Speaker 1: I remember what it felt like about a year ago
Speaker 1: when the pandemic really fully landed in the US. Everything
Speaker 1: was different, Everything got shut down. I went the Whole Foods.
Speaker 1: They had run out of kale. That was kind of
Speaker 1: like the tip to me that things were going to
Speaker 1: be different, because Whole Foods has one job stock Kale,
Speaker 1: maybe two jobs. Stock Kale charged me too much money
Speaker 1: for the Kale. When they canceled south By Southwest and
Speaker 1: the NBA, it felt even more real when there was
Speaker 1: no toilet paper to come by. It felt freaky, legitimately concerning,
Speaker 1: like why is it hard to get toilet paper? And
Speaker 1: for me, I had such a mobile life. I was
Speaker 1: on and off planes constantly. My life was predicated on
Speaker 1: super spreader events, comedy shows and conferences and fast of
Speaker 1: Us and all that had come to an end and
Speaker 1: I was just at home. But I still needed to
Speaker 1: get out. So I started walking where I used to
Speaker 1: fly and I used to be in cars. I would
Speaker 1: just had my feet and I was walking through my
Speaker 1: neighborhood every day to get out of the house, get
Speaker 1: out of this head space of fear, of anxiety, of death.
Speaker 1: When I turned on the screens in my life they
Speaker 1: were filled with bad news world surpassing one million deaths
Speaker 1: from the coronavirus. President Trump not guilty of abuse of power. Australia,
Speaker 1: where they're facing those masterupted following the arrest and death
Speaker 1: of George Floyd Briana Taylor year old ah mod Arbor,
Speaker 1: twenty seven year old Jacob Blake be about the hundred
Speaker 1: day of protest in Portland's police declared a riot. Can
Speaker 1: I find something else out in the world that would
Speaker 1: give me a bit of where I could see people
Speaker 1: doing something other than wallowing in the sorrow, you know?
Speaker 1: And I found it. Keep in my I found it
Speaker 1: in the form of wildlife, and I'm talking to all
Speaker 1: kinds of animals I wasn't used to seeing. It was
Speaker 1: like some kind of PBS special happening in my own hood.
Speaker 1: We had hawks and possum and coyotes. I saw Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter signs everywhere, and I saw people helping each other.
Speaker 1: I saw people setting up community fridges and community pantries
Speaker 1: to help those in need. I remember this sign I
Speaker 1: saw it said presidents are temporary, boutang is forever. I
Speaker 1: love it, and that put a smile on my face
Speaker 1: and helped me keep walking, and even with all the
Speaker 1: stress and depression and anxiety and anger and what COVID
Speaker 1: has brought, I was also grateful to be grounded in
Speaker 1: some way, and in a lot of ways. Things have
Speaker 1: started through the past year. At the end of this
Speaker 1: last twelve months, things have started to look up. I mean,
Speaker 1: we may have dropped the ball on the masks, but
Speaker 1: we're vaccine and like it's going out of style. Not one,
Speaker 1: not two, but three at last count vaccines available to us.
Speaker 1: That's dope. We had an historic presidential and vice presidential race,
Speaker 1: and we've been rewarded for our good works by things
Speaker 1: like how does any come to be chilled? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like it's just it felt like candy
Speaker 1: sugar we deserve. The point is I am proud of us,
Speaker 1: we citizens. We turned up, We showed up for each other,
Speaker 1: and I was starting to feel tentatively good again about
Speaker 1: the whole project, not just not just my neighborhood, but
Speaker 1: the wee thing, the democracy thing, and I just I
Speaker 1: wanted so much for the simple story to be We
Speaker 1: overcame the darkness and slung ourselves into the light. We
Speaker 1: took our democracy back and now We're ready to do
Speaker 1: what's right. And uh, well, the story is not that simple.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe what we're seeing right there, they're
Speaker 1: just walking through Wearer Capital. Police clearly gets you know,
Speaker 1: this has gotten out of hand. These protesters got up
Speaker 1: the steps, they reached the barricades. On the same day
Speaker 1: that we got Senators Reverend Raphael Warnock and Senator John
Speaker 1: Assaf we got something else. We got an insurrection. We
Speaker 1: got an attack on our capital, on our democracy, on
Speaker 1: the people's house. This is a system built on people power,
Speaker 1: and our house was invaded by people denying votes, being
Speaker 1: unwilling to accept the results of the election. I felt
Speaker 1: so angry, so angry, in part because I was in
Speaker 1: a party mood I really wanted to celebrate, and in
Speaker 1: part because it just it felt like the lesson was
Speaker 1: it is too good to be true. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: just because of people with guns who were largely white,
Speaker 1: waving Confederate flags stormed the U. S. Capital. It was
Speaker 1: that they had permission to do it. When I saw
Speaker 1: the attack on the Capitol, I was angry and disgusted.
Speaker 1: I must be watching a movie. This can't be actually happening.
Speaker 1: They knew this was coming. They knew this was coming.
Speaker 1: If it had been protesters, they would have had the
Speaker 1: National Guard out. I've seen how the police treat people
Speaker 1: in Minnesota. Anchor shocked, but I think ultimately mostly sadness.
Speaker 1: Washington is my hometown. I was taught unbelieved. This is
Speaker 1: my country. I'm a citizen. The capital is my beautiful house.
Speaker 1: Those bastards invaded my capital. They desecrated my house. As
Speaker 1: this attack on our democracy was unfolding, I felt frustrated,
Speaker 1: I felt angry, I felt hopeless. I thought maybe things
Speaker 1: were getting better. And then on January six, I was
Speaker 1: reminded somewhat naively how divided we are, or how separate
Speaker 1: we are, and I was left wondering, can this even work?
Speaker 1: This being the whole democratic experiment thing, this being us
Speaker 1: living together with our differences thing, this being making a
Speaker 1: democracy that works for the many, not just a few.
Speaker 1: Can we actually do that? This is how the Citizens
Speaker 1: Season two. I'm barytone Day Thurston, and I want to
Speaker 1: welcome you. If you are coming back from season one
Speaker 1: or whether you're new. We are taken on a big
Speaker 1: topic this season, division and we're digging into the core
Speaker 1: of what I think creates that division. But more on
Speaker 1: that later. In the meantime, let me tell you about
Speaker 1: the types of folks. We are gonna be talking to, bankers, brewers,
Speaker 1: social scientists, all kinds of people who are helping us
Speaker 1: bridge that divide. You need to have that e can
Speaker 1: freedom in order to have the political equality and the
Speaker 1: political freedom. First up, Astra Taylor, after the breaking and
Speaker 1: we're moving there. And then one more record button for
Speaker 1: good measure? Do you want me to record over here? Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you? Director, I play one on TV podcasts. I'm
Speaker 1: here with Astra Taylor, who wrote and directed the documentary
Speaker 1: What Is Democracy. For the film, Astra traveled all over
Speaker 1: the US and even to Greece in hopes of answering
Speaker 1: this question. It's a question has been on my mind
Speaker 1: a lot, especially since January. Now, most of us trying
Speaker 1: to figure out that question. We just google it, but
Speaker 1: Astra did a lot more than that, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to know why. I'm looking for a moment in your
Speaker 1: life when you started to question the concept of democracy.
Speaker 1: Can you take us there for me? If anything kicked
Speaker 1: off in September of two thousand eleven to the movement
Speaker 1: of Occupy Well Street in New York, Thousands of demonstrators
Speaker 1: descended on the financial district as big Occupy Wall Street
Speaker 1: started in response to the bailout of the big banks, right,
Speaker 1: and it was a protest against the fact that even
Speaker 1: with Obama in the White House, there was a sense
Speaker 1: that regular people were being left to drown in this
Speaker 1: epic financial crisis, and that it was a sign of
Speaker 1: the fact that our democracy wasn't working. And I was
Speaker 1: in the streets with others and we were saying that
Speaker 1: chance that you always hear, this is what democracy looks like.
Speaker 1: This is what democracy looks like. And my my mind
Speaker 1: would be like, huh is it? Like? What is democracy?
Speaker 1: Do you even want this thing? Is democracy what the
Speaker 1: powerful say it is? Or is it really just us,
Speaker 1: like a few hundred people in this park, like are
Speaker 1: we democracy? You know, I like us, but I feel
Speaker 1: pretty powerless, and you know it's democracy just a protest?
Speaker 1: Is it just this uprising and the spontaneous thing? Or
Speaker 1: can it be actually structured? Can we actually make democracy
Speaker 1: in our laws, in our institutions. And it set me
Speaker 1: off on this path of writing a book about democracy,
Speaker 1: making a film about democracy, and also my organizing, which
Speaker 1: is really what matters to me and is basically, you know,
Speaker 1: how do you actually do it? It's a verb. You
Speaker 1: know a lot of people have opinions these days? How
Speaker 1: do we do it? That's the greatest T shirt I've
Speaker 1: yet to see. A lot of people have opinions these days.
Speaker 1: So what was your definition of democracy before? Um, occupied
Speaker 1: how would you describe your understanding of it? Before that?
Speaker 1: I think I would have said, oh, democracies, government, democracies, bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: It really doesn't have much to do with me, right um.
Speaker 1: And Also, I wasn't technically a citizen. I was born
Speaker 1: in Canada, I spent my whole life in the US.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Georgia. But I knew I wasn't enfranchised.
Speaker 1: I wasn't even allowed to do this thing that people
Speaker 1: associate with democracy, which is voting. And so it felt
Speaker 1: like something that wasn't really part of my life. It
Speaker 1: wasn't part of the my daily experience or my daily practice.
Speaker 1: And I think that's actually true for a lot of
Speaker 1: people today, right. I Mean, what I discovered as I
Speaker 1: started interviewing people many years later and making this film
Speaker 1: is when I asked Americans on the street, you know,
Speaker 1: what is democracy? They actually couldn't answer the question that
Speaker 1: deeply or authentically, because in the end, how do you
Speaker 1: describe something that you truly don't know? Can you take
Speaker 1: me into that journey? These questions you were asking, what
Speaker 1: are some of the stories you heard? One thing I
Speaker 1: tried to do in the film was questioned, who's an
Speaker 1: expert in democracy? So typically when you go to talk
Speaker 1: to someone about democracy, if you're a journalist or a
Speaker 1: podcaster or a filmmaker, you'll go to a professor of
Speaker 1: political science, right, or maybe a professional politician. But democracy
Speaker 1: involves us all in theory, right, it means the most
Speaker 1: the people Kratos have power or rule, And so there's
Speaker 1: no credential you have to have to get into the demos.
Speaker 1: You don't need a PhD to be part of the demos.
Speaker 1: So what I wanted to do in the way a
Speaker 1: structure of this film was to position these kids from
Speaker 1: this middle school next to great thinkers, right, to have
Speaker 1: their voices ring out right next to someone crediting Rousseau
Speaker 1: or Plato or some great philosopher. So I talked to
Speaker 1: all sorts of people. I talked to school children, I
Speaker 1: talked to some some fantastic middle schoolers UM in Overton, Miami.
Speaker 1: What's what was the in depth analysis of a school
Speaker 1: child in Miami. Well, it began where one would imagine
Speaker 1: about the lunch, and the lunch doesn't taste good. But
Speaker 1: it's not just that it doesn't taste good. It's coal,
Speaker 1: which is an insult. And these kids said to me,
Speaker 1: it could at least be warm, you know, if if
Speaker 1: it's not delicious, And that became a whole thing about
Speaker 1: how when they raised their voice to say we want
Speaker 1: warm lunch, they're punished by the administrators who do things
Speaker 1: like take the vending machines away. And then they said,
Speaker 1: but we know it's not about our teachers. There are
Speaker 1: the administrators, the principle, and then there's the county, the
Speaker 1: kids said, and then there's the uh state, and then
Speaker 1: there's Washington. I mean, these kids were twelve or thirteen,
Speaker 1: and they weren't just saying, oh, these mean grown ups
Speaker 1: won't let me eat, you know, donuts all day long.
Speaker 1: They're saying this has implications. And then they also said,
Speaker 1: why do you want to make us real powerless? Shouldn't
Speaker 1: you want us to be democratic citizens of our school UM,
Speaker 1: I interviewed trauma surgeons. I interviewed immigrant factory workers from
Speaker 1: Guatemala who live in North Carolina. I interviewed people on
Speaker 1: the street. I interviewed philosophers like Wendy Brown and Corner
Speaker 1: west Um. I spoke to quite a few people who are,
Speaker 1: you know, politically the polar opposite of me. And then
Speaker 1: I went to Greece, the supposed mythic birthplace of democracy.
Speaker 1: So I'm getting this picture. You're traveling around the United
Speaker 1: States of America, You're tapping into the demos to the people,
Speaker 1: and then you do this super hyperlink to ancient Greece
Speaker 1: and ask some of where these ideas started. Why did
Speaker 1: you ask the question of the ancient Greeks and their
Speaker 1: attitude store democracy. You know, it's very important to say
Speaker 1: that democracy is a practice didn't begin an ancient Greece.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is something in the historical record shows
Speaker 1: there are democratic society is all over in what we
Speaker 1: now call Mexico and what we now call the African continent,
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. Why it's important to go back
Speaker 1: to Greece, in my mind, is because it's this mythic birthplace.
Speaker 1: They did give us the word that we use. The
Speaker 1: word that we use is from the Greek the most crops.
Speaker 1: And also the founding text of the Western political and
Speaker 1: philosophical tradition is Plato's Republic. And I think this is
Speaker 1: really interesting. So Plato was anti democracy. He was famously
Speaker 1: skeptical of democracy, really, so he proposed an undemocratic society
Speaker 1: as an alternative. But it wasn't a society that would
Speaker 1: have been very egalitarian in terms of class, and that
Speaker 1: limited the sort of perverse incentives that can twist the
Speaker 1: political leaders. So what Plato says, he says, you know
Speaker 1: the problem with democracy is that it devolves into tyranny.
Speaker 1: It just isn't stable. It's an unstable system. And why
Speaker 1: is it unstable Because they're rich abuse the poor and
Speaker 1: they bury them in debt, and they know basically exploit them.
Speaker 1: They extract all of this wealth. So there's incredible income polarization.
Speaker 1: Inequality is destabilizing, and so then the people vote for
Speaker 1: a demagogue. What Plato called all this right, and so
Speaker 1: Plato says, you know what I think we should do
Speaker 1: to fix this is create a class of rulers who
Speaker 1: love wisdom. And there were men and women's a philosopher
Speaker 1: kings and queens, they called them, and they would have
Speaker 1: to be indigent. They can't have any property, no kickbacks, right,
Speaker 1: So impoverished property lists lovers of wisdom and they'll make
Speaker 1: things better. So we can say, matty professors with no
Speaker 1: no incentives, you know, no political donations. So I think
Speaker 1: it's all about letting ourselves be provoked, letting ourselves be
Speaker 1: engaged in thought experiments. Of course this doesn't answer our problems,
Speaker 1: but let it provoke us to think for our own time.
Speaker 1: We don't need a class of philosopher kings and queens.
Speaker 1: We need to all be philosophers though, because democracy demands
Speaker 1: we all engage philosophically, and it will only work if
Speaker 1: we all have the space to reflect on that level,
Speaker 1: which means we all have to have the time, which
Speaker 1: means we all have to be fed, which means we
Speaker 1: all have to be sheltered, which means we all have
Speaker 1: to be okay. So then we can do this work
Speaker 1: of democracy. I've seen a hand to something here, but
Speaker 1: before we get there, I just need to understand what
Speaker 1: did ancient Greek society look like in real life? Was
Speaker 1: it anything like what we have now? Greeks did have
Speaker 1: a very unique society. But the Greeks were slave owning society,
Speaker 1: so a lot like the United States. It was a
Speaker 1: democracy that was built on these incredible exclusions and exploitation
Speaker 1: and dehumanization. So it was built an idea of freedom
Speaker 1: based on other people's un freedom. Right, So it's a
Speaker 1: problem at the heart of democracy we have to acknowledge.
Speaker 1: But they had these amazing systems of participation for people
Speaker 1: who counted as citizens, and so for example, they compensated
Speaker 1: poor farmers and artisans so they could skip work so
Speaker 1: they could be in the Assembly. It was like everybody
Speaker 1: who counted as citizen could plan on being called up
Speaker 1: to the equivalent of Congress in their life. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine if we all had if we were all selected
Speaker 1: by lottery, which is how they did it, to serve
Speaker 1: in congress jury duty, but congress duty. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think that's really important. They thought elections were undemocratic because
Speaker 1: rich people, charismatic people, well connected people tend to win them.
Speaker 1: So they thought you should do it like jury duty,
Speaker 1: random selection. Um. I think that's a very provocative Greek
Speaker 1: sound very radical. They sound so committed. Okay, more about
Speaker 1: how what this practice looked like. No elections can script
Speaker 1: people into legislative service. So yeah, they m randomly selected
Speaker 1: people to serve in the council and then they suggested
Speaker 1: some laws. But they also just ran the city. They
Speaker 1: provided the social insurance programs, they handled the water and
Speaker 1: the irrigation. Was based on this idea that democracy is
Speaker 1: something you learned by doing. It's not that just a
Speaker 1: special group of people are born with the ability to
Speaker 1: run the city. We can all run the city together,
Speaker 1: but we have to be called to do it. We
Speaker 1: have to learn to do it. It's something that is
Speaker 1: a priority for us if we're going to live together
Speaker 1: as equals everyone I have ever known. I got a
Speaker 1: jury duty summon It's like, how do I get out
Speaker 1: of this? I can't imagine getting summoned to run the
Speaker 1: water depart of it. What did did people actually serve
Speaker 1: in these positions where people not trying to wease a
Speaker 1: lot of their civic responsibilities. Oh, it was the highest honor.
Speaker 1: And I get frustrated with people when they're they want
Speaker 1: to get out their dreary duty, because I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is our duty. We should be called to serve in
Speaker 1: all of these other ways, um, they were compensated again,
Speaker 1: so that way poor people could legislate, could govern next
Speaker 1: to more affluent people. They recognize you have to compensate
Speaker 1: folks to be able to do this, and it wasn't perfect.
Speaker 1: Scholars of the period will say there were aristocrats, right,
Speaker 1: people had more influence than others. But the point is
Speaker 1: they were thinking about these problems we're not thinking about,
Speaker 1: which is how do you create systems of equality? How
Speaker 1: do you compensate people so they can truly participate? This
Speaker 1: is why I'm saying that we are stuck. We just
Speaker 1: aren't being very creative when you think about all the
Speaker 1: tools at our disposal, and when we think democracy equals elections,
Speaker 1: I think we have to be honest that that's actually
Speaker 1: that might be an tradiction in terms We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about ancient Greek democracy, not a perfect democracy,
Speaker 1: probably not even the first one, but it does seem
Speaker 1: like they were really onto something in terms of money
Speaker 1: and true representation. So how does money affect our ability
Speaker 1: to participate in a democracy? So I think you know,
Speaker 1: we can name different kinds of freedom. So one is
Speaker 1: political freedom. So this is do you have formal rights?
Speaker 1: The formal rights that we associate with citizenship. Can you vote, right,
Speaker 1: do you get social benefits? But there's also economic freedom, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, well, can you afford to live? And these
Speaker 1: things really need each other. You need to have that
Speaker 1: economic freedom, You need to have that baseline of economic
Speaker 1: egalitarianism in order to have the political equality and the
Speaker 1: political freedom. To go back to the Greeks, I think
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that they recognize that for this class
Speaker 1: of elites called citizens, that they needed to have economic resources.
Speaker 1: So that's why they paid the farmers. That's why they
Speaker 1: paid the artisans to participate. So I mean today, I
Speaker 1: think you know, how I would describe our moment that
Speaker 1: we're in now, is that our political democracy in the
Speaker 1: United States, you know, doesn't live up to its name
Speaker 1: because of the intense economic inequality that we have. Right.
Speaker 1: So it's like, well, sure we all have one person,
Speaker 1: one vote, but when there's a billionaire who can make
Speaker 1: endless donations through a million dark money channels, like, that's
Speaker 1: not political equality, right. It just makes a mockery of
Speaker 1: the idea that we're actually equals in this society. I
Speaker 1: have observed through my life. I was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, largely a child of the eighties. When I
Speaker 1: think of when my childhood was and who was president
Speaker 1: and what I heard on the news, capitalism and democracy
Speaker 1: have been interpreted broadly and publicly as synonymous in the
Speaker 1: United States, I'm pretty sure they're not. What do you think?
Speaker 1: This question is made for me now. I mean they're not.
Speaker 1: Capitalism is a system that's based on inequality, right. Capitalism
Speaker 1: is a system of competition, not cooperation. It's about markets,
Speaker 1: it is about channeling greed. Right. So, um, can I
Speaker 1: give another ancient Greek thing really quick? The word idiot
Speaker 1: actually comes from the ancient Greek as well. Idiotis so
Speaker 1: in ancient Athens, the worst thing could be was an idiot,
Speaker 1: and it didn't mean that you were dumb or uneducated.
Speaker 1: What it actually meant was that you were a private person.
Speaker 1: You're only concerned with yourself, and the worst thing you
Speaker 1: can be in Athens with somebody only concerned with your
Speaker 1: private being. You're supposed to care about the community. You're
Speaker 1: supposed to be a citizen. And that's why I think
Speaker 1: capitalism and democracy are at odds because capitalism, you know,
Speaker 1: it encourages us to think in this atomized way, and
Speaker 1: to think about our personal gain, to see ourselves as
Speaker 1: in competition with other people, as opposed to seeing ourselves
Speaker 1: in a kind of cooperative relationship of mutual prosperity and betterment.
Speaker 1: How do we take this ancient Athenian vision a step further,
Speaker 1: evolve it and build or rebuild an economy that actually
Speaker 1: supports the demos and the power of those people for
Speaker 1: the many, not just the few. I mean for me.
Speaker 1: It all comes down to organizing, right, And it's really,
Speaker 1: actually it's really tough work thinking about the economy. Point
Speaker 1: right in this idea of leaving the economy of the experts,
Speaker 1: it's this idea that, you know, let the politicians make
Speaker 1: the decisions for us, and we need to challenge that
Speaker 1: by building power from the bottom up. Tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about the Biden Jubilee, which I might add
Speaker 1: is a great name for something. I'm like, is there
Speaker 1: a party I didn't get invited to? Like? Who doesn't
Speaker 1: have tickets to the Biden? Jew? Believe? To tell me
Speaker 1: about that? So I co founded a union for debtors
Speaker 1: called the Debt Collective, And so we're fighting to cancels
Speaker 1: all student debt right now. So it's a hundred people
Speaker 1: saying they're not going to pay their student loans. They're
Speaker 1: not asking for debt forgiveness, they're asking for justice for
Speaker 1: the abolition of these loans on the grounds that nobody
Speaker 1: should have to mortgage their future for the chance again education. Um.
Speaker 1: And so jubilee is you know a biblical term, right,
Speaker 1: it's this ancient term for the moment the debts are
Speaker 1: canceled and the land is given back people. Um. Jubilee
Speaker 1: was a word that was invoked by enslaved people. It
Speaker 1: was the name for emancipation, right, it was going to
Speaker 1: be jubilee. And jubilee was something that happened periodically in
Speaker 1: the ancient world. The economy would get so out of whack,
Speaker 1: people would be selling themselves into debt servitude and you
Speaker 1: know ancient Babylonia, and so periodically the king would say jubilee,
Speaker 1: wiping up the slates that have been canceled, and now
Speaker 1: you're free, you can go back home. So there's a
Speaker 1: long tradition of jubilees. And so what we're doing is
Speaker 1: echoing that call and saying this one point seven trillion
Speaker 1: dollars of student debt that is it didn't exist a
Speaker 1: few decades ago, right, I mean college was free. I
Speaker 1: just did the math. Actually, yesterday I found out that
Speaker 1: a kid going to the same school as Joe Biden
Speaker 1: did today math and justed for inflation, pays ninety dollars
Speaker 1: more than Joe Biden did. How much did he pay
Speaker 1: if he had paid for all women board uh intuition,
Speaker 1: he would have paid thirty thousand for four years. He
Speaker 1: also paid zero dollars to go to law school. So
Speaker 1: we're just saying we need a jubilee to get us
Speaker 1: back on parody with what you experienced. Joe Biden, that's
Speaker 1: the Biden Jubilee one hundred. I personally would argue that
Speaker 1: education is a democratic good and also because he has
Speaker 1: the power to do it. Turns out that he actually
Speaker 1: has the authority. He doesn't have to go through Congress.
Speaker 1: Congress gave the president the authority to cancel all student
Speaker 1: debt in the sixties, So with the stroke of a pen,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden can cancel all student debt, provide an economic
Speaker 1: boost for all of the country. Helped close the racial
Speaker 1: wealth gap because we know that actually black women are
Speaker 1: the most burdened by student debt, and so we're telling
Speaker 1: him it's the right thing to do. And so this
Speaker 1: is one of these little examples of where I take
Speaker 1: hope because when we first raised this issue ten years ago,
Speaker 1: the mainstream media just like knocked us, like they were like,
Speaker 1: these idiots think that the government's going to cancel debt,
Speaker 1: never gonna happen. And now we have a president who
Speaker 1: literally campaigned on it. So I'm just like, let's ask
Speaker 1: for things that seem crazy. My mouth is hanging open,
Speaker 1: my eyes are wide this Biden jubilee. I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: the count of argument. I'm thinking about what incentives are
Speaker 1: you creating. These people made decisions on their own, and
Speaker 1: now you're perverting the marketplace to let people off the
Speaker 1: hook for something they signed up for. That's not responsible citizenship,
Speaker 1: that's not sound economic policy. And then I remembered, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure this is true, but I'm willing to be wrong.
Speaker 1: I think the Fed just like brought up a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of corporate debt just like we'll take that. I
Speaker 1: think we've been doing debt forgiveness for certain parts of
Speaker 1: our society and certain sectors of the economy for some time.
Speaker 1: So please address this idea, uh, that wiping away one
Speaker 1: point seven trillion dollars a student debt is actually sound.
Speaker 1: First off, you made me think of this meme that
Speaker 1: was going around recently where it said things that are
Speaker 1: classy if you're rich, and trashy if you're poor. You know,
Speaker 1: it's speaking two languages, um, and one of them was bankruptcy. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're rich and you declare bankruptcy, it's strategic.
Speaker 1: It's a strategic default, you know. So you're exactly right.
Speaker 1: May of when the coronavirus hit, the FED took an
Speaker 1: unprecedented step of stepping in and stabilizing the corporate debt market,
Speaker 1: which is a way of saying providing debt relief to corporations.
Speaker 1: I remember when my mother declared bankruptcy. It was not celebrated.
Speaker 1: She could never run for president based on that decision.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't a savvy business. Movie was a move
Speaker 1: of desperation, and it shifted our family's finances for quite
Speaker 1: some time and burned some ideas into my head to
Speaker 1: check book by hand every day, balancing every dollar. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and as we go back to the sixties and look
Speaker 1: at the University of California, college was free for everyone,
Speaker 1: community colleges, state colleges, and the flagship universities. Why did
Speaker 1: that get rolled back? Ronald Reagan was governor. He didn't
Speaker 1: like that they are all these protesters at Berkeley. He
Speaker 1: didn't like the beginning of the black power movement Merritt
Speaker 1: College campus, and he said the state shouldn't be subsidizing curiosity.
Speaker 1: If we charge these kids, they're going to think twice
Speaker 1: before going around with a picket sign. I'm not making
Speaker 1: these up. These are basically quotes, right, So I think
Speaker 1: for me as a from a democratic perspective, from a
Speaker 1: citizen perspective, you know, there's a baseline of like, education
Speaker 1: is a public good and we should invest in it
Speaker 1: so much. Research shows that all of that money currently
Speaker 1: being spent to service loans that go to the government,
Speaker 1: the government doesn't need. This money would then be spent
Speaker 1: in the community, so it would be spent buying things,
Speaker 1: People would start businesses, it would create Research shows over
Speaker 1: a million and a half jobs a year. What's it
Speaker 1: felt like to see people try to reclaim some lost
Speaker 1: economic power in our system, even if we don't cancel
Speaker 1: people's deaths, just the psychological shift, like the fact that
Speaker 1: something we're basically saying, like you don't have to be ashamed,
Speaker 1: you don't have to feel like you made a mistake.
Speaker 1: Like that's such a burden off of people. I see
Speaker 1: that transformation like all the time of like wow, I'm
Speaker 1: in this boat and you all are too, So that
Speaker 1: that is this immeasurable value. We have one debt relief
Speaker 1: for tens of thousands of people at this point, mostly
Speaker 1: for people who went to predatory for profit colleges. And
Speaker 1: what they've said to us is, you know, I got
Speaker 1: my future back. Maybe I can say for retirement, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll be able to help my kids, you know, as
Speaker 1: they start on their path. I mean, it's life changing.
Speaker 1: You know, people are so underpaid in this freaking country,
Speaker 1: and it's like you're talking about getting fifty dollars of
Speaker 1: debt canceled. I mean, like might as well be fifty million.
Speaker 1: I mean, so it's amazing, um, and I wish it
Speaker 1: for every student debtor. I wish it for every medical debtor,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I think it's like, canceled the debt, man,
Speaker 1: let people be free. Wow. Do you think we've had
Speaker 1: a real democracy in the United States? We've never had
Speaker 1: a true democracy. We've never had a real democracy, and
Speaker 1: in fact, you know, if you look at the track record,
Speaker 1: I mean when we say things like exclusions, but I
Speaker 1: mean the level of violence and dispossession that has happened
Speaker 1: in the name of democracy is really profound. And yet
Speaker 1: nevertheless people have made tremendous progress. I mean, you and
Speaker 1: I are citizens, and it's like, who am I did,
Speaker 1: like not honor all of the work, all of the
Speaker 1: energy and hope and like the lives lost to get
Speaker 1: to this point where we hopefully get to carry the
Speaker 1: ball even further. So I'm trying to get to that
Speaker 1: duality of no, we haven't had a perfect democracy. But
Speaker 1: I think what's cool about the word democracy is that
Speaker 1: even the horizon I'm aiming at, like compulsory voting and
Speaker 1: didn't debt, abolition like that, to me that that would
Speaker 1: just be like a new beginning, right, So then the
Speaker 1: question is like where would you go after that? There's
Speaker 1: a lot of really tough stuff we need to figure
Speaker 1: out together, and so I very much see democracy as
Speaker 1: a horizon point. Let's not aspire to be founding fathers
Speaker 1: who like put it all on paper, like write a
Speaker 1: constitution or like we did it. You will live with
Speaker 1: us for eternity, but let's see ourselves instead. Is perennial
Speaker 1: midwives like trying to birth democracy and new and passing
Speaker 1: that on to future generations and letting them take up
Speaker 1: the challenge and probably make us feel a bit curmudgently.
Speaker 1: I knew why we invited you, but now I feel it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that. It's uh. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: something our first guest in Season one, Valerie Corps, talks about.
Speaker 1: She said, whether this is not the darkness of the tomb,
Speaker 1: but the darkness of the womb. Our nation isn't dying,
Speaker 1: but we're it's being born and maybe being born again,
Speaker 1: and that can be a dark and painful and even
Speaker 1: bloody process, but there's life on the other end of it.
Speaker 1: I like the journey metaphor rather than the mission accomplished
Speaker 1: stamp of approval um Astra, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: spending this time with us. Thanks for having me. I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed it. Astra reminded me that we can't talk
Speaker 1: about democracy without talking about the money, about the system
Speaker 1: of money and finance, which is intertwined with our definition
Speaker 1: of democracy and which divides us. I think there's a
Speaker 1: way for us to talk about division that is a
Speaker 1: little hokey. Oh, this Republican and this Democrat don't get along.
Speaker 1: They should have a beer together and talk about what
Speaker 1: they have in common. There's a deeper way to access
Speaker 1: what divides us. And I think when we start talking
Speaker 1: about the wealth inequality in this country, how during a
Speaker 1: pandemic the very rich got very much richer and the
Speaker 1: very poor got very much poorer, that's getting at the
Speaker 1: heart of the division. So when this season of How
Speaker 1: the Citizen, we're gonna talk about the money, we're digging
Speaker 1: into the problems an economy based on exclusion, run by
Speaker 1: big corporations, built on the backs of the working poor,
Speaker 1: And like we always do, we're looking at the solutions.
Speaker 1: I'm not an economist. I don't write economic papers. The
Speaker 1: point of this is not too investigate economic theories. The
Speaker 1: point of this is for us to be able to
Speaker 1: claim and use our power for our collective benefit. And
Speaker 1: I am convinced that we can do so much better.
Speaker 1: I've been reading about wealth and equality forever. It's a
Speaker 1: big problem. Where the solutions. Who's making it easy for
Speaker 1: me not to give all my money to Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: and Amazon, That's who I want to talk to. I
Speaker 1: am sure that there are people who recognize that we
Speaker 1: would all do better if we included more people an
Speaker 1: economic opportunity, not as charity, but as gaining from their contributions.
Speaker 1: Where are they? And I am sure that there is
Speaker 1: a way for people who work full time, sometimes in
Speaker 1: three jobs, to make enough to show up for their
Speaker 1: families and their communities and for all of us and
Speaker 1: not be categorized as the working poor. I know it
Speaker 1: because it happens in other nations. So what's happening in
Speaker 1: the United States that we can celebrate and do more?
Speaker 1: That's what I want to know, and that's what I
Speaker 1: want you to help me find out. Join me, be
Speaker 1: a part of the demos. Let's do this together. This
Speaker 1: is how to Citizen with barretton Day m HM. Because
Speaker 1: we see the word citizen as a verb that involves
Speaker 1: doing things. So here's our producer Stephanie with some things
Speaker 1: you can do to citizen in your life. Are you
Speaker 1: in debt? Check out Astro's Union for debtors, the Debt
Speaker 1: Collective at www dot Debt Collective dot org. Learn more
Speaker 1: about how you can wield your collective power. That's right.
Speaker 1: Being in debt does not make you powerless. You can
Speaker 1: still citizen with loans. But if you're not in debt,
Speaker 1: well lucky you. Seriously though, you can still find strengthen numbers.
Speaker 1: Find a week, take some time this week to reflect
Speaker 1: on communities that you are a part of, and research
Speaker 1: organizations you can join that are advocating for causes you
Speaker 1: care about. And lastly, you can citizen better by pressing
Speaker 1: a button, the one that says subscribe or follow. We're
Speaker 1: not being vain. Keeping up with the podcast is the
Speaker 1: best way for you to keep up with our incredible
Speaker 1: guests and all the ways you can citizen better. So
Speaker 1: buckle up. It's going to be a great season and
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot more ways that you can
Speaker 1: get involved if you take any of these actions. First
Speaker 1: of all, thank you, Thank you so very much. Now
Speaker 1: make sure to brag about yourself online. Use the hashtag
Speaker 1: how to citizen to encourage others to do the same.
Speaker 1: You can send us general or very specific feedback directly
Speaker 1: two comments at how to citizen dot com and just
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Speaker 1: If you like the show, please help us spread the word.
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Speaker 1: you've all been vaccinated, put it in your weekly newsletter,
Speaker 1: because everybody seems to have one of those. Thank you.
Speaker 1: How to Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio Podcasts and dust Light Productions. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Me, barrettun Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Stephanie Cone and Ali Kilts. Kelly Prime
Speaker 1: is our editor, Valentino Rivera is our engineer, and Sam
Speaker 1: Paulson is our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced and sound designed by Stephanie Cone. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Joel Smith from I Heart Matter