Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And this week alone, President Biden has
Speaker 1: canceled over one hundred and fifty thousand students debt.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Rise's Mary pat Hector talks to us about gen Z
Speaker 1: getting out to vote and organizing. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: doctor Ouch Blackstock about her new book, Legacy of Black Physicians,
Speaker 1: Reckoning with Racism and Medicine. But first we have legendary
Speaker 1: campaign manager and the author of the Conspiracy to End
Speaker 1: America Five Ways My old party is driving our democracy
Speaker 1: to autocracy, The Lincoln Project's owned Stuart Stephens. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: My buddy, Stuart Stephens.
Speaker 3: Nys for asking me to the party. Great to be here.
Speaker 2: I was so excited to talk to you because.
Speaker 1: Last night I was on the eleventh Hour and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in the makeup chair and I'm listening to Lawrence's
Speaker 1: monologue and I don't know You're in Sweden and you
Speaker 1: can't get MSNBC in Sweden, so you may not have
Speaker 1: heard it. But this week's Big Brainworms Fiasco has featured
Speaker 1: Ezracline last week said that even though he loves Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: that Democrats should kick Joe Biden to the curb. I
Speaker 1: have talked to everyone I know off the ledge. Everyone
Speaker 1: I know has then come to me and said, talk
Speaker 1: me off the ledge, and I've said, you can't kick
Speaker 1: Joe Biden to the curb. But anyway, one of the
Speaker 1: brilliant things that Lawrence did last night was he explained
Speaker 1: just how destructive and how much a broker convention Besides
Speaker 1: the fact that I think Biden is a great president,
Speaker 1: besides the fact that I think Biden is going to
Speaker 1: win maybe by more than a lot of people, besides
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, my own personal feelings, the
Speaker 1: idea of this is so completely insane. And Lawrence did
Speaker 1: a really great historical analysis of what happens during a
Speaker 1: broker convention and just how destructive it is. So talk
Speaker 1: us through this media mailstorm created by and for media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm fescinated by broker conventions. When I was in
Speaker 3: film school, I actually wrote a screenplay, shockingly, shockingly, this
Speaker 3: was never produced about the nineteen twenty four Democratic Convention
Speaker 3: with Al Smith, which went to like thirty six ballots.
Speaker 3: You can imagine how the market was just dying to hear.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: Great, finally a film about the thirty six ballots. I
Speaker 3: don't understand this about Democrats, right, and I say that
Speaker 3: with great love and affection, because Democrats are the only
Speaker 3: pro democracy party left in America. Why there's any reluctance
Speaker 3: to get behind their guy? You know? To me, this
Speaker 3: is just a variation of a couple of years ago
Speaker 3: when Biden gave what turned out to be a great
Speaker 3: State of the Union address and Democrats gave not one,
Speaker 3: but two alternatives. I took an alternative to their own guy.
Speaker 3: I think what's really lost here is the fact that,
Speaker 3: you know, Biden has an extraordinarily young administration. You know,
Speaker 3: he has passed the church. Look at the people who
Speaker 3: are running the country now compared to who Trump picked,
Speaker 3: you know, compare Secretary of States. You know, he didn't
Speaker 3: get a guy in the sixties was running Exxon. He
Speaker 3: got a young, brilliant guy. And I think that's across
Speaker 3: the board. I really think that Biden is historically great
Speaker 3: president domestically and abroad. I find the fact that Democrats
Speaker 3: are unhappy with him where people are unhappy with him
Speaker 3: I find that very normal. I mean Americans won't choices,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, if he's paid somebody, would you
Speaker 3: like the choice? No one says well no, or don't.
Speaker 2: Would you speak a little bit about that?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like there's a lot of historical president
Speaker 1: for people being a little irritated with their president.
Speaker 3: How about that? Another point is in June of nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two, Bill Clinton was running third, not second, third,
Speaker 3: famously on the cover of Time magazine and that X
Speaker 3: ray photo of why can't we Trust Bill Clinton? And
Speaker 3: you know, I seem to remember that they played Tales
Speaker 3: of the Chief, you know, the next year when he
Speaker 3: was walking into the room. There is something that is
Speaker 3: very American about wanting choices. There's not a lot of
Speaker 3: restaurants in Germany or France or Sweden that have like
Speaker 3: cheesecake factory long menus. You don't walk into the McDonald
Speaker 3: as they go, well let's sell hear what we're serving today.
Speaker 3: We got two things. They're really good. It's all about
Speaker 3: options and how do they sell cars. They never said, well,
Speaker 3: you know, are just as good as it was last year.
Speaker 3: I promise you. You know, there always has to be
Speaker 3: something new. But I think that the numbers of Biden's
Speaker 3: approval are flawed comparing it to historical precedents. So you have,
Speaker 3: what over fifty percent of the other party believes that
Speaker 3: Joe Biden is an illegal president. So think about that.
Speaker 2: Which is insane.
Speaker 1: In a normal world, this would not be happening. And
Speaker 1: it happened because no body ever stood up to Trump.
Speaker 3: Because the Republican Party went along with it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: all they had to do was have their com shop
Speaker 3: put out a statement congratulating the president.
Speaker 2: Of the leg That's all they would have to do.
Speaker 3: In the history of defending democracy. That's a pretty low bar.
Speaker 3: No one was asking him to go charge of beach
Speaker 3: or take a machine gun nest. They just have their
Speaker 3: commshop congratulate the president like the United States, and you
Speaker 3: know only a couple of them did. But you know,
Speaker 3: once you believe that the president is illegal, what in
Speaker 3: the world can you tell somebody to make them like
Speaker 3: that president? Okay, look, I know he stole the light
Speaker 3: offf but how about that Infrastructure Act. Those people are lost,
Speaker 3: and I think that they affect those numbers. If I
Speaker 3: was polling here, I would ever screen that says, do
Speaker 3: you believe he's legally elect your president. He said no,
Speaker 3: say thanks very much and just continue the conversation.
Speaker 1: And those are the mag of faithfulls, and that crew
Speaker 1: is not going to be won by anyone.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: I saw some very interesting numbers, I thought the other
Speaker 3: day out of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where Biden's approval
Speaker 3: was thirty eight and he was winning by nine points.
Speaker 3: And I think that that's where we're going to start
Speaker 3: to see a lot of that. I actually think that
Speaker 3: there is a very good chance that this could be
Speaker 3: like nineteen eighty in reverse for the incumbent, you know,
Speaker 3: a tight race to the middle of October and then
Speaker 3: the bottom really falls out, you know. I think there's
Speaker 3: an element to Donald Trump being on trial and four
Speaker 3: different jurisdictions that is sort of like a guy walking
Speaker 3: around with a paper bag full of water. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's going to leak, but if it goes, it's
Speaker 3: going to go the conventional wisdom of Biden. It's going
Speaker 3: to come down to four hundred thousand people in a
Speaker 3: couple of states, and usually the conventional wisdom is right.
Speaker 3: But if I was placing a bed on it, I
Speaker 3: would bet that Biden is going to win by a
Speaker 3: substantially larger margin. Media lest I.
Speaker 2: Happen to agree with you.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I continue to be
Speaker 1: not even struck by, but shocked by is the level
Speaker 1: of unforced errors that this Republican party keeps making. And
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about Alabama, and if so. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: the biggest hospital in Alabama, a state that has really
Speaker 1: had trouble attracting medical talent. I think that's the understatement
Speaker 1: of the year, right, But they have had some problems,
Speaker 1: you know, attracting guynecologists for obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: Now they shut down IVF in this.
Speaker 1: Biggest hospital in Alabama because they're worried about being prosecuted
Speaker 1: because embryos are people in the state of Alabama. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but like a Pennsylvania suburban voter who lives on the
Speaker 1: mainline and wants lower taxes is about to find out
Speaker 1: that she can't do IVF, listen.
Speaker 3: I think that it is just a pattern that there
Speaker 3: are two ways to look at what was going to
Speaker 3: happen when Republicans went down this Trump path. Either they
Speaker 3: were going to modulate themselves and decide that they were
Speaker 3: not that crazy, and it's necessarily just all about campaigning,
Speaker 3: or it was going to get crazier craze here, and
Speaker 3: we've obviously seen it's the latter extremist movements go that way.
Speaker 3: They get in a cycle of purity tests. It happens,
Speaker 3: happened with the Khmerre rouge, happens with the right card.
Speaker 3: It just you have to prove that you can be
Speaker 3: more extreme. That becomes the test. I think that there
Speaker 3: is a deep misogyny at the heart of this, you know.
Speaker 3: I thought one of the most extraordinary numbers that come
Speaker 3: out of the Iowa Caucus was the fact that in
Speaker 3: the last Des Moines Register poll Mancelter, according to her,
Speaker 3: sixty eight percent of the Republican Party in Iowa was mail.
Speaker 3: That's self collecting. It's really important for the Biden campaign
Speaker 3: to focus on the future and what is it going
Speaker 3: to mean. So nobody would have believed that you would
Speaker 3: have someone who was raped and had to go out
Speaker 3: of state and was prosecuted and they went after the doctor,
Speaker 3: but that happened. Nobody would have believed what just happened
Speaker 3: at Alabama, and it's just going to get worse. I mean,
Speaker 3: the difficulty with the unimaginable. Is it's difficult to manage
Speaker 3: that is just going to get worse and worse and worse,
Speaker 3: and there's no moderating force. Nothing inside to Republican Party
Speaker 3: is going to stand up and say this is too far.
Speaker 3: But the thing about it, they had this moment Trump
Speaker 3: inside of a riot of people who came into your
Speaker 3: workplace and tried to kill you, and you still didn't
Speaker 3: vote to convict him. Once you're not going tovict somebody
Speaker 3: that like got people who try to kill you. What
Speaker 3: do you even think? Well, okay, I think that this
Speaker 3: is too far. It's really extraordinary. I don't think it's
Speaker 3: at all where the country is. Look I'm a seventh
Speaker 3: generation Mississippi and I don't think this is where Mississippi
Speaker 3: is at all. I think it's a great miscalculation. You know,
Speaker 3: when Trump tried to frighten suburban voters at the end
Speaker 3: of the left contane by saying, and he's doing it again,
Speaker 3: you know that someone non white or a different religion
Speaker 3: might move in next door. I think most suburban voters
Speaker 3: I know would go out of their way to show
Speaker 3: their kids that they're welcoming to this family. It's somewhere
Speaker 3: the country is hating people. I mean that happens some,
Speaker 3: but it's not the majority of the country.
Speaker 2: You talked about polling.
Speaker 1: A lot of the Biden panic of the last few
Speaker 1: weeks has been almost exclusively based on polling, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no other theory of the case. Right, there's no
Speaker 1: other piece of information like New York three last week,
Speaker 1: Democrats way overperformed the polls, Like, there's not some piece
Speaker 1: of information that I'm missing here, right.
Speaker 3: No, it's a tentativeness about the Democratic Party that I
Speaker 3: sawn just sort of fascinating. You know. I wrote a
Speaker 3: piece for the Bullwork right before the twenty EELESSU where
Speaker 3: I said, you know, my dear dear new Democratic friends
Speaker 3: walk with swagger. There's more of you than them. You're right,
Speaker 3: they're wrong, And I think there ought to be a
Speaker 3: righteous prosecution about this, and I think they ought to
Speaker 3: go about it with the attitude we are right, and
Speaker 3: Joe Biden is right, and Joe Biden is doing great things.
Speaker 3: Embrace that. And I think that there's a case that
Speaker 3: if Joe Biden was running against pick your favorite governor
Speaker 3: or Republican camp in Georgia or whatever, I think you
Speaker 3: beat that person because there's really no policy in the
Speaker 3: Republican Party. Now, then think about it, and this was
Speaker 3: really clear in twenty two. What is it you're getting
Speaker 3: when we vote Republican and Hunter Biden's laptop investigations. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's no policy at all.
Speaker 2: So let's talk for a minute about Patrick McHenry.
Speaker 1: I want you to hit on this because I don't
Speaker 1: think Democrats are spending nearly enough time talking about this.
Speaker 1: Patrick McHenry was the Speaker pro tem for about five minutes.
Speaker 1: He's resigning. He's not running again. He's one of the
Speaker 1: few Republicans who knows what they're doing. Still there, he
Speaker 1: tells CBS this morning. We went through five choices and
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson's the fifth choice. He has not been around
Speaker 1: leadership decisions. He's had a really tough process. We've thrown
Speaker 1: him into the deepest end of the pool with the
Speaker 1: heaviest weights around him. We're trying to teach him how
Speaker 1: to learn how to swim. It's been a really rough
Speaker 1: couple of months.
Speaker 3: Yeah, being Speaker of the House is turning out like
Speaker 3: the third person in ol Kaeda. You know, you just
Speaker 3: really she just really don't want to be that person.
Speaker 3: There's gonna be a drone over your head pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: It's really amazing. I mean, I think you know, if
Speaker 3: you're applying for a job, you would not put it
Speaker 3: on your resume if you have been speaker at this point.
Speaker 3: It's because they're not a governing party. So you know,
Speaker 3: normally you can unify elements of your party to disagree
Speaker 3: with you based upon certain fundamental principles. You can get
Speaker 3: up there and say, look, we don't agree on this
Speaker 3: or that, but here are some big issues we agree on.
Speaker 3: And there really aren't those big issues in the Republican
Speaker 3: Party except they would like to be in power. And
Speaker 3: you take some sad example of humanity like Lindsey Graham. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he goes to Ukraine and swears that he'll support Ukraine forever,
Speaker 3: and here he votes against Ukraine funding. If you joined
Speaker 3: the party that was defined by Ronald Reagan standing in
Speaker 3: front of the Berlin Wall and saying, mister gorvig trofth
Speaker 3: tear down this wall and you end is now the
Speaker 3: pro Putin Party, it is the most disconcerting, strange sensation.
Speaker 5: And you know, I don't.
Speaker 3: Think we talk enough about the simple pack pattern here.
Speaker 3: We know the Russians wanted Donald Trump to win, we
Speaker 3: know he helped him win. What did they get? Turns
Speaker 3: out they got a lot and they may very well
Speaker 3: get a victory over Ukraine because of that. It's the
Speaker 3: most successful covert operation in history. That has to be
Speaker 3: And I think these next ten days or so are
Speaker 3: going to have generational effects. I think in five years,
Speaker 3: if you're gonna be able to get a car in
Speaker 3: Paris and drive to Warsaw without crossing some really nasty borders,
Speaker 3: I think that's going to be decided probably in the
Speaker 3: next ten days.
Speaker 1: Wow, I've not heard someone explain the war in Ukraine
Speaker 1: like that. Save a tiny bit more on that, will you.
Speaker 3: Well, I we know what Putin wants. He wants to
Speaker 3: reconquer tote the Soviet Union. We know what the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union was, we know how he operates. He will have
Speaker 3: a small incursion there NATO to fight, So then it'll
Speaker 3: be a question is NATO really going to fight over
Speaker 3: ten square miles? And that'll be an interesting question. And
Speaker 3: Russia now is on a war footing, unlike any European
Speaker 3: country has been since Germany re armed and the thirties
Speaker 3: and there has been a reluctance to admit it. People
Speaker 3: don't graft the fact the United States military budget it's
Speaker 3: larger than the next non countries combined. I mean, that
Speaker 3: is just such a staggering number. And those are some
Speaker 3: awfully big countries. We are living in a Pax Americana
Speaker 3: and is that going to continue? And we've sort of
Speaker 3: become like third generation rich kids. We've sort of forgotten
Speaker 3: what it was like to earn this and this is
Speaker 3: this is what kills me about these Republicans. There air
Speaker 3: the greatest generator. They were handed this legacy one a
Speaker 3: great unimaginable cost. And now, well, just think that there
Speaker 3: are a lot of data Americans buried across Europe and
Speaker 3: if they could come back to life and vote whether
Speaker 3: or not they were going to support Ukraine? Does anybody
Speaker 3: think that they would vote for Putin? And those are
Speaker 3: the people that earned the freedom. And we have a
Speaker 3: European democracy that is engaged in the largest land war
Speaker 3: since World War Two, and the Republican Party doesn't want
Speaker 3: to support it. It's a leadership because of Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: a guy who was elected with Putin's hill. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you can't see our history's going to write that
Speaker 3: it's just unromaginable. Hopefully it's still going to pass. I
Speaker 3: accept what everyone says. It seems to know a lot
Speaker 3: about the House, and if you put it up for vote,
Speaker 3: it will pass. I have to ask yourself, how many
Speaker 3: innocent Ukrainian men women in Shortern, how many brave Ukrainian
Speaker 3: fighters have to die for a guy from Shreef Ports
Speaker 3: who's an accidental speaker's concerce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Stuart Stevens please come back.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for asking me. I love the show.
Speaker 2: Did you know?
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson and I are bringing together some friends for
Speaker 1: a general election kickoff party at City Winery in New
Speaker 1: York on March sixth. We're going to be chatting right
Speaker 1: after Super Tuesday about what's going on, and it is
Speaker 1: going to probably be the one fun night for the
Speaker 1: next eighty days. If you're in the New York area,
Speaker 1: please come by and join us. You can go to
Speaker 1: City Winery's website and grab a ticket.
Speaker 2: Mary pat Hector is the CEO of Rise.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Mary Pat.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, Molly. I'm super excited to be here.
Speaker 1: I really think that elections are won by young activists
Speaker 1: who get out there and organize. And so when I
Speaker 1: heard you speak a couple months ago, I thought, we
Speaker 1: got to get Mary Pat on this podcast so she
Speaker 1: can talk about all of the organized thing she's doing.
Speaker 2: So Mary Pat tell us about Rise Sure Well.
Speaker 5: Rise is a youth and student center organization that focuses
Speaker 5: on building student political power. Young voters are some of
Speaker 5: the more difficult voters to touch and reach, but we've
Speaker 5: been able to prove that when you organize three hundred
Speaker 5: and sixty five days a year on these college campuses
Speaker 5: and but some trusted messengers, that you can truly be
Speaker 5: successful in mobilizing these voters. And this year, in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four, literally forty one million gen z years between
Speaker 5: the ages of eighteen and twenty seven will vote for
Speaker 5: the first time for the first time in our country's history.
Speaker 5: Nearly forty nine percent of the countries are electric under
Speaker 5: the age of forty five years old. Young voters have extreme,
Speaker 5: extreme power, but it's all about organizations and individuals who
Speaker 5: really value them and prioritize reaching out to them to
Speaker 5: exercise their political agency and utilize the power that they have.
Speaker 5: And that's what we do at RISE.
Speaker 1: So explain us how you started Rise and where you
Speaker 1: started Rise and where Rise is now and where Rise
Speaker 1: is going.
Speaker 5: Sure. So Rise was actually founded by Maxwell Lubin in
Speaker 5: California in twenty seventeen as an organizing that really advocated
Speaker 5: for students' access to college and college affordability. Max realized
Speaker 5: that in order to influence issues that young people care about,
Speaker 5: it's really about building youth political power student political power
Speaker 5: to really influence policies that directly impact young people around
Speaker 5: those issues like college affordability. You know, students basic needs
Speaker 5: and issues that they were fighting were in California, and
Speaker 5: they ended up expanding the organization to Michigan and Wisconsin
Speaker 5: and they were able to see higher education policies passed
Speaker 5: and they were organizing in those particular states, and then
Speaker 5: we ended up expanding to places like Georgia and now
Speaker 5: we're in eight states collectively doing the work. And I
Speaker 5: actually began my organizing journey with the organization back in
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen when I was a student organizer at Welma College,
Speaker 5: organizing around college affordability at HBCUs and you know, student
Speaker 5: debt relief and food access and leading hunger strikes on
Speaker 5: my college campus, and I remained involved in the organization
Speaker 5: upon graduation. I became the Georgia State Organizing Director, where
Speaker 5: we led the organization's largest FOTEM campaign in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty and twenty twenty two, and I ended
Speaker 5: up continuing to work within the organization. I became the
Speaker 5: CEO eight months ago. We're coming up on my one
Speaker 5: year anniversary as the CEO of the organization, but I've
Speaker 5: been immenisely proud to see the organization grow since I've
Speaker 5: been working with RISE since twenty eighteen two.
Speaker 1: Wow explained to us a little bit about the sort
Speaker 1: of theory of the case, how it works. I have
Speaker 1: a college kid, so I know a little bit about
Speaker 1: how hard it is to get them to vote.
Speaker 5: I think oftentimes when young people think about voting, they
Speaker 5: immediately just think about the candidates. What we're seeing with
Speaker 5: gen z ors specifically, is that they're not really moved
Speaker 5: by the two party system, right. They're not impressed with
Speaker 5: either of these candidates. I mean they feel like, you know,
Speaker 5: they're forced to choose between the candidates, and with us
Speaker 5: as an organization, we're not mobilizing student voters around candidates
Speaker 5: we're mobilizing student voters around the things that they care about.
Speaker 5: We're mobilizing them around things like student debt relief. We're
Speaker 5: organizing around issues that they care about like college affordability.
Speaker 5: And some of our partner organizations that are also successful
Speaker 5: in this wh're disorganizing around climate change. They do this
Speaker 5: organizing around, you know, reproductive justice. And we also know
Speaker 5: that the issues that we talk to students about in
Speaker 5: Georgia might kind of differ around the issues that we
Speaker 5: talk to student on the ground in Wisconsin. So we
Speaker 5: really adjust, but we center the issues that young people
Speaker 5: care about, and beyond sending the issues that they care about,
Speaker 5: we also center the fact that we are trusted messengers
Speaker 5: on the campuses where we're mobilizing because they see us
Speaker 5: on their campus three hundred and sixty five days a year. Oftentimes,
Speaker 5: what happens is civic organizations and campaigns show up two
Speaker 5: to three months before an election and they're like, we
Speaker 5: want your vote. Well, the truth is gen zers are
Speaker 5: not as trusting, right, Like they're like, I don't know you.
Speaker 5: You showed up two months before this election and you're
Speaker 5: only just like here to pretty much ask for my
Speaker 5: vote and you haven't shown me that you value me
Speaker 5: as a person or that you really align with me
Speaker 5: on my values. So gen Zers value individuals that they
Speaker 5: see in community with them through sixty five, which is
Speaker 5: also why we stress the importance of organizing three sixty five,
Speaker 5: especially with such a difficult And I am a gen
Speaker 5: Z voter voter myself, so I understand this a difficult base.
Speaker 5: Right It's very hard to gain the trust of gen
Speaker 5: Z voters.
Speaker 1: And it's not exclusive to gen Z. I mean, young
Speaker 1: people have always been hard to get to turn out.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. What I will say is I would love to
Speaker 5: give them credit. Young voters have been showing up for
Speaker 5: the past two cycles like never before, especially in moments
Speaker 5: and times when we really needed them. But right now
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty four, there is so much going on,
Speaker 5: so many issues and problems that young people internally are
Speaker 5: not happy about. They're not happy about a lot of
Speaker 5: things that they felt were promised that didn't necessarily happen,
Speaker 5: a lot of issues going around.
Speaker 1: In the world.
Speaker 5: Young people are just be us censoring the issues, is
Speaker 5: what we're noticing are what's most resonating with them right now.
Speaker 5: I'm hopeful that with this opportunity and the power that
Speaker 5: they have in twenty twenty four, they will show up.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about a student debt really, because that is
Speaker 1: something where the Biden administration did try to cancel student debt.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court, in its inherent conservativeness, kicked it out.
Speaker 1: Now Biden is going program by program trying to forgive debt.
Speaker 1: Yesterday was a huge victory with that. Are people hearing
Speaker 1: about that and are you able to transmit that to them?
Speaker 1: And is it making any kind of inroads there?
Speaker 5: We are in the need to you know, educate voters
Speaker 5: on you know, the things that are happening on the ground.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, people are here. You know, Biden
Speaker 5: approves one point two million in luve forgiveness and they
Speaker 5: they're like, oh, well, you know, I still have by loans.
Speaker 5: But the reason being is because of course, like you mentioned,
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court issues around reproductive justice that have been
Speaker 5: rolled back in this administration are not due to Biden's
Speaker 5: you know doing or the fact that we weren't able
Speaker 5: to get student debt forgiveness is not his faut I
Speaker 5: think oftentimes, and that's the reason why it's important to
Speaker 5: have trust The messages on the ground to like debunk
Speaker 5: a lot of disinformation that you see on things like
Speaker 5: TikTok and Instagram, and you know, have these things come
Speaker 5: from people that people trust on these campuses are amongst
Speaker 5: the group of individuals because you know, the work that
Speaker 5: Biden is doing is not trickering down to those at
Speaker 5: the margin or those that need to hear it the most.
Speaker 5: And then beyond Biden proposing student debt relief in it
Speaker 5: being striggened down by the Supreme Court and even what
Speaker 5: he did recently, a lot of people don't know that.
Speaker 5: Right now, the US Department of Education has really introduced
Speaker 5: a plan for debt relief for borrowers who are experiencing hardship,
Speaker 5: which is a lot like almost you know, providing in
Speaker 5: the debt relief because many borrowers have not been able
Speaker 5: to literally over half of the US borrows have not
Speaker 5: been able to make payments on their student loans since October,
Speaker 5: when you know we began repayment and so through negotiated
Speaker 5: role making, which is happening right now, Secretary of Education
Speaker 5: in Cardonia and his team have pretty much taken the
Speaker 5: next steps to say, hey, we want to provide debt
Speaker 5: relief to student loans borrowers experiencing hardships. And what that
Speaker 5: means is basically, if that is passed and the conversation
Speaker 5: will actually take place today, if the Department of Education,
Speaker 5: through this process of negotiated role making, it's provided the
Speaker 5: opportunity to prov buy debt relief for borrows experience hardship,
Speaker 5: more borrowers will be I think a lot of people
Speaker 5: who feel that in Biden's recent student debt relief moves
Speaker 5: just didn't impact people because it was for people with
Speaker 5: balances under twenty thousand dollars. Typically, Americans who really need
Speaker 5: this debt relief are they're in student loan debt way
Speaker 5: more than twenty to forty thousand dollars worth of student loan.
Speaker 5: That also individuals who have been making consecutive payments for
Speaker 5: ten years, you know, the people who are really feeling
Speaker 5: this debt and it's directly impacting their ability to buy
Speaker 5: homes to take care of their families. And they're individuals
Speaker 5: that have not been able to make ten year consecutive payments.
Speaker 5: And so the Americans at the margins who you know,
Speaker 5: really need this relief have not been able to get
Speaker 5: They don't understand that the President can only do what
Speaker 5: he can do under the circumstances of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 5: but we are hopeful that President Cardonia's requests through the
Speaker 5: negotiated rolemaking process, will be able to support and provide
Speaker 5: immediate relief for most Americans.
Speaker 1: To me about the importance of historically black colleges and universities,
Speaker 1: I know that the Vice president has been coming and
Speaker 1: speaking there. I've seen videos of people being very excited
Speaker 1: to see her. We don't see a ton of reporting
Speaker 1: about that. I'm just curious if you could talk about
Speaker 1: is the vice president connecting with young people?
Speaker 5: Well, one I did attend a historically black college university
Speaker 5: in Atlanta, Georgia called Spelman College, and the Vice president
Speaker 5: herself also did attend an HBCU and Washington, d C.
Speaker 5: Called Coward University. I do believe that the Vice president
Speaker 5: has been working to kind of be in front of
Speaker 5: the young people. But I think the real point is
Speaker 5: not about the vice president or the vice president necessarily
Speaker 5: just continue to be around young people. Because it's February
Speaker 5: of twenty twenty four, so anything that they decided to
Speaker 5: do on many college campuses at this point with a
Speaker 5: little perform. I think it should be about them focusing
Speaker 5: on you know, in which they can do whatever they
Speaker 5: can do to complete or focus on achieving some of
Speaker 5: the promises that they made in twenty twenty in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four, and being very strategic about just messaging. Again,
Speaker 5: Like even with the debt relief, the administration, despite what
Speaker 5: took place with the Supreme Court, has been very very
Speaker 5: adamant we're doing all that we can amongst our base
Speaker 5: to just educate them on what has been done, because
Speaker 5: a lot has been done, but the administration has had
Speaker 5: a very difficult problem with distanging. The previous administration was
Speaker 5: very strategic in marketing and like made sure, you know,
Speaker 5: their base always knew what it was that they were doing,
Speaker 5: how they did it in any time they made a
Speaker 5: move the world to do about it, and I've seen
Speaker 5: the current administration kind of should have been taking the
Speaker 5: same approach. It it has to. Really the work is
Speaker 5: relying on the backs of people on the ground, like
Speaker 5: us at Rise, just making sure that voters are educated
Speaker 5: on you know, things that have been taking place or
Speaker 5: things that had not been taken in place, and providing
Speaker 5: voters with ac information and not disinformation. That they're finding
Speaker 5: on Twitter and well x and TikTok right and ensuring that,
Speaker 5: you know, they're also provided the needed resources that they
Speaker 5: need to show up and vote in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: So you can give money to Rise, and what will
Speaker 1: Rise do with the money?
Speaker 5: Absolutely? Rise in a student organizing organization. We organize student
Speaker 5: organizers three hundred and sixty five days a year, We
Speaker 5: register voters three hundred and sixty five days a year,
Speaker 5: We build our base. So the idea is that our
Speaker 5: student organizers are supporting students now and like making plans
Speaker 5: to vote leading up to some of our primaries and
Speaker 5: leading up to the twenty twenty four election, that they
Speaker 5: are reaching out to those voters three to five times
Speaker 5: leading up into their upcoming elections, making sure that they,
Speaker 5: you know, are making a voter plan, making sure that
Speaker 5: they have a ride to the polls if they don't,
Speaker 5: you know, providing them with resources to get to the
Speaker 5: polls on election day. Any student organizers in twenty twenty
Speaker 5: most of our organizing was virtual. But what we saw
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty two was that a lot of young
Speaker 5: people were not adequately trained or prepared to do a
Speaker 5: lot of field organizing our work. So our organization also
Speaker 5: spends a good time and training people to be the
Speaker 5: trusted messengers that we need on our college campuses but
Speaker 5: also directly in our communities. So we're training them on
Speaker 5: how to be deep canvassers. We're training them on how
Speaker 5: to adequately look up proper information to combat disinformation happening
Speaker 5: among this very sensitive group. And what I mean by
Speaker 5: sensitive is it's very easy for young people to be
Speaker 5: provided with disinformation based off of BAI and you know,
Speaker 5: social media. So ensuring that they're able to train to
Speaker 5: effectively look up information, search information, and just fatcheck as
Speaker 5: well as consecutively being on these college campuses and in
Speaker 5: these communities, knocking on these doors and doing the work
Speaker 5: that we need them to do to fill our program
Speaker 5: at RISE, but also for some of the work that
Speaker 5: some of our harder organizations they're doing across the state.
Speaker 5: Because what we for sure is that while young people
Speaker 5: are moved by the issues, you know, all of them
Speaker 5: you know that we train, may not be passionate about
Speaker 5: student debt or you know, college affordability. Some of them
Speaker 5: may be passionate about reproductive rights. And so connecting them
Speaker 5: with organizations that they are, you know, passionate about work,
Speaker 5: you know, working with leading up into the twenty twenty
Speaker 5: four election and supporting mobilizing student voters in that capacity.
Speaker 5: So beyond doing our own build program, really just focusing
Speaker 5: on training the next generation of civic leaders going into
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four and even beyond this, you know that
Speaker 5: is also initiative that we do three hundred and sixty
Speaker 5: five days a year. But here in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 5: our focus is like a registering fifty thousand student voters
Speaker 5: and our eight core city mobilizing over two hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty students through supporting them and making a voter plan
Speaker 5: going into the twenty twenty four election, and knocking on
Speaker 5: over three hundred thousand doors of young people between the
Speaker 5: ages of eighteen and twenty nine and touching over a
Speaker 5: million year loaders this year.
Speaker 1: And what states are you in right now and what
Speaker 1: states do you want to expand to?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so right now we are in all of the
Speaker 5: states that we were looking to expand to in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four. We have officially been able to do what
Speaker 5: the exception was working on California right now, but we
Speaker 5: are in Arizona. We are in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada,
Speaker 5: in Wisconsin, and we're working on expanding fully into California.
Speaker 2: So great. Thank you so much, Mary pat for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having us on and allowing
Speaker 5: me to talk a little bit more about our organization
Speaker 5: and the importance of lebalizing the youth book this year.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ouch Blackstock is a physician and author of Legacy,
Speaker 1: a Black Physician Reckons with Racism and Medicine. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, doctor Blackstock.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Talk to us about your book.
Speaker 1: It's called Legacy, and why you decided to write this book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so excited to talk about legacy. So the full
Speaker 4: title is Legacy of Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine.
Speaker 4: And the title actually has a double meaning. One it's
Speaker 4: about the legacy of racism in medicine. And then the
Speaker 4: other meaning is I am a second generation black woman physician.
Speaker 4: My twin sister and I were the first black mother
Speaker 4: daughter legacy from Harvard Medical School.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so your mother was a doctor too. Yeah, My
Speaker 4: mother's a doctor. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York,
Speaker 4: in very different settings than I did. Grew up in poverty,
Speaker 4: first person in her family go to college, then went
Speaker 4: I showed to Brooklyn College, then went to medical school
Speaker 4: at Harvard, and came back to her central Brooklyn neighborhood
Speaker 4: to practice for many, many years. And that was the
Speaker 4: influence that both my twin sister, Oni, who's also a physician,
Speaker 4: and I had growing up. I thought that most physicians
Speaker 4: were black women, and I didn't recognize until I was
Speaker 4: older that we only.
Speaker 5: Represent about three percent of all physicians.
Speaker 1: This is a topic that I try to talk about
Speaker 1: as much as humanly possible, despite the fact that these are.
Speaker 2: Not my will houses.
Speaker 1: It seems to me one of the most upsetting things
Speaker 1: in American life right now is how incredibly racist our
Speaker 1: medical system is. And so I was hoping you could
Speaker 1: talk a little bit for people who are not quite
Speaker 1: as read in, if you could just sort of paint
Speaker 1: the scene and explain a little bit, like, you know,
Speaker 1: what the statistics are and how crushing and deeply troubling
Speaker 1: they are.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No, absolutely, And that's actually why I wrote the book.
Speaker 4: I wrote the book because I really wanted to explain
Speaker 4: for readers why in twenty twenty four you know, we're
Speaker 4: seeing you know, even myself, as a black woman with
Speaker 4: a Harvard undergrad and medical school degree, I fill five
Speaker 4: times more likely to die of pregnancy related complications than
Speaker 4: my white peers. In the US, the birthing complication rate
Speaker 4: for black people is three to four times that higher
Speaker 4: than for other people. And these are just high rates
Speaker 4: overall compared to other high incomnations, even for white people
Speaker 4: in the country, but especially bad for black people and
Speaker 4: people of color. And we see that with infant mortality,
Speaker 4: we see that with life expectancy. So we are seeing
Speaker 4: all of this. Despite advances in innovation, technology, and research,
Speaker 4: we're seeing actual worsening of health outcomes along the racial lines.
Speaker 1: I was hoping you could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: life expectancy because that is one of the most shocking revelations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it is so shocking because life expectancy
Speaker 4: essentially is that metric that tells you how healthy a
Speaker 4: country is. We are not doing well. This country is
Speaker 4: not doing well overall. And we actually saw when the
Speaker 4: pandemic started, the life expectancy drop and it dropped for
Speaker 4: even other hunt income nations, but it hasn't bounced back
Speaker 4: for the US. Like it has for those other countries,
Speaker 4: and actually it continues to drop, and it drops for
Speaker 4: all racial demographic groups. You know, we have some of
Speaker 4: the highest overdose rates, the highest suicide rates, highest rates
Speaker 4: of product disease. We have the lowest professional health professional
Speaker 4: to provider ratio, Like we don't have enough health professionals
Speaker 4: the care of the patients. There's a shortage of primary
Speaker 4: care physicians in this country. Nurses are burning out. So
Speaker 4: I would say, like our healthcare system is absolutely in crisis,
Speaker 4: and the pandemic revealed that. But I think also what
Speaker 4: we're seeing is this is a result of a nation
Speaker 4: where so many people are still uninsured and underinsured. There's
Speaker 4: huge income inequality, and like we're seeing this in these numbers,
Speaker 4: like these very dismal numbers for the US.
Speaker 1: So we had a guy called John Burns Murdoch on
Speaker 1: this podcast he writes for the Ft and he was
Speaker 1: talking about how in America at every age, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to die than you are in Europe.
Speaker 2: But as a black person you're even more likely to die.
Speaker 5: It's even worse.
Speaker 4: And we saw these, you know, they call it age
Speaker 4: adjusted mortality ratios, Like we saw this like during the pandemic.
Speaker 4: We saw that black people were dying in the pandemic
Speaker 4: much much younger ages than white people were, Like, we
Speaker 4: were dying at rates like that white people tend to
Speaker 4: twenty years older than us. We're dying at No, it
Speaker 4: wasn't because of like the fact that our rates is black.
Speaker 4: It was because there are many different factors all related
Speaker 4: to living under and with interpersonal and systemic racism that
Speaker 4: essentially ages our bodies. Like there is something called weathering,
Speaker 4: which Arleen and Gerontomous, the public health researcher, she coined
Speaker 4: that term, which essentially says that you know, under any
Speaker 4: sort of stress, whether it's poverty, racism, your body kind
Speaker 4: of wears down and wears down much much earlier you're
Speaker 4: was susceptible to developing different diseases. And so that is
Speaker 4: what we saw literally happened in the pandemic, and that's
Speaker 4: why you know, we're feel like we're definitely talking more
Speaker 4: about these issues now than we were before. But black
Speaker 4: and brown people were still dying before. It's just worse now.
Speaker 1: There's a problem with outside stressors, but there's also the
Speaker 1: problem with racist doctors, right, and not just racist doctors,
Speaker 1: but also like a system that is innately racist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's what I write about in the books.
Speaker 4: So it's like it comes from all different angles. It
Speaker 4: comes from like, you know, the everyday stresses that you
Speaker 4: go through life, but it also comes from the fact
Speaker 4: that our communities have been deprived of resources because of
Speaker 4: discredatory housing policies like redlining. But then it's what happens
Speaker 4: when we interface with healthcare professionals in a healthcare setting.
Speaker 4: And what I'm going to say is that, you know,
Speaker 4: I think that no doctor or health professionals would say,
Speaker 4: you know, I treat my patients differently, But the fact
Speaker 4: is is that we're seeing that they are more likely
Speaker 4: not to live in two black patients. You know, Serena
Speaker 4: Williams talks about her experience with a blood clot that
Speaker 4: even the greatest athlete of all time has to deal
Speaker 4: with health professionals not listening to her. If that happens
Speaker 4: to her, you know what happens to the average black patients.
Speaker 4: But also all that to say is that even myself,
Speaker 4: I was educated and trained in the Western biomedical model,
Speaker 4: and this is a model that has you know, messaging
Speaker 4: foundations that are deeply rooted in the history of this country,
Speaker 4: and that is a history of slavery, a history that
Speaker 4: has really dehumanized black people and black bodies. So a
Speaker 4: lot of these myths get perpetuated in our medical education,
Speaker 4: like you know, for example, kidney function. I was taught
Speaker 4: that black people have different kidney function like normal values
Speaker 4: than non black people. Most medical students and physicians were
Speaker 4: taught this based on a myth that black people had
Speaker 4: more muscle mass and that correlated with kidney function. Do
Speaker 4: you know what that has done? That has actually led
Speaker 4: to deferred care, specialty care for black people.
Speaker 5: To get kidneys or to go on kidney transplant lits.
Speaker 2: And it's not true. It's based on racis lies.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And that's the problem is is that that influences
Speaker 4: how health professionals, whether they intended or not, and mostly
Speaker 4: don't intend to okaying like most of roth, I want
Speaker 4: to keep my patients well. But the fact is is
Speaker 4: that if you've been trained in these institutions like I
Speaker 4: have been. You know, I'm not excluding myself.
Speaker 1: And you're talking about Harvard here, We're not talking about
Speaker 1: like Podunk.
Speaker 4: You know, you went to Heart right, I did, And
Speaker 4: I talk in the book I talk in a legacy
Speaker 4: about all these educational gaps, you know, I mean yet
Speaker 4: I had a great, a great education, but there are
Speaker 4: all these things I had to unlearn and relearn as
Speaker 4: a practicing physician, and pieces of history that I never
Speaker 4: ever ever learned about that totally I should have learned
Speaker 4: about that should have impacted how I cared for patients.
Speaker 1: So interesting, We covered this really great documentary about these
Speaker 1: fathers and daughters who had the mothers had died black women,
Speaker 1: and the fathers had been left to raise these children.
Speaker 1: They had died because of racism and medicine. Right, they
Speaker 1: hadn't gone treated, they hadn't gone you know, they died
Speaker 1: of things that were absolutely preventable. This is much more
Speaker 1: of a story than it has covered us.
Speaker 5: Oh absolutely.
Speaker 4: And I think the other piece of it, like you know,
Speaker 4: like for example, lets people know about they call it
Speaker 4: casually Tiskidi Ciplet study, but it's actually it actually the
Speaker 4: US Public Health Service Study on the Untreated Negro Male
Speaker 4: with Zippilid. Like this was a study that was the
Speaker 4: still uitated, developed orchestrated by our government from nineteen thirty
Speaker 4: two to nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 5: You know, and men living in rural Alabama.
Speaker 4: And the only reason that it was actually stopped in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy two was because of black ethicaneologists found out
Speaker 4: about it and reported to the so Sociated Press. But
Speaker 4: all I to say is that, like that, it's one
Speaker 4: of unfortunately many many instances of medical racism, of ways
Speaker 4: that black communities have been exploited and experimented on, so that,
Speaker 4: you know, when the pandemic hit, you know, a few
Speaker 4: years ago, first people were saying, oh, black people had
Speaker 4: medical mistrusts, and I'm like, wait, wait, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: that's not don't put it on the individual. Our institutions
Speaker 4: have proven themselves untrustworthy towards our communities and really have
Speaker 4: to earn and engender our trusts.
Speaker 5: So because of this history, and that's you know, that's
Speaker 5: only one story of many many stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how do you undo something this big?
Speaker 5: I know, I know it, and it seems so overwhelming
Speaker 5: to people.
Speaker 4: And actually, the final chapter of my book, which is
Speaker 4: sort of like it's like a memoir, but it's also
Speaker 4: call to action. The final chapter is truly a call
Speaker 4: to action of different groups of medical schools to rethink
Speaker 4: and hold themselves accountable. For how they're training our future
Speaker 4: physicians and to make sure they are training them to
Speaker 4: care for diverse patient population that we have in this
Speaker 4: country and to do so equitably.
Speaker 5: For hospital systems.
Speaker 4: To think about how they're reinforcing racism, one by using
Speaker 4: these metrics that are deeply rooted in myths about racist
Speaker 4: myths about black people, like kidney function. But also look
Speaker 4: at how are their discrepancies between how people are prescribing
Speaker 4: or health professionals are prescribing opioids or pain medications like
Speaker 4: those things. Those are structured processes that they can keep
Speaker 4: track of to see our patients being treated differently. I
Speaker 4: also say for policy makers, help is not just about
Speaker 4: what happens in healthcare. We need to think about help
Speaker 4: and all policies. So again, we are one of the
Speaker 4: only high income countries that do not have universal health care.
Speaker 4: That is a major major issue. We don't have paid
Speaker 4: sick and family leave. That's another major issue. People come
Speaker 4: to work sick people. During the pandemic, we knew that
Speaker 4: low income service workers were coming to work sick and
Speaker 4: they were more likely to be exposed to the virus.
Speaker 4: So we need to think more holistically about what health
Speaker 4: looks like. And also we know that black communities, because
Speaker 4: of federal policies like red lighting, like the GI Bill,
Speaker 4: have left our community so deprived of resources, of wealth
Speaker 4: and what it looks like. It's for policy makers to
Speaker 4: make an investment in the pipeline of black health professionals
Speaker 4: and physicians, but also restore black communities to know the
Speaker 4: dignity that they need.
Speaker 5: For people to be healthy.
Speaker 4: People need jobs, they need quality education, you know, they
Speaker 4: need just like anyone else needs, so that they're not
Speaker 4: dying these premature lives.
Speaker 5: It's very unfair.
Speaker 1: Do you think that this is also a problem that
Speaker 1: can be solved by having more black doctors.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's just black doctors. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: I talk about in the book How They Were report
Speaker 4: put a flex and report in nineteen ten that was
Speaker 4: commissioned by American Medical Association that lets the closure of
Speaker 4: five out of seven of those medical schools and leaving
Speaker 4: behind leg Howard and Henry which would have trade between
Speaker 4: twenty five and thirty five thousand black positions. So yes,
Speaker 4: that has had a detrimental impact on the health of
Speaker 4: our communities. Absolutely, But the other piece of it is
Speaker 4: that the way that we live in this country as
Speaker 4: Black Americans is very stressful. Like it's not that being
Speaker 4: black makes you sick, it's like living as a Black
Speaker 4: American makes you sick. Having to deal with interpersonal racism,
Speaker 4: having to deal with the fact that you go to
Speaker 4: a bank, you're less likely to be approved for a mortgage.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like like all of that, all of that adds
Speaker 4: up and causes like this, where a tear on the
Speaker 4: body that makes us thick, or even the lack of
Speaker 4: access to healthy foods, the fact that many of our
Speaker 4: communities are in food deserts because grocery stores don't want
Speaker 4: to come there. So there are all of these reasons
Speaker 4: that we need to look at, both not just interpersonally,
Speaker 4: but systemically. Like that's my call to actually think about
Speaker 4: these issues systemically if we want to improve the health
Speaker 4: of black people.
Speaker 2: But it does seem like government could absolutely, I mean
Speaker 2: certainly not fix this, but work to fix it.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, Molly. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: And in my call to action, I have a special
Speaker 4: section for policymakers, and I are elected, I said, this
Speaker 4: is your responsibility. You have to invest with private institutions
Speaker 4: like academic medical centers in the pipeline of black health professionals.
Speaker 5: You have to also think about what does community look
Speaker 5: like in.
Speaker 4: Terms of programs for increased home ownership among black people,
Speaker 4: because we know that's one way that people generate well
Speaker 4: b through home ownership, or looking at training community health
Speaker 4: workers who are actually late health professionals that are from
Speaker 4: the communities, but who educate the communities about different prevented
Speaker 4: measures or give vaccines. They use them in sub Saharan
Speaker 4: African country, so well they can use them here, but
Speaker 4: that skill is not valued. And I think also we
Speaker 4: need to look at what's happening locally and hyperlocally. There
Speaker 4: are a lot of really great community led efforts that
Speaker 4: address health, like doulahs and birthing centers and organizations that
Speaker 4: are trying to increase the canopy, so the amount of
Speaker 4: green space and trees in our neighborhood. Because the climate
Speaker 4: crisis is actually impacting Black communities more so because of
Speaker 4: the legacy of redlining, we have left trees and so
Speaker 4: our neighborhoods are actually a few degrees higher than others neighborhoods,
Speaker 4: and that leads to exacerbation of asthma attack that leads
Speaker 4: to pre term births like it has health consequences. So
Speaker 4: those are all areas that policymakers can get involved in
Speaker 4: at a local level.
Speaker 2: I think this is such an important point.
Speaker 1: This seems like the kind of thing where if government
Speaker 1: were at all interested. Obviously there certainly have been some inroads,
Speaker 1: but if we had a federal government that was committed
Speaker 1: to fixing this, they could get us there.
Speaker 5: Oh absolutely.
Speaker 4: You know, it happens in some parts of the country
Speaker 4: more than others. I'm worried about the obviously the Southeast
Speaker 4: because actually that's where the largest percentage of black people
Speaker 4: live in the Southeast. So what states are those? So
Speaker 4: I'm worried about Florida. I worried about Louisiana. I worried
Speaker 4: about Alabama, Mississippi. Oh, those last three that I name
Speaker 4: have like the very worst health outcomes, right, and we
Speaker 4: know that because of you know, the road decision. We
Speaker 4: know that those places that are maternity deserts. Health professionals
Speaker 4: have left areas that we're getting Titled ten funding, you
Speaker 4: know that had been cut, not cut, but had been compromised.
Speaker 4: People left their jobs. Title ten providers left their jobs.
Speaker 4: They were counseling around STIs they were providing contraception, they
Speaker 4: were doing cancer screenings, and so we actually are making
Speaker 4: those areas actually thicker because they're going to have fewer
Speaker 4: and fewer health professionals to work with patients.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Can you just two seconds on Medicare expansion.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, yes, yeah, medic Medicaid expansion.
Speaker 2: Yeh, Medicaid expansion.
Speaker 4: Sorry, yes, So that is so important, and we've actually
Speaker 4: seen over the last few years in those states where
Speaker 4: Medicaid was expanded, people do better in the pandemic people.
Speaker 4: That's that things actually did better because they had health insurance.
Speaker 4: But there are those still, I don't know they're nine
Speaker 4: or ten of those states that still refuse to expand.
Speaker 1: Red states with Republican governors that refuse to expand.
Speaker 4: Yes, who refuse to expand Medicaid And listen, well, we
Speaker 4: have so much data that shows and people are insured,
Speaker 4: they actually then end up spending less. We spend less
Speaker 4: on healthcare because they don't.
Speaker 2: Have to go to the emergency room for check ops.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, And they're getting preventive care. They're getting prevented care, right,
Speaker 4: They're getting the care that they need. When we see
Speaker 4: illness and disease in our communities. That is an end result,
Speaker 4: that's a downtreaming outcome of upstream factors.
Speaker 5: We don't want to.
Speaker 4: See people with diabetes. We don't want them to get hypertension.
Speaker 4: We want to get them before they get there. Kind
Speaker 4: of system we have in its country, it's for profit
Speaker 4: system that's very decentralized, where many people are uninsured or underinsured.
Speaker 4: People are getting a big care that they need, and
Speaker 4: there are not the incentives to keep them healthy.
Speaker 1: And also it means that more hospitals are able to
Speaker 1: stay open right in rural areas too.
Speaker 2: It has a larger effect.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, because they've seen so many closing of hospitals
Speaker 4: in rural areas because we have a for profit system
Speaker 4: and they say we're not making enough money, so we're
Speaker 4: going to close. But what about the people that live there.
Speaker 1: It's so important and so deeply relevant to every person
Speaker 1: in this country.
Speaker 2: And I really appreciate having you.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you so much for having Molly.
Speaker 4: And I want people to realize that we can do
Speaker 4: so much better as a country for everyone because we're
Speaker 4: not I would say we're on life support right now.
Speaker 6: They're no more fo Jesse Cannon by junk Fast. I
Speaker 6: knew it was coming, but I kind of can't believe
Speaker 6: the shape it's coming in, with these bills coming out
Speaker 6: of Oklahoma and the Supreme Court decision in Alabama.
Speaker 1: So we all said this would happen. I take no
Speaker 1: pleasure in being right here. First, Alabama has ruled that
Speaker 1: embryos are people, and that embryos, if you damage an embryo,
Speaker 1: it's like damaging a person. As this is happening now,
Speaker 1: all of these IVF clinics in Alabama are closing. In Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: we're seeing that Republicans they have a House Bill three
Speaker 1: two one six which will ban IUDs and the morning
Speaker 1: after pill if those are both forms of contraceptive and
Speaker 1: it would mean that Republicans are now coming after birth control.
Speaker 1: We said during the healcyon Days of SB eight, when
Speaker 1: Texas overturned Roe v. Wade a year before Roby Wade
Speaker 1: was actually functionally overturned, that Republicans would never stop at abortion,
Speaker 1: that they would keep going and they would come for
Speaker 1: contraception IUDs, the Morning after pill, which is by the way,
Speaker 1: just another birth control pill. And now we are seeing that,
Speaker 1: in fact, they are absolutely doing that so that infuriating,
Speaker 1: fucked up, just terrifying anti science xelotry.
Speaker 2: That is our moment of fuck Ray.
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