WEBVTT - Baratunde Reflects on Season Two 0:00:00.800 --> 0:00:03.680 Hey, I'm Baritune Day Thurston and this is how to 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:08.600 citizen with Baritune Day in season two. We're talking about 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:12.360 the money, because, to be real, it's hard to citizen 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:21.840 when we can barely pay the bills. Many years after 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:26.960 I graduated from college, like maybe ten, I started noticing 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:31.400 types of mail showing up and it was about how 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.840 to fix your credit. We can help you consolidate your debt. 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:37.600 And I was like, what, this is a very particular 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:40.400 type of spam. What what are you trying to tell me? World? 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:44.440 And uh, I decided to like look up my credits core. 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:49.120 Oh dear lord. The amount of red that I saw 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:51.880 it was there was this one card that I kind 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:54.600 of forgot about because it was after my mom died, 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:56.480 and I got very distracted and I was like, I 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.120 don't pay bills anymore. I cried, That's what I do. 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:02.360 And then when I stopped crying, I didn't remember to 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:04.360 go pay the bills. I just I was like I 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:08.080 moved forward as well. I don't look back. And I 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.279 was ashamed because I was like, I got this college degree, 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:14.600 I'm twenty something years old. I am a full grown up, 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:17.920 you know. I signed a lease rate I owned a 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:22.520 car for a minute, I'm doing this adulting thing, and 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:24.800 I felt really alone because I thought I was supposed 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:26.360 to know. I thought I was supposed to be better 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:30.280 and have done better until I've met a good friend 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:34.080 of mine who also had a college degree and he 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:38.480 had a terrible credit score too. Oh that was that 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:41.120 was an interesting reunion. We're like, yo, you have terrible 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:48.040 credit who's embarrassing their family? This guy? Know? This guy? 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:50.640 That's me. That's me who should have been better but 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:54.400 isn't doing better. Oh that's YouTube. Wait, so we're not 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:59.800 so alone in all these feelings. Well, that's actually pretty cool. 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:04.040 We shared that shame, which made it feel less like shame, 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:07.200 and we made some fun of it, and then we 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:12.920 got to working on it together. My point is the 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:15.800 economy we're living in makes us all feel alone, the 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:18.720 same way my credit score made me feel alone. So 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.240 many of us feel ashamed and embarrassed, and sometimes we 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:24.600 even feel like it's our neighbor's fault that things are 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:29.639 so bad. In other words, isolation and shame lead to division. 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:37.440 But the truth is we're not alone. That's what we 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:41.400 made this season for. How do we bring a different 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:46.040 story of this economy to life. I wanted to understand 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:48.239 the forces that stop us from being able to show 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:52.360 up as citizens. This wealth and equality built on racial exclusion, 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:56.400 fueled by a corporate consolidation of power, resulting and growing 0:02:56.480 --> 0:03:00.359 numbers of people who are overworked, underpaid, and undersupport with it. 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:03.720 I wanted to understand all that and talk to the 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.040 people who are moving us forward into a more united, 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:10.400 equitable future where we could all pay the bills, where 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:17.640 we can all citizens. And I think we did that. 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:21.080 I know we missed many things. We couldn't cover everything. 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.320 We didn't talk about overseas tax shelters, we didn't talk 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:29.240 about the massive economic impact of the climate crisis. But 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:31.920 the point wasn't to gather every piece of the public. 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:34.920 The point was to paint a bigger picture, to tell 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:38.760 a bigger story of an economy that could work to 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:47.960 benefit us all. And by pursuing this bigger story, I 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.360 learned that this wealth and equality that's aparated in us 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:55.960 its roots run deep into our past. Our original economic 0:03:56.040 --> 0:04:00.680 model was stolen people, stolen land, and stolen labor, And 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:05.680 in order to justify that within a Christian society, they 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:10.920 had to make those people who were being stolen less 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.840 than human back to what Heather McGee calls this zero 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:19.880 sum worldview, this US versus them mentality that for one 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:23.400 to win, another has gotta lose, and it's designed to 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:28.000 keep everybody in their place. And the model was, I profit, 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:30.479 you lose. You don't get to share any of the 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:34.719 games of your land, your effort, your labor, nothing. But 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:38.320 even then this was the real like aha for me. 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:45.400 Even then, that worst possible economic model only truly maximally 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:50.920 benefited a narrow elite back then of white people. Wealthy 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:55.200 white folks created a story, a story designed to exclude 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:57.679 people of color and to distract the poor white folks 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:00.920 from what was really going on. And so that white 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:07.280 slave owning, landowning elite had to convince the far more numerous, landless, 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:11.359 indentured white folks who were sitting there in the you know, 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:16.279 rocky fields alongside the black folks, that they were better 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:20.960 than the person down the row, and that in fact, 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:25.800 justice or freedom for black folks would be a threat 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:31.839 to white folks period. The I of course, always knew 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:34.039 our country is built on racism. I'm very much on 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:36.839 the record saying that. But I've got to say, I 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.719 was surprised to hear from just about everybody that a 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:43.560 major point in our country's history of racist economics was 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.200 also this era that our history books tend to paint 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.680 as a time of tremendous growth and prosperity for Americans. 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:52.720 The New Deal, the New Deal, the New Deal. There 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:55.880 was New Deal, policies of the New Deal, labor laws, 0:05:56.000 --> 0:06:01.880 the Party of the New Deal for white Americans. The 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:05.240 New Deal was the Democratic Party's response to the Great 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:09.279 Depression in the nineteen thirties, where we put these foundational, 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:14.720 sweeping policies and in place to try to reset and 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:18.799 adjust our economy and our democracy for the next phase. 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:23.320 Tens of millions of people made a working class into 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:26.880 the middle class through this massive economic expansion. It included 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:30.560 protections for the right to organize a union, social security 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:33.720 and other assistance for people on hard times, strong anti 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:38.400 monopoly policies, subsidization of housing. We had these state funded 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:41.320 colleges in every state. It was just sort of this 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.400 period of time where everything kind of aligned to make 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:47.560 the greatest middle class the world had ever seen. And 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:50.440 it was social movements that created the context for that. 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:54.880 Workers everyday people organizing it sounds like the American dream. 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:57.719 It sounds like the American dream. Ding ding ding, You 0:06:57.760 --> 0:06:59.760 got that's it, that was it, that was when we 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:02.160 had it, you know. But the question is who was 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:05.760 the week? And so much of what I just described 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:11.320 was done from a federal policy level in an explicitly 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:17.480 racially exclusive way. This thing we celebrate should probably be 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:21.000 called the New Deal for white Americans because a lot 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:25.440 of us were deliberately excluded, which reinforced that us versus 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.120 them worldview that started with the slave owning elite in 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.240 the first place. So white people got to move up 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:36.200 while people of color will. We remain stuck, but as 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:40.320 we always have, we fought to be included. We see 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.640 America through the eyes of someone who has been the 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:50.240 victim of Americans. We don't see any American dreams. We've experienced, 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:55.680 only the American night movie. We do not want our 0:07:55.760 --> 0:08:00.640 freedom graduate, but we want to be fret now all realization. 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:07.440 It takes dedication, It takes the willingness to stand by 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:11.360 and do what has to be done when it has 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:16.320 to be done. We had the Civil rights movement pushing 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:19.840 for everyone to get in on that American dream, on 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:25.840 that liberty and justice for all. But they have always 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:31.240 been those resisting that progress. And you think that that pushback, 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:35.599 that that racism would only hurt the intended targets a 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:39.160 k a. Black people, But the crazy truth is white 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:42.760 folks were so determined to exclude Black Americans that they 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:47.800 actually sabotaged themselves. There's one wild example. I can't stop 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:51.800 thinking about. The town's drained the public pools, rather than 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:55.199 integrate them, took the water out, backed up trucks of dirt, 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:58.880 dumped it in, paved it, over seated it with grass. 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:02.959 In my governery, Alabama, they closed the entire Parks and 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:06.120 Recreation department. They sold off the animals in the zoo, 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:11.920 all to avoid sharing it with black folks. And then 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:16.600 this guy shows up, Ronald Reagan. Do solemnly swear that 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.440 I will faithfully execute the office of President of the 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:25.319 United States. Ronald Reagan, he was a Republican heavy hitter, 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:29.000 the former governor of California, and he basically came in 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:32.640 with a big business mentality rolling back the social programs 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:36.600 of the New Deal, and he was very, very successful 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:41.240 at doing that. The ideas essentially were bigger and bigger 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:44.520 industries that are ever more efficient and can put out 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:48.040 more stuff for less money. At the University of California, 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:51.520 college was free for everyone. Why did that get rolled back? 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:54.200 Ronald Reagan was governor. He didn't like that they're all 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:56.560 these protesters at Berkeley. He didn't like the beginning of 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:59.199 the black power movement at Merritt College campus, and he 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:02.880 said this, it shouldn't be subsidizing curiosity. I remember seeing 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:07.240 evictions and plant closures and members of my family losing 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:10.520 jobs and benign neglect. That was when you started to 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:13.520 see a lot of money and resources pulled out of 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:18.520 urban cities, urban programs, and that is really what accelerated 0:10:18.600 --> 0:10:22.479 urban decline and the loss of value in urban communities. 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:27.720 He cut all kinds of things. He cut policies that 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:31.079 were designed to better resolve He cut urban programs creating 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:36.319 this benign neglect, cut publicly funded higher education out of spite, 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:42.439 and changed our anti monopoly policies. Selling us this story, 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:45.680 which is fitting for a man who never quite fully 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:50.040 left Hollywood, selling us this bootstrap narrative that if you 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:54.679 just try hard enough, if if you alone wanted bad enough, 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:58.280 you alone can make it on your own that you 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.439 already have everything you need to succeed. If you just 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:05.640 want to succeed badly enough, and your failure to succeed, 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:10.959 that's yours alone. You shouldn't need anybody else's help. There 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:14.520 is this moralism associated with poverty, where we believe in 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:18.120 individuals who are poor are bad people, or they're not 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:21.640 capable people, they're not as smart as we have not 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:25.600 looked at or examined the systems, so that make it 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:30.120 virtually impossible for individuals to move up the economic latter. 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.839 So much of what we know today is tied up 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:37.760 in what we've been taught for so long with somebody 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:41.280 else told us. When I first spoke with Jamila Medley, 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:46.400 she told me we have to heal from individualism. M hmm, 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:51.839 what a scrumptious and true statement. Individualism as an illness 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:55.600 really stuck with me. We're told all our lives, get 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.560 an education, find a well paying job, buy your house, 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:01.400 start a family, do this, do that, And all I'm 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:05.160 hearing is me, me, me, me, me, figure it out, 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:09.000 do it all by yourself. And then I remember what 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:12.559 Heather said, two people in a cold room, one's got 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:14.920 a coat, one doesn't. But if they just sort of 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:19.000 joined together and like shouldered open the door, then walked 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:21.320 out into the sun where it's seventy degrees. They both 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.960 be good, you know, but it's the boss that keeps 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:27.080 them in the cold room. Imagine if we dropped the 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:31.160 individualism and work together, things could get a whole lot 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:34.480 better for all of us. When some of us lose, 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.800 we all lose. When we work together, we can all win. 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.280 And you could say that this idea goes back way 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:45.360 earlier than Reagan, way earlier than the New Deal. We 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:47.360 can take it all the way back to something Astra 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:50.920 Taylor told me about the ancient Greeks. The word idiot 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:54.920 actually comes from the ancient Greek as well. Idiotis and 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:57.680 it didn't mean that you were dumb or uneducated. What 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:00.360 it actually meant was that you were a private person. 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:03.440 You're only concerned with yourself. So in ancient Athens, the 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:07.440 worst thing could be was an idiot. And once we 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:11.680 change our mindset and stop looking just at this separate 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:15.560 world of us and them, seeing ourselves as individuals instead 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:19.000 see ourselves as part of a week that we benefit 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:24.400 when everybody does by definition, that's when we can start 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:26.920 to do some real cool stuff. We can have new 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:31.679 models of business that served the many, not just the few. 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:36.240 So this is a model for how to cement ourselves 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:52.320 as citizens. After the break we talk solutions. So clearly, 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:57.360 our economy has some issues racism, division, all the money 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:00.560 flowing right into the pockets of Mr Bezos, and this 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:04.120 extreme wealth inequality that's been plaguing our nation for decades. 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.440 But if there's one thing I learned this season, it's 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:12.040 that people are coming out swinging. There are people working 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:14.800 hard to citizen and to create new models that make 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:18.000 it possible for all of us to thrive. And as 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:20.680 I started looking at some of these incredible new models, 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:24.120 I noticed that they were accounting for something that feels 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:29.640 very far away from capital e economics. They were focusing 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.720 on human needs, on the fact that in order for 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:38.840 the economy to thrive, people need to thrive too. First, 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:43.840 you need space, like a space of your own, physical space, 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:47.880 a mental space to feel like you belong, like you've 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:51.800 got room to grow. When you're tied down to debt, 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:55.640 trust me, it's impossible to feel that sense of space. 0:14:56.440 --> 0:15:00.720 It's impossible to pay the rent or educational opportunities or 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.200 health expenses when you are burdened by that lack of space. 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:08.160 You don't have time to ground yourself, to plant yourself, 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:12.760 to think about growing into something more. You're too busy surviving. 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:18.040 Nony Sessions saw firsthand what happens when people lose that 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:23.480 sense of physical space called home, without land, without permanence, 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:28.360 the path in the future go up and smoke, They disappear. 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.640 There's nothing to connect you to before, and there's there's 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:36.960 very little the ground YouTube after. Nony is a third 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:41.760 generation West Oaklander, a community that's been assaulted by gentrification, 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:46.480 or what she calls accelerated racialized displacement. As she's watched 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:51.960 countless evictions, the encampments of houseless Oaklanders get larger and larger, 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:55.920 and big developers swarm their way in. She realized that 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:59.960 the solution was ownership, and that her community was vulnerable 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:04.200 because her community didn't own their land. So she created 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:08.880 eb PRECK, the East Bay Permanent real Estate Cooperative. This 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:12.400 fights gentrification in West Oakland by buying up real estate 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:15.680 and historically black and brown communities and then collectively owning 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:19.640 and managing those properties democratically. So this is a model 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:26.640 for how to cement ourselves as citizens structurally. So ownership 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:31.640 permanent is critical for culture building, identity building, the building 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:38.240 of futures. Ownership gives us room to breathe. And there's 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.760 this thing that I've felt through all of these conversations 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:46.920 about the power of place and community, about being grounded 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:50.600 somewhere and having a platform from which to launch, to 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:56.480 become more, to become citizens, to citizens not just legally, 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:00.360 but in a community sense, to feel connect did to 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.120 other people, to feel valued with and buy other people 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:07.760 in a way that isn't captured by dollars. It's captured 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:13.440 by something else, something Richer small business owner and distiller 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:16.960 Maria Strada remembers that feeling so clearly. When the pandemic 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:21.359 hit her community in Bushwick, I started realizing that people 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:24.679 did love us in a way, which is something I 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:30.240 didn't really recognize. When COVID hit Marie's distillery, Moto Spirits 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:34.240 turned around and started making hand sanitizer to supply hospitals 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.200 and to keep her community safe. And when Marie needed 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:41.320 her neighbors to show up, they did. Everyone was reaching 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:44.919 back out to us, the relationships that we had initially 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:50.320 fostered with random things like motorcycles and dogs, and they 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.240 just came, you know, everyone just said okay, well we're 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:55.800 gonna do this. Or bartenders came and we did this 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:59.879 bartending event once this competition, and they reached out and 0:17:59.880 --> 0:18:02.000 they said, hey, how about if we do you know, 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:05.080 a special cocktail thing for you online and then we 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:08.120 can you know, give that money to a certain organization. 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.119 So that's that's how we've been doing things. Now, I 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:15.120 gotta say hearing how Mri showed up for her community 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.000 in its time of need challenge. The way I often 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:21.800 think about businesses, like our US concept of how a 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:25.440 business works tends to involve the image of cost cutting 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:33.040 and operating opportunistically, competitively and above all, capitalistically to maximize profits. 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:37.200 I think about CEOs get the basils who make piles 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:40.880 of money while workers fight for a livable minimum wage. 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:44.840 But so many guests really elevated my idea of what 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:48.960 a successful community centered business should and can look like. 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:53.520 Jamila Medley has seen the cooperative ownership model working for 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:57.560 hundreds of years. But what exactly is a cooperative? Like? 0:18:57.760 --> 0:19:00.760 What's a co op? I thought I knew, but I 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.560 really didn't. So a co op has two components. One 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:08.080 is the association of people who come together. They identified 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:12.360 that they have a shared need economic, social, cultural, and 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:17.639 they determined that they want to democratically own an enterprise together, 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:22.360 and so they create that business to fulfill the need 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:26.639 that they have. So co ops sound new ag, but 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:30.119 really certain communities have been practicing cooperative economics on the 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:34.560 d L for a long time. For black folks in Philadelphia, 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:40.080 cooperative economic and mutual aid practices have been essential to survival. 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:44.280 So we can think back to periods when black folks 0:19:44.320 --> 0:19:48.080 were enslaved and there were people who were running away 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:51.960 from slavery who came to Philadelphia and created a rich 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:56.480 and robust community of black folks here. But they survived 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:01.080 in many ways through cooperative economic practices. Here's the thing 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:06.359 that resonates most with me about the cooperative model. It 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:08.919 gives people a chance to make their voices heard. It 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:14.080 gives people a choice. It's like this little place where 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:17.880 democracy plays out. And as I started to explore these 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:20.880 new models of business, it became clear that that sense 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:25.240 of agency is key well beyond voting, well beyond business, 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:28.640 just in life. It's a lot easier to thrive when 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:31.640 you have the space to make your own decisions rather 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:35.520 than someone prescribing those decisions for you, giving you the 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.680 feeling of choice while having pre selected a certain set 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:43.480 of options that you're limited by now. Bruce Patterson saw 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:46.600 that when he set out to bring a public option, 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:51.320 a choice for broadband to the small town of amin Idaho. 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:53.600 There's no way for you to invest in a different 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:56.080 outcome unless you own it. That's the only way you 0:20:56.119 --> 0:20:58.760 can invest in a different outcome. So as a community, 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:02.359 people that decide to join AM and Fiber, they're invested 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:05.040 in that. So when they call and we've got an issue, 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:07.520 they know they're talking to somebody that lives in the 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:14.480 same community. After the break public broadband and free money, 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:21.560 I gotta say I am a total nerd. I said 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:23.440 it before and I'll say it again that the Internet 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.600 is a subject close to my heart and I feel 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:29.520 like something that doesn't get talked about enough. Is this 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:33.399 connection that broadband has to our economy, our society, and 0:21:33.440 --> 0:21:38.000 our ability to show up as citizens. Without equal internet access, 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.800 we don't have equal access to information, and in the pandemic, 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:44.800 it means we don't have equal access to work, to school, 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:48.920 even to vaccines, which is why I was so excited 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:52.160 to talk to Bruce. How would we as a small 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:57.159 town in idahobe competitive in attracting businesses and residents with broadband. 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:01.000 So the hardest part about this isn't the technology, but 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:05.760 the absolute hardest thing is consensus. Bruce found that locals 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:09.520 were paying for this essential need access to the Internet, 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:14.080 which is like access to electricity or water or even air, 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:18.080 but their needs were not getting met, not getting met 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:21.399 by the private option. There are people in neighborhoods that 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:25.359 want fiber, they want better connectivity, they want another choice. 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:28.680 And here's the brilliant thing to me, Bruce didn't just 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:32.720 jam the option down people's throats. He knew that wouldn't 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:37.119 go over well and conservative rural Idaho. No, he found 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:40.480 those people where they were in their neighborhoods and gave 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:44.879 them a space and opportunity to discover and voice their needs. 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:49.200 These people came out of the woodwork and found us 0:22:49.800 --> 0:22:52.280 and said, if I talk to my neighbors, if I 0:22:52.320 --> 0:22:55.639 go knock on doors, can you give me anything to say? 0:22:57.000 --> 0:23:01.160 So we started to call these folks fiber champions, and 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:04.919 they did it am and Idaho now has the choice 0:23:04.960 --> 0:23:08.400 to opt into some of the cheapest, fastest, most public 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:12.119 internet in the country. The Open Technology Institute did a 0:23:12.200 --> 0:23:16.320 cost of connectivity research program and found am and to 0:23:16.400 --> 0:23:21.600 have the cheapest gig internet in the world. I gin 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:24.760 poos fight for domestic workers is about giving those workers 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:28.280 more choices. The choice to have health benefits comes to mind, 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:31.280 but it's also about lending the care and support our 0:23:31.280 --> 0:23:34.000 society needs to open up choices for the rest of us. 0:23:34.240 --> 0:23:39.000 We think about infrastructures, bridges and tunnels and broadband, but 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:43.680 what could be more fundamental infrastructure than the ability to 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:47.040 make sure that our families are loved, ones are cared 0:23:47.080 --> 0:23:49.960 for so that we can work. I call these jobs 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:54.400 job enabling jobs because they make it possible for everything 0:23:54.400 --> 0:23:58.400 else to work and everyone else to work, space to live, 0:23:58.800 --> 0:24:02.280 access to internet, access to health care, and job options. 0:24:02.800 --> 0:24:05.600 All of that equates to choice. But at the end 0:24:05.600 --> 0:24:08.480 of the day, so much choice in this economy comes 0:24:08.600 --> 0:24:12.840 right down to money, and giving poor black mother's choices 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:17.840 is why Yandoro started the Magnolia Mother's Trust Magnolian Mother's 0:24:17.880 --> 0:24:21.800 Trust as the first and only guaranteed income project in 0:24:21.840 --> 0:24:25.080 this country that takes a racial and gender equity approach 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:27.960 to our conversations about wealth and equities within this country. 0:24:28.320 --> 0:24:31.280 It provides a thousand dollars a month twelve months and 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:37.320 no strings attached extremely low income Black mothers. Yeah, that's right, 0:24:37.720 --> 0:24:40.560 a thousand dollars a month, no strings attached for a 0:24:40.640 --> 0:24:44.600 full year. Because you can't citizen when you can barely 0:24:44.680 --> 0:24:47.280 pay the bills, when you live in poverty and don't 0:24:47.280 --> 0:24:52.400 have savings. How that constantly holding your breath? Um, how 0:24:52.400 --> 0:24:55.639 stressful that is, and how that takes away your ability 0:24:55.760 --> 0:24:59.160 to plan and dream and hope. One of our moms 0:24:59.320 --> 0:25:02.919 went do in the pandemic and became a paramedic. She's like, 0:25:03.000 --> 0:25:05.840 I always want to be a paramedic. They need paramedics now. 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:09.720 I'm like, yes, they do need paramedics now. And by 0:25:09.760 --> 0:25:13.720 giving people money, Magnolia Mother's Trust is giving people options, 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:16.720 giving them a chance to decide on their future, a 0:25:16.800 --> 0:25:21.800 chance two citizen. And that's exactly what Astra Taylor told 0:25:21.840 --> 0:25:26.080 me about ancient Greek society. Greece is this mythic birthplace 0:25:26.119 --> 0:25:28.800 of democracy in the US. And there's some parts of 0:25:28.800 --> 0:25:32.480 their society that definitely needed work. Women were excluded, and 0:25:32.640 --> 0:25:35.280 you know they own slaves. But there's one thing they 0:25:35.359 --> 0:25:38.880 really did get right. They paid those who counted as 0:25:38.880 --> 0:25:42.240 citizens to participate in self government, and when it was 0:25:42.280 --> 0:25:45.239 your turn, you'd actually get called up to serve. It 0:25:45.280 --> 0:25:47.920 was like jury duty. But for Congress, they were thinking 0:25:47.960 --> 0:25:49.920 about these problems we're not thinking about, which is how 0:25:49.960 --> 0:25:52.680 do you create systems of equality? How do you compensate 0:25:52.680 --> 0:25:55.240 people so they can truly participate? Right? And this is 0:25:55.280 --> 0:25:58.120 why I'm saying that we're stuck. We just aren't being 0:25:58.200 --> 0:26:00.720 very creative when you think about all the tools or disposal, 0:26:01.000 --> 0:26:04.159 and when we think democracy equals elections, I think we 0:26:04.200 --> 0:26:06.840 have to be honest that might be a contradiction in 0:26:06.960 --> 0:26:13.639 terms when we give ourselves room to citizen to really 0:26:13.720 --> 0:26:16.800 show up and invest in relationships and understand our power 0:26:16.840 --> 0:26:19.640 and benefit the many not the few. We give ourselves 0:26:19.760 --> 0:26:23.960 room to pursue things that some of us have deemed radical. 0:26:24.440 --> 0:26:28.359 I'm talking public broadband and giving people money just to 0:26:29.000 --> 0:26:33.040 do with what they say they need. So many of 0:26:33.080 --> 0:26:35.879