Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Baritune Day Thurston and this is how to
Speaker 1: citizen with Baritune Day in season two. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the money, because, to be real, it's hard to citizen
Speaker 1: when we can barely pay the bills. Many years after
Speaker 1: I graduated from college, like maybe ten, I started noticing
Speaker 1: types of mail showing up and it was about how
Speaker 1: to fix your credit. We can help you consolidate your debt.
Speaker 1: And I was like, what, this is a very particular
Speaker 1: type of spam. What what are you trying to tell me? World?
Speaker 1: And uh, I decided to like look up my credits core.
Speaker 1: Oh dear lord. The amount of red that I saw
Speaker 1: it was there was this one card that I kind
Speaker 1: of forgot about because it was after my mom died,
Speaker 1: and I got very distracted and I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't pay bills anymore. I cried, That's what I do.
Speaker 1: And then when I stopped crying, I didn't remember to
Speaker 1: go pay the bills. I just I was like I
Speaker 1: moved forward as well. I don't look back. And I
Speaker 1: was ashamed because I was like, I got this college degree,
Speaker 1: I'm twenty something years old. I am a full grown up,
Speaker 1: you know. I signed a lease rate I owned a
Speaker 1: car for a minute, I'm doing this adulting thing, and
Speaker 1: I felt really alone because I thought I was supposed
Speaker 1: to know. I thought I was supposed to be better
Speaker 1: and have done better until I've met a good friend
Speaker 1: of mine who also had a college degree and he
Speaker 1: had a terrible credit score too. Oh that was that
Speaker 1: was an interesting reunion. We're like, yo, you have terrible
Speaker 1: credit who's embarrassing their family? This guy? Know? This guy?
Speaker 1: That's me. That's me who should have been better but
Speaker 1: isn't doing better. Oh that's YouTube. Wait, so we're not
Speaker 1: so alone in all these feelings. Well, that's actually pretty cool.
Speaker 1: We shared that shame, which made it feel less like shame,
Speaker 1: and we made some fun of it, and then we
Speaker 1: got to working on it together. My point is the
Speaker 1: economy we're living in makes us all feel alone, the
Speaker 1: same way my credit score made me feel alone. So
Speaker 1: many of us feel ashamed and embarrassed, and sometimes we
Speaker 1: even feel like it's our neighbor's fault that things are
Speaker 1: so bad. In other words, isolation and shame lead to division.
Speaker 1: But the truth is we're not alone. That's what we
Speaker 1: made this season for. How do we bring a different
Speaker 1: story of this economy to life. I wanted to understand
Speaker 1: the forces that stop us from being able to show
Speaker 1: up as citizens. This wealth and equality built on racial exclusion,
Speaker 1: fueled by a corporate consolidation of power, resulting and growing
Speaker 1: numbers of people who are overworked, underpaid, and undersupport with it.
Speaker 1: I wanted to understand all that and talk to the
Speaker 1: people who are moving us forward into a more united,
Speaker 1: equitable future where we could all pay the bills, where
Speaker 1: we can all citizens. And I think we did that.
Speaker 1: I know we missed many things. We couldn't cover everything.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about overseas tax shelters, we didn't talk
Speaker 1: about the massive economic impact of the climate crisis. But
Speaker 1: the point wasn't to gather every piece of the public.
Speaker 1: The point was to paint a bigger picture, to tell
Speaker 1: a bigger story of an economy that could work to
Speaker 1: benefit us all. And by pursuing this bigger story, I
Speaker 1: learned that this wealth and equality that's aparated in us
Speaker 1: its roots run deep into our past. Our original economic
Speaker 1: model was stolen people, stolen land, and stolen labor, And
Speaker 1: in order to justify that within a Christian society, they
Speaker 1: had to make those people who were being stolen less
Speaker 1: than human back to what Heather McGee calls this zero
Speaker 1: sum worldview, this US versus them mentality that for one
Speaker 1: to win, another has gotta lose, and it's designed to
Speaker 1: keep everybody in their place. And the model was, I profit,
Speaker 1: you lose. You don't get to share any of the
Speaker 1: games of your land, your effort, your labor, nothing. But
Speaker 1: even then this was the real like aha for me.
Speaker 1: Even then, that worst possible economic model only truly maximally
Speaker 1: benefited a narrow elite back then of white people. Wealthy
Speaker 1: white folks created a story, a story designed to exclude
Speaker 1: people of color and to distract the poor white folks
Speaker 1: from what was really going on. And so that white
Speaker 1: slave owning, landowning elite had to convince the far more numerous, landless,
Speaker 1: indentured white folks who were sitting there in the you know,
Speaker 1: rocky fields alongside the black folks, that they were better
Speaker 1: than the person down the row, and that in fact,
Speaker 1: justice or freedom for black folks would be a threat
Speaker 1: to white folks period. The I of course, always knew
Speaker 1: our country is built on racism. I'm very much on
Speaker 1: the record saying that. But I've got to say, I
Speaker 1: was surprised to hear from just about everybody that a
Speaker 1: major point in our country's history of racist economics was
Speaker 1: also this era that our history books tend to paint
Speaker 1: as a time of tremendous growth and prosperity for Americans.
Speaker 1: The New Deal, the New Deal, the New Deal. There
Speaker 1: was New Deal, policies of the New Deal, labor laws,
Speaker 1: the Party of the New Deal for white Americans. The
Speaker 1: New Deal was the Democratic Party's response to the Great
Speaker 1: Depression in the nineteen thirties, where we put these foundational,
Speaker 1: sweeping policies and in place to try to reset and
Speaker 1: adjust our economy and our democracy for the next phase.
Speaker 1: Tens of millions of people made a working class into
Speaker 1: the middle class through this massive economic expansion. It included
Speaker 1: protections for the right to organize a union, social security
Speaker 1: and other assistance for people on hard times, strong anti
Speaker 1: monopoly policies, subsidization of housing. We had these state funded
Speaker 1: colleges in every state. It was just sort of this
Speaker 1: period of time where everything kind of aligned to make
Speaker 1: the greatest middle class the world had ever seen. And
Speaker 1: it was social movements that created the context for that.
Speaker 1: Workers everyday people organizing it sounds like the American dream.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the American dream. Ding ding ding, You
Speaker 1: got that's it, that was it, that was when we
Speaker 1: had it, you know. But the question is who was
Speaker 1: the week? And so much of what I just described
Speaker 1: was done from a federal policy level in an explicitly
Speaker 1: racially exclusive way. This thing we celebrate should probably be
Speaker 1: called the New Deal for white Americans because a lot
Speaker 1: of us were deliberately excluded, which reinforced that us versus
Speaker 1: them worldview that started with the slave owning elite in
Speaker 1: the first place. So white people got to move up
Speaker 1: while people of color will. We remain stuck, but as
Speaker 1: we always have, we fought to be included. We see
Speaker 1: America through the eyes of someone who has been the
Speaker 1: victim of Americans. We don't see any American dreams. We've experienced,
Speaker 1: only the American night movie. We do not want our
Speaker 1: freedom graduate, but we want to be fret now all realization.
Speaker 1: It takes dedication, It takes the willingness to stand by
Speaker 1: and do what has to be done when it has
Speaker 1: to be done. We had the Civil rights movement pushing
Speaker 1: for everyone to get in on that American dream, on
Speaker 1: that liberty and justice for all. But they have always
Speaker 1: been those resisting that progress. And you think that that pushback,
Speaker 1: that that racism would only hurt the intended targets a
Speaker 1: k a. Black people, But the crazy truth is white
Speaker 1: folks were so determined to exclude Black Americans that they
Speaker 1: actually sabotaged themselves. There's one wild example. I can't stop
Speaker 1: thinking about. The town's drained the public pools, rather than
Speaker 1: integrate them, took the water out, backed up trucks of dirt,
Speaker 1: dumped it in, paved it, over seated it with grass.
Speaker 1: In my governery, Alabama, they closed the entire Parks and
Speaker 1: Recreation department. They sold off the animals in the zoo,
Speaker 1: all to avoid sharing it with black folks. And then
Speaker 1: this guy shows up, Ronald Reagan. Do solemnly swear that
Speaker 1: I will faithfully execute the office of President of the
Speaker 1: United States. Ronald Reagan, he was a Republican heavy hitter,
Speaker 1: the former governor of California, and he basically came in
Speaker 1: with a big business mentality rolling back the social programs
Speaker 1: of the New Deal, and he was very, very successful
Speaker 1: at doing that. The ideas essentially were bigger and bigger
Speaker 1: industries that are ever more efficient and can put out
Speaker 1: more stuff for less money. At the University of California,
Speaker 1: college was free for everyone. Why did that get rolled back?
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan was governor. He didn't like that they're all
Speaker 1: these protesters at Berkeley. He didn't like the beginning of
Speaker 1: the black power movement at Merritt College campus, and he
Speaker 1: said this, it shouldn't be subsidizing curiosity. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: evictions and plant closures and members of my family losing
Speaker 1: jobs and benign neglect. That was when you started to
Speaker 1: see a lot of money and resources pulled out of
Speaker 1: urban cities, urban programs, and that is really what accelerated
Speaker 1: urban decline and the loss of value in urban communities.
Speaker 1: He cut all kinds of things. He cut policies that
Speaker 1: were designed to better resolve He cut urban programs creating
Speaker 1: this benign neglect, cut publicly funded higher education out of spite,
Speaker 1: and changed our anti monopoly policies. Selling us this story,
Speaker 1: which is fitting for a man who never quite fully
Speaker 1: left Hollywood, selling us this bootstrap narrative that if you
Speaker 1: just try hard enough, if if you alone wanted bad enough,
Speaker 1: you alone can make it on your own that you
Speaker 1: already have everything you need to succeed. If you just
Speaker 1: want to succeed badly enough, and your failure to succeed,
Speaker 1: that's yours alone. You shouldn't need anybody else's help. There
Speaker 1: is this moralism associated with poverty, where we believe in
Speaker 1: individuals who are poor are bad people, or they're not
Speaker 1: capable people, they're not as smart as we have not
Speaker 1: looked at or examined the systems, so that make it
Speaker 1: virtually impossible for individuals to move up the economic latter.
Speaker 1: So much of what we know today is tied up
Speaker 1: in what we've been taught for so long with somebody
Speaker 1: else told us. When I first spoke with Jamila Medley,
Speaker 1: she told me we have to heal from individualism. M hmm,
Speaker 1: what a scrumptious and true statement. Individualism as an illness
Speaker 1: really stuck with me. We're told all our lives, get
Speaker 1: an education, find a well paying job, buy your house,
Speaker 1: start a family, do this, do that, And all I'm
Speaker 1: hearing is me, me, me, me, me, figure it out,
Speaker 1: do it all by yourself. And then I remember what
Speaker 1: Heather said, two people in a cold room, one's got
Speaker 1: a coat, one doesn't. But if they just sort of
Speaker 1: joined together and like shouldered open the door, then walked
Speaker 1: out into the sun where it's seventy degrees. They both
Speaker 1: be good, you know, but it's the boss that keeps
Speaker 1: them in the cold room. Imagine if we dropped the
Speaker 1: individualism and work together, things could get a whole lot
Speaker 1: better for all of us. When some of us lose,
Speaker 1: we all lose. When we work together, we can all win.
Speaker 1: And you could say that this idea goes back way
Speaker 1: earlier than Reagan, way earlier than the New Deal. We
Speaker 1: can take it all the way back to something Astra
Speaker 1: Taylor told me about the ancient Greeks. The word idiot
Speaker 1: actually comes from the ancient Greek as well. Idiotis and
Speaker 1: it didn't mean that you were dumb or uneducated. What
Speaker 1: it actually meant was that you were a private person.
Speaker 1: You're only concerned with yourself. So in ancient Athens, the
Speaker 1: worst thing could be was an idiot. And once we
Speaker 1: change our mindset and stop looking just at this separate
Speaker 1: world of us and them, seeing ourselves as individuals instead
Speaker 1: see ourselves as part of a week that we benefit
Speaker 1: when everybody does by definition, that's when we can start
Speaker 1: to do some real cool stuff. We can have new
Speaker 1: models of business that served the many, not just the few.
Speaker 1: So this is a model for how to cement ourselves
Speaker 1: as citizens. After the break we talk solutions. So clearly,
Speaker 1: our economy has some issues racism, division, all the money
Speaker 1: flowing right into the pockets of Mr Bezos, and this
Speaker 1: extreme wealth inequality that's been plaguing our nation for decades.
Speaker 1: But if there's one thing I learned this season, it's
Speaker 1: that people are coming out swinging. There are people working
Speaker 1: hard to citizen and to create new models that make
Speaker 1: it possible for all of us to thrive. And as
Speaker 1: I started looking at some of these incredible new models,
Speaker 1: I noticed that they were accounting for something that feels
Speaker 1: very far away from capital e economics. They were focusing
Speaker 1: on human needs, on the fact that in order for
Speaker 1: the economy to thrive, people need to thrive too. First,
Speaker 1: you need space, like a space of your own, physical space,
Speaker 1: a mental space to feel like you belong, like you've
Speaker 1: got room to grow. When you're tied down to debt,
Speaker 1: trust me, it's impossible to feel that sense of space.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to pay the rent or educational opportunities or
Speaker 1: health expenses when you are burdened by that lack of space.
Speaker 1: You don't have time to ground yourself, to plant yourself,
Speaker 1: to think about growing into something more. You're too busy surviving.
Speaker 1: Nony Sessions saw firsthand what happens when people lose that
Speaker 1: sense of physical space called home, without land, without permanence,
Speaker 1: the path in the future go up and smoke, They disappear.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to connect you to before, and there's there's
Speaker 1: very little the ground YouTube after. Nony is a third
Speaker 1: generation West Oaklander, a community that's been assaulted by gentrification,
Speaker 1: or what she calls accelerated racialized displacement. As she's watched
Speaker 1: countless evictions, the encampments of houseless Oaklanders get larger and larger,
Speaker 1: and big developers swarm their way in. She realized that
Speaker 1: the solution was ownership, and that her community was vulnerable
Speaker 1: because her community didn't own their land. So she created
Speaker 1: eb PRECK, the East Bay Permanent real Estate Cooperative. This
Speaker 1: fights gentrification in West Oakland by buying up real estate
Speaker 1: and historically black and brown communities and then collectively owning
Speaker 1: and managing those properties democratically. So this is a model
Speaker 1: for how to cement ourselves as citizens structurally. So ownership
Speaker 1: permanent is critical for culture building, identity building, the building
Speaker 1: of futures. Ownership gives us room to breathe. And there's
Speaker 1: this thing that I've felt through all of these conversations
Speaker 1: about the power of place and community, about being grounded
Speaker 1: somewhere and having a platform from which to launch, to
Speaker 1: become more, to become citizens, to citizens not just legally,
Speaker 1: but in a community sense, to feel connect did to
Speaker 1: other people, to feel valued with and buy other people
Speaker 1: in a way that isn't captured by dollars. It's captured
Speaker 1: by something else, something Richer small business owner and distiller
Speaker 1: Maria Strada remembers that feeling so clearly. When the pandemic
Speaker 1: hit her community in Bushwick, I started realizing that people
Speaker 1: did love us in a way, which is something I
Speaker 1: didn't really recognize. When COVID hit Marie's distillery, Moto Spirits
Speaker 1: turned around and started making hand sanitizer to supply hospitals
Speaker 1: and to keep her community safe. And when Marie needed
Speaker 1: her neighbors to show up, they did. Everyone was reaching
Speaker 1: back out to us, the relationships that we had initially
Speaker 1: fostered with random things like motorcycles and dogs, and they
Speaker 1: just came, you know, everyone just said okay, well we're
Speaker 1: gonna do this. Or bartenders came and we did this
Speaker 1: bartending event once this competition, and they reached out and
Speaker 1: they said, hey, how about if we do you know,
Speaker 1: a special cocktail thing for you online and then we
Speaker 1: can you know, give that money to a certain organization.
Speaker 1: So that's that's how we've been doing things. Now, I
Speaker 1: gotta say hearing how Mri showed up for her community
Speaker 1: in its time of need challenge. The way I often
Speaker 1: think about businesses, like our US concept of how a
Speaker 1: business works tends to involve the image of cost cutting
Speaker 1: and operating opportunistically, competitively and above all, capitalistically to maximize profits.
Speaker 1: I think about CEOs get the basils who make piles
Speaker 1: of money while workers fight for a livable minimum wage.
Speaker 1: But so many guests really elevated my idea of what
Speaker 1: a successful community centered business should and can look like.
Speaker 1: Jamila Medley has seen the cooperative ownership model working for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years. But what exactly is a cooperative? Like?
Speaker 1: What's a co op? I thought I knew, but I
Speaker 1: really didn't. So a co op has two components. One
Speaker 1: is the association of people who come together. They identified
Speaker 1: that they have a shared need economic, social, cultural, and
Speaker 1: they determined that they want to democratically own an enterprise together,
Speaker 1: and so they create that business to fulfill the need
Speaker 1: that they have. So co ops sound new ag, but
Speaker 1: really certain communities have been practicing cooperative economics on the
Speaker 1: d L for a long time. For black folks in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: cooperative economic and mutual aid practices have been essential to survival.
Speaker 1: So we can think back to periods when black folks
Speaker 1: were enslaved and there were people who were running away
Speaker 1: from slavery who came to Philadelphia and created a rich
Speaker 1: and robust community of black folks here. But they survived
Speaker 1: in many ways through cooperative economic practices. Here's the thing
Speaker 1: that resonates most with me about the cooperative model. It
Speaker 1: gives people a chance to make their voices heard. It
Speaker 1: gives people a choice. It's like this little place where
Speaker 1: democracy plays out. And as I started to explore these
Speaker 1: new models of business, it became clear that that sense
Speaker 1: of agency is key well beyond voting, well beyond business,
Speaker 1: just in life. It's a lot easier to thrive when
Speaker 1: you have the space to make your own decisions rather
Speaker 1: than someone prescribing those decisions for you, giving you the
Speaker 1: feeling of choice while having pre selected a certain set
Speaker 1: of options that you're limited by now. Bruce Patterson saw
Speaker 1: that when he set out to bring a public option,
Speaker 1: a choice for broadband to the small town of amin Idaho.
Speaker 1: There's no way for you to invest in a different
Speaker 1: outcome unless you own it. That's the only way you
Speaker 1: can invest in a different outcome. So as a community,
Speaker 1: people that decide to join AM and Fiber, they're invested
Speaker 1: in that. So when they call and we've got an issue,
Speaker 1: they know they're talking to somebody that lives in the
Speaker 1: same community. After the break public broadband and free money,
Speaker 1: I gotta say I am a total nerd. I said
Speaker 1: it before and I'll say it again that the Internet
Speaker 1: is a subject close to my heart and I feel
Speaker 1: like something that doesn't get talked about enough. Is this
Speaker 1: connection that broadband has to our economy, our society, and
Speaker 1: our ability to show up as citizens. Without equal internet access,
Speaker 1: we don't have equal access to information, and in the pandemic,
Speaker 1: it means we don't have equal access to work, to school,
Speaker 1: even to vaccines, which is why I was so excited
Speaker 1: to talk to Bruce. How would we as a small
Speaker 1: town in idahobe competitive in attracting businesses and residents with broadband.
Speaker 1: So the hardest part about this isn't the technology, but
Speaker 1: the absolute hardest thing is consensus. Bruce found that locals
Speaker 1: were paying for this essential need access to the Internet,
Speaker 1: which is like access to electricity or water or even air,
Speaker 1: but their needs were not getting met, not getting met
Speaker 1: by the private option. There are people in neighborhoods that
Speaker 1: want fiber, they want better connectivity, they want another choice.
Speaker 1: And here's the brilliant thing to me, Bruce didn't just
Speaker 1: jam the option down people's throats. He knew that wouldn't
Speaker 1: go over well and conservative rural Idaho. No, he found
Speaker 1: those people where they were in their neighborhoods and gave
Speaker 1: them a space and opportunity to discover and voice their needs.
Speaker 1: These people came out of the woodwork and found us
Speaker 1: and said, if I talk to my neighbors, if I
Speaker 1: go knock on doors, can you give me anything to say?
Speaker 1: So we started to call these folks fiber champions, and
Speaker 1: they did it am and Idaho now has the choice
Speaker 1: to opt into some of the cheapest, fastest, most public
Speaker 1: internet in the country. The Open Technology Institute did a
Speaker 1: cost of connectivity research program and found am and to
Speaker 1: have the cheapest gig internet in the world. I gin
Speaker 1: poos fight for domestic workers is about giving those workers
Speaker 1: more choices. The choice to have health benefits comes to mind,
Speaker 1: but it's also about lending the care and support our
Speaker 1: society needs to open up choices for the rest of us.
Speaker 1: We think about infrastructures, bridges and tunnels and broadband, but
Speaker 1: what could be more fundamental infrastructure than the ability to
Speaker 1: make sure that our families are loved, ones are cared
Speaker 1: for so that we can work. I call these jobs
Speaker 1: job enabling jobs because they make it possible for everything
Speaker 1: else to work and everyone else to work, space to live,
Speaker 1: access to internet, access to health care, and job options.
Speaker 1: All of that equates to choice. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, so much choice in this economy comes
Speaker 1: right down to money, and giving poor black mother's choices
Speaker 1: is why Yandoro started the Magnolia Mother's Trust Magnolian Mother's
Speaker 1: Trust as the first and only guaranteed income project in
Speaker 1: this country that takes a racial and gender equity approach
Speaker 1: to our conversations about wealth and equities within this country.
Speaker 1: It provides a thousand dollars a month twelve months and
Speaker 1: no strings attached extremely low income Black mothers. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars a month, no strings attached for a
Speaker 1: full year. Because you can't citizen when you can barely
Speaker 1: pay the bills, when you live in poverty and don't
Speaker 1: have savings. How that constantly holding your breath? Um, how
Speaker 1: stressful that is, and how that takes away your ability
Speaker 1: to plan and dream and hope. One of our moms
Speaker 1: went do in the pandemic and became a paramedic. She's like,
Speaker 1: I always want to be a paramedic. They need paramedics now.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, they do need paramedics now. And by
Speaker 1: giving people money, Magnolia Mother's Trust is giving people options,
Speaker 1: giving them a chance to decide on their future, a
Speaker 1: chance two citizen. And that's exactly what Astra Taylor told
Speaker 1: me about ancient Greek society. Greece is this mythic birthplace
Speaker 1: of democracy in the US. And there's some parts of
Speaker 1: their society that definitely needed work. Women were excluded, and
Speaker 1: you know they own slaves. But there's one thing they
Speaker 1: really did get right. They paid those who counted as
Speaker 1: citizens to participate in self government, and when it was
Speaker 1: your turn, you'd actually get called up to serve. It
Speaker 1: was like jury duty. But for Congress, they were thinking
Speaker 1: about these problems we're not thinking about, which is how
Speaker 1: do you create systems of equality? How do you compensate
Speaker 1: people so they can truly participate? Right? And this is
Speaker 1: why I'm saying that we're stuck. We just aren't being
Speaker 1: very creative when you think about all the tools or disposal,
Speaker 1: and when we think democracy equals elections, I think we
Speaker 1: have to be honest that might be a contradiction in
Speaker 1: terms when we give ourselves room to citizen to really
Speaker 1: show up and invest in relationships and understand our power
Speaker 1: and benefit the many not the few. We give ourselves
Speaker 1: room to pursue things that some of us have deemed radical.
Speaker 1: I'm talking public broadband and giving people money just to
Speaker 1: do with what they say they need. So many of
Speaker 1: these things were a pipe dream to so many of
Speaker 1: us until the pandemic. Right now, in particular, I think
Speaker 1: we are in this a new New Deal moment, honestly,
Speaker 1: where more deeper, impactful change is possible than my entire
Speaker 1: twenty five years of organizing. Yeah, that's right, I'm bringing
Speaker 1: up the Rhona. Look, I'm not gonna sit here and
Speaker 1: tell you how great COVID nineteen has been for everybody,
Speaker 1: how good it was for society, because it's not, and
Speaker 1: it hasn't been. It caused us a lot of pain,
Speaker 1: a lot of distraction, a lot of agony. But it's
Speaker 1: also shown us how dire things have been and how
Speaker 1: much better they can be. And it's shown us that
Speaker 1: when pressed, we can rise to that opportunity. You know,
Speaker 1: we've kind of been here before. This happened with the
Speaker 1: Great Depression. Our entire nation's economy crashed, and we responded.
Speaker 1: We were forced to respond with the New Deal. So
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen now. Adoption of a widespread guaranteed and
Speaker 1: come on a national scale. I think that that will
Speaker 1: look like as finally eradicating poverty. I think that will
Speaker 1: look like us having healthier families. I think that would
Speaker 1: look like us having healthier kids. I think that would
Speaker 1: look like us finally looking like the greatest nation in
Speaker 1: the world. I think that would change the trajectory of
Speaker 1: our future, not just for some before an entire country,
Speaker 1: before the pandemic, universal basic income was this radical, relatively
Speaker 1: fringe idea. Now everyday Americans are cashing stimulus checks and
Speaker 1: enhance unemployment benefits, and we're starting to expect it. Maybe
Speaker 1: now we can create that new new deal that doesn't
Speaker 1: leave out people of color and explicitly exclude so many
Speaker 1: who we need to all move forward. Maybe we'll get
Speaker 1: to be just go out and limb here free. Do
Speaker 1: you believe? Is you know a biblical term, right? It's
Speaker 1: this ancient term, uh, for the moment the deaths are
Speaker 1: canceled in the land is given back, the economy we
Speaker 1: get so out of whack, people would be selling themselves
Speaker 1: into debt servitude. And you know ancient Babylonia, and so
Speaker 1: periodically the king would say, jubilie, wiping up the slate.
Speaker 1: So that's been canceled, and now you're free. You can
Speaker 1: go back home. What would it mean to be free
Speaker 1: of crushing debt, free of small mindedness, free of being
Speaker 1: penned in and not being able to show up as citizens?
Speaker 1: That excites me? Can you hear it in my voice?
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, I'm getting a little excited. Okay, calm
Speaker 1: down here. Today. I am cautiously optimistic about this future.
Speaker 1: But I've also lived, and I know this is not
Speaker 1: going to be easy. It's never been easy. Literally, it's
Speaker 1: always hard. Doing good stuff is almost always hard to
Speaker 1: do because there's gonna be pushed back. People will get
Speaker 1: impatient with the pace to change. Some of us will
Speaker 1: remain stuck in the zero sum us versus them mentality.
Speaker 1: And we're still struggling with how to grow through the
Speaker 1: systemic racism that's held us back so long. We're still
Speaker 1: struggling to accept all people as people, regardless of how
Speaker 1: they identify themselves versus our limited expectations of who they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be. We're still struggling with just really starting
Speaker 1: to face the size of the climate crisis. Yeah, climates
Speaker 1: hanging out there like I see your plans? What? And
Speaker 1: still with all that, with all those real challenges that
Speaker 1: I've named and some that I haven't, I feel like
Speaker 1: something big could happen. I know something big could happen.
Speaker 1: And I know what's more likely to happen if we
Speaker 1: all do our part, if we show up right, if
Speaker 1: we participate, if we if we citizen, even in small ways,
Speaker 1: to help make those possible big changes, real, big realities.
Speaker 1: That's the story we put together. But there is one
Speaker 1: more story to tell in this season. Next week we
Speaker 1: have a very special guest and a very special episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get called like a professor doing comedy, which you know,
Speaker 1: it feels good in some way because it makes my
Speaker 1: parents feel good to hear the word professor next to
Speaker 1: my name. At the same time, it's I don't want
Speaker 1: to be teaching people. I want to be making them laugh,
Speaker 1: and I want to be able to make anybody laugh.
Speaker 1: Next week, Harri Kondabolo, and now time for some action.
Speaker 1: Ask yourself, how did this season make you feel? How
Speaker 1: has it challenged you and what have you learned? And
Speaker 1: if you're comfortable sharing any of those reflections, please share
Speaker 1: them with us. Send an email to comments at how
Speaker 1: to Citizen, doctor m or leave a voice memo with feedback.
Speaker 1: In general, how do Citizen dot com slash voiceman. We
Speaker 1: know there's always more to learn, which is why we
Speaker 1: set up a special bookshop just for you. Head over
Speaker 1: the bookshop dot org slash shop slash how to Citizen.
Speaker 1: We've got shelves with titles written by our guests, those
Speaker 1: recommended by our guests, and those we have learned to
Speaker 1: love as well. I am sure there's something on those
Speaker 1: shelves that will help you keep learning. I know we've
Speaker 1: asked you to do a lot this season, and if
Speaker 1: you've missed any of it, we got you head over
Speaker 1: to how the Citizen dot com for all those actions
Speaker 1: plus more. There's some bonus thing happening over there where
Speaker 1: we've got personalized ways to get you going on your
Speaker 1: citizen journey. We know it's not always easy to know
Speaker 1: where to start, so we built something a little customized
Speaker 1: just for you. And lastly, just tell somebody about the show.
Speaker 1: If you've been with us this long, you know what
Speaker 1: we're up to was dope. We need you to tell
Speaker 1: the algorithms how dope we are with those five stars
Speaker 1: in those reviews. We need you to tell your friends,
Speaker 1: your family members, and your colleagues. And if you go
Speaker 1: loud on social media, our hashtag is how to Citizen Now.
Speaker 1: I've got to thank some people for helping make this
Speaker 1: show possible. I want to thank all of our guests.
Speaker 1: It's pretty obvious I couldn't have done this without them.
Speaker 1: It would just be me talking to myself, which, trust me,
Speaker 1: has its limits. I want to thank the Economic Security Project,
Speaker 1: who helped us find so many of these guests. To
Speaker 1: my producing team, Stephanie Cone, Ali Killed, Sam Paulson, Kelly Prime,
Speaker 1: thank you for your patience with me, for your creativity,
Speaker 1: and for your dedication. And a special thanks to Misha Yusuf,
Speaker 1: Tamka Adams, Arwin Nix, and Rachel Garcia all at dust
Speaker 1: Like Super Dope. Special extra thanks to this show's executive
Speaker 1: producer and my wife, Elizabeth Stewart. I used the term
Speaker 1: we a lot when I'm describing this show, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I mean that generically, like we're all part of a
Speaker 1: collective find the week, but often I mean that very specifically,
Speaker 1: like me and Elizabeth. You hear my voice, but you're
Speaker 1: often experiencing her thinking, her brain, and her big picture vision.
Speaker 1: She's been a key to the architecture of this season,
Speaker 1: helping us all connect these dots. So thank you, Bo. Finally,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening, for emailing and social media in
Speaker 1: and sharing your literal voice with us. Thank you for Citizen.
Speaker 1: We're in this together? How does Citizen? With Baritone Day
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio Podcasts and Dust
Speaker 1: Like Productions. Our executive producers are Me Barritton, Day, Thurston
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Stewart and Misha Yusa. Our producers are Stephanie Cone
Speaker 1: and Ali Kilts. Kelly Prime is our editor, Valentino Rivera
Speaker 1: is our engineer, and Sam Paulson is our apprentice. Original
Speaker 1: music by Andrew Eaple. This episode was produced and sound
Speaker 1: designed by Stephanie Comb. Special thanks to Joel Smith from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio