Speaker 1: Miles and Maria. I'm thrilled for you all to be
Speaker 1: here today and just start talking about the group if
Speaker 1: you will. That you have you have started up.
Speaker 2: Well, Steve, I'll say at the outside, I appreciate it,
Speaker 2: my friend, And you know this better than almost anyone.
Speaker 2: Folks like us. I mean, we don't need to be
Speaker 2: out here doing this, you know. And that was a
Speaker 2: consideration I had after being targeted by the president. You
Speaker 2: know I've done. I've been out there for seven years
Speaker 2: railing against this guy and trying to warn people about
Speaker 2: a second administration, and to quote Jerry Maguire, it's a
Speaker 2: pride swallowing siege every single day. And there's a lot
Speaker 2: of people in my life, a lot of people in
Speaker 2: my family who would like us to just lay low
Speaker 2: and go back to normal life. And that would be
Speaker 2: very nice. And for a little while we got to
Speaker 2: do that. But after this guy took office, and when
Speaker 2: I saw, including personally, the way that he was trying
Speaker 2: to criminalize criticism in this country, it felt like there
Speaker 2: wasn't really an option to go retreat. I mean, you
Speaker 2: have two choices when someone like this comes to power,
Speaker 2: whether it's a foreign land or your own country, and
Speaker 2: that is either submission or defiance.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: There's no middle ground because if you're just staying quiet,
Speaker 2: you've already chosen submission. Okay, there's not a middle ground
Speaker 2: you get to be in. It is black and white,
Speaker 2: submission or defiance. And this year, as people kept asking
Speaker 2: me the question what can I do? I got a
Speaker 2: little pissed off that despite all the organizations out there,
Speaker 2: great organizations doing great work, there wasn't like an easy
Speaker 2: one word answer to tell folks about, like, hey, go
Speaker 2: here and you can find a lot of different efforts
Speaker 2: that you can go help out and support. And so
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago, I pitched to a few friends,
Speaker 2: why don't we just let's go get a domain name.
Speaker 2: Let's recommend the groups that we love that exist and
Speaker 2: are doing great work out to the world and try
Speaker 2: to help drive people towards amazing efforts. And that resulted
Speaker 2: in the lawn Show Defiance dot org and is doing
Speaker 2: great work is the group that we're runs and us.
Speaker 2: They do a whole host of amazing things, from the
Speaker 2: grasstops to the grassroots. I mean, they got people like
Speaker 2: Michael Douglass and Jennifer Lawrence and all these incredible people
Speaker 2: helping get the word out, but they also have helped
Speaker 2: mobilize Americans to go put pressure on their elected representatives
Speaker 2: who have a spinal cord and to not just roll
Speaker 2: over for belly rubs from Donald Trump. And I admire
Speaker 2: what they're doing. So at launch, one of the organizations
Speaker 2: that we're directing our members of Defence dot org too
Speaker 2: is represent US and we're really proud to team with them.
Speaker 1: Maria, how do you see this moment? Why are you
Speaker 1: involved in this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, look, my background is in international human rights work.
Speaker 3: I grew up abroad in Peru during a time of
Speaker 3: autocracy and corruption and with the war and all sorts
Speaker 3: of things, and when I moved to the US, I
Speaker 3: believed and I saw that we had a thriving democratic culture.
Speaker 3: This was in nineteen ninety seven. We've come a long
Speaker 3: way from that, and now the problems that I have
Speaker 3: spent much of my career working on internationally are very
Speaker 3: much present here. And so the main issue I see
Speaker 3: is a government that is slowly in some ways eroding
Speaker 3: democratic norms so that eventually all the powers concentrated in
Speaker 3: the president, and it's in the process of enriching itself
Speaker 3: and its cronies. So the way things are going to
Speaker 3: work in future and are starting to work now, are
Speaker 3: all going to be about fear, you know, rewards for
Speaker 3: the people who join the administration, and punishment for those
Speaker 3: who stand up and dissent. Fortunately, we still have courts
Speaker 3: that are independent at the lower levels. You know, you
Speaker 3: still have a lot of Americans who believe in civil
Speaker 3: liberties and civil rights who will go out and exercise
Speaker 3: those those rights and freedoms. But the pressure is to
Speaker 3: destroy that and to make the system answer only to
Speaker 3: the people who are in power, right, and so that
Speaker 3: is why it's critically important that we call that back.
Speaker 3: We not let that power be concentrated. And that means
Speaker 3: going out and protesting, It means pushing back in the courts,
Speaker 3: and for represent us, it means also trying to get
Speaker 3: Congress to take its power back and do its job.
Speaker 3: So we've launched the Congressional Courage Campaign, which is one
Speaker 3: of the things that Divines dot Org is supporting, right,
Speaker 3: and that is all about mobilizing Americans across the country
Speaker 3: to hold their representatives to account. We're going to be
Speaker 3: prioritizing some swing districts where we really think we need
Speaker 3: to gain traction. But across the board, we need members
Speaker 3: of Congress to uphold the constitution and do so strongly, firmly.
Speaker 3: We need them to hold the executive branch to account.
Speaker 3: That is their job they need to do. You exert
Speaker 3: oversight of the different agencies, of the corruption that's going on,
Speaker 3: of what DOJ is doing. And they need to reform
Speaker 3: the system because our political system has been dysfunctional for
Speaker 3: a very long time. A lot of people have lost
Speaker 3: trust and faith in democracy because democracy has not really
Speaker 3: been working the way it's supposed to. We have too
Speaker 3: much influence of money and politics, you know, we have
Speaker 3: too many problems like jerrymandering that have made the system
Speaker 3: less accountable to the people. And that goes back to
Speaker 3: the work we've done throughout our existence as an organization.
Speaker 3: We need a government that's truly accountable to the people.
Speaker 3: Let's seize this moment of crisis and actually build something
Speaker 3: that is better, not just return to the status quo.
Speaker 1: As of January. When you see Maria, a masked agent
Speaker 1: deploying tear gas attacking a community. Having grown up in
Speaker 1: an autocratic society in Peru, during difficult days. What is
Speaker 1: that like for you?
Speaker 3: I mean, it is so appalling that we would have
Speaker 3: any agents in this country who are operating wearing masks.
Speaker 3: You know, this is supposed to be a country that
Speaker 3: has the rule of law, that has accountability. Like we
Speaker 3: had judges without a face when I was growing up
Speaker 3: in Peru, so judges that you couldn't see who they
Speaker 3: were and they were convicting people. And I understand stood
Speaker 3: there were some security issues there at the time. It
Speaker 3: was a it was a very politically violent period, but
Speaker 3: even that was deeply problematic. You need to know who
Speaker 3: is in government, who is making these decisions that are
Speaker 3: life or death or you know, very serious for people.
Speaker 3: And the fact that this is happening without a second thought, right,
Speaker 3: they just said, Okay, they're gonna wear masks. They claimed
Speaker 3: randomly that there are security issues. I'm sorry, but the
Speaker 3: security issues are coming now from the government itself.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Law enforcement is supposed to be protecting us. Instead they're
Speaker 3: turning into an unaccountable force that is in many cases
Speaker 3: it seems hurting people, targeting even US citizens just because
Speaker 3: of the language they speak. And now with a Supreme
Speaker 3: Court approval for some of that. It's it's it's really
Speaker 3: an abdication of everything that the United States has historically
Speaker 3: stood for in terms of basic freedoms, basic rights, rule
Speaker 3: of law, do process. Uh, you know, a system that
Speaker 3: works for the people and is accountable to it.
Speaker 4: I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning. I invite you
Speaker 4: to join this community where I promise to be honest,
Speaker 4: blunt and direct about what is happening in this country.
Speaker 4: America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe to this channel
Speaker 4: and on substack. Thank you.