Ep 1: Pilot

0:00:34

Welcome to left on red where a GenX mom and gay millennial do socialism. We've got views on the news you can use. From two socialist organizers, from the Democratic socialist of America, but this is not an official podcast. My name is Stylianos Karolidis, but you can call me Scott. I am twenty eight years old. I live in Queen's New York, greatest borough, in the greatest city, in maybe not the greatest country in the world. And I'm joined by my cohost, Susan Kang. Hi. I'm Susan Kang. Guys, we're telling our age. I'm forty two years old. I'm a mom of two. I live also here in Queens, and I'm happy to be here. We are so happy to be here. And let's get started. We wanna give you some perspective on current events and the news that help explain left politics and socialism to you but also offer you a little bit of hope.

0:01:27

This is not a doomer podcast. We're gonna talk about why things are the way they are. But what can we do to make them better. And let's dive right into it. Let's do it.

0:01:38

So one of the things that have been going on for a few weeks now in social media and the news. And we really wanted to make sure we talked about this was the train crash in East Palestine. By the way, what is that pronunciation? Apparently, there are a wealth of towns, cities, villages in the Midwest. Actually all over the country, to be honest, that take names from very historically notable locations across the world but they change the pronunciation slightly so that they're actually different. So it's not East Palestine, but it's East Palestine. Which incidentally is probably closer to how it's actually pronounced in most other parts of the world. Right. I I lived in the Midwest for a while, so I was always fascinated by towns like New Berlin, Wisconsin, that kind of thing. It's it's just a delightful Americanism. Yeah. And so what happened in East Palestine? A couple weeks ago, if you haven't heard, a train crashed in the region. A train carried by Norfolk Southern, I think, is the name. And it was carrying hazardous material as incredible amount of trains in our rail system are, it created a environmental crisis for the residents of the fairly rural area in the middle of Ohio and it's been covered ad nauseam at this point by a lot of media, but political situation around it has gotten I wanna say really, really bad.

0:03:06

Donald Trump visited the area. He was, I think, the first major national politician to do so, whereas Joe Biden was in Ukraine at the time and Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation in the United States. He hasn't visited until just a few days ago. And the residents obviously were really happy to see Donald Trump And of course, we're very upset not to see their other national leaders. But a few things happened in those visits as well. Obviously, Donald Trump has no power, so he went to kind of support folks and make them feel like there's national attention on them and that they haven't been abandoned, which say what you will about the motives but people really appreciated that.

0:03:49

Pete Buttigieg, when he went, I got a clip of him at a press conference saying that he was frustrated how every time they try to do a regulation, the rail companies fight them a lot. Norfolk Southern and the other freight rail companies need to stop fighting us every time we try to do a regulation. In order to hold them accountable and there are other railroad companies accountable, for their safety record. While we're acting on it with the authorities we have and calling on members of Congress, act on it on it with the authorities they have, and the railroads not to wait on us to require them to do the right thing on there. So with the background of something really terrible happened, this rail crash, which is one of thousands a year in the United States, is now damaging these residents in Ohio.

0:04:41

And Pete Buttigieg saying the rail companies fight us on regulation. I feel like this is extremely ripe. For a socialist perspective. We sort of think of this as a unique moment, a unique crisis, but in fact, under capitalism, the lack of regulation, lack of state capacity leads to these kinds of disasters all the time in which the pursuit of profit leads to uncertain conditions that hurt people's health and that leaders are just kind of pointing fingers at each other. Like Republicans or who are leaders that there are the governors of Pennsylvania and Ohio They they allowed for the burning off of these chemicals, but the Republican leadership nationally is trying to blame this as a democratic failure. And whereas Democrats traditionally have been more likely to wanna regulate. They also have had a very light hand and haven't really changed the way in which rail companies operate.

0:05:33

And it's really funny that Buttigieg is trying to place the blame on private rail companies when private rail companies are only allowed to operate under the conditions that the state allows. When by the state, I mean, the United States, the federal agencies we actually have power here. Like, our state can regulate if United States want to say that we're going to cancel or end this contract we have in which you're allowed monopoly control over these rail lines. It could do so. We wanted to nationalize rail lines we could do so. Right? So to act like the Department of Transportation in the United States has its hands tight is a very a naive political gesture.

0:06:14

Are we supposed to feel sorry for Pete Buttigieg for, you know, not being able to fight these private rail companies? To me, it demonstrates the exact problems with their Democratic leadership. They're spineless. They're unwilling to take a stand. They're they're afraid of pissing off corporations. Right? And people see this. Right? Oh, you're worried that corporations can't make a profit. At the potential health costs of regular people. I always feel mildly sorry for Pete Buttigieg. He's an unfortunate character.

0:06:46

I think we'll be remiss also not to talk about the role that government has, not just in regulating the rail companies or the allowing a monopoly, but also in the labor aspect here. So all the rail workers are unionized but they're governed under this kind of public bargaining legal system where there's laws passed by Congress that do and do not allow them to do certain things. One of those things that just happened recently was rail workers across the United States were set to go on strike. They were extremely unhappy with their contract for a number of reasons, but one of the most salient that came to four was that they didn't have sick days and their schedules were extraordinarily brutal. Mhmm. What ended up happening was instead of going on strike and fighting for those changes in their contracts, fighting for different regulations that would make rail safer for all people that would probably have prevented accidents like these where the rail workers would have been Not that this is to be blamed on the rail workers. I think it was an infrastructure problem, but to help prevent accidents like these, to make sure that all rail workers are working in the best possible conditions, Congress and the president Joe Biden actually stepped in and said, no, you're not allowed to go on a rail strike. Essentially busted the strike and voted for the imposition of an agreement that the railroad companies supported and wanted to impose on the workers.

0:08:14

Howard Bauchner: Right. And so, actually, I read something in more perfect union that said that real workers actually had been bringing up these safety concerns, problems with the physical infrastructure of the rail lines for years. Workers are the ones who are at the front lines the safety conditions under which they operate. And so if rail companies and the federal government had taken their concerns seriously, we could have prevented things like East Palestine trained derailment from happening. And one of the things I'm always scratching my head over is, what about this twenty twenty one infrastructure bill? Right? Millions of dollars being injected into our physical infrastructure, which we know has been a problem for decades now. That money didn't go to the places where it was needed. So we see all these failures in democratic leadership that have led to these these problems. And speaking of failures and democratic leadership, and it's funny, the more I hear you talk and the more I think about it, the more it's like this crisis affects every single possible thing you could talk about with regards to capitalism in terms of exploitation of workers, the not just exploitation of them, but the concentration of power in bosses not allowing workers who understand things infrastructure better, working conditions better, how to run these trains and rail lines better than the bosses. All of these things are how coming to this confluence, not just that, but then the economic system in which this all operates in.

0:09:42

Why are we transporting hazardous materials in the middle of places where people live. Yes, we might need some level of hazardous material for production. I get it. We're not gonna produce every single good in the world necessary with the safest possible things, but we can try a little bit harder. What is going on in our economics them that we're transporting things that are extremely toxic to people and that are thus considered quote unquote necessary. Are these things actually necessary I think what was being transported that's built was stuff used in plastic production, which makes you think about, okay, how much plastic do we produce in this world that's so necessary to this consumer economy that is worth endangering lives over.

0:10:26

And not just the lives of people in Ohio now, but where does this stuff get produced? Are there factories in East Asia where American companies are exploiting cheap labor overseas. And are these people exposed to these chemicals and fumes every single day as they work on them? And what are we making out of them? Are they just turning into like plastic bags, single use plastics, plastic cutlery? Is there a better way that our economy could be structured if people like you and me actually had control over things, if workers had more of a say in terms of what gets produced, where it gets produced, how it gets produced, how much of it, all of those big questions. I feel like we're barely scratching the surface when we look at this derailing incident and we're not seeing it's almost every single pain point of capitalism coming to a to a bear against rural people in East Palestine, and so we're actually paying a little bit of attention to it. Yeah.

0:11:24

And just to wrap up very quickly, this is something that, so you all know, I've talked about before, which is an idea of carbon lock in, which is that it would be safer and probably cheaper in some ways to move beyond our carbon based economy, but there's so many like some cost and institutional arrangements that make us all rely on plastic, existing like supply lines, and existing manufacturing, and What ends up happening is that rather than doing the rational thing, which is to move away from this carbon reliance, whether it be in producing plastics or relying on them for fuels, but rather There's just a continuation of the same, and nobody with power, economic, political, or otherwise is taking the necessary short term like, risks in order to move beyond carbon lock in, and that's a huge problem. And we're gonna think about some ways that we could change that. So speaking of carbon lock in and environmental disaster, I'm very excited to talk about something happening in New York State. We talked a little bit about just now, like, this overarching economic question, things in capitalism that kinda little people don't have a lot of control over. One of the things that the United States doesn't do a lot of is what we call industrial policy, where the government kind of takes more of a heavy hand in determining where the economy goes, how it works, why it should go that direction. That would include things like helping people train for industries that are the highest needs, like, as opposed to here in the US if you don't train for something that's got a high need, you're just kind of stuck on your own. Right? But if you if they were like subsidies, scholarships to help people learn early on, like skills that would make them employable, that the government would help orchestrate. It would be a totally different situation. Yeah, some industrial policy may be including government supported union apprenticeship programs across the country. That would be great. But one thing that maybe you can feel a little helpful for in terms of what the United States does or doesn't do, Here in New York, we have just passed through the New York State Senate, so that's one house out of two, the Build Public Renewables Act.

0:13:50

So this is a bill written entirely by New York City DSA folks and some friends to allow the New York Power Authority the largest public power authority in the United States currently owns a ton of hydroelectric power in the Niagara Falls region, which is kinda cool. To allow it to build and own new renewable energy generation. And the reason we're pushing this bill really hard is for a couple of reasons. Number one, Obviously, climate change is first and foremost why we support this legislation. We are really, really desperate to do everything we can, to prevent climate change, to mitigate its effects, and we've seen that private companies don't have that incentive. Their incentive is to earn more and more and more profit. And right now, the most profitable thing to do is to continue burning fossil fuels. And to not worry about the second or third order effects of what you're doing.

0:14:50

The other thing about BPRA, Bill Public Renewables Act, that's really important, is that it allows the state to directly intervene in the economy. We're not just providing new tax incentives or asking private wind and solar companies to build more, which we've been doing and it hasn't worked out. We are now directly saying the government is going to go ahead and do it ourselves. I'm saying ourselves here. I'm obviously not a member of the New York State government. But when we say the government, it's important for us to increasingly take on. That's us. These are the people we get to put in power. We must have a say over the public realm.

0:15:31

Howard Bauchner: And to give a little bit of background, New York state despite being like a very progressive Democratic state. We've got a Democratic trifecta, which means both houses are, you know, majority democratic. We've got a Democratic governor I believe the number is we have about four percent of our energy capacity through wind and solar at this time, which is less than Texas. So that's really embarrassing. But then we also have like a lot of shoreline and we have, you know, we're a state with lamps. Right? We're not like tiny. So we have potential capacity to build out a lot of energy generation, but we haven't done it yet.

0:16:05

If we think about some of the problems that emerge when we don't shift right out of our carbon lock in. We get things like rising energy costs. We get things like rolling brownouts and blackouts during the hottest days of the summer here in New York City especially. One of our friends, Andrea, is telling us it's gonna be even hotter than ever because Lundinja is ending. We also get things like the crisis in Russia and Ukraine. Right? So the reliance on Russian fuel and especially within Europe leads to the complication of this of these geopolitics. Right? And Russia wouldn't have the influence if we didn't rely or sorry, European consumer markets didn't rely heavily on its carbon resources. Right? And so rather than using this as an opportunity to heavily build out alternative fuels and renewable energies. We're just continuing on more the same. The United States is exporting oil and gas, right, to Europe and Europeans get mad because we subsidize that production domestically. They don't get the subsidies. Right? So it's leading to further further, I guess, tensions. And so failing to deal with hardened lock in leads to all these continuation and exacerbations of problems both domestically, internationally.

0:17:19

Whereas here in New York, we could serve as like a model of Democratic energy production. Right? It it would be revolutionary in a way that not only would change access to energy, but also control of energy. Right? Maybe you could talk a little bit more about how this would be like a democratic program. Oh, yeah. But I wanna, you know, you said so many things that I wanna say and talk about. I think it's interesting that you pointed out at first, New York is this progressive blue state And so people think of it as meant to be friendly to renewable energy or, you know, ostensibly progressive politics. This is yet another reminder that Democrats aren't on the left. They're not exactly in favor of people. It's a progressive state insofar as everyone is votes Democrat and it's really blue. But at the end of the day, there's an allegiance in the Democratic Party and all of the politicians here in New York to corporations first. They don't go into power saying, I really want to remove money from politics and I wanna work in favor of working class people, they go into power remembering all the millionaire and billionaire donors that got them there. And they go into power thinking, I need to maintain this capitalist power structure where private companies have power over the government, not the other way around.

0:18:41

As we've been fighting to pass this bill to make it more democratic, some of the greatest criticism from the governor's office that's come to us has been What about the private companies? What about the small energy generators that wanna build in New York? What are you gonna say to them? Now, I would not say over the call, tell them to go fuck themselves, but it was really difficult for me to hear that and have any answer that wasn't just you're being an idiot. This is not the time to worry about who's profiting off of what. Yeah. I mean, what stopped a lot of those private companies from going solar, from from building wind energy? Like, they've had their moment to user private enterprise to to meet the needs, right, of New Yorkers and they haven't done it.

0:19:31

Capitalism incentivizes not just profit alone, but making sure your profits get bigger, making sure you get more of the share of profits in an industry, all of these different things that forced companies to be as cutthroat as possible. And I'm saying forced companies because I wanna be clear when we talk about capitalism and climate change, companies don't participate in capitalism willingly either. Right? That's a funny distinction. In the same way that you or I as workers don't wake up one day and say, this is a great system. I want my boss to exploit me for wages. Companies, you know, bosses don't just wake up and say, wow, I love the competition and capitalism. These companies and these bosses probably would prefer some mode of production that prioritizes them more, even more, or protects their profits further, has a government that intervenes on their behalf more often, which does happen here. But capitalism even forces them into further production, further cutthroat policies, more and more exploitation. Because if you're a capitalist company and you're not doing everything you can, in this case, for example, to earn a greater profit, to benefit your shareholders more, to burn more fossil fuels so you make even more money and get a bigger market share. You are going to potentially be kicked out of the industry. You're going to fail. And when these companies fail, even after they've tried everything they can to exploit fossil fuel and workers, then there's further negative effects on the workers that work with these companies. Howard Bauchner: Right.

0:21:09

And the the thing is as well is that when we think about classic economic theories about capitalism. We think about, like, widgets. Like, oh, there's a consumer good. If the price gets too high, the demand goes down. It's not like that for energy. Because energy is like a social need. People need energy even if they're like, you know, the energy rates go up. They might try to use a little bit less. But when it's hot in the summer, you can't just be like, oh, I won't use my air conditioner. When it's cold in the winter, you can't just be like, well, you know, the prices have gone up, so I guess I'll just wear a blanket because then your pipes might freeze. Right? Energy to social good, it's different than like an iPhone, right, or other sort of like non essential consumer goods. So the ideas behind like like a demanded supply don't apply here.

0:21:53

And the other thing I read once is that private utility companies, part of what's included in the rates they charge us, is the money they use to then lobby lawmakers to make sure that things like PPA don't pass. So we're paying for our own, I guess, seeds of our destruction when it comes to climate change because we're allowing the private companies to do this. And that's because energy generation is wrapped up not just in burning the fossil fuel and then selling you the energy that's made from it, but in the extraction, you talked earlier about, like, this great power politics of all of these different countries fighting with each other over energy resources. Part of the reason these companies are doing these countries are doing it. It's a freudian slip companies, countries is because under capitalism, the government is directly tied to the corporations that exist inside of it. Our governments are captured by those corporations because the economy and this perpetual growth they want to pursue is reliant on corporations, getting more investment, getting more profit, and engaging in more and more economic activity in those borders.

0:23:05

So the United States on some level, unless it's controlled by working class people who have an interest in a safer environment, and cleaner air to breathe, will have an incentive to say, I want more natural gas. I want my companies to profit even more. That profit is non existent in the same way in a renewable energy system, especially one that's publicly controlled. And so there's this real tension between the things we need to do to protect the planet and protect its people and fight climate change and the things that capitalism drives companies to do and countries to do in order to chase extreme profit and growth. Right. So we said that we're not doom and gloom.

0:23:50

We just talked about a lot of doom and gloom, but the bright spot is is that Bill Public Renewables Act here in New York has the potential to pass the assembly. So if you are a New York based listener, go call your assembly member, tell them that you want them to pass this. It's something that would benefit communities, diverse communities throughout New York, not just New York City, especially I think smaller towns that have they don't have the same kind of tax base and they're often held like hostage by their utility companies, the BPRA has the potential of being a policy that other states can copy. And we don't have time to go in just right now, but other states are looking at the BPRA as a potential model for their own movement towards green energy. Someone from Connecticut reached out asking, hey, we'd love to do this exact kind of bill, and we're work shopping another one potentially in Illinois and even Maine. As we speak. So it's exciting.

0:24:42

I appreciate that note Susan. That was very doom and gloom. It's very much about what's wrong. How do we fix it? This is just one step of the way. There's so much more we have to do on climate change and industrial policy, but I'm extremely excited that in New York, we are getting very close to at least allowing the state, setting the terrain for this fight over public versus private ownership. For this fight between a capitalist mode of production that prioritizes private companies and profit versus a socialist one that prioritizes people, social, and make sure that we are in charge of what happens in the world and why.

0:25:37

Alright. So we're gonna move on to our next topic, which is thinking about the federal student debt relief program passed by Biden and how it's now being considered in the Supreme Court? Yes. So I'm a millennial. Thank you very much. The most indebted generation. Yeah, actually. And it's actually a little funny. My student loan Burden isn't that high. It's funny. It's actually very high. But relative to most other people, I feel like I have it pretty good. A lot of folks I know are in a hundred thousand dollars in debt or close to that eighty thousand. I have about twenty five thousand dollars in student loans. And it's all public. So when Biden announced his program, I was a Pell grant recipient. Under his program that he announced last year, I would have had twenty thousand dollars totally wiped out. And I was thrilled about it, you know, Conrad Biden. He's on his Dark Brandon rises. Dark brand in was rising at the time, and it got locked up in some legal battles because a few conservative states in the country and some individuals sued to stop it. So now, it's being debated in the Supreme Court.

0:26:47

And what I thought was really crazy to read this morning. Was. I saw a New York Times headline that basically said conservative justices have legal doubts on whether or not the president is allowed to do such a thing as forgiving debt, or the secretary of education is allowed to forgive debts. And the article framed it as these conservative justices are legal experts, and they're so worried about the legal implications and the law. And I thought that was so funny because I feel like anybody reading that knows that it's not like Amy Comey Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh are such legal scholars with such an original thought around how the law works that they're just like, I don't know if this is applicable, but they're obviously just conservatives with a political ideology that says, no, this is not a good thing. And that's the great thing about the supreme court is that it can use legal justifications for really far reaching political decisions. That's an excellent point.

0:27:54

There's literally a quote from the chief justice, John Roberts. And he says, well, isn't there Is it fair to forgive someone's student loans and not to forgive someone's loans for starting a lawn mower business? One, it's not you know, he's deciding whether or not something's fair. He's openly admitting to you his personal thoughts, his political meanings. He's making it very clear. This is a politically decided question, not some sanctimonious legal one. But two, Yeah.

0:28:27

We actually forgave people's lawnmower business loans. We had this huge program nationally that forgave virtually any business' loans taken out during the pandemic that PPP loans. So it's absolutely wild for him to go say those things knowing that happened, knowing how much debt was totally wiped out, how much wealth was transferred from the public, the government to private companies because the government wanted it that way. It was the exact opposite of trickle down economics. Right? It would taxes that are collected from regular people because we know that the rich don't pay their share of taxes, then trickling up to quote unquote business owners. Many of who like, we're able to take tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousand dollars, and weren't able to find people. Like, if you look at sort of the details of the PPP, loans, you can see just how worrisome they are, as opposed to student loans in which young people are saddled with debt because of these terrible interest rates. And so even when they pay the minimum, they're not even servicing the principal amount. They're often just paying and we see these debts balloon over time.

0:29:39

This is like the practical reality of living in the United States where I as a person who went to college in order to get a degree so I could get a better paying job than what was available to me at the time. And had to take out loans because my parents were immigrants and didn't have any money really to spare for me at the time. I am continuously I continue to be in debt. And if I were an LLC, I were a company. If all of these things stayed true about me that I was in debt, but I was a company and I could go to the government and say, hey, I'm a corporation, not a person, they would have treated me better. The practical effects of living in the United States are that if you are an LLC, or private industry, business in some form or fashion, the United States will treat you far better than if you are a person, someone who's working class, someone who is doing everything they can to try to make ends meet, to try to work within the confines of the system, In those cases, the government just says, I'm so sorry. Good luck.

0:30:47

One of the things that this article sort of makes me think about is who benefits from having this supreme court system that's able to make far reaching political decisions without any democratic accountability. Like, what are the effects of this? Yeah. It makes me think about it too because as you read the article or you saw the headline, like who the hell believes this? Who is sitting here thinking that Clarence Thomas spent some time reading the law and reading the constitution and saying I don't know if this works out. I don't know if I can vote to support. Everybody knows they're just making their personal political decisions.

0:31:26

And it goes away from the liberal justices too. I appreciate that they're trying to argue in favor of the debt relief but I have no illusion that somehow Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor and Catanji Brown Jackson all came to the same legal conclusion. I have no illusion that somehow they all had the same reading of the law. I know that they have a certain set of politics. The other justices have a different set of politics, and the supreme court is just an unelected legislature masquerading in robes to provide some illusion of impartiality or a higher power of government. That is beyond partisanship or pull up or politics. You know, that's actually an extremely important thing that we should be saying constantly as socialists, and for anyone to understand government, everything is political. There's no such thing as not political. There's no way the Supreme Court, which is making decisions on law and policy that affect millions and millions of people's lives can go and say we're not a political institution. The law as it written is politics and it was done in a political way. The way you read it is political and the decisions you make on it are political. There's no such thing as someone that's above that. Not in this country. And I think it's extremely important we get over this illusion yesterday because I don't know who it's serving besides the people that are already in power. Howard Bauchner: Right.

0:33:00

And I do think that there is some idea among lawyers that the law does have some kind of neutrality behind it. And that's why they take it so seriously. Like, what kinds of legal procedures? What kinds of constitutional interpretations? What kinds of prior decisions can inform these future interpretations? I do think there is a little bit of thinking within the legal profession that they are not necessarily engaging in politics. But, you know, those of us who watch them, those of us who read, those of us who scrutinize this, we know that there are deeply political implications about every Supreme Court decision that gets made, whether it's one that upholds Affordable Care Act, whether it's something that overturns Roe v Wade. We do know that the Supreme Court's decision has deep effects on regular people's lives and our ability to sort of even survive under capitalism. And so law is weird like that. And as somebody who studies law from a political science perspective, I just I don't understand this framework at all.

0:33:57

I do think that there's a couple of interesting partisan results from this, which is that Republicans benefit from getting people to dislike public institutions, to dis trust democracy because then it allows them to say, why isn't our democratic system working? It's this group, undocumented immigrants. It's trans people. Right? It's black people, whatever. Right? They're able to create this narrative of like scapegoat, and then you can get your perfect democracy backed. And that's why they're so eager to, for example, manipulate people's ideas around East Palestine and say this is like, you know, our public institutions and democrats are failed again as opposed to it being like a problem that's inherent in the system. Right?

0:34:39

I always tell students when we talk about the US constitution that The reason why our democracy often fails is because we never saw the original sin of American democracy, which was like slavery and inequality and exploitation, which is baked into that original seventeen eighty seven constitution. I know that because I went to second grade during the two hundred two hundred anniversary of the constitution. So that'll always be baked into my brain, which I know you guys weren't alive. Maybe I know I wasn't. Yeah. And I you you talked about the Republican cause in terms of why are the Republicans promoting this? But even the law thing that you're talking about, this all seems like there's like a big lie, you know, not to say what the Democrats and MSNBC are saying about Trump. But this is this big lie pervaded by both parties that the law like you've said lawyers talk about is this impartial beautiful, separate from people and our passions and our politics thing. But as we see very clearly, it's so deeply political from its roots to its execution.

0:35:45

Why are both party saying this? Republicans are saying it because, like you said, they wanna reduce trust in our institutions and they want us to think that, oh, everything that's going on is just a failure of corruption, of the people in power, and those people in power for them are Democrats. The Democrats are saying it because they don't want people to see beyond, okay, who's actually in control here? Is it Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg? No. It's the rail company that Pete Buttigieg is complaining argues with him over new regulations. Pete Buttigieg alone can make a new regulation on these rail companies, but he won't do it because According to him, process and procedure and precedent, but as we all know, he doesn't wanna regulate the rail industry.

0:36:35

Democrats don't want to do the things that they claim they do. They're going to make really big talk about all of this stuff. And then they're going to turn around and tell you there's process and procedure and precedent, and we can't just go ahead and do everything. And that leaves you with a system or Republicans are fairly naked about the terrible things that they wanna do. And Democrats are fairly quiet about the terrible things that they wanna do. And if you're a regular working class person, your impression is this whole system is f ed up, and I'm just not gonna participate at all. Hundred percent.

0:37:07

Well, the other thing Democrats can do is they can point to the Supreme Court decision and say vote for us because we're not Republicans. And that will become that that sort of become the key framework they've had to justify their existence and their political relevance since two thousand sixteen. We're not the party of Trump. Don't ask us to do too much more. Don't ask us to regulate. Don't ask us to cut into corporate profits. Don't ask us to change, like, the fundamental social and economic inequality. That we've helped set up under the Clinton administration. Don't hold us accountable, but aha, vote for us because we are not the party of Trump. We are not the unreasonable party that over throws and overturns things like Rovi Wade or the pretty popular student debt program, which still didn't go far enough. Right? We are reasonable just like the law.

0:37:55

Yeah. I can imagine a better friend for democrats than Republicans who are terrible. They're a match made in heaven. And that brings us to, what can we do about it? We're such doomers on this today, but I think the state of things as we describe them as a little tough. But what are some things that you listening can do to kind of engage a little bit more and maybe begin to find ways to expose the system and begin to make changes. I will tell you the number one thing that I have done that has made me so deeply happy has brought me a community, brought me way too many friends brought me a sense of agency and control that I can actually do something about the world as I see it, not just describe it and be sad. Is join DSA, the Democratic socialist of America. We're lucky to have a really great chapter here in New York City, but there are tons of great chapters all over the country.

0:38:57

And in addition to all those lovely things I said about community and friends, the biggest benefit for me was finding a group of like minded people who are all fairly opening and welcoming, who all really desperately wanted to change the world. Everyone is working towards the same goal of we understand the world as it is. Maybe not all the time. Lots of people come with different perspectives I am not a reader. I've never read Marx, but I've read a plain language summary, which was really helpful. I didn't understand the world according to theory or those types of, like, higher level political things. But I got a lot of friends who do know things that way and they teach me and they talk to me about it.

0:39:42

But I'm most excited because I just get to talk to my neighbors and other people in the neighborhood in New York and talk to them about the problems in their lives and the ways we can make changes together. And people have been really responsive to that. Every time I get to go out canvasing, which is knocking on people's doors to talk to them about politics or tabling, which is talking to them about politics. From a table in the street, It warms my heart so much that any random person walking across the street, if I talk to them about taxing the rich, they're like, oh yeah, what's that about? I wanna tax the rich. You know, there's this latent energy that a lot of people have that they do wanna make changes in the world, that they do see things for the way they are, and they are frustrated with them. And I think that's the best antidote to duomerism, knowing that the people around you see it, know it, care about wanting to change it to.

0:40:37

We can't solve the problems that we face, politically, ecologically, socially by ourselves. You can't do it by engaging in ethical consumption or trying to be like a perfect person under capitalism. Right? The only way we can do this is working together. And all of us have different things we bring to the people. Some of us are talkers. Some of us might be great at design. Some of us might like to do text banking or phone banking, but it doesn't matter. We all can bring something to an organization. And one of the things I always say when I talk to people before they can, this is that people agree with us, they just don't know what to do. So when we go to people and talk to them about, hear some things that we'd like to do, they're often really grateful that we're taking our time to talk to them and then providing them a way to then act. Because otherwise, we all go about our individual lives We're dealing with, you know, our bills, our immediate concerns, our workplaces, our families, and we don't stop and think what can I do to change the world for the better we're just, you know, overburdened? We're tired. But practicing organizing. Right? Working with others to engage in organizing campaigns.

0:41:47

This kind of thing provides a way to bring people in who may not necessarily have the time or ability to join the organization, but wanna contribute in their own way. That's such a great way to say not everyone is an organizer. And you don't have to be one. You can just join and pay monthly dues and be a member of the party. Right? DSA is essentially growing to become a mass party in the United States. And that's going to mean a lot of different things for the organization One of that includes having a large member base of people who donate monthly, you know, five, ten dollars a month to in order to be members.

0:42:27

And support the organization to do things that need money to pay for such as national staff running campaigns, but also people who are on the email list. People who say, I don't really have a lot of time in my life to Canvas or get involved in the rank and file strategy. We'll talk about that. A different day in terms of what that is and what that means. But they do know they can give a little bit of their money every month, they can support the organization, and they can sign up for the email list, and get in the know about what's happening locally or what candidates they should support in elections or if there is a labor action that they can show up in support. There are so many different ways you can be involved that do not require more than thirty minutes of your time a month. And that's really exciting. So even if you're feeling overwhelmed and you feel like you don't even have time to deal with what's overwhelming you at minimum. Joining is a great way to just be one part. Everyone has a different role to play. And for a lot of people, that role is just being a member.

0:43:28

I joined the Democratic socialist of America right after Trump was elected, and I was like, what do I need to do with all my anger? What do I need to do with all my anxiety about the world? And It has changed my life in so many ways. And I've met so many people who are not in my age group, which is just a fantastic way to to broaden your perspective. And it's also a way to think about engaging with people beyond your immediate experiences. And for me, one of the things I always talk about when I talk to people my age and older about, like, what do we do about the world? Is that Millennials and Gen Z are the most progressive voting block in the country, and they're also the most numerous. Because I love my parents and all, but boomers are declining a number. And Gen X, we're the worst. We're the worst generation. We listen to Sugar Ray and no one ever made us. Right? Like, what was going on? Right? We The Gen X is not so left, but you know, as we're having kids, as we're watching our kids grow up, we're wondering what kind of world we're gonna leave our kids. This is our opportunity to join with the younger people and make the world a better place. We love to hear it.

0:44:40

There's a quote, I forget exactly how it goes and I forget who said it, but it's like never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, nothing else has. Margaret Mead, I think. Thank you. I don't know who that is. But what I love the the reason I bring that quote is I think it sucks. I think it's not true that a small group of people changes it, but a collective. The mass will. And that's what we're trying to build here. And that's what we can offer.

0:45:12

I feel so good being in the Democratic Associates of America because of everything that Susan said, and that I'm friends with Susan. So when I'm having a difficult day or things are bringing me down, or if I'm working on a campaign or something and it's not going too hot, I know that there are people like Susan extremely competent, smart, caring dedicated people all working towards the same goal. I am surrounded by almost ten thousand other DSA members in New York. All contributing in different ways and it feels so good to be a cog in the collective machine. To be helping in whatever small part I can whether that's doing the things I'm skilled at or just donating monthly to know that I am part of moving this massive operation of socialists committing to bringing about change in the world.

0:46:07

I wanted to end on another quote that you told me about. Which was that when we were doing a tax rich tabling here in Jackson Heights a couple weeks ago, I believe that you gave a flyer to somebody. Right? And that person said, do you really think this is gonna make a difference? And then her friend said, well, you gotta do something. Right? And so to all of our listeners out there, You gotta do something. That's right. It wasn't even her friend. It was just another woman who was talking to me about tax the rich. And she heard this person who was justifiably apathetic and she goes, well, you can't just do nothing. You gotta do something. And I was like, oh my god. Thank you. That's that's great energy to leave it on. You gotta do something. Thank you all for listening. This was left on red. You gotta do something.

0:46:52

It's the show where we end with quotes from different people that we don't know the names of, we would love to hear from you. So please reach out. Especially if you're interested in climate organizing, wanna get started in socialist politics. Wanna start a DSA what maybe if you wanna start a DSA chapter in your community? We would love to talk to we would love to hear from you. You can email us at left on red n y c at gmail dot com, and that is red spelled like the color. Thanks everybody and have a great rest of your day.