 12: the Capital, you know, the sort of events around the
Speaker 12: Capitol on that day that had his in his view,
Speaker 12: made Trump sort of disqualified for the presidency.
Speaker 10: But he's still a Republican.
Speaker 12: He still sort of you know, wants Republican and conservative
Speaker 12: ideas in government. So he really likes DeSantis, for example.
Speaker 12: And this was a thing that we heard again and
Speaker 12: again and again, actually people sort of saying, you know
Speaker 12: that they really didn't want one of Biden or Trump,
Speaker 12: and a strong sense that if there was another alternative
Speaker 12: to them, then Biden or Trump would lose very badly.
Speaker 12: And I think we saw that in the NBC poll yesterday.
Speaker 12: A Democrat, generic Democrat beats Trump, a generic Republican beats Biden.
Speaker 12: So Nicholas was one of those examples of quite a
Speaker 12: clued up He was a college graduate, he was in Millageville,
Speaker 12: quite a clued up person on politics. But for him,
Speaker 12: Trump was not a viable option. He wasn't keen on Biden,
Speaker 12: he's going to vote for Biden, but he wasn't keen
Speaker 12: on him. He spoke about how Biden could have reached
Speaker 12: across the aisle to voters after twenty twenty, and that's
Speaker 12: what he expected. He spoke about Biden saying he was
Speaker 12: going to be a president for all America rather than
Speaker 12: just Democrats, and he felt that Biden hadn't done that,
Speaker 12: but he was going to hold his nose and vote
Speaker 12: for him anyway. This is looking like a very much
Speaker 12: hold hold your nose election. Everybody sort of had one man, Frank,
Speaker 12: who was an independent. He sort of sat almost with
Speaker 12: his head in his hands. He couldn't work out who
Speaker 12: to vote for. So it's a lot of It's not
Speaker 12: a happy election for sure.
Speaker 1: Did any and P's double disapprovers who are not excited
Speaker 1: about this election, did any of them mention maybe I'll
Speaker 1: vote third party or I'm giving a third party candidate
Speaker 1: a look.
Speaker 12: Yes, Frank, the man I just mentioned he was sort
Speaker 12: of in a dictionary definition of an independent.
Speaker 10: He has sort of big sage beard.
Speaker 12: He was sat back at his in his sop when
Speaker 12: he was sort of know voted for Ross Perrot in
Speaker 12: the nineties. He voted for a write in since he
Speaker 12: voted for Trump in twenty twenty, but he didn't want
Speaker 12: to repeat it again because of concerns about Trump's tent temperament.
Speaker 12: He spoke about a writing candidate or third party. I
Speaker 12: said to him, Oh, have you heard about RFKJ union.
Speaker 12: He said, oh, yeah, maybe him, but he didn't come
Speaker 12: up with him, unprompted. A few other people did mention
Speaker 12: RFK Junior or a few other people spoke about looking elsewhere, however,
Speaker 12: And I think this is because Georgia is such a
Speaker 12: swing state.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 12: I mean it went to Biden for it's first time
Speaker 12: I went Democrats, sin it's nineteen ninety two under Bill
Speaker 12: Clinton in the last election. People are really aware that
Speaker 12: it's a tight margin. And lots of people said to me,
Speaker 12: even when they were sort of talking through about oh
Speaker 12: maybe I could be tempted to buy a third party,
Speaker 12: they corrected themselves and said it would be a wasted vote, waste,
Speaker 12: And that was a really really strong motivator for these guys.
Speaker 11: Interesting.
Speaker 4: One thing that has stood out for me as you
Speaker 4: started doing focus groups on Breaking points side was asking
Speaker 4: where people what their news diets look like and where
Speaker 4: they're getting their information, and that strikes me as perhaps
Speaker 4: one of the most interesting distinctions between twenty sixteen, twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: and potentially twenty twenty four. When you have the double
Speaker 4: disapprovers saying things, for instance, like I think it was
Speaker 4: the man Gabriel you mentioned who felt as though Democrats
Speaker 4: were swapping white women for black voters. That is not
Speaker 4: something you hear in the establishment media, the legacy media
Speaker 4: at all. And I'm really curious what your sense is
Speaker 4: as you're talking to double disapprovers, and maybe as you're
Speaker 4: talking to people in general, how media diets have changed,
Speaker 4: just maybe even since the pandemic, just since twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: I think that's one thing maybe people like, especially Democrats,
Speaker 4: the Democrat establishment might not fully be banking on, is
Speaker 4: that there's information, there are narratives, there are arguments that
Speaker 4: are getting the voters in a more powerful way than
Speaker 4: perhaps before.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 12: I mean someone spoke to me there and said, can't
Speaker 12: trust anything, you know. They said that they go online
Speaker 12: and they'd google something even and try and find out
Speaker 12: a story and they think, oh, this looks like a
Speaker 12: good news story, and they click on it and it
Speaker 12: would just be either an agenda or clickbait and people
Speaker 12: feel like there's this real, real loss of trust that
Speaker 12: people feel now to the point where they almost don't
Speaker 12: flock and trust anything. It's turning some people off. So
Speaker 12: I think that is a huge factor. You know, the
Speaker 12: usual sources of media that were perhaps banked on, you know,
Speaker 12: the world of you know, candidates writing op heads or
Speaker 12: candidates getting on an important cable news station. Those days
Speaker 12: really really seemed over for these double disapprovers and for
Speaker 12: voters as a whole. It's this sort of free orbit
Speaker 12: almost of media now that people can sort of select,
Speaker 12: select and go for and you know, they're looking for
Speaker 12: those trustworthy, straight down the line sources, but they can't
Speaker 12: always feel they can find them. So I think that's
Speaker 12: an absolute huge factor. It means that viral clips become
Speaker 12: more important. It means that sort of how people sort
Speaker 12: of feel about the candidates become more important directly. I
Speaker 12: think it's also an opportunity for politicians. They're able to
Speaker 12: speak more directly to the elect than they ever have been.
Speaker 12: That obviously brings dangers if you're you know, if you're
Speaker 12: Biden and you potentially fall over. It also brings opportunities
Speaker 12: if you're Trump, and you can get your message directly
Speaker 12: to them.
Speaker 1: James, What the Democrats are really banking on is two things.
Speaker 1: Number One, you brought up Trump January sixth, threat to democracy,
Speaker 1: like basically, this guy and his party are just too extremists,
Speaker 1: too unhinged. The other one which ties into that argument
Speaker 1: is abortion. And we have seen even though frankly I
Speaker 1: was skeptical that this would be sufficient.
Speaker 6: We've seen now in midterms.
Speaker 1: We saw in the twenty twenty three, you know, the
Speaker 1: off term elections that we just had, that has been
Speaker 1: very compelling for voters, and the pro choice position has
Speaker 1: one in every single ballot initiative that it's been put on.
Speaker 1: It seems to be very motivating for a democratic base,
Speaker 1: and a lot of independence too, who may otherwise have
Speaker 1: been kind of thrown up their hands, stayed home, not been.
Speaker 6: Too excited about this election.
Speaker 1: Did abortion come up with these voters at all? Are
Speaker 1: you seeing that in your conversations that this is a
Speaker 1: you know, a really super like hot issue that is
Speaker 1: motivating people to come out and express their choices THEO So.
Speaker 12: I didn't see too much of it amongst in Georgia,
Speaker 12: amongst these double disapprovers and I think one of the
Speaker 12: reasons for that is not necessarily because their views on
Speaker 12: it differ, but because the presidential race is a different
Speaker 12: range of issues. And I think that's the caveat I
Speaker 12: make about reading too much endo twenty twenty two or
Speaker 12: the twenty twenty three elections is that they happened off cycle,
Speaker 12: and the choice of who's in the White House wasn't
Speaker 12: on the ballot, and I think that changes the issues agenda.
Speaker 12: That's not to say it weren't important, it won't be important.
Speaker 12: So for example, you know, Arizona might have abortion on
Speaker 12: the ballot next year. That's probably going to have a
Speaker 12: bit of an impact in getting Democrat voters out, and
Speaker 12: so I think it does have a potential turnout impact.
Speaker 12: But I think what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing
Speaker 12: both in polling and in focus groups, is that when
Speaker 12: it comes to the choice between Biden and Trump or
Speaker 12: whoever it might be, it's the positives and negatives of
Speaker 12: those individuals that are weighing more heavily than abortion. So
Speaker 12: I'm not sitting here and saying it's not important, but
Speaker 12: I do think it's becomes a slightly lower tier issue
Speaker 12: when we get into a presidential election.
Speaker 4: One thing I'm hearing from all of this is that
Speaker 4: the people of are not clamoring for Dean Phillips. They're not.
Speaker 4: They're not on the Phillips train, right They were they
Speaker 4: literally asking you what about Joe Mansion. Please tell me
Speaker 4: Joe Mansen is going to get into the race.
Speaker 12: I mean there was there was no Joe Mansion train.
Speaker 12: There was no Dean Phillips train. There was well, I
Speaker 12: mean not. There weren't many trains, to be honest. So
Speaker 12: you don't want to get on the Trump or the
Speaker 12: Biden train either. It's interesting even despite the more disengaged Democrats.
Speaker 10: I went.
Speaker 12: I had a fascinating interview with a man called Joseph.
Speaker 12: He's a Nighthawks veteran and he runs a helps run
Speaker 12: the Veterans hospital now in Mergerville. And he had this
Speaker 12: big army Army shirt on and he sort of, you've
Speaker 12: got you've got to remember these things are very exciting
Speaker 12: for me as a brit We.
Speaker 10: Don't have people wearing big army shirts in the UK.
Speaker 12: And he sort of sat back and he had a
Speaker 12: picture actually of Clinton and the barber on his shirt
Speaker 12: on his on his wall, and he said, He pointed
Speaker 12: at them, and he said, Biden's not like them. He's
Speaker 12: not a firecracker. I'm not going to put a bumper
Speaker 12: sticker on for Biden. Despite all that, he still said
Speaker 12: that shouldn't be a primary chalvage to Biden because he
Speaker 12: felt that would divide Democrats even more.
Speaker 6: That is interesting, fear of Trump.
Speaker 1: It really really does dictate a lot of our politics
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 6: James, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Always so insightful to just hear directly from voters the
Speaker 1: way they are viewing this election that not a lot
Speaker 1: of people are super excited about.
Speaker 6: So great to see you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 13: All right.
Speaker 8: I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor in chief of the
Speaker 8: Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People.
Speaker 8: And this is the art of class war on breaking points.
Speaker 8: With each passing day, more Israeli bombs are falling on Gaza,
Speaker 8: more bodies are being blown apart and buried under the rubble.
Speaker 8: Over a million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes.
Speaker 8: The world has borne witness to a genocidal military campaign
Speaker 8: to clear out Gaza once and for all, And every day,
Speaker 8: every hour, it feels like the chance to stop one
Speaker 8: of humanity's most inhumane crimes is slipping through our fingers,
Speaker 8: and the powers that be have shown no interest whatsoever
Speaker 8: in listening to the thundering calls for a ceasefire that
Speaker 8: are coming from governments and mass demonstrations around the world,
Speaker 8: particularly the Biden administration here in the United States, the
Speaker 8: increasingly fascistic Netan Yahoo government in Israel, and the arms
Speaker 8: manufacturers and war profiteers who are raking in billions from
Speaker 8: manufacturing mass death. This is prompting activists and people of
Speaker 8: conscience around the world to take direct action themselves to
Speaker 8: try to disrupt the war machine, and that includes working
Speaker 8: people and trade unions. In Australia, for instance, direct actions
Speaker 8: and protests have exploded across the country. As Mustafa Rishwani
Speaker 8: recently reported for The Guardian, Quote, across the country, protests
Speaker 8: continued to be held in major cities. They include a
Speaker 8: daily sit in front of the Victorian Parliament, weekly protests
Speaker 8: at the Sydney office of the Prime Minister Anthony Albanize,
Speaker 8: and prayer vigils at various locations. Protests are being held
Speaker 8: against Israeli shipping companies zim at Port, Botany in Sydney
Speaker 8: and at the Port of Melbourne where there is an
Speaker 8: ongoing presence. Patty Gibson, an organizer at Trade Unionist for Palestine,
Speaker 8: said workers were keeping an eye out for future ZIM
Speaker 8: arrivals in order to facilitate snap protests.
Speaker 9: Quote.
Speaker 8: Our intention is to disrupt the businesses and we're calling
Speaker 8: for a boycott of Zim shipping, Gibson said end quote. Now.
Speaker 8: The group Trade Unionists for Palestine made headlines early November
Speaker 8: when they took action at the Port of Melbourne blocking
Speaker 8: entry roads, preventing trucks from accessing the area where the
Speaker 8: Israeli shipping line operates. One hundreds also participated in a
Speaker 8: direct action to prevent an Israeli cargo ship from docking
Speaker 8: at Sydney's Port Botany on November eleventh, and that included
Speaker 8: many members of Trade Unionists for Palestine. So to talk
Speaker 8: about all of this and more, I got to speak
Speaker 8: with April and seb two members of Trade Unionists for
Speaker 8: Palestine who have been there on the ground in Australia
Speaker 8: taking action with their fellow unionists to disrupt the war machine,
Speaker 8: to force a ceasefire and to end the violence of
Speaker 8: Israel's seventy five year occupation of Palestine. Here's our conversation,
Speaker 8: which we recorded late at night on Friday, November seventeenth
Speaker 8: from the Real News Networks studio in Baltimore, although it
Speaker 8: was Saturday morning in Melbourne for them. All right, Well,
Speaker 8: April Seb, thank you both so much for joining us
Speaker 8: today on Breaking Points. Hello from across the world. Good morning.
Speaker 8: I was wondering if you could start by just introducing
Speaker 8: yourselves to the Breaking Points viewers and listeners real quick. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I'm Seb.
Speaker 14: I am an Earliot educator, so I welcome my kindergarten sitting.
Speaker 13: Yeah, my name is April. I'm an organizer with United
Speaker 13: Workers Union, which is a large blue collar union here
Speaker 13: in Australia of about one hundred and fifty thousand members.
Speaker 13: I am organized in early childhood with members like Seb.
Speaker 13: I also work in the kind of background strike an
Speaker 13: event logistics. So yeah, I've been doing that for seven years.
Speaker 8: And you were both members of Trade Unionist for Palestine
Speaker 8: over in Australia. Correct, Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 14: It's a pretty good you know, it's like a nice
Speaker 14: rank and file organization that popped up pretty organically.
Speaker 8: All right, cool, So I want to hear all about that.
Speaker 8: I just gave a little bit of an intro when
Speaker 8: we introduced the segment earlier. But I guess, like before
Speaker 8: we start talking about how Trade Unions for Palestine itself
Speaker 8: came to be in the actions that y'all have been
Speaker 8: taking over there in Australia, I wanted to kind of
Speaker 8: take a quick step back, kind of like we did
Speaker 8: in the previous art of Class War segment that we
Speaker 8: did with another fellow worker, a healthcare worker here in
Speaker 8: the United States, who was also taking action for Palestine.
Speaker 8: So you both, you know, and other members of Trade
Speaker 8: Unions for Palestine, the rank and file group that you
Speaker 8: refer that we were just talking about over in Australia.
Speaker 8: I mean, you're all working people, just like the rest
Speaker 8: of us. So I wanted to start there, like, tell
Speaker 8: us more about who you are, what you do, what
Speaker 8: working life is like for you and workers like yourself
Speaker 8: in Australia these days, and then tell us about how
Speaker 8: you came to be, you know, an active fighter in
Speaker 8: the movement to stop Israel's occupation of Palestine and its
Speaker 8: genocidal destruction of Gaza. Like walk me through how those
Speaker 8: two parts of your lives have converged in this moment.
Speaker 14: Yeah, So working as an earli as educator, you know,
Speaker 14: that's basically working with children, educating them, helping them get
Speaker 14: the best sort of set up for their life. Been
Speaker 14: working in that sector for five years now, and you know,
Speaker 14: working in a sector like that, you interact with a
Speaker 14: lot of children and families from very diverse backgrounds, and
Speaker 14: the vast majority of them, particularly where I work, you know,
Speaker 14: people who either are or directly related to people from Palestine.
Speaker 14: They have some connection to the to the people and
Speaker 14: the suffering going on there, and you know, just sort
Speaker 14: of working in that sector, you can very you know,
Speaker 14: easily rationalize that this is something that's really important to
Speaker 14: stand by. In regards to what it's like to live
Speaker 14: in Australia, it's you know, for working class people, it's
Speaker 14: quite difficult. The cost of living is through the roof.
Speaker 14: And you know we've got because we've got a monopoly
Speaker 14: in our sort of food provider industry, which is colloquially
Speaker 14: referred to as Colesworth. We you know, there's a lot
Speaker 14: of price gouging in regards to just basic necessities.
Speaker 8: So I think there is.
Speaker 14: You know, this sort of convergence for a lot of
Speaker 14: working class people with frustration of their their own living
Speaker 14: conditions and then seeing on the other side like the
Speaker 14: most violent way that that plays out. And I think
Speaker 14: they have developed quite a lot of international solidarity with
Speaker 14: the suffering that's going on in Palestine.
Speaker 13: So just to I suppose echo what Seb was saying.
Speaker 13: The sector that I organize in, and Seb works in
Speaker 13: very howard. He is a very inspirational leader and a
Speaker 13: very inspirational educator for children, has been doing it for
Speaker 13: many years. It's a sector that leans very heavily on
Speaker 13: visa workers, on primarily women who are on their student visa.
Speaker 13: It's a sector that kind of burns through workers and
Speaker 13: pays them very very low rates. Essentially. The thing that
Speaker 13: kind of strikes me as an organizer when I go
Speaker 13: out to speak to educators like Seb at their sites.
Speaker 13: These are incredibly skilled and important workers who have been
Speaker 13: through an education process to become the professional educator that
Speaker 13: they are, but they're being paid what we call in
Speaker 13: Australia award rates, and these are rates that are basically
Speaker 13: the bare minimum. There's no agreement there, the bare minimum
Speaker 13: that they can be paid. And this is the majority
Speaker 13: of the sector. This is the for profit sector, which
Speaker 13: kind is the bottom line is about how much money
Speaker 13: they can make. So you see when you have these
Speaker 13: conversations with educators that they are really really feeling it.
Speaker 13: We as organizers are experiencing it through them. The cost
Speaker 13: of living crisis, the fact that they are working all hours,
Speaker 13: they're working over time, they're not really getting paid properly
Speaker 13: for that overtime sometimes and this kind of cumulative impact
Speaker 13: leads to them not being able to do things like
Speaker 13: go for holidays, and it creates this kind of two
Speaker 13: tier labor system within the sector, which is reflected elsewhere
Speaker 13: in Australia. And there's this kind of this kind of
Speaker 13: false idea that Australia is this lucky country, but unfortunately
Speaker 13: Australia is actually being built on a colonialism, which of
Speaker 13: course you know, relates to what we're discussing today, but
Speaker 13: also the exploitation in a very real way of migrant workers.
Speaker 13: And what's really inspiring and one of the reasons why
Speaker 13: I'm so involved in what we're doing taking action for
Speaker 13: Palestine is these educators are actually relating to this struggle
Speaker 13: and they're turning out we have more educators coming to
Speaker 13: our rallies every week, week on week because people are
Speaker 13: becoming aware that this is a class thing and this
Speaker 13: does not have boundaries. They relate to what they see,
Speaker 13: They relate to seeing children, relate to seeing women, and
Speaker 13: they think, my god. You know, there are educators in
Speaker 13: that country that are trying to do the job that
Speaker 13: we're doing under unimagined you know, pressures. So that's the
Speaker 13: context in terms of Australia. I've worked in this space
Speaker 13: for about fifteen years. My background is policy in the UK.
Speaker 13: I previously worked for a group called Labor Friends of
Speaker 13: Palestine in the Middle East, which is a advocacy group
Speaker 13: within the Westminster kind of bubble for want of a
Speaker 13: better word, that was for many, many years trying to
Speaker 13: build a progressive case for for statehood, for the lefting
Speaker 13: of the backade, the separation policy. And you know, that
Speaker 13: feels like many years ago now with where we are
Speaker 13: as at a party, but that's how I came to
Speaker 13: it originally. And here the work that we're doing as
Speaker 13: a union just does top dovetails so much with.
Speaker 8: That struggle, right, I mean, you know, again, from one
Speaker 8: settler colony to another. You know, I find a lot
Speaker 8: relatable in that, and I feel like I'm seeing a
Speaker 8: lot of that, or at least some of it here
Speaker 8: in the United States. Even if it's not translating to
Speaker 8: say mass action, our labor movement is certainly lagging behind
Speaker 8: the rest of the world or other parts of the
Speaker 8: world that are standing up with courage against the genocide
Speaker 8: that we are watching unfold. I'm sad to say that
Speaker 8: a lot of labor unions here in the United States
Speaker 8: have not done so, but many rank and file workers have,
Speaker 8: many local unions have, many groups formed by rank and
Speaker 8: file workers across sectors have and that is very heartening.
Speaker 8: But I remember, you know, I asked the question the
Speaker 8: way that I did because I want to, you know,
Speaker 8: always emphasize for people that corporate media, as it always does,
Speaker 8: is going to try to if it's going to acknowledge
Speaker 8: the actions being taken by people around the world to
Speaker 8: try to end this madness in Gaza over there, that
Speaker 8: Israel is wiping Palestine off the face of the earth,
Speaker 8: People of conscience who just want to stand up and
Speaker 8: do something whatever they can to stop this horror. The
Speaker 8: mainstream media, if it covers that at all will do
Speaker 8: what they always do. When we talk about protests, we
Speaker 8: talk about them as like as if the people there
Speaker 8: just sort of appear from nowhere out of like some
Speaker 8: Antifa basements, or that they're all just professional activists or agitators.
Speaker 8: And I think what we're seeing right now is no,
Speaker 8: these are just regular people. I was down in Washington,
Speaker 8: d C. Two weeks ago at the largest pro Palestine
Speaker 8: margin US history. I was interviewing people for the Real
Speaker 8: News Network. Folks watching can go check it out. There's
Speaker 8: just people like you and me. Yeah, there were activists there,
Speaker 8: but there were over one hundred thousand people there, right.
Speaker 8: You just gotta you can't fill that much space in Washington,
Speaker 8: D C. Without just a lot of regular people like
Speaker 8: you and me. And so that's why I asked the
Speaker 8: first question that way. And I want to kind of
Speaker 8: piggyback onto that and and focus in on trade unions
Speaker 8: for Palestine specifically, and and and the work that y'all
Speaker 8: have been doing there, the the the actions y'all have
Speaker 8: been taking. Right. You know, I first learned about y'all
Speaker 8: when I saw a tweet from my colleague over in
Speaker 8: the United Kingdom, the Great taj Ali uh showing you know,
Speaker 8: uh y'all out there in Melbourne, like shutting down a
Speaker 8: port and stopping you know, the unloading of a shipment
Speaker 8: headed to Israel. So like, you know, that was really
Speaker 8: wild to see. I wanted to ask if you all
Speaker 8: could just take us there, like tell us how this
Speaker 8: group came together, what y'all have been doing, how you
Speaker 8: have been involved in it, and and and yeah, like
Speaker 8: what has been happening uh since that you know action
Speaker 8: that that y'all took early in November.
Speaker 14: Yeah, so I trade used for Palestine. Like I said earlier,
Speaker 14: it was very organically formed. It wasn't sort of like
Speaker 14: an on high authority was like here we go, here's
Speaker 14: trade units for Palestine. It was born from a lot
Speaker 14: of unions sort of coming together and going we need
Speaker 14: to take a stand, like this is something that is
Speaker 14: just simply not acceptable. We can't just you know, sit
Speaker 14: idly by the action that happened at the port was
Speaker 14: super cool. To really oversimplify it, but what what happened
Speaker 14: was there was a ship that was headed for Botany
Speaker 14: Bay in Sydney, but it had to go through Port
Speaker 14: Melbourne first, Like it had to go buy it. So
Speaker 14: we organized just this rally out the front where the
Speaker 14: police basically came out in force to say, you know,
Speaker 14: basically tell us to sot off. Like it was pretty
Speaker 14: like high security levels, very aggressive police presence, and we
Speaker 14: sort of huddled around this spot where you know, we
Speaker 14: could sort of you know, make a good like area
Speaker 14: of organizing, and we were listening to speeches and discussing,
Speaker 14: you know, what else we could do. And I can't
Speaker 14: remember which company it was, but one of the Israeli
Speaker 14: trucks came through and people were just so frustrated. All
Speaker 14: of the workers there were so frustrated just seeing all
Speaker 14: of these trucks come through. And eventually we just kind
Speaker 14: of had enough and we very spontaneously just went onto
Speaker 14: the road to stop it, to stop that truck going
Speaker 14: in to be able to be you know, sent off
Speaker 14: and help Israel profit on the genocide of Palestinians. So
Speaker 14: we sat there until we could send it back. We
Speaker 14: did not let it go through. It was a very
Speaker 14: powerful moment and I think for a lot of people too,
Speaker 14: it showed them that they actually do have this power,
Speaker 14: like it's not something that is given to us, like
Speaker 14: we have it already. We just need to exercise it.
Speaker 10: And just to.
Speaker 15: Further echo again what SEB said, The actual grouping itself
Speaker 15: came from an open letter that unionist rank and file
Speaker 15: unionists started to sign.
Speaker 13: So it was I think two members too loan members
Speaker 13: of a union called ASU, who were so frustrated at
Speaker 13: the lack of leadership from our own union executives that
Speaker 13: they started this open letter that got passed around and
Speaker 13: very organically all these different unions and the next thing
Speaker 13: you know, every single rank and file unionist is signing it,
Speaker 13: and that's members and also organizers. So there was this
Speaker 13: kind of like sudden kind of coalition being formed that
Speaker 13: brought together all of the industrial knowledge of the different
Speaker 13: types of union in the different sectors that they cover
Speaker 13: in the different industries. And what we found was that
Speaker 13: unions were actually doing this on their own as well.
Speaker 13: So workers in union were already within their own separate
Speaker 13: unions having conversations and thinking about pressure points where we
Speaker 13: could turn up and use our bodies to occupy space
Speaker 13: and go to rallies and banner painting sessions has been
Speaker 13: become a really big thing because it also brings in
Speaker 13: members who might not be ready to come out to
Speaker 13: an action, but they are able to engage with the
Speaker 13: issue around something that is quite accessible and we can
Speaker 13: set around painting and have conversations around the history and
Speaker 13: why they need to be there as unionists. The actual
Speaker 13: action was organized within the Trade Unionists for Palestine group
Speaker 13: and crucially, crucially brought in the community because one of
Speaker 13: the things that we need to make sure it doesn't
Speaker 13: happen here is that unionists are organizing an isolation of
Speaker 13: the communities that are actually affected. So we speak to APAN,
Speaker 13: who are the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network, one of the
Speaker 13: biggest groups here that advocate for Palestinian rights, other kind
Speaker 13: of like rank and file groups within Melbourne, to build
Speaker 13: a coalition and to start thinking about how we can
Speaker 13: do this in a sustainable way. The ZIM truck that
Speaker 13: came kind of turned up out of the blue. Really,
Speaker 13: we weren't sure that trucks were even going to come,
Speaker 13: but he turned up and there was this wonderful moment
Speaker 13: where we were all I think, we're all listening to
Speaker 13: a speaker at the rally that had been organized, and
Speaker 13: everyone's head just kind of turned and we see this
Speaker 13: truck coming towards us, and then this is just rush
Speaker 13: of human beings running into the middle of the road.
Speaker 13: And then like you know, the banners come out. Everyone
Speaker 13: ends up sitting down and and we stay sitting and
Speaker 13: we're chanting, and it's the chance is up, up with liberation,
Speaker 13: down down with occupation. And it goes on and on
Speaker 13: and on for about you know, twenty minutes, and then
Speaker 13: this this uncle gets up to the front and tells
Speaker 13: us about his family who have in the last week died,
Speaker 13: and shows pictures to the crowd of his family and
Speaker 13: who have died. And as far as I know this,
Speaker 13: this this man is still there now in a tent
Speaker 13: by the side of that road. So I think what's
Speaker 13: happening is there is there is a space being formed
Speaker 13: for grief, and that grief is making people show up.
Speaker 13: And I think that even if you are not a
Speaker 13: Palestinian person, when you're close to that grief, you understand
Speaker 13: why it's so necessary.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I think that's really beautifully and powerfully put by
Speaker 8: both of you. And I just wanted to quickly sort
Speaker 8: of ask about that because I don't have too much time,
Speaker 8: and I got one more question I want to get to.
Speaker 8: But could you just say a little more about that space,
Speaker 8: Like what does the scene look like over there in Australia,
Speaker 8: Like I said, like, we are seeing a tremendous amount
Speaker 8: of action happening here in the United States. It's happening
Speaker 8: in different pockets. It's happening in train stations, it's happening
Speaker 8: with you know, people demonstrating in front of Elbit Systems
Speaker 8: headquarters and manufacturing facilities. These are the sites where where
Speaker 8: groups like Palestine Action are stopping you know, like production
Speaker 8: of weapons that are going to Israel. Also, you know,
Speaker 8: people are you know pressing their elected officials. Right there's
Speaker 8: a real battle going on between the narratives. You know,
Speaker 8: people are seeing like just one totally lopsided account on
Speaker 8: certain corporate media channels, and they're flooding to channels like
Speaker 8: this to see what else is out there. And they're
Speaker 8: realizing that they've been lied to for so long. And
Speaker 8: so there's a real mix of stuff happening here because
Speaker 8: all of that's happening amidst you know, spikes and hate crimes,
Speaker 8: anti Semitic, you know, like it's crimes against Muslims and Arabs,
Speaker 8: and like there's a real high kind of tense moment
Speaker 8: in the country. There's also a lot of like McCarthy
Speaker 8: I repression coming on college campuses. People are losing their
Speaker 8: jobs speaking up for Palestine. YadA, YadA, YadA. We'll get
Speaker 8: to that in a second. I wanted to ask if
Speaker 8: you could just sort of give us again a little
Speaker 8: bit of a snapshot of what else is happening there, Like,
Speaker 8: do you feel that you're alone in this over in
Speaker 8: Australia or is it the opposite? Are there more actions
Speaker 8: that y'all are taking part of, more groups that you're
Speaker 8: seeing coming to the fore and speaking up about this.
Speaker 8: You know, what is the response from the powers that be?
Speaker 8: Like Parliament and Anthony ALBANIZI like, I think I call
Speaker 8: them Albanese in the introduction, but like, what's going on
Speaker 8: over there? I guess for people living over here in
Speaker 8: North America.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Well, the one sort of I guess super awesome
Speaker 14: thing is that the community movement, the rank and file movement,
Speaker 14: is just growing and growing and growing. I don't remember
Speaker 14: the exact number of the last march through the city,
Speaker 14: but it was over I think it was over two
Speaker 14: hundred thousand from memory. It was huge, and you know,
Speaker 14: we've got these mass movements of people who are just
Speaker 14: saying no, like this is ridiculous. On the flip side,
Speaker 14: we've got elected officials coming out and you know, some
Speaker 14: are just blatantly saying that, you know, Israel's in the right,
Speaker 14: while others are being a bit more sort of you know,
Speaker 14: vague with how they reached the same conclusion, and people
Speaker 14: are really getting frustrated with that.
Speaker 8: The community is.
Speaker 14: Getting annoyed and is starting to show that in a
Speaker 14: very you know, open way that like a lot of
Speaker 14: people have you know, started to connect that what happened
Speaker 14: in Australia and is still happening, this active you know
Speaker 14: colonization in Australia is now being played out for them
Speaker 14: in a very visible way over in historic Palestine. And
Speaker 14: I think that's really causing people to kind of, you know,
Speaker 14: raise their consciousness to this situation, to want to understand
Speaker 14: why these things are happening and how else we can
Speaker 14: fight them. And it's been super inspiring to see more
Speaker 14: and more people who would traditionally not want to do
Speaker 14: any organizing come out and be trying to start mass movements.
Speaker 13: And going back to the struggle to counteract you know,
Speaker 13: partial representation of the truth if it can use propaganda
Speaker 13: that I've never seen such propaganda in my life. It's
Speaker 13: it's almost constant. You know, you feel like you're being
Speaker 13: gas lit because you see the thing with your eyes,
Speaker 13: your own eyes, it's verified by an expert in the area,
Speaker 13: and then you're told that you don't see it, and
Speaker 13: it's it's maddening and it makes it makes you feel
Speaker 13: very frustrated, which you know, on the flip side, really
Speaker 13: encourages you to turn out. That's that frustration of not
Speaker 13: being heard, not being seen that turns people out. One
Speaker 13: of the things that we are doing as a union,
Speaker 13: as our union, United Workers Union, is we are actually
Speaker 13: actively going to our sites with information, with flyers, with
Speaker 13: ways that people can become involved, and we're having got
Speaker 13: to be called toolbox meetings where the organizer will go
Speaker 13: and have conversations with leaders at that site about the
Speaker 13: history and about the part that unions have played historically
Speaker 13: around things like apartheid in raising up the voices of
Speaker 13: people who aren't you know, represented in news, who aren't
Speaker 13: generally listened to, and who are really homogenized and othered.
Speaker 13: So it's I would say incumbent on us as union leaders,
Speaker 13: people like me and seb to continue to have conversations
Speaker 13: to actually break through, because it's always much more powerful
Speaker 13: having that conversation with a human being in front of you,
Speaker 13: who you trust and who you know, than just sitting
Speaker 13: and listening to the propaganda that's fed to you. And
Speaker 13: that is I think for any union organizer listening to
Speaker 13: this in Canada or in America, that is such an
Speaker 13: important thing for us to do right now, because because
Speaker 13: union organizing isn't just about your site, and it's not
Speaker 13: just about your industry, it's about the broader social good
Speaker 13: in the world and being part of that.
Speaker 8: Tell. Yeah, well, and like you always saying, I mean,
Speaker 8: I think there is it's exciting to hear what you
Speaker 8: just said, you know, because it means that the future
Speaker 8: is not yet written, right. I think we are seeing
Speaker 8: a real battle over the future happen right now, and
Speaker 8: what happens next depends on what regular people like you
Speaker 8: and me and everyone watching do right now. And you
Speaker 8: know I think that that, Yeah, like the ways that
Speaker 8: this sort of armature of ideology that had held so
Speaker 8: many of us on one side of this issue, that
Speaker 8: we were always fed just one side of it, and
Speaker 8: we ourselves are living in as I said, also the
Speaker 8: United States a successful settler colony that was founded upon
Speaker 8: the dispossession of the land and the genociding of the
Speaker 8: people who lived here. And so I think that that
Speaker 8: is what the role that Israel always played for a
Speaker 8: lot of Americans is. It was like it was like
Speaker 8: this symbol upon which we could project our own lingering
Speaker 8: colonial guilt and have it washed clean, you know, like
Speaker 8: through a settler colony that seemed to be the most
Speaker 8: sympathetic version you could have of that project of you know,
Speaker 8: like people like again the story we were told and
Speaker 8: the and the story that really, you know, means a
Speaker 8: lot to a lot of people who believed in that
Speaker 8: that you know, there was nowhere to go in Europe,
Speaker 8: they needed Jews, needed their own nation, and that this
Speaker 8: was there was no one there right. Our media, our
Speaker 8: education made us not ask those sorts of questions that
Speaker 8: people are now asking themselves. And I think it's it's
Speaker 8: really hitting people really hard. But they we need to
Speaker 8: be steadfast and learn and and and understand as much
Speaker 8: of this as we can. But at the bare minimum,
Speaker 8: all you need to understand that is that this is
Speaker 8: wrong this shouldn't happen. This can't happen. We cannot let
Speaker 8: this happen. We cannot let our world go on if
Speaker 8: this becomes permissible over and over again and we do
Speaker 8: nothing to stop it. You can do something to stop it.
Speaker 8: People like Seb and April are doing stuff like that.
Speaker 8: You know your fellow workers are doing stuff like that.
Speaker 8: Whatever it is, you can do something. And that is
Speaker 8: always the message, as you all both mentioned that that
Speaker 8: is endemic to the labor movement, right It's baked into
Speaker 8: the cake of the labor movement is that we are
Speaker 8: stronger together and we are fighting for a better life
Speaker 8: for all working people who deserve better than this. So
Speaker 8: I wanted to end on that note really quickly, because
Speaker 8: we have gone a long and I do have to
Speaker 8: let y'all go. But as people see these connections, as
Speaker 8: the blinders come off, as they allow themselves to feel
Speaker 8: as much sympathy for you know, dying Palestinian children as
Speaker 8: dying Israeli children, as they are dealing with that all
Speaker 8: at once and want to know what they can do.
Speaker 8: But they're worried about again, as I described, the McCarthyite
Speaker 8: sort of fog on that is settled on the country,
Speaker 8: the pressures that are doxing people outside of their college
Speaker 8: campuses for going to a demonstration, even if they're not
Speaker 8: speaking at it. You know, people getting fired from their jobs,
Speaker 8: people becoming paries within their own families. What would your
Speaker 8: message be to your fellow workers in North America and
Speaker 8: beyond about why you have, you know, taken that step
Speaker 8: to get involved in why you think it's important that
Speaker 8: they do.
Speaker 14: My message would be pretty It would be pretty short
Speaker 14: and sweet. I will explain it a little bit though.
Speaker 14: Keep fighting, get united, get organized, and stay educated. Like
Speaker 14: we are stronger together. And people don't like people who
Speaker 14: fight for good because it's easier to stay on the
Speaker 14: status quo, because that's not hard to do. It's hard
Speaker 14: to fight for what's right. So organize, get united, figure
Speaker 14: out how you can create a movement or a community
Speaker 14: that will support you, and keep yourself educated on what's
Speaker 14: going on so you know how to combat anyone who
Speaker 14: tries to feel disinformation.
Speaker 13: I would say that this is actually a moment that
Speaker 13: we really need to rise to as a global movement
Speaker 13: of workers. And one of the things that I think
Speaker 13: really needs to be said right now is if any
Speaker 13: of your viewers watching just now are not in the union.
Speaker 11: Join your union.
Speaker 13: Find out who your union is, go online, find it,
Speaker 13: join it, and organize right because trade unions are one
Speaker 13: of the few really good resilient structures for engaging working
Speaker 13: people and channeling all of our energy towards taking action
Speaker 13: for what's right. Okay, join your union, organize like Sev said,
Speaker 13: and if you're in your union already, start to have
Speaker 13: conversations around what you as members are comfortable doing. Speak
Speaker 13: to your delegates, speak to your rep find out what's
Speaker 13: happening at your in a community level. Turn out you
Speaker 13: signal right, because signal is relatively safe to talk about
Speaker 13: actions that you can be part of. Because what we're
Speaker 13: talking about here, the need to join a union is
Speaker 13: it's not just about protecting yourself now, It's not just
Speaker 13: about how they can community around you that will protect you,
Speaker 13: but it's about building a country where nobody is allowed
Speaker 13: to dock somebody, nobody is allowed to fire somebody because
Speaker 13: of their viewpoint that you're strong enough as a union
Speaker 13: workforce to prevent that from happening. Because in a democracy,
Speaker 13: nobody should be shut down for standing up for peace.
Speaker 8: That is April and Seb, two members of Trade Unionists
Speaker 8: for Palestine, a rank and file group over in Australia.
Speaker 8: April SEB. Thank you both so much for joining us
Speaker 8: today on Breaking Points. I really really appreciate it.
Speaker 13: Thank you, thanks, thank you.
Speaker 8: Thank you for watching the segment with Breaking Points, and
Speaker 8: be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, the Real
Speaker 8: News Network with links in the show description. See you
Speaker 8: soon for the next edition of the Art of Class War.
Speaker 8: Take care of yourselves, take care of each other forever.
Speaker 5: Excuse me, do you guys got a sport stern? Hold on,
Speaker 5: hold on, wait one second. Do you have any thoughts
Speaker 5: on CEOKA? What do you think about consulting?
Speaker 8: Is it BS?
Speaker 5: Or do they actually add value to businesses? So we're
Speaker 5: doing a piece trying to get people's thoughts on consulting.
Speaker 5: Is consulting legit business or is it just BS? It's legit.
Speaker 8: I interned there this summer and it was very legit.
Speaker 5: A few weeks ago, John Oliver on his HBO show
Speaker 5: Last Week Tonight, engaged in an epic takedown of mackenzie
Speaker 5: and the consulting industry, where secretive companies like McKenzie charge
Speaker 5: exorbitant fees to their clients, usually Fortune five hundred companies
Speaker 5: for quote unquote innovative advice, and all of our segment
Speaker 5: has garnered over six million views on YouTube so far.
Speaker 16: McKinsey's advice can be expensive but obvious, its predictions can
Speaker 16: be deeply flowed, and it's all gonna be helped super
Speaker 16: charge economic inequality in this country, all of which is
Speaker 16: pretty striking coming from a company who's lead You've already
Speaker 16: seen some of its fundamental mission like this.
Speaker 4: Our purpose is to create positive, enduring change in the world.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but is it though?
Speaker 3: Good question?
Speaker 5: So I thought it might be interesting to hear from
Speaker 5: some potential aspiring future mackenzie consultants. We are at New
Speaker 5: York University's Stern School of Business, my alma mater, and
Speaker 5: we're hopefully going to talk to some students about McKenzie,
Speaker 5: which approximately thirty percent of the student population wants to
Speaker 5: work at. That is true. In fact, I may have
Speaker 5: even underestimated that a little bit, because according to NYU's
Speaker 5: latest NBA Employment report, almost forty percent of the graduating
Speaker 5: class went to work for a consulting firm, with an
Speaker 5: average starting salary of nearly one hundred and seventy thousand
Speaker 5: dollars per year, along with a thirty K signing bonus.
Speaker 5: What do you think about consulting? Is it bs or
Speaker 5: do they actually add value to businesses?
Speaker 17: I think the correct answer for me would be for
Speaker 17: my future, I think yeah, providesoral value.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 11: No.
Speaker 18: I mean I've also had like and I've been a
Speaker 18: little bit on the inside and know a lot of
Speaker 18: people and that you know, have worked in these firms,
Speaker 18: So they probably are adding value to businesses. I mean,
Speaker 18: when you go to mckensey with a business issue that
Speaker 18: you're looking to address, they're more than they're going to
Speaker 18: be likely to solve it in some capacity. But there's
Speaker 18: a chance that they're not accounting for like what people
Speaker 18: feel on the inside. How good does a business really
Speaker 18: need to be? I mean, if they're not afloat but
Speaker 18: doing well and creating you know, revenue and profits for
Speaker 18: their stakeholders, what's the does do you need to go
Speaker 18: to the next level to and then have to you know,
Speaker 18: cut a bunch of employees. It'd be nicer if someone
Speaker 18: from mckensey works on the inside of a company and
Speaker 18: actually put skin in the game.
Speaker 17: They do provide like some some consultation device that's like,
Speaker 17: does seem like common sense, but I think there's a
Speaker 17: lot more that goes into it, And based off like
Speaker 17: the casing and all the consultant consulting stuff that I've
Speaker 17: been doing, there's a lot that goes into it, a
Speaker 17: lot more than people think. So I think that's important
Speaker 17: to keep in mind.
Speaker 10: John Oliver.
Speaker 5: He also highlighted how mackenzie has spearheaded the extreme rise
Speaker 5: in executive compensation that we've seen in the last sixty years.
Speaker 16: So there was one area where mckinziys historically advised the
Speaker 16: exact opposite of cost cutting, and that is executive pay.
Speaker 16: Starting in nineteen fifty, consultant of Theirs named Arch Patten
Speaker 16: started advising corporate leaders that they were underpaid, writing books
Speaker 16: like Men, Money and Motivation executive compensation as an instrument
Speaker 16: of leadership. His advice was so wildly popular that for
Speaker 16: a time Pattern personally accounted for almost ten percent of
Speaker 16: the firm's billings and later came to be seen as
Speaker 16: a major contributor to skyrocketing executive pay.
Speaker 10: What do you think.
Speaker 5: About CEO pay? It did too much, too little? Just
Speaker 5: the right amount?
Speaker 17: Oh, I don't know, because it's how much they want,
Speaker 17: how much they I think it's it's probably on a
Speaker 17: per person basis too, because the amount of uh, you know,
Speaker 17: work that they put in, the amount of hours I
Speaker 17: know those jobs are taxing.
Speaker 18: The market does decide, you know, no one is going
Speaker 18: to pay three hundred times three hundred x you a
Speaker 18: salary per c if the market doesn't demand for it.
Speaker 19: Yeah, I think they do get paid too much. But
Speaker 19: a lot of their compensation out tied with their stock performance, right,
Speaker 19: So if they're getting paid more than I guess shareholders
Speaker 19: are also beneficiaries. So yeah, I guess it's good for everyone,
Speaker 19: except if you're not shareholders for the company, then I
Speaker 19: guess you were missing out.
Speaker 5: The fact of the matter is if you work at McKenzie,
Speaker 5: that's kind of a springboard into a very great career.
Speaker 8: There's a lot of well.
Speaker 5: To do people like CEO of Google, people to just
Speaker 5: all these guys that come from mackenzie. Are you comfortable,
Speaker 5: let's say, working within an industry that maybe does some
Speaker 5: unscrupulous things, but it's going to really help your career
Speaker 5: or is it unfair to ask people that to say
Speaker 5: you need to be morally right all the time.
Speaker 19: It's very hard to say, right, but I guess as
Speaker 19: long as within the law boundaries.
Speaker 18: I don't believe that the consulting industry is evil. I
Speaker 18: think that it is a good springboard if you want
Speaker 18: to put yourself and surround yourself by, you know, top minds,
Speaker 18: people who've been exposed to the highest level of transactions
Speaker 18: and the highest level of policy, and also just be
Speaker 18: in the kind of reaching distance of real policy makers
Speaker 18: and real change makers. It's it's totally legitimate to go
Speaker 18: to these firms.
Speaker 19: For me, I would just follow my heart, Like, if
Speaker 19: I think this is right now, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 19: If I don't think it's right, it's not comfortable for me,
Speaker 19: I'll probably.
Speaker 3: Pass on it.
Speaker 19: You know, there's better ways to make money than just
Speaker 19: going against your marls and you know, make money from that.
Speaker 5: Are there any red lines you think in terms of like,
Speaker 5: let's say McKenzie works with the Saudi government questionable human
Speaker 5: rights or regulatory gray areas such as consulting for the
Speaker 5: FDA at the same time they're consulting for a pharmaceutical company.
Speaker 18: That's the market. Because the size of mackenzie is the
Speaker 18: size of the market. So in terms of red lines, Like,
Speaker 18: it's just more like everyone loves to see transparency and
Speaker 18: everyone loves to see kind of a value judgment. Personally,
Speaker 18: I'm not huge on like government tons of government intervention.
Speaker 18: So it's just kind of what the market created.
Speaker 19: There should be more regulations, but also not everyone find
Speaker 19: this guy is a is a you know, Ponzi scheme runner.
Speaker 19: So I would say, like, there's definitely a lot of
Speaker 19: bias from outside of the.
Speaker 8: Stern you know, just talk to more stern people. I
Speaker 8: think they're nice.
Speaker 10: They're nice people.
Speaker 5: I don't doubt that I'm one of them. But what
Speaker 5: business school students were willing to share I think pales
Speaker 5: in comparison to what they were not willing to share.
Speaker 5: Hold on, hold on, wait, wait one second. We're part
Speaker 5: of a news organization called Breaking Points. Are you okay
Speaker 5: with us using that footage?
Speaker 13: No?
Speaker 6: No, keep time in my opinion, but a lot of
Speaker 6: negated something I would be okay with.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, you don't want to be caught on camera?
Speaker 8: Is that right?
Speaker 11: Sorry?
Speaker 4: Sorry, Y don't have time.
Speaker 13: I'm gonna decline, but thank you.
Speaker 5: Very difficult to get people to speak since they have
Speaker 5: a lot to lose. Yeah, I think about it. They
Speaker 5: has a lot of student student loans, two hundred thousand
Speaker 5: dollars in student loans, and then you have to get
Speaker 5: a job, you know, or else you can't. I did
Speaker 5: my best, but truly there is no, at the very
Speaker 5: least no financial upside in talking to me, so I
Speaker 5: can't really blame them for prioritizing their self interest. Truth is,
Speaker 5: modern corporations only love superficial diversity, what you look like,
Speaker 5: your sexual orientation, things like that. But they do not
Speaker 5: love diversity and thought. And this principle applies before you
Speaker 5: get the job and while you're on the job.
Speaker 3: And I think that's why you.
Speaker 5: See so many unscrupulous business practices or personal misconduct go unchallenged.
Speaker 5: Your company is doing something shady tunnel vision, you say nothing.
Speaker 5: Maybe a coworkers is getting harassed by boss. Unless it's
Speaker 5: really egregious, probably best just look the other way and
Speaker 5: also say nothing for risk of you also becoming a
Speaker 5: potential cultural pariah yourself in the eyes of the company. Look,
Speaker 5: I'm not here to be the morality police. And despite
Speaker 5: some of the cringe posts that you'll see on LinkedIn,
Speaker 5: some crap like this about helping the environment, or whatever.
Speaker 5: The uncomfortable truth is that corporations can't really be anything
Speaker 5: more than a platform or a vehicle to help you
Speaker 5: build economic security for you and your family, and unfortunately,
Speaker 5: as we all know today, that does come with tremendous
Speaker 5: societal cost.
Speaker 6: That's it for me this week.
Speaker 5: Let us know what you think. Also, if you enjoyed
Speaker 5: the segment, you can support my work by going over
Speaker 5: and subscribing to my YouTube channel fifty one to forty
Speaker 5: nine with James Lee. The link will be in the
Speaker 5: description below. Your support would mean a lot to me,
Speaker 5: of course, keep on tuning into Breaking Points and thank
Speaker 5: you for your time today.
Speaker 8: All right, I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor in chief
Speaker 8: of the Real News Network and host of the podcast
Speaker 8: Working People, and this is the Art of class war
Speaker 8: on Breaking Points after a historic six weeks strike that
Speaker 8: for the first time in the union's history involved workers
Speaker 8: at each of the Big three automakers going on strike
Speaker 8: at the same time, United Auto Workers at Ford, General
Speaker 8: Motors and Stillantis have ratified their new contracts with the companies.
Speaker 8: As Dan DiMaggio reports at Labor Notes Quote, the stand
Speaker 8: up strike began September fifteenth, when thirteen thousand workers walked
Speaker 8: out at three Ford General Motors and Stillantis assembly plants.
Speaker 8: By the end, it grew to fifty thousand out of
Speaker 8: the one hundred and forty six thousand UAW members at
Speaker 8: the Big Three. The agreements came after a major escalation
Speaker 8: striking each company's most profitable truck plant. Workers approved the
Speaker 8: deals at GM, Ford, and Stallantis this week. At Ford
Speaker 8: and Stillantis, two thirds voted in favor, but at GM
Speaker 8: the numbers were close. Just fifty five percent of workers
Speaker 8: voted yes, reflecting workers heightened expectations and frustration with years
Speaker 8: of give backs Any higher seniority. Assembly plant workers at
Speaker 8: all three companies voted no, saying the raises and retirement
Speaker 8: gains were not enough. Still, DiMaggio notes the new contracts
Speaker 8: go further than many people thought possible on issues that
Speaker 8: the companies had insisted were off the table now as
Speaker 8: far as those contract gains go. As Jamie L. LaRue
Speaker 8: of Detroit Free Press Rights quote, the UAW represents about
Speaker 8: one hundred and fifty thousand auto workers at the Detroit Three.
Speaker 8: In the contracts, which largely mirror each other with a
Speaker 8: few individual company exceptions, the union won back some of
Speaker 8: the big provisions lost during the Great Recession, such as
Speaker 8: cost of living adjustments or COLA, annual bonuses for retirees,
Speaker 8: and the elimination of wage tiers. The agreements will provide
Speaker 8: compensation increases of at least thirty three percent after COLA,
Speaker 8: and compounded wage increases up to over one hundred and
Speaker 8: sixty percent for some of the lowest paid workers over
Speaker 8: the four point five years of the contract. The union
Speaker 8: won a three year wage progression to the top pay rate,
Speaker 8: down from eight years at all three automakers. At Stalantis,
Speaker 8: which makes Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and Fiat vehicles, it
Speaker 8: will reopen an assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois that it
Speaker 8: idled in February. The automaker committed to build a three
Speaker 8: point two billion dollar battery plant there, employing more than
Speaker 8: one thousand union workers. Also, the UAW won commitments at
Speaker 8: all three companies to bring thousands of electric vehicle and
Speaker 8: battery jobs under the union's national agreements. Finally, retirees will
Speaker 8: receive annual bonuses for the first time in fifteen years,
Speaker 8: a one point twenty five billion dollar boost in their
Speaker 8: total benefits. That is a billion dollars more than the
Speaker 8: union won for retirees in the last four contracts combined.
Speaker 8: At all three companies, traditional workers hired i e. Those
Speaker 8: on the job before two thousand and seven won a
Speaker 8: five dollars increase to their pension multiplier, the first time
Speaker 8: getting an increase in over fifteen years. Still, many at
Speaker 8: GM were dissatisfied with that increase and cited that as
Speaker 8: one of the reasons several GM assembly plants voted no
Speaker 8: on the agreement now. In a Facebook live message to
Speaker 8: union members on November eighth, UAW President Sean Fain acknowledged
Speaker 8: that the union had not won on all fronts, including
Speaker 8: in the fight for a thirty two hour workweek and
Speaker 8: the fight to reinstate defined benefit pensions for workers who
Speaker 8: were hired after two thousand and seven. Quote. What we
Speaker 8: did win in this contract will change many lives, Faine said.
Speaker 8: But we went into this round of negotiations to and tiers.
Speaker 8: One of the biggest and worst tiers in our union
Speaker 8: is the difference between pre two thousand and seven and
Speaker 8: post two thousand and seven hires, which determines who gets
Speaker 8: a pension in retiree healthcare and who doesn't. We didn't
Speaker 8: win on this issue. The fact is both of these
Speaker 8: issues are extremely difficult and expensive to fix, primarily because
Speaker 8: the Big Three, being so driven by Wall Street, refuse
Speaker 8: to have the liability on their books. So already we're
Speaker 8: looking at twenty twenty eight for this issue, and we're
Speaker 8: thinking even bigger. Either the Big Three guarantees retirement security
Speaker 8: for workers who give their lives to these companies, or
Speaker 8: an even bigger player does the federal government. Look, No
Speaker 8: contract is perfect, No one wins everything they need and
Speaker 8: deserve in a single strike or a single union drive,
Speaker 8: and there is still much much more to for here.
Speaker 8: But make no mistake, this is a momentous victory and
Speaker 8: a historic turning point for the UAW, for the auto industry,
Speaker 8: and for the labor movement writ large. After half a
Speaker 8: century of backsliding concessionary bargaining give backs to the companies
Speaker 8: under immense pressures of de industrialization and offshoring of jobs,
Speaker 8: after the post two thousand and eight explosion of lower
Speaker 8: paid tiers and permanent temp positions that turned a once
Speaker 8: stable career into just another precarious job for so many workers.
Speaker 8: After being rocked by corruption scandals at the top levels,
Speaker 8: of the union, and after decades of devastating layoffs and
Speaker 8: plant closures, UAW auto workers fought valiantly to take back
Speaker 8: their union, to vote in new leadership, to rebuild faith
Speaker 8: and a fighting spirit among the rank and file file,
Speaker 8: to finally go on the offensive and put the bosses
Speaker 8: on the back heel for once. And they won. They
Speaker 8: did not win everything, but they won a lot, and
Speaker 8: the owning class is taking notice. Non union auto companies
Speaker 8: like Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota have already announced incoming raises
Speaker 8: for their employees as a direct result of the UAW
Speaker 8: gains at the Big three, and the UAW has reportedly
Speaker 8: been flooded by inquiries from workers at non union plants
Speaker 8: about unionizing, including workers at Tesla. Now that the strike
Speaker 8: has finally concluded and the contracts have been ratified, I
Speaker 8: wanted to take a moment to bring back some of
Speaker 8: the many UAW workers I've been interviewing before and throughout
Speaker 8: this historic strike, including here on breaking points. So in
Speaker 8: this extended art of class war segment, I got to
Speaker 8: sit down once again with Nick Leivik, a General Motors
Speaker 8: auto worker, a rank and file member of UAW Local
Speaker 8: thirty one, in Kansas City and an activist with the
Speaker 8: Caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy. And we also sat
Speaker 8: down with Marcy Pedrasa an electrician at the Ford Chicago
Speaker 8: Assembly Plant and a member of UAW Local five point
Speaker 8: fifty one. Here's my conversation with Nick and Marcy, which
Speaker 8: we recorded right here in the Real News Network studio
Speaker 8: in Baltimore on Saturday, November eighteenth. Marcy, Nick, welcome back
Speaker 8: to Breaking Points. Is so great to see you both.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much for joining me today, especially after
Speaker 8: this long, intense fight that y'all have been in. I
Speaker 8: hate to take you away from your much needed rest,
Speaker 8: but I really appreciate you being here and it's really
Speaker 8: great to see you both.
Speaker 11: Good beer, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 8: All right, So voting is in, the contract is ratified.
Speaker 8: It is a new day for the UAW, a new
Speaker 8: day for the labor movement here in the US, and
Speaker 8: y'all have been on the front lines fighting the good fight.
Speaker 8: And you know, Nick, you and I did a segment
Speaker 8: here together for Breaking Points before the strike began back
Speaker 8: in August. Lots happened in the world since then, so
Speaker 8: I was wondering if we could sort of just take
Speaker 8: a step back. Let's reflect for a second. Let's refresh
Speaker 8: everyone's memories about how far we've come in a short
Speaker 8: amount of time, what the strike was really about, what
Speaker 8: was significant about it, and what it felt like. From
Speaker 8: your vantage points is rank and file workers and you know,
Speaker 8: active members of your union working to organize and uplift
Speaker 8: your your fellow union members, your fellow workers. Take us back, Nick,
Speaker 8: why don't we start with you and just sort of
Speaker 8: like for folks who are are you know, maybe forgetting like,
Speaker 8: you know, like where this all started, what was what
Speaker 8: it was all about? You know some of that gets
Speaker 8: lost in the coverage of the strike as it's going on.
Speaker 8: Let's start back to, you know, where we were when
Speaker 8: we all were talking before the strike, because of course you,
Speaker 8: me and Marcy and another one of your UAW members
Speaker 8: did a podcast together before the strike as well, So
Speaker 8: let's talk about let's go from there to here from
Speaker 8: your eyes, what where? What was this strike all about?
Speaker 8: And what was it like for you all to live
Speaker 8: and fight through it.
Speaker 9: I really think that this strike was about charting a
Speaker 9: new a forward for the UAW. We saw a lot
Speaker 9: of a lot of different things from from listening the
Speaker 9: public demands which were very ambitious to to transparency like
Speaker 9: we've never seen before with the live streams. I mean,
Speaker 9: that was the first time I've ever seen my international
Speaker 9: president get up there and give up weekly up dates
Speaker 9: of where they were. And we had a completely new
Speaker 9: strike strategy. There was a lot of people talking in
Speaker 9: the media saying, oh, this isn't gonna work. This is
Speaker 9: uh this, this strategy is too insane, Like it's not.
Speaker 9: You guys are demanding too much. And what we saw
Speaker 9: in the end result is a very militant membership that
Speaker 9: stood up. Rallied around the call, rallied around their their membership,
Speaker 9: and we won the most large, the largest contract in
Speaker 9: the UAW in the last twenty years, I believe, dating
Speaker 9: back to Walter Ruther even so nineteen seventy. This is
Speaker 9: our largest contract. Since then, we've seen some some record
Speaker 9: record games. We've reinstated a cola temps have a shorter
Speaker 9: path to.
Speaker 3: Full time.
Speaker 9: We've rolled in all of the CCA and gmc h
Speaker 9: plants at my facility. I know the phrasing is different
Speaker 9: for Forden stillanis, but that's huge and that's what people
Speaker 9: should really take for this, Like when you're when you're
Speaker 9: unionized and when you're you're aligned in solidarity and you're
Speaker 9: actually standing up and fighting for this stuff, and you
Speaker 9: have a leadership that's backing the rank and file, and
Speaker 9: that's actually keeping the rank and file informed and pushing
Speaker 9: and and helping the rank and file push forward, you
Speaker 9: can win record contracts. And we've seen that now with
Speaker 9: the the Teamsters ups and the UAW.
Speaker 11: I agree with everything Nick just said.
Speaker 20: So you know, for us like starting back, going back
Speaker 20: to our contract campaign even you know, just trying to
Speaker 20: get more information to the membership on the shop floor
Speaker 20: about what this contract you know, can possibly mean for
Speaker 20: us in with this newly elected leadership, right. You know,
Speaker 20: in the past, this was only my third contract in
Speaker 20: the past two you know, I've known many folks who
Speaker 20: might not have even voted before because you just thought
Speaker 20: it was hopeless or why bothers.
Speaker 11: Is going to pass anyway.
Speaker 20: You know, they're shamming these contracts down our throat without
Speaker 20: any transparency, right, or or updates on bargaining. So we've
Speaker 20: seen a real shift in getting members you know, involved
Speaker 20: and just excited and pumped up to be part of
Speaker 20: this campaign or even to be.
Speaker 11: You know, asked to join the stand up strike, you know.
Speaker 20: I know that every week when there was the live
Speaker 20: updates and the announcement of a potential plant being struck,
Speaker 20: you know, people were on the edge of their seats,
Speaker 20: like I said, going to be us or you know whatever,
Speaker 20: And many members were kind of disappointed when they found
Speaker 20: out it wasn't them. And that just shows to you know,
Speaker 20: their you know, excitement about this and just wanting to
Speaker 20: be part of this historic moment, the first time that
Speaker 20: having all Big three a plant or someone from all
Speaker 20: Big three on strike at the same time, you know.
Speaker 20: And there were you know, obviously a lot of folks
Speaker 20: who were you know, naysayers or didn't agree with the strategy.
Speaker 20: I mean not just I mean the membership, but you know,
Speaker 20: mainstream media or just everybody who wanted to have their
Speaker 20: put their two cents in, right, But at the end,
Speaker 20: I think most of us have to agree that it
Speaker 20: was brilliant.
Speaker 11: The strategy worked, and.
Speaker 20: We would not have seen these gains if you know,
Speaker 20: it went another way. Like Nick said, you know, this
Speaker 20: is the most the highest wage increases we've seen in
Speaker 20: the last twenty two years combined.
Speaker 11: That's going to be life changing. For all of us.
Speaker 20: I think, you know, especially these newer temp workers are
Speaker 20: going to get even bigger wage increases right off the bat,
Speaker 20: you know, just to be able to say, like, you know,
Speaker 20: I want to work here, and I want to stay
Speaker 20: here because now I have a fair living wage. I'm
Speaker 20: not just gonna work a few months or years and
Speaker 20: then go somewhere else where I can potentially make more
Speaker 20: money or get better benefits.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 13: One of the.
Speaker 20: Important things, or few of the important things for me,
Speaker 20: was the that's still the just transition to electric vehicles,
Speaker 20: right which you know, we we have won some gains there,
Speaker 20: but I have said, you know, it's like we have
Speaker 20: our foot in the door when it comes to those plants,
Speaker 20: you know, which they said was impossible before, right that
Speaker 20: we wouldn't be able to to get that right off
Speaker 20: the bat.
Speaker 11: So that's great.
Speaker 20: And then also even though I worked for Ford now,
Speaker 20: but I used to work at Belvedere Assembly plant, and
Speaker 20: you know, just the fact that they are going to
Speaker 20: reopen the plant and build new vehicles and a new
Speaker 20: battery plant nearby and a parts distribution center that's going
Speaker 20: to be beneficial to the community of Belvidere, you know,
Speaker 20: I grew up on the southeast side of Chicago, and
Speaker 20: I seen when the steel mills closed and when they
Speaker 20: all left, and how it just devastated our community. And
Speaker 20: you know, when I moved to Belvidere, is coming from
Speaker 20: big city to a small city. I was kind of like,
Speaker 20: where am I going in rural Illinos. You know, on
Speaker 20: one side of the street, you see some Trump posters,
Speaker 20: and then the other side, you know there's a Mexican
Speaker 20: migrant farm worker making she shut on in his backyard.
Speaker 20: You know, there's a huge Latino community in Belvidere, just
Speaker 20: a lot of working families and for for if Belvidere
Speaker 20: were to have been shut down, you know that that
Speaker 20: would have really just been awful for the small town.
Speaker 11: And I'm just glad to see that it can still
Speaker 11: be a thriving community.
Speaker 8: Yeah. No, I think I think it's really huge. And
Speaker 8: I want us to circle back to that in a second,
Speaker 8: because I mean, for breaking points, viewers and listeners, if
Speaker 8: you guys, remember another UAW member and auto worker that
Speaker 8: I interviewed on this segment during the strike was Austin Gore,
Speaker 8: who was striking in Toledo, Ohio after he had to
Speaker 8: you know, leave his family momentarily when Belvidere, the Belvidere
Speaker 8: plant got shuttered, and you know, he described like how
Speaker 8: devastating that was to him, him to his family. And
Speaker 8: this is the situation that so many auto workers have
Speaker 8: been put in for so many years. And so the
Speaker 8: fact that we that the UAW has fought to turn
Speaker 8: the tide on those plant closures to have more of
Speaker 8: a direct say in managerial and business decisions at the
Speaker 8: company level is huge. I want to like circle back
Speaker 8: to that in the next round of questions, but I
Speaker 8: wanted to just sort of follow up on what you
Speaker 8: guys were talking about regarding to strike itself. Are there
Speaker 8: any like particular moments or memories that really stand out
Speaker 8: to you that you want to share with folks like Marcia.
Speaker 8: It could be the moment that you heard your plant
Speaker 8: was one of the ones called to stand up right,
Speaker 8: or it could be a moment that you y'all experienced
Speaker 8: on the picket line itself. Like I guess, like looking
Speaker 8: back now that this intense struggle, you know is well,
Speaker 8: the struggle is never over, right, but this contract fight
Speaker 8: has concluded, and y'all are kind of looking ahead. Are
Speaker 8: there any sort of moments from the strike itself that
Speaker 8: you want to share with folks or that that stick
Speaker 8: out in your memory.
Speaker 9: For for me, like my membership. We were we were
Speaker 9: laid off about three three working days after Winsville went down,
Speaker 9: three or four, I can't remember. And I had been
Speaker 9: trying to you know, I got I got two small
Speaker 9: kids at home, and my wife still works, so we
Speaker 9: were trying to arrange our schedules so we could actually
Speaker 9: go out to Wentsville, which is about three to four
Speaker 9: hours away. It's on the other side of the state
Speaker 9: from from where my locals at. So we loaded up
Speaker 9: the truck, we took our kids out, my kids out
Speaker 9: there three and uh one. So so just to give
Speaker 9: you guys an idea of what that car car ride
Speaker 9: was like, we get there, you know, the kids are
Speaker 9: finally excited to get out of the car, and you
Speaker 9: know everyone at Wentzville two two five, oh, they're given
Speaker 9: high fives, They're excited we're there, and like, it was
Speaker 9: just really heartwarming for me to to not only be
Speaker 9: accepted fully on you know another locals pick a line,
Speaker 9: but to also have like a village in a sense,
Speaker 9: you know, all all of your brothers and sisters, all
Speaker 9: of your union siblings are just welcoming you. And they're
Speaker 9: not just welcoming you as a member, they're welcoming your
Speaker 9: entire family, you know, offering you snacks, you guys, need
Speaker 9: any drinks, you guys, and like they're the one they're
Speaker 9: the ones out on.
Speaker 8: Strike, you know.
Speaker 9: So, so it was just really heartwarming when we when
Speaker 9: we finally found the time to go over to Wentsville,
Speaker 9: and how welcoming they all are, And it really gives
Speaker 9: you the sense of camaraderie and and how deep that
Speaker 9: bond goes because here are perfectly fine strangers and all
Speaker 9: they know is you're from the other side of the
Speaker 9: state and you're coming to show support, and they're doing
Speaker 9: like whatever they can can offer you, from conversations to snacks.
Speaker 9: I mean we we literally had people bringing up bags
Speaker 9: of chips to our kids, like, hey, you guys want
Speaker 9: some cheetahs And you know, my kids are loving it.
Speaker 9: So it was just it was fantastic. And I really
Speaker 9: think that that's probably one of the biggest takeaways I'll
Speaker 9: take away from this strike, is just how how deep
Speaker 9: that union bond is and how much it means to
Speaker 9: me and I imagine all of us.
Speaker 11: For me, it was a few things. Obviously.
Speaker 20: First, you know, I was sitting in my living room
Speaker 20: watching the live update from Sean Fain on Friday and
Speaker 20: I heard Chicago Assembly Plant and I will spit out
Speaker 20: my coffee.
Speaker 11: I did scream. I think I jumped up. There was
Speaker 11: nobody in my house but me.
Speaker 20: And immediately got ready to go go to work basically
Speaker 20: at the Union hall, even though it was my day off, right,
Speaker 20: but I knew, as you know, an involved member in
Speaker 20: my union, I.
Speaker 11: Have to do something.
Speaker 20: I have to go, even if it's just making signs
Speaker 20: or you know, trying to.
Speaker 11: Like tell people what's going to happen the next few days.
Speaker 20: Because obviously the first day was very chaotic and we
Speaker 20: didn't have everything set up yet to sign folks up
Speaker 20: for strike benefits. So it was just exciting and exciting
Speaker 20: moment and time to be there. Another emunctious uh that
Speaker 20: stands out is we had a big rally at the
Speaker 20: whole October seventh, where labor leaders and elected.
Speaker 11: Officials came out.
Speaker 20: You know, it was huge, was the most crowded I've
Speaker 20: seen our hall, Like it was standing roomontely. People were
Speaker 20: overflowing on the parking lot, and like one of our
Speaker 20: local not my aldermen, but an alderman from Pilsen in
Speaker 20: Chicago came out and he's texted me like, I can't
Speaker 20: get inside. I'm like sorry, it's to capacity, you know. Like,
Speaker 20: but they were able to watch the rally outside where
Speaker 20: you know, they had great speeches and all that. But
Speaker 20: and and also to see like you know, Seawan Feyn
Speaker 20: come out to every picket site and talk to members
Speaker 20: and you know, just be in involved in in our
Speaker 20: strike too, you know, because we've seen a lot of
Speaker 20: coverage of you know, everyone going around to the Michigan
Speaker 20: plants and all that. So that was that was really
Speaker 20: significant for a lot of people just to see to
Speaker 20: see that happen, which you know, I don't think that's
Speaker 20: happened before, but mainly too, just the the camaraderie and
Speaker 20: the picket lines, right, you know, just for me first
Speaker 20: time being on strike, but being in Chicago, there's always
Speaker 20: a strike somewhere right Chicago teachers Union, hotel workers, and
Speaker 20: you know, I've supported them, and it was just great
Speaker 20: to see all of them come out to support us
Speaker 20: as well. You know, we had so much support from
Speaker 20: other labor unions, the local community. I mean, tons of
Speaker 20: small businesses just dropping off food and supplies, and you know,
Speaker 20: we made a list so that we remember these places
Speaker 20: so we go back and you know, we support them,
Speaker 20: especially the ones near the plant because I live and
Speaker 20: work near the plant, so some of these businesses are
Speaker 20: you know, ones I frequent, and I just want to
Speaker 20: make sure that they're recognized and supported because I know
Speaker 20: they were struggling when you know, a most five thousand
Speaker 20: of us walked out. You know, nobody was ordering pizza
Speaker 20: every day or lunch, you know, but they sure did
Speaker 20: come out and bring us free food. So that was
Speaker 20: amazing to see. And just having conversations on the picket
Speaker 20: line with people and I've never met or people that
Speaker 20: I've said hi to but never really talked to. You know,
Speaker 20: it was a great moment to bond and share experiences
Speaker 20: and just you know, make sure that everyone is you know,
Speaker 20: educated and involved and keep this momentum going because who knows,
Speaker 20: you know, what we're going to do in four and
Speaker 20: a half years.
Speaker 8: Right, Yeah, And I like while I was listening to
Speaker 8: you both talk, I was sort of reflecting on how
Speaker 8: I would answer that same question right as someone over
Speaker 8: here in Baltimore in the media who's been talking to
Speaker 8: y'all throughout this whole saga, and well, before you know,
Speaker 8: I think that that obviously is my memory from this
Speaker 8: strike was, you know, first connecting with Nick, interviewing him
Speaker 8: for breaking points, then doing a podcast with you guys, Nick,
Speaker 8: Marcy and Taurus, who was another UAW member, Then having
Speaker 8: like Marcy on a live stream at the Real News
Speaker 8: Network with a sag AFTRA member who was on strike,
Speaker 8: and hearing y'all talk about how your struggles were more
Speaker 8: connected than they may appear in you know, then they
Speaker 8: may initially appear. And that was just such a beautiful
Speaker 8: moment of solidarity. That I had the privilege of seeing
Speaker 8: moments like those by talking to workers like yourselves throughout
Speaker 8: this saga and seeing the solidarity y'all were bringing to
Speaker 8: other strikes and struggles that were either going on at
Speaker 8: the time or are still going on as we record
Speaker 8: this on Saturday, November eighteenth. You know, that was really
Speaker 8: significant for me and really beautiful to see. Also, I
Speaker 8: just got to say, you know, again, as I've mentioned
Speaker 8: on many interviews up until now, having interviewed so many
Speaker 8: striking GM workers are laid off GM workers from the
Speaker 8: twenty eighteen layoffs and the twenty nineteen strike, before the
Speaker 8: era of Sean Fain and this new reform movement within
Speaker 8: the UAW, before y'all you know, like voted to have
Speaker 8: direct democracy in your union elections, which led the union
Speaker 8: to elect Seawan Fain right before all of that, just
Speaker 8: talking to workers in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen and
Speaker 8: hearing how dissatisfied and betrayed they felt by their unions,
Speaker 8: by the company, and just how hopeless things felt to
Speaker 8: see for us to go from that to seeing Sean
Speaker 8: Fain wearing an eat the Rich shirt talking to the
Speaker 8: members in the country about how some of the ev
Speaker 8: plants were going to be brought under the Master Agreement,
Speaker 8: Like that is a seismic shift in the movement, in
Speaker 8: the politics, the class politics of this country. They you
Speaker 8: all made happen, and so like that's where I want
Speaker 8: us to conclude in terms of like thinking about this
Speaker 8: strike in terms of the big picture and the long
Speaker 8: trajectory of the UAW, the auto industry, and the labor movement,
Speaker 8: and where this strike kind of fits into that. But
Speaker 8: I guess really quick before we get there. I just
Speaker 8: wanted to ask for people watching and listening to this,
Speaker 8: if you could say a little bit about the ratification votes,
Speaker 8: like the results of the strike, right, and and people
Speaker 8: were hearing, you know, news reports that some locals voted
Speaker 8: the TA down whether they were in general Motors Ford
Speaker 8: Stlantis right, you know, you had three big three auto makers,
Speaker 8: different kind of groups voting on those contracts. Like, I
Speaker 8: just wanted to ask if you could a just sort
Speaker 8: of clarify for folks watching, like what the results do
Speaker 8: mean and do not mean? Like, you know, like what
Speaker 8: sort of mis conceptions do you think folks have as
Speaker 8: they're trying to parse the results of these the contracts
Speaker 8: that resulted from this strike and the votes from the
Speaker 8: membership on those contracts. And and do you feel yourselves
Speaker 8: from where you sit, that that this strike has brought
Speaker 8: the union closer together or changed things within the UAW itself.
Speaker 9: So I'm one of the people, like I don't I
Speaker 9: don't really hide what I what I say or do.
Speaker 9: I voted yes on this contract. This was the first
Speaker 9: contract I've ever voted yes on. I think thought it
Speaker 9: was an amazing contract. That being said, my local was
Speaker 9: within four votes of it being voted up or down.
Speaker 9: So's there's a lot of people that felt like, you know,
Speaker 9: we could have stayed out, we could have won more.
Speaker 9: There's people that aren't happy with like the amount of
Speaker 9: benefits that we won for the retirees, you know, we
Speaker 9: won their first race since I believe it was two
Speaker 9: thousand and two, and their pensions. There's some people that
Speaker 9: wanted a bigger up from like there was just there's
Speaker 9: some things that people wanted to see they didn't see.
Speaker 9: But for me, it was about like looking at how
Speaker 9: how life changing this was going to be as a
Speaker 9: tier two person, I took a decade to get to
Speaker 9: top pay and knowing that that's never gonna happen again
Speaker 9: for anybody coming in after me. Like I said in
Speaker 9: a previous interview, this this this strike was about the
Speaker 9: next generation. While doing everything we can for the current
Speaker 9: and actives, you know, the next people deserve to have
Speaker 9: a better chance that that we got. What you're seeing
Speaker 9: with the results is democracy in action. I wouldn't have
Speaker 9: it any other way. Dissident is dissidents is important and
Speaker 9: in vital to democracy. People have the right to vote
Speaker 9: now and then that's what you're seeing with the results.
Speaker 9: But with democracy, majority does rule, and that's what you're
Speaker 9: seeing play out. I think the strike really did bring
Speaker 9: a lot of people together. I mean you saw offlying squadrons,
Speaker 9: especially up in Detroit, going out to different picket lines.
Speaker 9: It didn't matter if they're Affordstlantis or GM. You know,
Speaker 9: there were people out there driving across the across the country,
Speaker 9: across states.
Speaker 8: Man. This was really.
Speaker 9: I mean, you said, it's there's no other way to
Speaker 9: say it. It's a seismic shift. And with that, you
Speaker 9: know there's gonna be there's gonna be a lot of
Speaker 9: people that aren't necessarily willing to or aren't ready to
Speaker 9: trust the new leadership. And you know that's that's to
Speaker 9: be expected. You know, we're we're coming off a corruption
Speaker 9: scandal that I mean, a lot of people were embarrassed
Speaker 9: to wear their UAW shirts in public, a lot of
Speaker 9: people burn their UAW shirts. I mean, it was it
Speaker 9: was that bad. Morale was that low. You don't bounce
Speaker 9: back from that instantly. I think Sean Fain and the
Speaker 9: members United and this entire executive board is doing a
Speaker 9: hell of a good job with the transparency being open,
Speaker 9: being honest with the membership. And I think that's where
Speaker 9: it where it starts, and where we got to go
Speaker 9: to win some of these major demands back, like getting
Speaker 9: defined pensions back, getting better raises for retiree retiree healthcare.
Speaker 9: We have got to unionize the transplants. So if you
Speaker 9: are a Toyota worker, if you're a super worker, if
Speaker 9: you're Honda, if you're Hyundai, if you are an auto
Speaker 9: worker in the United States of America, you need to
Speaker 9: be reaching out to the UAW and you need to
Speaker 9: be organizing because your management is afraid of you guys
Speaker 9: having the power to fight back like we did. That's
Speaker 9: why you're already seeing Honda fight back in internal emails
Speaker 9: warning the workers about unionizing. So that's where we got
Speaker 9: to go next as a union, in my opinion, in
Speaker 9: the in my sector, because keep in mind, the UAW
Speaker 9: is bigger than just autoworkers.
Speaker 11: So yeah, I mean this, who could have predicted all
Speaker 11: of this?
Speaker 20: And I think the you know, the people were asking
Speaker 20: you this so much, like people that were supporting us,
Speaker 20: Like I'm surprised it was so close, Like I thought
Speaker 20: it would pass across the board. And you know, I
Speaker 20: I kind of assumed for a ford at least that
Speaker 20: it would it would pass, and but it would be
Speaker 20: not a landslide, you know, for many reasons. You know,
Speaker 20: some folks were still holding out on retirement, healthcare right
Speaker 20: or pensions like Nick said, you know, work better, work
Speaker 20: life balance, which were all things.
Speaker 11: That you know, we thought we could win.
Speaker 20: I mean, obviously you can win everything in one contract,
Speaker 20: but I attribute that to you know, our elected, newly
Speaker 20: elected leadership getting everybody so fired up that we thought
Speaker 20: we could.
Speaker 11: Win it all.
Speaker 20: Right, damn it, Like we're out here, we might as
Speaker 20: well stay out here until we win it all. So
Speaker 20: that's just you know, like exciting, right to see that
Speaker 20: much involvement and you know, interest in what's going on
Speaker 20: in our union for the first time in many years, right,
Speaker 20: So just you know, getting everyone on board and with
Speaker 20: our demands and fired up, and hopefully that will continue,
Speaker 20: you know, in this next organizing drive in the next
Speaker 20: few years, you know, so that we can keep fighting
Speaker 20: for these things that we didn't get in this contract,
Speaker 20: you know, and it definitely changed you know, many many
Speaker 20: workers attitudes towards just you know, our whole campaign across
Speaker 20: the country and getting support from from non union workers,
Speaker 20: you know, like like Nick said, we we got to
Speaker 20: reach out to all these non union shops and they've
Speaker 20: been reaching out to the U a W already to join,
Speaker 20: and that's that's going to be great and huge. We
Speaker 20: just you know, increase our our membership, right, because that's
Speaker 20: that's how we fight, is with with our labor and
Speaker 20: I say organize the world, right because uh, that's what
Speaker 20: it's going to take to to you know, defeat the
Speaker 20: ruling class and to get what we deserve.
Speaker 11: So yeah, we got a.
Speaker 20: Little lot of work ahead of us, you know, but
Speaker 20: I think it's also important to take a break and
Speaker 20: take a pause when you need it. You know, it's
Speaker 20: important to so that we stay you know, in this fight,
Speaker 20: that we have the energy and because it's you know,
Speaker 20: it's not a marathon or right, it's a it's not
Speaker 20: a sprint, that's a marathon.
Speaker 13: Right.
Speaker 11: I've heard that said before.
Speaker 20: So we got our work cut out for us, but
Speaker 20: it's going to be it's an exciting time for the
Speaker 20: labor movement and I'm just glad to be part of
Speaker 20: this this fight.
Speaker 8: Heh. Yeah, it's essair And like, you know, I think
Speaker 8: that that's beautifully put right. I mean, this is this
Speaker 8: is kind of the message I preached to anyone and
Speaker 8: everyone who is rolling up their sleeves right now and saying, look,
Speaker 8: the world's in a dire state. Uh, it's got to
Speaker 8: be us to fix it. And we got to do
Speaker 8: whatever we can wherever we are, whether we're talking about
Speaker 8: the destruction of our shared planet, the destruction of our
Speaker 8: fellow humans in endless war, or the destruction of our
Speaker 8: society by you know this, this sort of vampiric rigged
Speaker 8: economy that is screwing over working people for the benefit
Speaker 8: of a you know few rich executives and shareholders. Right,
Speaker 8: we got to be the ones to fight back against this,
Speaker 8: and it's a life's work. We may not see the
Speaker 8: culmination of it, we may not get to the Promised
Speaker 8: Land ourselves. But like you all said, and like you
Speaker 8: and your union siblings, we're fighting for like we're fighting
Speaker 8: for the next generation. We're fighting for our kids, like
Speaker 8: we're fighting as hard as we can now for the
Speaker 8: folks who are here now. But we're also committing ourselves
Speaker 8: to a fight that goes well beyond us, and that
Speaker 8: is going to be you know, like carried on by
Speaker 8: the generations that come after, and so we got to
Speaker 8: dig in deep. You know, it's not going to be
Speaker 8: an easy, you know, victory. It's not going to come
Speaker 8: you know, like in the next year or two. It's
Speaker 8: a life's work. And I want to sort of end
Speaker 8: there and sort of take the this historic you a
Speaker 8: stand up strike again the first time in the uaw's
Speaker 8: history where y'all struck at each of the big three
Speaker 8: automakers at the same time, even if you didn't have
Speaker 8: every worker at those companies go on strike at the
Speaker 8: same time. And you know, like there's just so much
Speaker 8: kind of historical context that we've given over the course
Speaker 8: of the past couple months in our different interviews. We
Speaker 8: can't go through all that now, but just again, I
Speaker 8: want to really like stress to folks go back watch
Speaker 8: and listen to those interviews. Think about this contract fight,
Speaker 8: not just in like the kind of recent context of
Speaker 8: the UAW corruption scandals, the post bankruptcy, the post two
Speaker 8: thousand and eight shenanigans, although that's really crucial, right, but
Speaker 8: also like in the broader sweep of things, right in
Speaker 8: the larger trajectory, right, we've talked about the auto industry
Speaker 8: as a symbol of like de industrialization in the United States,
Speaker 8: manufacture going away and those sort of good union jobs
Speaker 8: also going away. Well, the pictures a little more complicated
Speaker 8: than that, because manufactured auto manufacturing has not gone away
Speaker 8: in the United States. What has happened is that the
Speaker 8: industry has been deunionized. And the companies that Nick mentioned,
Speaker 8: companies like Nissan, Hyundai, Honda, Tesla, right, I mean, like,
Speaker 8: these are the companies that are replacing those you know,
Speaker 8: good union jobs at in American auto manufacturing with non
Speaker 8: union jobs. And so the fact that the UAW has
Speaker 8: waged this incredible struggle at the big three auto makers,
Speaker 8: and that that struggle is already spooking companies like Toyota
Speaker 8: to give raises to their workers, and it's scaring the
Speaker 8: living shit out of Tesla and Elon Musk that an
Speaker 8: organizing committee is being formed out in California. Like that's
Speaker 8: the ripple effect of this struggle. But the struggle itself
Speaker 8: is against this this kind of larger shift in the
Speaker 8: economy that has pushed workers to work for work longer,
Speaker 8: for less while you know, like and have fewer workers
Speaker 8: doing more work and have like more chances for workers
Speaker 8: to get trapped in low wage work or lower tier
Speaker 8: employment with no possibility for advancement, no possibility for retirement,
Speaker 8: so on and so forth, all while the companies that
Speaker 8: employ us and their shareholders are raking in record profits.
Speaker 8: And so the fact that you know, that's been such
Speaker 8: a long sort of trajectory that American workers have experienced
Speaker 8: for decades, and that the auto industry and its workers
Speaker 8: like yourselves have experienced very acutely. But also like this,
Speaker 8: this is why I want to stress that, like the
Speaker 8: fact that y'all are kind of turning back the clo
Speaker 8: a bit, Like the fact that you reached back into
Speaker 8: time and you said to your employers, like, hey, we
Speaker 8: gave up cost of living adjustments for our pay during
Speaker 8: the financial crash that affected the world, when you guys
Speaker 8: were on life support, when our employers were, you know,
Speaker 8: on the brink of collapse. We opened up our contracts
Speaker 8: and gave a lot of concessions, and we were promised
Speaker 8: we would get those concessions back when these companies were
Speaker 8: profitable again. And of course that didn't happen, and it
Speaker 8: was kind of just taken for granted that once you
Speaker 8: give something up like that, in a contract, you're never
Speaker 8: getting it back. But you, guys, changed that paradigm. You
Speaker 8: went back and you got it right. And you mentioned
Speaker 8: the reopening of the Belvedere plant, again turning back the
Speaker 8: clock and saying to the company, to the employer class,
Speaker 8: to the capitalist class, you do not have soul sovereign,
Speaker 8: unchecked right to determine what happens with your business. Workers
Speaker 8: get us say too. People get to say too, like
Speaker 8: we get to say and whether or not this plant
Speaker 8: closes and this community gets destroyed, that is significant. I
Speaker 8: wanted to just sort of toss that back to you
Speaker 8: guys and ask, taking in the broad sweep of history,
Speaker 8: the larger trajectory of the American labor movement and the
Speaker 8: fight to unrig this rigged economy, what do you want
Speaker 8: to communicate to folks watching and listening about the significance
Speaker 8: of this strike and what happens next? Like, where do
Speaker 8: we go from here? What should people have their eyes
Speaker 8: on moving forward from this historic struggle?
Speaker 9: You know, I think in many ways, between the Teamsters
Speaker 9: and the UAW and on a lot of unions before
Speaker 9: us too. You're seeing since like twenty ten, unions are
Speaker 9: stepping up and they're fighting back and it's getting bigger
Speaker 9: and bigger every single year.
Speaker 8: Here.
Speaker 9: The historical I mean, you can't it's almost hard to
Speaker 9: even put into words what we've accomplished here, especially like
Speaker 9: if you look at stillanis they have the right to
Speaker 9: strike over investments and uh, I mean that that's that's
Speaker 9: that's huge. That was seen as a management prerogative, something
Speaker 9: that they have soul say over. So the fact that
Speaker 9: we were able to get that into our contract was
Speaker 9: was huge. And and where we go from there to
Speaker 9: fix this economy is is we got to unionize. If
Speaker 9: you want to organize, you know, don't don't wait for
Speaker 9: a union to reach out for you. Start talking to
Speaker 9: your coworkers. You guys can form that organizing committee and
Speaker 9: then you can contact unions and you can say, hey,
Speaker 9: we got this organizing committee and uh, we want to unionize.
Speaker 9: You know, we've already been We've already got the groundwork.
Speaker 9: And that's what it's gonna take. It's gonna take the
Speaker 9: working class of this nation to start organizing themselves, start
Speaker 9: talking to each other, start talking to their co workers
Speaker 9: and not being afraid of all the union anti union
Speaker 9: propaganda and the union busting firms that are going to
Speaker 9: come in. You know, these guys have one sole goal,
Speaker 9: and that goal they would rather spend millions on these
Speaker 9: anti union corporations to beat you guys down than have
Speaker 9: you guys come together and beat management down. They want
Speaker 9: that total control over their workplace. And that's what we
Speaker 9: need to see in this nation, is we need to
Speaker 9: see workers starting to take the initiative talking to their
Speaker 9: co workers, forming those organizing committees, reaching out to unions
Speaker 9: and organizing because labor isn't this monolithic institution. Labor is workers.
Speaker 9: You are your union, and that's what I really think
Speaker 9: is going to propel our labor struggle to the next
Speaker 9: level and is what this nation desperately needs to fix
Speaker 9: this rigged economy that we're facing.
Speaker 20: Yeah, I just it to go back to talking a
Speaker 20: bit about the strike strategy, because you know, like you
Speaker 20: were saying, some folks were saying, oh, we should have
Speaker 20: all gone on strike, same time.
Speaker 11: Whatever.
Speaker 20: But you know, just seeing I think for the first time,
Speaker 20: like these companies, for the first time, we had them
Speaker 20: pitted against each other, right, trying to scramble for who's
Speaker 20: gonna come out with a better offer. So they don't
Speaker 20: have another plant going on strike, you know, like it
Speaker 20: seemed like they were running around.
Speaker 11: Like chickens with their heads cut off for a minute,
Speaker 11: you know.
Speaker 20: And usually that's what they want us to do, right,
Speaker 20: They want us to take the scraps and fight each
Speaker 20: other or be against each other, union versus non union,
Speaker 20: America versus the world, you know, and that's just you know,
Speaker 20: got to stop, right. We need to have solidarity, international solidarity,
Speaker 20: because that's how these companies work, right, They're already on
Speaker 20: a global economy, So we need to think and fight
Speaker 20: in the same way, you know.
Speaker 11: And where do we go from here? Wow, that's that's
Speaker 11: a big loaded question.
Speaker 20: And you know, me as an environmental activist, you know,
Speaker 20: we're fighting uh you know, these corporate toxic polluters you
Speaker 20: know that are contributing to climate change, you know, and
Speaker 20: that's that's a workers rights issue too.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 20: We were just at a demonstration against the American Petroleum Institute,
Speaker 20: you know, huge lobbying organization.
Speaker 11: That supports big oil.
Speaker 20: And you know, what good is a job if we
Speaker 20: don't have a planet to work on, right, And you know,
Speaker 20: we need to keep standing up against the military industrial complex,
Speaker 20: you know, our tax dollars are going to wars and
Speaker 20: the genocide of people across the world.
Speaker 11: And you know that's not right.
Speaker 20: You know, we we They can't pay for payoff student
Speaker 20: debt or universal health care, but they have billions of
Speaker 20: dollars to fund these wars, you know, So just you know,
Speaker 20: whatever you're passionate about, get involved, join a union and
Speaker 20: fight against the one percent and the ruling class.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, well, Nick, Marcy, I cannot thank you both
Speaker 8: enough for joining us again on Breaking Points. I can't
Speaker 8: thank y'all enough for letting me annoy you and bug
Speaker 8: you for months saying hey, can we do another interview
Speaker 8: for this thing, for this thing like It's just been
Speaker 8: a real pleasure and honor to be in conversation with
Speaker 8: you throughout this struggle. Now, please, for the love of
Speaker 8: God to you and your fellow Union siblings, go get
Speaker 8: some rests.
Speaker 11: Thanks brother, thank you anytime.
Speaker 8: Thank you for watching this segment with Breaking Points, and
Speaker 8: be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, the Real
Speaker 8: News Network with links in the description of this video.
Speaker 8: See you soon for the next edition of the Art
Speaker 8: of Class War. Take care of yourselves, take care of
Speaker 8: each other. Solidarity Forever