Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to Book f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
Speaker 1: Today's conversation is one that takes a deep dive into
Speaker 1: American history through the lens of Hubert Humphrey. I sit
Speaker 1: down and chat with author Samuel Friedman to discuss his
Speaker 1: new book, Into the Bright Sunshine, Young Hubert Humphrey and
Speaker 1: the Fight for Civil Rights. Why this is really interesting,
Speaker 1: other than the fact that Samuel Friedman is an award
Speaker 1: winning author, journalist, and educator and was a finalist for
Speaker 1: the Pulitzer, is that the time that he outlines, the
Speaker 1: timeline that he outlines in his book very much mirrors
Speaker 1: the time frame that we are living in right now,
Speaker 1: where you are seeing a lot of the rights and
Speaker 1: protections and dissemination of equity that we have been participating
Speaker 1: in over the last fifty years be rescinded, and in
Speaker 1: his book he is looking at how those rights came
Speaker 1: to be and who was pushing back and who was
Speaker 1: upholding white supremacy. And again, what is old is new again.
Speaker 1: History oftentimes repeats itself when we don't disrupt the patterns
Speaker 1: of behavior and get to the root and the core
Speaker 1: of the issues. And so in this conversation we talk
Speaker 1: about how public schools came to be, how segregation transpired,
Speaker 1: and what Hubert Humphrey's role was in all of this
Speaker 1: in creating the progressive movement as we know and understand
Speaker 1: it today, That's not the name that it went by
Speaker 1: at that time. But essentially, the people that were pushing
Speaker 1: back against Hubert Humphrey, the people that were wanting to
Speaker 1: institute and did institute Jim Crow and uphold segregation, are
Speaker 1: the same people that are banning books, and that are
Speaker 1: intimidating school teachers, and are racing black culture and are
Speaker 1: overturning affirmative action now right. We love to tell ourselves
Speaker 1: the lies that, oh, well, racism will die out. Well,
Speaker 1: no it doesn't, because the people white Americans who uphold
Speaker 1: a racist ideology give birth to children for whom they
Speaker 1: pass down that information too. And so that's how we
Speaker 1: end up in this cyclical place. What's unfortunate, though, is
Speaker 1: that I'll ask Samuel, you know, what do you see
Speaker 1: different this time? Is there any hopefulness that you see
Speaker 1: in this time that can signal that this may not
Speaker 1: be the end of days how we discuss it, and
Speaker 1: so we get into that conversation. I hope you all
Speaker 1: enjoy this and that you pick up his book if
Speaker 1: you were looking for some historical things to read, which
Speaker 1: I always think is really helpful when we're in such
Speaker 1: a period of upheaval. And again, his book is entitled
Speaker 1: Into the Bright Sunshine, Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight
Speaker 1: for Civil Rights. Folks, I am very happy to welcome
Speaker 1: to WOKF Daily Samuel G. Friedman, who is an award
Speaker 1: winning author, journalist, and educator and had been a finalist
Speaker 1: for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and
Speaker 1: has won a National Jewish Book Award and New York
Speaker 1: Public Libraries Helen Bernstein Award in his new book, Into
Speaker 1: the Bright Sunshine and Young Herbert Hubert Humphrey and the
Speaker 1: Fight for Civil Rights. In this book, Samuel, you go
Speaker 1: into it's almost odd that nineteen forty eight, it's almost
Speaker 1: scary that the timeframe that you're covering and the rise
Speaker 1: of Humphrey and the rise of I guess liberal politics
Speaker 1: as we know it, where he was and where we
Speaker 1: are now is almost as if we're looking in a mirror.
Speaker 2: You're You're so right, Danielle. You know, when I started
Speaker 2: working on this book in early twenty fifteen, we're in
Speaker 2: the second Obama presidential term. Marriage equality was a few
Speaker 2: months away from being enshrined by the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 2: I thought I was working on a really important work
Speaker 2: of narrative history about this overlooked chapter in civil rights
Speaker 2: history that takes place during the nineteen forties. But then
Speaker 2: once we got past November twenty sixteen and we know
Speaker 2: what happened, I realized that what I was writing about
Speaker 2: was a parallel set of experiences to what we've been
Speaker 2: living with in this country for the last seven years now,
Speaker 2: which is this battle between inclusive, interracial, interfaith democracy and
Speaker 2: forces of authoritarianism. And that was the same battle Humphrey
Speaker 2: was fighting. And the terms that were applied to his
Speaker 2: foes are the same ones we apply to our foes
Speaker 2: these days, white supremacist, Christian nationalist America firster. And I
Speaker 2: don't think that the moral of the story is that
Speaker 2: no progress has ever made. But I think the very
Speaker 2: important moral of the story is that you can't get
Speaker 2: complacent after you've made progress, that battles continue to need
Speaker 2: to be fought and that every time there's been a
Speaker 2: period of progress in this country towards progress on inclusive
Speaker 2: democracy and greater social equality, is followed by a backlash,
Speaker 2: and then you have to push back and turn against
Speaker 2: that backlash.
Speaker 1: Can you set the stage of where where we were
Speaker 1: as a country when Humphrey gave his speech with regard
Speaker 1: to the fact that we needed to move into what
Speaker 1: we refer to now as a multiracial democracy.
Speaker 2: Sure, that's a great question, Danielle. The speech you're referring
Speaker 2: to as a speech, Humphrey gives it the Democratic Convention
Speaker 2: July fourteenth, nineteen forty eight, so almost exactly seventy five
Speaker 2: years ago. What really sets the stage for that and
Speaker 2: sets the state for that battle over what a multiracial
Speaker 2: democracy is going to be is very much World War
Speaker 2: two actually, and the moral claim that black Gis and
Speaker 2: also Jewish Gis have on the conscients of the United States,
Speaker 2: because in that war you have people who were othered
Speaker 2: in this country, who are treated as second class citizens
Speaker 2: or worse, who go to war to defeat different forms
Speaker 2: of fascism and racial and religious supremacy in Nazi Germany,
Speaker 2: Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and the Black Gis formed this
Speaker 2: term in this concept that they call double V double victory,
Speaker 2: and it means we're going to defeat fascism abroad and
Speaker 2: then we're going to come home and stake our claim
Speaker 2: to defeating fascism in the United States. And the Jewish
Speaker 2: Gis didn't have any phrase as eloquent and succinct as
Speaker 2: double V. But they had the same idea that we're
Speaker 2: going to fight on behalf of this country, which, although
Speaker 2: it doesn't clinch us, treats us definitely second class citizens,
Speaker 2: and we're going to come back and demand our equality
Speaker 2: in this country. And so that really led to a
Speaker 2: conversation in the United States during the latter years of
Speaker 2: the war, when it was clear we were going to
Speaker 2: win the war, and definitely in a couple of years after,
Speaker 2: of America's unfinished agenda, and how do we make this
Speaker 2: more inclusive society? And the reason it really telescoped into
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party in the Democratic Convention is that at
Speaker 2: that time we're coming out of four elections of Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Speaker 2: thirteen years in office until he dies in office and
Speaker 2: Harry Truman takes over. And of course, in many ways
Speaker 2: Roosevelt is the great American liberal president of all time
Speaker 2: because of the New Deal, the social compact that it created.
Speaker 2: But in order at least as FDR saw it, to
Speaker 2: keep getting elected and keep being able to enact New
Speaker 2: Deal legislation, he made what I think was literally a
Speaker 2: devil's bargain with the Southern segregationists in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: And I know now we look at the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: especially in the South, as being the party of white supremacy,
Speaker 2: but actually back in the forties and for many decades before,
Speaker 2: it was completely reversed the Republican Party because it had
Speaker 2: been the Party of Lincoln and the Union was abhorred
Speaker 2: by Southern bigots, and the Democratic Party was seen as
Speaker 2: the protector of white supremacy. And Jim Crow FDR decided,
Speaker 2: I need the electoral votes from the South to win
Speaker 2: in November. I need the support of these Southern legislators
Speaker 2: in Congress to enact my legislation. And so what I'm
Speaker 2: going to let them do is implement New Deal legislation
Speaker 2: on a segregated basis. And in some cases FDR went
Speaker 2: so far as to have New Deal legislation written and
Speaker 2: signed by him to really enshrine racial inequality. Just one
Speaker 2: quick example. A lot of us are familiar with Social Security, right,
Speaker 2: social Security was written to omit agricultural workers and domestic workers. Well,
Speaker 2: guess what ninety percent of the working black citizens in
Speaker 2: the South did agriculture work and domestic work. So that
Speaker 2: was clearly a way to carve out black citizens in
Speaker 2: the South from the provisions of the New Deal. And
Speaker 2: so that created this unbearable tension within the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: of are we going to continue to do that in
Speaker 2: more but supposedly pragmatic system of letting the South have
Speaker 2: segregation and the rest of the party being fairly liberal
Speaker 2: organized labor or been Catholics or been Jews a significant
Speaker 2: number of blacks in the North, although many still voted
Speaker 2: for the Republican Party and the liberal intellectuals. Or are
Speaker 2: we going to call the question and say you can't
Speaker 2: have it both ways. You can't say you're the party
Speaker 2: of liberalism and the social Compact and omit millions upon
Speaker 2: millions of Black Americans and also tacitly tolerate a great
Speaker 2: deal of anti Semitism as well. And all of that
Speaker 2: comes to boil at the nineteen forty eight Democratic Convention
Speaker 2: because Harry Truman, who has kind of gone back and
Speaker 2: forth on civil rights, sometimes being rather bold and sometimes
Speaker 2: being very timid, is at this moment in his timid phase.
Speaker 2: He just wants a quiet convention, pass a platform that
Speaker 2: has very pallid, ambiguous civil rights playing collect ones for
Speaker 2: FDR always did, and keep the votes of the South.
Speaker 2: And it's impossible. The Southerners already are threatening to mutiny,
Speaker 2: and the liberals, led very much by Hubert Humphrey, are saying,
Speaker 2: as he actually says in this convention speech, it's one
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy two years too late to endorse equal
Speaker 2: rights by race. We're way overdue on this. And that's
Speaker 2: what comes to play for these four incredible, turbulent, sweltering
Speaker 2: days in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: You know what's so interesting to me, right, as somebody
Speaker 1: who follows and covers and analyzes current events and our
Speaker 1: current political system, is how much of what is old
Speaker 1: is always new again, right, And the fact being that
Speaker 1: as a country, we have never reckoned with our founding,
Speaker 1: We have never reckoned with the the policies that have
Speaker 1: been applauded like the New Deal right that helped shape
Speaker 1: the middle class, but in so many ways excluded purposefully
Speaker 1: black people, people of color and indigenous people in this country. Right,
Speaker 1: And so we find ourselves in this moment. You know,
Speaker 1: we can go back to you know, pre Trump to
Speaker 1: Obama years where many had said, well, we finally arrived, right,
Speaker 1: we have finally we were actualizing the dream and the
Speaker 1: vision of what this country should have been, right and
Speaker 1: could have been. I often, frankly think about who would
Speaker 1: America be now had Reconstruction been allowed to continue, had
Speaker 1: Reconstruction lasted from when it started until this moment, what
Speaker 1: would America look like? What would our GDP look like?
Speaker 2: You're right, You're absolutely right. And this your point goes
Speaker 2: to something I thought about a lot, which is these
Speaker 2: repeating cycles in American history of Ussian resistance, emancipation, progress, backlash,
Speaker 2: and that goes, rinse and repeat at various points in
Speaker 2: our history. One you already named Reconstruction, which is cut
Speaker 2: off by white terrorism and political cowardice after about ten years.
Speaker 2: The second time is after the period of mass immigration
Speaker 2: from Eastern and Southern Europe, when immigration gets cut off
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty four. The third time is after this movement.
Speaker 2: The Freedom movement begins in the nineteen fifties with Montgomery
Speaker 2: bus boycott and Brown versus Board of bed and you
Speaker 2: have the policy in the South of what's called massive resistance.
Speaker 2: And then the fourth is after the election of Barack
Speaker 2: Obama and the sense the naive idea of being post racial,
Speaker 2: which I never bought into, but certainly the idea that
Speaker 2: we're now seeing a rising multiracial coalition which is the
Speaker 2: future of this country. And what we get trump Ism
Speaker 2: as the ultimate.
Speaker 1: Backlash, you know. And so here we are, right, all
Speaker 1: of the policies, many of the policies, not all, but
Speaker 1: many of the policies that Humphrey lifted up right are
Speaker 1: being challenged at this very moment. Look, we can look
Speaker 1: at this last session of the Supreme Court and watch
Speaker 1: how the white lash wasn't just one that is based
Speaker 1: purely in politics in terms of an election, but now
Speaker 1: is a judicial backlash based on the fact of who
Speaker 1: was able to see three Supreme Court justices and turn
Speaker 1: and weaponize the Supreme Court of the United States to
Speaker 1: erode the fifty years of progress that were hard to win.
Speaker 1: Whether we're looking at abortion or we're looking at affirmative action,
Speaker 1: we're looking at LGBTQ equality and access, and so when
Speaker 1: you look at this moment that we're in, which is
Speaker 1: clearly in the whitelash moment, right, that's clearly where we are. Yes,
Speaker 1: do you see that they is sam an opportunity for
Speaker 1: us to learn from this phase? Or is this like
Speaker 1: are we I guess the question that I'm asking is
Speaker 1: is this rinse and repeat cycle that we have always
Speaker 1: that we continue to go through in America? Is this
Speaker 1: one worse than what we have ever seen?
Speaker 2: That last question is profound. It's hard not to feel
Speaker 2: like trump Ism is worse. But that's just because it's
Speaker 2: what we're living through right now.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You know, I was a little too young to have
Speaker 2: firsthand memories of the worst of the church bombings and
Speaker 2: other forms of white terrorism against civil rights workers and
Speaker 2: long before I'm born. Is the terrorism that destroys reconstruction
Speaker 2: and ushers in Jim Crow. So I don't know how
Speaker 2: one could assess which is worse than the others. They're
Speaker 2: all horrific enough in and of themselves. And there are
Speaker 2: a couple of important lessons from Humphrey's example. I should
Speaker 2: say that what happened in forty HS, so your listeners understand,
Speaker 2: is over and against Harriet Truman's desire to avoid the
Speaker 2: civil rights issue, and over and against the Southern segregationist
Speaker 2: threat to leave the party in the convention, which they do.
Speaker 2: Humphrey gives this spellbinding speech which convinces the delegates to
Speaker 2: vote in favor of a firm civil rights plank for
Speaker 2: the first time ever. And the famous phrase which I
Speaker 2: use in my book title is he says, it's time
Speaker 2: for the Democratic Party to walk out of the shadow
Speaker 2: of states rights and into the bright sunshine of human rights.
Speaker 2: A couple of key takeaways from how he accomplished it.
Speaker 2: This was a case at the forty eight Convention of
Speaker 2: what I call mister inside and mister outside, and the
Speaker 2: need for a symbiotic relationship between canny, savvy political maneuvering
Speaker 2: and mass mobilization. Humphrey was mister inside. He and his
Speaker 2: allies were inside the convention mention talking to delegates, getting
Speaker 2: their votes in line, obviously making great eloquent case from
Speaker 2: the pulpit, and meanwhile outside, the great labor and civil
Speaker 2: rights leader A. Philip Randolph was literally outside the convention
Speaker 2: hall picketing. Because Randolph had been threatening for months a
Speaker 2: campaign of massive black draft resistance if Harry Truman didn't
Speaker 2: desegregate the military. That was one of the key civil
Speaker 2: rights issues of that moment, you know, desegregating the military,
Speaker 2: fair Employment Practices Commission, and anti lynching laws were probably
Speaker 2: the three biggest items on the civil rights agenda. And
Speaker 2: Humphrey and people from Randolph's Union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping
Speaker 2: car Porters are writing letters back and forth after the
Speaker 2: convention saying, I couldn't have done it without you. So
Speaker 2: they recognized you needed pressure from the outside in the
Speaker 2: form of the prospect of massive black draft resistance, and
Speaker 2: he also needed political acumen and idealism from the inside.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the lesson now, it's not one
Speaker 2: worthy whether you need both. I think another important lesson
Speaker 2: of Humphrey in this era when some of us have
Speaker 2: realized there are never trumpers who we never thought would
Speaker 2: be our allies on certain issues but have become vital allies,
Speaker 2: is that Humphrey was really adroit at finding people to
Speaker 2: ally with on his civil rights agenda, especially when he
Speaker 2: was mayor of Minneapolis, even before becoming a national level politician.
Speaker 2: And he could find people who would disagree with on
Speaker 2: other issues, but a if they had a fundamentally decent soul,
Speaker 2: and b if they would agree with him on concrete
Speaker 2: elements of civil rights, like fair employment practices and and
Speaker 2: restrictive covenants and so forth, he would keep them as
Speaker 2: his allies. He'd have people labor and management, people who'd
Speaker 2: be on literally opposite sides of strikes, but would jointly
Speaker 2: be working with him for civil rights. And I think
Speaker 2: that ability to build issue based coalitions when you need
Speaker 2: them is another good lesson, and I do think it's
Speaker 2: one that a lot of us have been act really enacting.
Speaker 2: And you know, you brought up the demolition of abortion
Speaker 2: rights by the Supreme Court. We've looked at a lot
Speaker 2: of women and probably some men too, who in elections
Speaker 2: have voted on the basis of those rights being taken away.
Speaker 2: And probably a lot of them were moderate Republicans, are independents.
Speaker 2: It wasn't all progressive, but when they realized that the
Speaker 2: constitutional right was being stripped away after fifty years, it
Speaker 2: changed their thinking. And to some extent, even though I
Speaker 2: think that the queer vote overall, you know, e skews
Speaker 2: more progressive on the whold, but it's going to happen
Speaker 2: with some moderate and conservative queers too. Now that you
Speaker 2: know you can see where the decision on the three
Speaker 2: h three creative cases going. It's going towards further decisions
Speaker 2: in which businesses get to claim a religious exemption not
Speaker 2: to do any business for in this point case LGBTQ.
Speaker 2: But as people pointed out, what if someone says I'm
Speaker 2: against interracial marriage. What if someone says my religious beliefs
Speaker 2: are racial inequality? It opens a gigantic Pandora's box. And
Speaker 2: I'll just come back to one other thing you said,
Speaker 2: because you packed so much great insight into your last comment,
Speaker 2: You're right, somebod the achievements Humphrey was part of our
Speaker 2: exactly the ones under assault right now. When Humphrey was
Speaker 2: Lyndon Johnson's vice president. One of their great legislative achievements,
Speaker 2: and again with righteous pressure from doctor King and the
Speaker 2: mass movement as well, was the Voting Rights Act. And
Speaker 2: we've seen this court whittle it down, even though they
Speaker 2: threw a bone at it this past term, but overall,
Speaker 2: really try to defend a strate the Voting Rights Act
Speaker 2: affirmative action. Lyndon Johnson first really espoused to a firmative
Speaker 2: action during the Humphrey Johnson administrative term in a famous
Speaker 2: speech at Howard University. And we see where that's going now.
Speaker 2: And so this is what I mean about you make progress,
Speaker 2: but you can never be complacent about the marker, always
Speaker 2: staying where it is and never being pushed back, because
Speaker 2: history tells us there's always going to be a pushback.
Speaker 1: Do you think that we are then now being pushed
Speaker 1: back to the beginning right when you are because you
Speaker 1: are a student of history, you are an examiner of history.
Speaker 1: And here we are living in a moment that is
Speaker 1: I mean, if we still have books will be written about,
Speaker 1: if they're not banned, right, will be written about and
Speaker 1: studied for generations and generations to come, if in fact
Speaker 1: we're able to keep democracy in America. My thought, right,
Speaker 1: we are three years away from the two hundred and
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of the founding the quote unquote founding of America,
Speaker 1: and where I see us headed is, you know, back
Speaker 1: to the beginning, right like back to the beginning of time,
Speaker 1: where it is very clear who has power and who doesn't,
Speaker 1: that the laws that were fought during the time that
Speaker 1: you were writing about have all been eroded and erased
Speaker 1: and yet we have more people of color, more young
Speaker 1: people that have access to the ballot than have ever
Speaker 1: before in our history. So for you, what is that
Speaker 1: signal to what the future looks like?
Speaker 2: You're right that it's an existential moment. And for those
Speaker 2: of us who thought that the spectacles of January sixth
Speaker 2: insurrection would be the end of Trump, isn't. Tragically we
Speaker 2: found out that isn't the case. So you're right. The
Speaker 2: idea of another Trump term, or of a Desantus term,
Speaker 2: raises many of the pillars of democracy into question. And
Speaker 2: we're seeing, as you said, book bannings, attempt to censor
Speaker 2: school curriculum, all kinds of efforts at voter suppression. So
Speaker 2: we're not literally going back to enslaved people, but we're
Speaker 2: going back to a structural inequality that is like a
Speaker 2: national version of Jim Crow. And just to point out
Speaker 2: doing which the past does predict the present, kind of
Speaker 2: Trump's evil genius, and this is something he's more skilled
Speaker 2: at than DeSantis and other Trump wanta bees is he
Speaker 2: understands that there's a lot of the white working class
Speaker 2: that wants a safety net. They just want it only
Speaker 2: for certain people. They don't want pure old fashioned republican
Speaker 2: free market economics and one of the people Humphrey battled
Speaker 2: against Gerald L. K. Smith, who was a minister and
Speaker 2: political figure and created the here's the name America first
Speaker 2: political party and was up there with Father Coughlin, as
Speaker 2: you know, one of the most dangerous demagogues in America
Speaker 2: in the thirties and forties. Gerald L. K. Smith had
Speaker 2: this idea that he called Christian economics, and Christian economics
Speaker 2: was We're gonna have a social safety net, but basically
Speaker 2: only for white Christians. So that is what a lot
Speaker 2: of demagogues and dictators over history, not just in this country,
Speaker 2: have figured out, is you buy off the work, the
Speaker 2: you know, working class of whoever tose the German were
Speaker 2: the vulk, whoever the true people are, with the social
Speaker 2: safety net, and cut it out for everyone else. You know.
Speaker 2: Adolf Hiller had a great social safety net if you
Speaker 2: were a non Jewish German or a non Roma or
Speaker 2: a non career German. He did public works building Mussolini.
Speaker 2: If you ever go to Rome, the city is filled
Speaker 2: with gigantic public works projects that Mussolini authorized so that
Speaker 2: his supporters would have a social safety net, would have
Speaker 2: good paying work, and that goes right up to you know,
Speaker 2: Trump saying, on the one hand, we're going to close
Speaker 2: the borders, we're gonna do voters suppression, We're going to
Speaker 2: ban books on and on A, We're going to destroy
Speaker 2: all elements of wolfness, a term I'm in woodwoke. I'm
Speaker 2: not never gonna I'm never going to let that term
Speaker 2: get taken away because I remember in the Clinton years
Speaker 2: when Democrats are afraid to say the term liberal and like,
Speaker 2: don't be afraid of it. Own it. But anyway, and
Speaker 2: Trump combines all that with saying social Security and Medicare
Speaker 2: will be saved. But so that again goes right back
Speaker 2: to the right wing playbook. During Humphrey's zero.
Speaker 1: You know, the last question that I have for you
Speaker 1: because I think again that your book is so extraordinarily timely.
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons why we find ourselves
Speaker 1: in the predicament that we're in is because we don't
Speaker 1: understand our past, because it is not it is not studied. Right.
Speaker 1: We are given a bunch of propaganda, which frankly, you know,
Speaker 1: was our public education system. America is great. We are
Speaker 1: the beacon. Everyone wants to come here. So we have to,
Speaker 1: you know, limit access to those gates, but that we
Speaker 1: are the land of aspiration. And I think that what
Speaker 1: we have recognized over the last several decades, particularly with
Speaker 1: the advent of you know, social media and internet and
Speaker 1: access beyond textbooks and you know the five o'clock news,
Speaker 1: is that America is not that great. That America has
Speaker 1: has always had a history that is ripe and dark
Speaker 1: with racism and discrimination, and whether it is towards women,
Speaker 1: towards black people, towards indigenous people, towards queer people, or
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, that it has never lived
Speaker 1: up to its creed. Do you think then that given
Speaker 1: the times that we're in, given the past that we
Speaker 1: have come from, do you see something different, Samuel, in
Speaker 1: this upcoming generation, Generation Z, Generation Alpha, That they are
Speaker 1: more informed, they are more activated, and they're also getting
Speaker 1: into a work and school system that is worse off
Speaker 1: than their parents and grandparents ever were. How do you
Speaker 1: see this generation taking on the issues and the problems
Speaker 1: that we have rinstin repeated over the last two and
Speaker 1: a half centuries.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope that they will rise to the occasion.
Speaker 2: I'm not a political scientist who has done deep study
Speaker 2: of gen Z in the Alphas, and I can certainly
Speaker 2: understand on one hand the risk that they are so
Speaker 2: pessimistic because imagine coming of age, you know, in the
Speaker 2: trump eras and seeing rights taken away and feeling like,
Speaker 2: you know, we're losing some of the key rights we had,
Speaker 2: and the economy feels uncertain. You know, we can't see
Speaker 2: point will ever be able to retire. So, you know,
Speaker 2: similarly to the way your generation was so battered by
Speaker 2: the Great Recession and you know, traumatized by the endless
Speaker 2: wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the other possibility, which
Speaker 2: I hope will win out, is that when you know
Speaker 2: what's at stake, you can't say I don't care who
Speaker 2: I vote for. Both parties are the same, you know,
Speaker 2: putting aside specific candidates, No one who's at all sensate
Speaker 2: now in any generation can possibly look at the two
Speaker 2: parties and say there's no difference which one wins. As
Speaker 2: you were saying, look at the composition of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: Look at the laws that Ron DeSantis is putting through
Speaker 2: in Florida and Greg Abbott is putting through in Texas.
Speaker 2: Look at how many states are trying to criminalize women
Speaker 2: who get abortions, doctors who provide abortions, friends who take
Speaker 2: people out of state the states, or abortion is still illegal.
Speaker 2: You can't say that it makes no difference who's elected.
Speaker 2: So I really hope that that has sunk in. And
Speaker 2: the other important thing is the realization that it's these
Speaker 2: down ballot races that matter that I think a lot
Speaker 2: of us has progress and Democrats we're very motivated in
Speaker 2: presidential races, but the right wing got to give them credit.
Speaker 2: They get their troops out for every little state legislature
Speaker 2: race and now school board races. I used to cover
Speaker 2: schools early in my reporting career. Typically ten percent of
Speaker 2: the registered voters would come out and vote in the
Speaker 2: school board election. So it's easy for a mobilized right
Speaker 2: wing minority to take over a school board. So we've
Speaker 2: got to also be fully aware as progressives that every
Speaker 2: race all the way down to ballot has to be
Speaker 2: you know, topic A for us, not just turning out
Speaker 2: because we're exhilarated about you know, Barack Obama running, or
Speaker 2: we're so motivated to make sure Trump doesn't win, it
Speaker 2: will turn out in high numbers for Joe Biden. It's
Speaker 2: got to be every race on that ballot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent, folks. The book is into the
Speaker 1: bright sunshine, young Hubert Humphrey and the fight for civil rights.
Speaker 1: Samuel Freeman, thank you so much for making the time
Speaker 1: join wok app. This is a really exhilarating conversation and
Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Totally, my pleasure, in my honor, Dan Yellen, keep that
Speaker 2: name going.
Speaker 1: Oh, I will do you do No, not yet but
Speaker 1: I will.
Speaker 2: Okay, email when you've got some merch that I can buy.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, thank you.
Speaker 2: Okay, take good care. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today. Dear friends on woke
Speaker 1: f as always power to the people and to all
Speaker 1: the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.