Chapo Trap House - 282 - Syzygy of a Down feat. Gillian Russom and Karla Griego (1/21/19)

Episode Date: January 21, 2019

Happy Blood Moon, all. Matt and Virgil break down reactions to the rude MAGA teen, and cover new entries into the rapidly growing 2020 Democratic Primary field. We're also joined by Gillian Russom and Karla Griego, two Los Angeles teachers, to discuss what's at stake in the ongoing L.A. teachers' strike. Please consider supporting the strike: UTLA strike fund: http://www.reclaimourschools.org Tacos for Teachers https://www.gofundme.com/tacos-for-teachers California Educators Rising: https://sites.google.com/view/ca-educators-rising/home

Hey everybody, happy blood moon to you all! Virgil Texas here with Matt Crisman. It's one of those episodes. Everyone else is off for Martin Luther King Day weekend. Yep, showing their respects. We have a great, we actually do have a great episode. Two teachers in Los Angeles, Union activists will be joining us to discuss what's at stake in that strike. Before we get to that, I don't know, some bullshit. It's week 17 of the government shutdown. And I maintain that now is the time to disable smoke detectors in airplanes. Yeah, yeah. Go nuts. Who's going to stop you? If you ever wanted to join the mile high club, now is the time. There's no air marshals to my knowledge.

I don't know, maybe. But if there are, they aren't getting paid and they're pissed. Jeweling is not a crime. It isn't. God damn it. I have to say, the fact that these guys are still going to work is really dispiriting. Yeah, it really does show how we are a absolutely housebroken population in the United States. Now, what's their name from current affairs was talking about that the other day. And it's really staggering. Like, how do you just not become just corrupt right now? Yeah, just be like, Hey, you know, I'll get you on the plane. But you're gonna have to wet the beak. Yeah, I would. But I mean, come on, you're not getting paid. We haven't been paid for a month. And you're still going to work. What the fuck? It's a tight job market, too. Yeah. What are you

doing? Well, you know, a lot of the people that lower paid federal employees, which is especially in the TSA, they're just calling in sick so they can go drive Uber's. Yeah, but it really does show. I mean, we're housebroken, but it's not like, Oh, you're just a bunch of pussy. It's everything so fucking tenuous. There's so much precarity baked into the life of even people with steady federal jobs that they can not pay you for a month and keep going to work is a less scary and disruptive alternative than trying to find a new job or trying to organize some sort of stop it. It's very disheartening. You catch a Saturday live last night. I haven't seen it. I wasn't out. I was out, but you saw the cold intro. So I don't want I don't go home and watch it every

Saturday night. You fucking assholes and I'm home and then nothing else is doing. I will watch it, but I'm usually out with my cool friends. Okay, they had a they had a little suggestion for how the shutdown is going to end. Hamburgers. I saw that. I saw the cold open and it made me my bones ache. You're out and about and your, your, your leg just, uh, you start feeling that ache in your bones and that's how you know, Oh, storms are brewing. Some satires are coming. Oh, I can feel the twinge. Oh, they've got, they've got Alec Baldwin in that fucking wig again. But I realized I thought that the, that the stuff with Baldwin, where it's him scared of Mueller and Robert De Niro comes out and put your lines off of a cue card and everyone goes crazy. I thought

that was the worst political content they'd ever done, but this one, this cold open they did with the dealer. No deal. Yeah, it was a, it tried to both sides, the fucking shutdown, because McKay McKinnon played Nancy Pelosi and she was like, Oh, sorry, Donald. First of all, so her's impression was weird. Didn't solid at all. And she says, sorry, Donald. You're not allowed to have your state of the union address. And it's not, it's because of security, not cause I'm vindictive, not cause I'm on a power trip. And, and you're really trying to gin up sympathy that Donald Trump doesn't get to fucking go do a state of the union address. Are you fucking kidding me? Well, at the time, I definitely had shades of the, uh, you know, nineties SNL, which was, which was also

very much so at both sides enterprise because that was Jim Downey, right conservative, like straight up. Yeah. I, you know, I love art and I love satire. So, you know, I definitely watch that with great interest. I was at home because I was trying to avoid the Northeaster. Uh, my, my favorite thing that happened this weekend was the March for life, which of course, look forward to that. I love life. So I'm always in favor of marching for it. More like a march of whites. Am I right folks? And this one, you know, you probably saw the, the, the big thing that the viral video of the, the smug, uh, Catholic, old boy school, MAGA shit head kids, uh, harassing this old Native American man who was drumming and he was there for the, uh, indigenous peoples march.

Yeah. I haven't watched it. I didn't watch any of the video. Now you got the gist of it. You see like one frame of it. You get it. The whole thing was just so depressing as obviously it's awful that these kids exist and are just these proudly smug little shitheads. But then the reaction, everybody going to town because they're going to own these kids and they're going to drag them like it's going to result in anything other than them getting six figure TP USA signatures for the rest of their life. Like there's anything like, like the concept of public shaming exists in the year 2019. Are you fucking kidding me? Nobody gets shamed. You monetize the triggeredness. We have a Lib ownership based society. Well, it's going to get to be a fucking millionaire. And even if he

doesn't, no one's going to remember in a week anyway. So we're at best case scenario, what he locks his Twitter account or something. And then everyone forgets about it. And yet people just people, you could just see the frenzy desire to make a difference and just cancel somebody. And all you're doing is is is is very dramatically expressing your absolute impotence and your ability to change anything. I don't think this is this isn't this is some some conscious political effort. I think whatever an experience was just a primal revulsion. I just seeing those fucking shitty teens. Yeah, but nobody likes shitty teens. No, those are turds. And I really would rather not have any more of them come into my purview in any way. I would like to not see any mega piglets

from now on. Sorry, I mean, because they just got to keep going younger and younger because like you're you're you're like a mega grifter and you're our age, like your brain's melted. Like all of those all of those guys were grifters of our age cohort is just a blithering idiot. You're Laura Loomer at that point. You're loomered. You've been loomered. Yeah, you got to get them while there's still a few neurons firing so that they can be coherent because you could watch Caitlin Bennett is a good example. You can see her mental decline in real time. She started off just taking the gun to the graduation and you're just like, okay, game, recognize game. That's a classic move to trigger libs and get a profile. Yeah, but then her effort to maintain relevance

have just become more and more unhinged and diluted and lame and you realize the weird yeah. And the info war sleepover. Yeah. Oh my God. And she's getting dubbed a night or something like that info wars night in a completely empty room with a fucking flat screen TV on the floor. I kind of like that. I don't know. I kind of like the Andy Kaufman vibe I'm getting from all of that, but it's not. I just don't know who it's for. I mean, with her, I assume it's just horned up ordinary mega dads like we're talking the guys who are totally freaked out and and and spun by AOC because they're totally wired to have their horny centers and their political spite centers stimulated simultaneously by chicks like her. And without all this stuff

about outrage culture, that's whatever. I don't really give a shit about that. What's really funny to me is today is now the reaction to the mass call out and these pro livers are now saying, oh, no, there's another side to this story. You know, the video is deceptive and we have other video that's proof now that that our lads are our male. Our big beautiful boys. We're the victims in this of harassment by the black Israelites. Or is actually I've seen more often just straight up saying the black Muslims. Yeah. Sorry, guys. All you people who triggered got triggered. You never listen to the classic Phil Collins song, both sides of the story. And I've been getting, you know, replies from, you know, various Oinkers and one of them said,

who think that? Oh, I've checkmated you. One of them says, well, well, looky here. This video will be everywhere in a few days. P.S. you're all bullies, by the way. How does it feel? And this person linked me to a three hour long YouTube video recorded by one of the black Israelites guys. That's just what they do. You know that like there. You see them in the subway or in Times Square or whatever you live in. They yell there. They're trolls. They, they, they trigger there. They're honestly, they're triggering abilities are actually quite impressive way better than any mega should. But that's way better than most of the rose emoji. You know, absolutely better than ours. You know about them. If you live in a major city, these rubes from

fucking northern Kentucky from the suburbs of Cincinnati, who probably never entered the downtown area. And if they're not in an armored SUV, they've never seen that. And so they would probably that's their nightmare. It is the deepest, darkest nightmare in their brain. Yeah. Like if the bird box scenario happened, the thing they would see would be a black Israelite. That would be what they would make them kill themselves. And the drummer couldn't, you know, confirm the story, but it's really more Monday. The black Israelites were there and then just rubes who had no idea how to deal with that. So they start, I don't know, now let's debate this or whatever the fuck that their their elders have taught them to do. Of course, that doesn't

work. And that's what a child might think. And, you know, it was it was getting heated, you know, I'm, you know, using air quotes with that. So the drummer thought, OK, well, you know, I'm just going to I'm going to stand in between and I'm going to I'm going to try to, you know, try to be a barrier to all this this to this hectic scene. And then he just became the target of the abuse and revulsion of these teenagers. Well, what I think is funny is that they're these, you know, conservatives are really showing their hand here by thinking that this is the this is this is a checkmate. This is a defense. Oh, oh, this this is this is this gang of feral prep school kids. No, they're not the antagonists here. They're the victims of like five insane yelling black

guys and an elderly man with a drum. The elderly came with a threateningly with the drum. And this was funny. I caught this. So the mother of one of the one of the piglets, the sow wrote to heavy.com in emails to heavy. The mother boy believed to be a student was standing in front of Phyllis Friday, a first hand account of what the students claim happened and said the story was quote fake news. Yeah, classic. Good giveaway there that you're an absolute fucking goldfish brain. The woman who heavy is also not naming and her husband claimed in the email that Phillips, who she referred as this man in quotation marks, was drumming close to the teen's face. And she said that the students themselves were harassed, quote by black Muslims,

the Covington, their allies, they're not Muslims. How dare you, the Covington Catholic mother wrote shame on you. Were you there? Did you hear the names the people were calling were calling these boys? It was shameful. Did you witness the black Muslims yelling profanities and videotaping, trying to get something to further your narrative of hatred? Did you know that this man came up to this one boy and drummed in his face? Shame on you. Only reporting what you want. More fake news. One of them called me man ace boy. When a heavy reporter thanked her for the correspondence and explained that it would be reported on as part of the story, she demanded the emails be deleted. Delete my email. I want nothing to do with helping

perpetuating your hate. I do not want to be a part of your story. You are ruining a boy's life for fake news. Hate spreads like wildfire. I pray for you. May I please, may I please speak to the manager of Gmail. Shut the fuck up. What's your fucking praying for people? God, that's the most nausea inducing, disingenuous, worse shit. I love that. I kind of want to just start saying. That's one something that's been bothering me. The other thing, I mean, I do get depressed seeing everyone just go crazy like piranhas over some chum that mean nothing in the long run and getting just this sad little endorphin rush that means nothing. But at the same time, I see other people saying, Hey, you shouldn't be worrying about one racist kid. You should be attacking structures.

And it's like, well, that's true in the abstract, but you're on Twitter. It's like handing out as Dennis Hopper said in Apocalypse Now, you're handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. I mean, there's nobody you can at about structural racism. It's like nobody knows what to do. So you just want to do a thing that feels good for that one moment and owning this kid is one thing you can do. And it's that's a sad reality. But the thing that annoyed me was everyone was deciding to become theological scholars over this. And they were breaking down like what Catholicism specifically has to do with, you know, oppression of indigenous people and stuff. Yeah. And if you read anything by these parents or the fucking priests who are at the school or who are defending

them, they just sound like evangelical mega church shitheads because that is what American Christianity is. It's just a big conglomerated cult of mammoth. It's just everyone worshiping capital and literally determining your worth based on your fucking your the Worthington law. It's like it's replaced the sermon on the mount with Worthington's law. It's just your more money equals better than and that's true whether whatever fucking, you know, sect you claim to be a member of Catholics in America are just for the most part other than, you know, you got some radicals on the fringes, but you've got radicals. You've got immigrants. Yeah. But that's it. But mainstream white Catholicism in this country. It's just mega church shit. Only you like stained glass

and pedophilia more. That's it. One thing I think you could do is ban every private school in the country. Many wishes amount to segregation academies. Well, I mean that private schools exploded in the mid fifties for some weird reason that no one has ever been able to figure out. But yeah, no, private schools should be abolished. But on the, you know, that's a good segue to this interview where one of the topics we'll be discussing is the privatization of education. Let's roll that beautiful bean footage. Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest in the country serving about 500,000 students and about 31,000 union members, members of United Teachers Los Angeles have been on

strikes since the beginning of this past week, including teachers, nurses, counselors, librarians, and psychologists. Joining us today are two members of that union, two striking members, Carla Griego, teacher at Sotomayor High School, North Area Chair for UTLA, co-chair of the Union Power Caucus, and Jillian Russam, teacher at Roosevelt High School, UTLA board member, and an organizer with Union Power. Thank you both so much for joining us today. Hi, I'm Carla. Thank you for having us. Hi, I'm Jillian. Thanks for having us on. So let's get into this. What is at stake in this strike? Well, as people have probably read, this strike is about more than our contract.

It's really about the future and the very existence of public education here in our city. We've been bargaining for a contract for over 20 months around critical issues of student learning conditions and teacher working conditions, which we can go into in more detail. But we're kind of facing an existential threat to our schools because of privatization. We have the largest number of charter schools of any city, and we have a new superintendent who is an investment banker, a billionaire, Austin Butener, and who basically was brought in after a very expensive election, put pro-privatization people on our school board, and he was brought in to really dismantle our

district and open the doors for further privatization. And you can see that from the reports he's issued and the portfolio district plan that he has proposed, which would break up our district and make it easier to close and then privatize schools. So I think the teachers, like 33,000 people understand that this is more than a contract. This is really like a class struggle of the people against these incredibly rich individuals who think that they can dictate what happens to our schools. I think it would be helpful to start off with maybe a little recent history of the LAUSD. Where have the schools been headed in the past few years, and what is the state of privatization?

Well, you know, several years ago, about four years ago, Eli Broad came out with this plan. It was leaked through the LA Times. It was called Great Schools LA, and it was basically a plan to privatize 50% of our schools. That was somewhat the beginning of it, although prior to that, we had another superintendent, John Daisy, who was also a privatizer and believed in that model. And so since then, charters have been coming into our district, and if they cannot set up their own building, they have been co-locating. So when public schools have spaces, empty rooms in their classrooms, or a space that is used for computer labs, or art labs, or for therapy sessions, a charter school can come in and claim that space. And so that's what's been happening

throughout our district, and it's happened a lot in areas like East LA, in the Southeast areas, and in the Northeast areas, predominantly areas of color, where our students are of color. And so space has been taken away, and that's how it's been slowly encroaching our district and slowly taking away our students from LAUSD. And this has also sprouted a movement of parents who have been fighting back these co-locations. And so parents have been organizing throughout the city, forming their own groups to fight back these co-locations. So this is, you know, for you, charter schools, this isn't an abstract issue. This is very much so an immediate fight for resources. Exactly. You mentioned learning conditions for the students, working conditions for the teachers

and other professionals. So let's get into the details there. What are some of the specific issues at hand? You know, at the top of the list is class size. We have some of the largest class sizes in the country. So right now, you know, contract language says that even academic classes in secondary schools can go up to 46. And what's even worse than that is that there's a clause in the contract where the district says that if they are facing some type of fiscal emergency, they can make classes even bigger than that. And the superintendent in his plan additionally said that he thinks some of our class sizes in special education are too small. So he wants to raise class sizes for our students with the greatest

needs. I mean, you know, no rich person in the world puts their kid in a class of 46. And it's unconscionable. I mean, our students in LA have been in these packed classrooms for decades. I teach on the east side and there were 40 years where no new schools were built on the east side. And they just kept cramming more and more kids into a class. And like Carla said, this is as the number of students of color in our city has gone up. So it's the systematic abandonment of students of color. Another piece that's really high on the list and Carla can add more is staffing for student needs. So 80% of our schools do not have a full time nurse. And again, what message are you sending to kids that like, if you're sick or fall down and get hurt on the

wrong day, there's no nurse there to help you. We have about over 900 students per counselor. And we're talking about students that need guidance to be able to go to college and plan their future. And we're talking about woefully low numbers of school psychologists for students that in many, you know, lots of our students are dealing with trauma. We have students that are facing fear of immigration raids in their homes, you know, and we don't have anywhere near the level of supports that our students need. So those are two of the big ones. Other other things that we have been fighting for as well that we've been able to bring into this discussion is community community schools, a fight for community schools. As the charter schools have grown and grown and

taken away services really because they're taking over $600 million a year from our school district. We are supporting a plan for community schools. These are schools where there are wraparound services where the community is involved in its planning and deciding how they want to run that school. And back in 2017, the board actually approved a passed a motion for community schools, but they have not invested in this. And this motion was passed through the work of the Reclaimer Schools Los Angeles, which is a community group of students, parents and teachers that has come together. But they have not invested in these community schools. So we're fighting for more investment in this as an alternative to charter schools. We're also fighting for an end to random

searches of our students. We are, LAUSD is one of the 4% of school districts in the country that conduct random searches. And our students have asked that we include this in our demands and we see this as a racial justice issue because the students who get randomly searched are mostly African American and Latino. So we want to make sure that this practice is done with in our district. And instead, to implement other things that do support school safety like psychiatric social workers and counselors that can support students' social emotional needs. You mentioned Reclaimer Schools LA and something that's interesting to me having read about this strike is the involvement of these grassroots organizations like Reclaim,

one I've read about Students Deserve. How are these organizations involved in the strike? So Reclaimer Schools and Students Deserve is a member of Reclaimer Schools. They have been, during the strike, they have been working with other groups to stage different types of actions. Just this past week, they organized a protest. They wanted to deliver a letter to Monica Garcia, who is one of the billionaire-backed board members who was a strong supporter of Austin Butener. She is also the president of the school board and represents the East Area. So they organized students and parents and community members to deliver a letter to Monica Garcia. Obviously, Monica Garcia did not open her doors. Apparently, she was not there. They also

staged a vigil at Austin Butener's home. And again, in the past, Students Deserve attended a fundraiser where Austin Butener was attending. And it was the plate, I think, was the cheapest ticket. It was about $300 a person. It went up to over $1,000. And he attended this fundraiser. Students attended that fundraiser as well and attempted to speak to Austin Butener about their demands, their demands for community schools, for an end to random searches and for fully staffed schools. And again, Austin Butener walked away from them and did not speak to them. So the students have been attending school board meetings demanding that the school district, again, fund community schools and random searches and the district just refuses to hear them. So

they are now working on organizing a student strike. Not necessarily a strike to support students only, I mean, teachers only, but a strike for their demands. These are their demands. So they are working on that. And we'll see what happens. Yeah, I mean, the organizing by these high school students is incredibly inspiring. And folks should definitely check out their Facebook page and follow them. Another action they did this past week was a student block party in front of the school board, where they had an art workshop, a dance workshop, made their own signs. And then they tried to actually demand that Butener come meet with them about students' needs. And we were chanting like, we want Butener, we want Butener. And even more, you know, the police

presence to confront students was way higher than the police presence to confront teachers. And that connects back. It tells you something about how criminalized students feel in our schools, especially when they're being pulled out of class and searched with a wand. And I also want to mention another grassroots group that's emerged, which is called e-side padres contra la privatización e-side parents against privatization, which is it's led by some amazing militant moms who, like Carla mentioned, they've fought against charters coming in to take over space on their own school campuses. And through that process, they become aware and educated about, you know, the super rich, trying to dismantle our schools. And these parents are so fired up.

And they've been in the lead of a lot of these direct actions. So, you know, you have you have parent and student leadership emerging all over the city. It's it's really inspiring. Is there a demographic difference between the public school population and the charter school and private school populations? You know, I don't I don't have statistics on that. I mean, the student body in LA public schools is 85% black and brown students. So you're going to see an overwhelming majority of students of color in either the charters or the public schools. But I think the difference that you will that we all see, as we see the drain of our schools with privatization, is that it is the higher

achieving kids. It's the kids whose parents have more education, or a bit more time to be able to basically fill out applications, right, and seek out different schools to send their kid to. That is is the population that tends to be leaving public schools and going to the charters. And what that means is our kids with the greatest needs are left behind in our public schools. And then consequently, public schools that have less and less money because of the enrollment drain. And this is why even if the school gets public money, why this whole concept of school choice does not actually lead to equity, but it actually leads to to making basically a two tier school system. Yes. And why instead of creating this corporate model of like being a consumer and

buying a product, choosing a product of a school, we want fully funded community schools in every neighborhood where we commit to serve the needs of everybody. And that we don't start having this two tier system, which is which is what we increasingly have already. If I can add to that, then that what that looks like at the local public school is a high number of students with disability who are sent back to the public school from the charters, as well as English language learners, particularly the newcomer students, the ones who are learning English. And that is a big story that we hear over and over again from our public schools that as soon as the testing period begins, a lot of these students are sent back to the public school. Let's talk about that budget

issue. I'm quoting you from the LA Times. The open question is why in terms of money are not the two parties holding hands and getting on the plane to Sacramento, said Charles Kirchner, a labor relations historian, professor emeritus at Claremont Graduate University. The pay master here is the state. What is the state of finances of the LAUSD? We love hearing those comments because UTLA has been at the forefront of fighting for more state funding for years, and the district hasn't done anything on that issue. So they just want to use it as a decoy to avoid using what they have, which is over $1.9 billion in a reserve. So the LA public school budget is around $7 billion, and they have close to $2 billion sitting in a reserve, unrestricted

reserve, which is like 27% of their budget, I think. And they're only required by Ed Code to have 1% of their budget in reserve. And so we think it's outrageous when our student needs are this great for them to be sitting on more than a quarter of their budget. And that's what we're demanding that they spend. At the same time, our strike has gotten the attention of state officials to start increasing the state budget to education in ways that they haven't been doing. Until we were on strike, we were not hearing that. So the new state budget does have about $150 million increase for K-12 schools, and we're hoping that increases more. And we also busted our butts to get an initiative on the state ballot in 2020 that maybe Carla can talk about so that

the state also addresses the fact that we're 43rd in the nation in per-people funding. So we launched the campaign for 20 by 20, which is $20,000 per pupil by the year 2020. Right now, we are under $10,000 per pupil, and one of the richest economies in the world, and that's what we're spending. We went to the school district and asked them to join us in this campaign, and they chose not to do that. So it is appalling that the district now claims that we need to go to the state and saying that we need to join them in going to the state when we've been telling them to join us. So another thing that we've been working on that Jillian just referenced, which is the schools and communities first campaign, it will be on the ballot in 2020.

And if that passes, we will be getting $7 billion per year for schools in California. This will be huge. So we know that, one, there is money in the reserve to start investing in the things that our students need right now. There is also money that will be coming in from the state like Jillian stated that Gavin Newsom has already committed to. He says $140 million to LA. There is that money. And then of course, there is an effort to get this ballot initiative passed at the state level. So we are, when the district says there is no money, we don't believe it because we believe that the money is there, but their willingness to seek it and to invest it is the issue here. And that's because, again, like we spoke earlier about,

it's about their ultimate goal is to dismantle our district. And so they claim that they are broke because that is what they want to do ultimately. But our parents, our communities, our teachers, our students are wise to that. And they know that the money is there. And that's why we are where we are right now. We are claiming, we're saying that we will stay out one day longer than Austin Butener until our schools get fully funded. Let's talk about Austin Butener because he is a fascinating character in all this. A former investment banker who worked with the private equity firm Blackstone, co-founder of Evercore Partners, a global investment bank, and interestingly, a former State Department official whom the Clinton administration sent to Russia in the 90s to assist

with that country's genocidal conversion to a free market economy. How did Austin Butener become the superintendent of the LAUSD, a man with no educational qualifications? Yeah, I mean, you kind of could not make up a more cartoonish villain of somebody that should not be running a school district. And someone who is so clearly here simply to implement the will of the super rich. And the way he got in is equally ridiculous. So billionaires like the Waltons, like Doris Fisher of the Gap, and Reed Hastings of Netflix put in a combined approximately $13 million to our last school board election. This is the most expensive in U.S. history. It's more expensive than most Senate races. And they did that to put three new

pro privatization folks on the board and tip it to a pro charter school majority. And so those people were Kelly Gonas, Nick Melvoin, and Ref Rodriguez. And Ref Rodriguez pretty soon after he got on the board, he's the head of a charter school chain himself. And then he's on the board to run our public schools. He was began to be indicted on charges of corruption. He funneled his own money back into his campaign, claiming it was grassroots money. He also funneled money from his charter school to another one of his nonprofits. Parents were so outraged and immediately called for him to step down from the board while he was under investigation. He insisted on staying on the board just long enough to cast a deciding vote to bring Butner in a superintendent in what

were basically closed-door secret meetings. We as the union and parents were demanding open hearings. Let us have some type of transparency in who's going to run our district. And they refused. It was a rushed process in secret and brought this guy in. And yeah, his record is all about free market capitalism. He's also known for being brought in as a consultant to downsized struggling companies. So that's the attitude he had when he got to our district. The first thing he did was not to visit schools or get to know students or talk to teachers. His first step was to use this discredited research firm to put out a fiscal study on the district. It's called the ERS report. And it used such crappy research

methods. Basically, the study said that teachers are 17% overpaid in LA. Our health benefits are 44% too expensive. Like I mentioned before, it said that class size in special education is too small. And it said that we're spending too much on socio-emotional supports for students. These are just some of the wonderful things. And it's to create this sense of a crisis to justify dismantling a district with this portfolio model. So it's extremely outrageous. What is the portfolio district model? Well, if I can begin that, and maybe Jillian can fill in. So basically, it is an economic model of looking at schools. And at least his plan here in Los Angeles is to break up the district into 32 mini districts or downsize the district into 32 mini

districts. His plan is to use assessments and test scores to assess whether a school is viable or not, whether a school is worthy of staying open or not. And based on that, schools will be closed. However, the money, there's not going to be any further investment in any of the schools. It's just breaking them up and letting them just be as they are with no investment in them. And so the plan is that as schools are getting close down, then they are given away to charters. And that's basically how this model works. And it's been used in different cities throughout the country, where they have done it. I think his report has a powerpoint that presentation that shows graphics and slides as to what makes a school viable. And none of it has anything to do with

children or human beings in a classroom. It sounds a lot like the Rahm Emanuel plan. Yeah, the Renaissance 2010 plan. Is that what you mean? Yes. Yeah, it's definitely taking that playbook and maybe pushing it further. But it's a similar plan that was used in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to privatize the public schools. And people may know that New Orleans last remaining public school was just converted into a charter school. So there are literally no public schools left in New Orleans. The model, as people probably know or guessed, is it's named after a stock portfolio. This guy, Paul Hill from University of Washington, that was kind of the architect, basically said, you know, like investors with diversified portfolios of stocks and bonds,

school boards would closely manage their community's portfolio of educational service offerings, divesting less productive schools and adding more promising ones. So there's different elements to that. They've already created this basically web platform called Unified Enrollment, which is like parents go to a website and they choose among multiple school options. Again, some parents are going to have way more access to that process than others. And then they create a fake crisis that's supposed to make everyone feel, oh my gosh, we have to totally restructure everything. You know, they change the power structure like they did with the school board election. And then they also need this like rating system. So one of the pro charter board members, Nick Melvoyne said, we're going

to give every school like a Yelp score. And that way it'll be easy, you know, to decide which ones we're going to close and which ones are not. And so, and that's going to be based largely, as we know, on standardized testing, which drives, you know, our schools toward more and more testing, which kids and teachers hate. So that just gives you a flavor of what they're aiming at. I mean, I think all of us kind of feel that we need to come out of this strike with basically we want to put a nail in the coffin of this plan. We want statements, we want, you know, if the mayor truly wants to help, we want him to help put this portfolio model in the trash because even if we win a lot of positive investment in our schools, but they implement this and start closing our schools,

then we really, you know, we haven't progressed in the way we need to. So. No, no, it sounds like what you're doing is more than just a labor dispute or a dispute over wages and benefits, but a community revolt against disaster capitalism. Well, we've certainly brought all of those to the forefront, I think. And the beautiful thing is that even members who probably did not see this fight as such in the beginning are now beginning to speak in that manner and see this as a fight for social justice and racial justice, that they're willing to stay on the line longer for this. Now that they've spent five days and they've seen how tough it's been, they feel that they can do it for longer until we win what we need to win.

I want to talk a little about the recent history of UTLA, which as I understand it has undergone something of a political transformation in recent years. You're both members of the Union power caucus. What is that? You know, for a couple of decades, there's been caucuses of progressive folks trying to move the Union in a more proactive direction. And up until, you know, the 2000s, that those folks, those of us were always in an opposition. We had a really kind of typical top down Union approach where, you know, there was very little even mobilizing that would go on of the membership. Never mind actual organizing to develop more leaders at the school site levels. Also, you know, there was literally no approach to parent and community outreach

in our Union. And in about 2013, that progressive caucus we were part of called peak, progressive educators for action, merged with other activists to form the Union power caucus. And actually during 2013, I think an important event is that we had seen the Chicago teacher strike of 2012. Those were actually brothers and sisters in the core caucus that we had, you know, we'd been in dialogue with for a long time. And we saw that they built a strike around the issues of racial justice around the schools that students deserve and they won. And we put out, we actually have the ability in our Union, if you get enough signatures, to put a vote before the membership. And that vote was that we as a Union needed to mount a campaign for the schools

our students deserve. That would include aggressive parent and community outreach. And that was the precursor to getting a team together to be elected as a new officer group to run the Union. And they won in 2014, and then they won again in 2017. And it's pretty hard to overestimate how different our Union is now. And I think what's important about that is that we took these conversations to the whole membership about what we're up against, like Eli Broad's plan to move half of our kids into charters. We were like, we need to talk to everyone about this. It's an existential crisis. And so people also just began to become way more educated and conscious of the mission of our Union. It's just powerful to see

all of that work at the ground level, at the grassroots level, to change the Union into a social justice force. It's powerful to see that coming of fruition now. And another piece of it was getting the Union to be willing to speak about racism in an open way. So those are some of the things that Union power has brought to transform the Union. Quoting from that same LA Times article, this is a strike about the soul of public education, Kirchner said, calling it a contest between two profits preaching opposite visions. On the one hand, Caputo Pearl, the UTLA president, has a very clear idea of what he thinks schools in Los Angeles should look like, community schools with wraparound services. Butener, he said, has been manifestly

unclear about his plan. But given who supported him, making a safe haven for charter schools is much more in his wheelhouse. Do you have any closing thoughts? What would you like our audience to know about this? Well, we think that, you know, that we have the vision for public schools that meet the needs and our places for all students to grow and to thrive. We believe we have the vision and the plan for schools where communities and parents, students are treated with dignity and where they are given access to the things that they need, the basic things that they might need, like a nurse to support them with any health need. We have students who also have social emotional needs as being a student school district with 80% of our population being Title

1. We have a lot of social emotional needs and we want to plan to provide those services via our psychiatric social workers. So we do believe that we have that plan versus Austin Butener, whose plan is really just to dismantle the district, not put any serious investment in our schools and to basically give them off to privatizers, to organizations that will privatize and like Jillian stated earlier, will create a two-tier system of education. So that's what I think we have, that Austin Butener does not have in his plan. I would just add that, you know, we obviously owe a tremendous debt to the West Virginia teachers, the revolt that they started, which spread to so many states and woke up the public consciousness

about the abandonment of public education. And I think what's powerful about what we are doing that will hopefully spread it to even more places is that we are showing that we have the very same struggle in a very blue state. Our cities run by Democrats, our state is run by Democrats, and they have been for decades. And yet both the privatization and the underfunding have preceded a pace. And this is, as I'm sure folks know, the richest state in the country, the fifth largest economy in the world, Apple, Chevron, Disney, Wells Fargo, all these corporations are based here that because of Prop 13 have never paid the property taxes on the tremendous amount of money that they rake in in our state. And that's what's caused the gradual underfunding

of our schools. And so I think that, you know, this is just part of a national and probably a global awakening of working class people saying, like, we're not going to put up with austerity. There's insane amounts of wealth. And we deserve our basic needs, taking care of which education is at the top of that list. So, you know, a lot of us are radicals, I'm a socialist, I think this kind of points to a longer term struggle for a different world where, you know, our resources are really used for human needs and not, you know, the profit of this tiny group of jerks. So. Well said. And what can our listeners do to support the strike? Well, one of the things that has been started here in California online is California Educators Rising. And it's a network

of caucuses and unions throughout California that are supporting our strikers. So one way that folks have come through and supported us is by adopting a school. And they have either sent money to a school site or they buy lunch for the school site or they might, if they're close enough, they might go and walk picket lines with strikers. That's one way that folks can support our strikers right now. Yeah, I mean, obviously, if anyone is anywhere near Los Angeles, we urge you to come to the picket lines. Feel this incredible sense of community and empowerment that's going on. You really can't explain it unless you feel it. And also, we're continuing to have citywide and regional rallies all this week if needed until we get our contract. But also, there is a solidarity

fund that goes directly to the UTLA strike fund, which you can find at the website of Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools. And there's also the Fabulous Tacos for Teachers Fund, which has been getting tacos out to the picket lines all week. I think we've fed about 5,000 strikers so far. And any money that's left over goes back into that strike fund. So those would be some other ways. Carla, Grego, Jillian, Russam, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Take care. All right. You know, I think this is a good opportunity to round things out with a little 2020 update. We are off to the races. Oh, yeah. Last talked about this. People are jumping in. Since we last talked about it, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro,

Chris and Gillibrand have all either declared their candidacies or exploratory committees joining the powerhouse John Delaney and... Baldness, Pride Pimp, John Delaney. And Elizabeth Warren. Yeah. Though I do want to talk about it. I do want to check in before we get to those candidates. I do want to check in with one person who is probably going to run, but has not made any formal moves for it, Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who just gave a talk at a charter school in New Orleans. Oh boy. Whereas you have candidates like Chris and Gillibrand or Tulsi Gabbard apologizing for their past positions that are now way outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party. As far as I can tell, Booker is still a big supporter of charter schools. Oh yeah. Now he loves them.

And I don't know if you read that piece in BuzzFeed about a month ago or so about how Booker plans to run his campaign as, I don't know, a pep talk for America? Oh, yikes. Something it's going to be optimistic and it's kind of raking a lot of Wall Street cash and charter school money. He's trying to do Obama all over again. What's curious about that is, you know, he's one of the guys who, in his voting record anyway, has moved to the left and we're using that also in scare quotes. I'm doing that a lot, which I really shouldn't do because this is an audio medium. As long as you tell them though you did it. Like you're racking up a very, you know, anti-Trump obstructionist voting record there. But by all accounts, he hasn't

really moved to the left, even if he's could sign on to a Green New Deal or something like that, because it's not really reflected in his receipts. He's still very much so a senator from Wall Street. Oh, big time. He loves, he loves, he thinks that our finance brothers are our children of God like the rest of us and they deserve respect and a say in the political process as much as anyone else. And what I'm banking on is one, like that whole hope and change crap is like way outside what most people want to begin with. But even if it weren't, I mean, if you've looked at the man, you've heard him talk. He is a weird man. He is not with Obama. You read him as like, oh, you're a normal person. I could have a conversation with you. And you would probably

be like fun to be around. Like I'm talking 2007 candidate Obama. Could you imagine spending any time with Cory Booker like one on one? No, his skin would be crawling. He seems like that house member in Parks and Rec, who they show just sitting in an office staring off into space for 20 minutes, just not even looking at his phone or doing anything. I think that that's what he does when he is alone. He just stands there and stares at a wall until he needs to be engaged again. So we are, but the other big piece of news about Cory Booker is he was seen holding hands with Rosario Dawson at New York City Theater. Play on player. Go for it, buddy. Rosario Dawson, who, of course, was a big Bernie supporter. Yeah. What the hell, man? Come on. We went to, we actually

saw about a Bernie rally up in the Bronx. She was there and she really brought the house down. Yeah, I don't know what happened. Maybe she's just imagining herself wearing a Jackie O outfit with a pillbox hat. Well, who doesn't? It's just too enticing to not, to not go for just, you know, Oleg Cassini dress and onlooker says they were holding hands, seemed comfortable together. That's always a good sign. That's like them. That's how you know you're dealing with a real alien where it's newsworthy that he seemed comfortable in the, in the company of another human being extra extra extra. I actually did not know this Dawson split from boyfriend Eric Andre in November 2017. I did not know that she was dating Eric. I think I heard that somewhere.

That's an entirely different type of weird. I got to say, that is a weird move. Very odd. I would call that a lateral move from Eric Andre to Cory Booker. It's a zig, it's a zag. Yeah, I don't know what you're doing. Cory Booker is an Eric Andre character. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't, he doesn't seem like someone who enjoys life in any form or he doesn't seem to have any strong intentions. No, no, nothing other than just an empty sterile will to power. And his, in his right, in his Senate career, he's really just kind of a conduit for, you know, while special interest money and Wall Street money. He seems to want to be liked and that's about it. I remember when there were rumors of him dating an Instagram poet. Yes. That was a

thing that happened or they were, and I believe, and probably if I'm wrong here, I believe he made some just nauseating tweets about her. This is one of those things like, you know, when, when, when, when whoever's running the fucking Chuck Schumer Twitter account, like banters about Cardi B with another senator, but this one I genuinely felt, oh, that's actually him writing this and that's way more unnerving. Oh yeah. No, he's, he's uncanny Valley. He's probably the most uncanny Valley candidate of the 2020 cycle. So Matt Cory Booker, is he a winner or loser of the week? I'm going to say he's going to be a loser every week until he drops out because I don't see him getting any traction at all. Uh, I'm going to say winner. He found someone who

was not unnerved by his presence. Uh, moving on another center for Wall Street, Chris Gillibrand, uh, just got back from an Iowa tour. She's doing exploratory committee for nine yards, which I don't know why we bother doing the exploratory committee. Who's the last person to form an exploratory committee and then say no to Vilsack. I think it might have been Vilsack or maybe Vilsack did run for a week. I don't know, but he might have just had the exploratory committee. I like the idea of just, of just a famous, just an indecisive senator going, oh gosh, I don't know. Is there like a middle option? Can I, uh, can I just explore it? It's really interesting. Gillibrand is a fascinating case because you have somebody who has an incredibly

right wing voting record because she was an upstate New York, right? Uh, wrap. Then she's a senator. She sees the party moving to the left and she decides to reshape herself and she has these hilarious explanations for why she isn't a pro gun person or anti LBGT. Now things like well, you know, uh, when I came to New York city after I was in the Senate, I saw all these people that I never met before and she's lived in New York before she moved upstate to run for a Congress. Well, I'm just from a small town. Exactly. When I, when I got off at Peen station, I, yeah, like she's got a hayseed coming out of her mouth. She's got a, she's got a fucking a suitcase with a sock coming out. You know what she's talking about? She's talking about the black

Israelites. She, she, she would encounter them and realize I've got to change my whole worldview. So, but I think she at some point understands that that's kind of weak tea for a lot of people. So she's, her other big strategy to steer us off to the left was she went all in on me too. She was the me too center for a while there. She denounced Bill Clinton, uh, said he should have resigned with the Lewinsky thing and also pressured, uh, Alfred to resign. And I think she thought that that was going to get her buy in on the left, but all it did was get the establishment to hate her more than Bernie at this point. Yeah. They hate her so much and she never got any credit on the left. So now she's out there and she is just a turd floating in a fucking pool. She's like,

she's like Booker. She's in that small group of senators who very clearly have been planning to run in 2020 and have compiled very strongly anti-Trump voting records, voting against pretty much all of his nominees, which is by the way, the correct thing to do. If you voted for a single one of these or something, very easy, very easy to do. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, no penalty for that whatsoever. Uh, I mean, so I, I think that's what she, you know, was, is trying to base this run on and say, okay, I'm going to be like, I'm going to occupy this burnier space. Uh, but, uh, I'm younger and I'm woman and probably have more financial resources to run for president being the senator from New York, which means that you're necessarily cozy for Wall Street. Yeah. But, you know, the,

the, the, the frankest off and the Clinton stuff, I, my personal thesis on this is like Gillibrand running is a net good for Bernie because if you, if you read any given Gillibrand tweet and you just see the replies from it from the, you know, extremely online, uh, Democrat loyalists, uh, they hate her just viscerally. Yeah. And it just, those people, those same people, like, like the Venn diagram of them and people hate Bernie's one to one. Her announcement tweet got ratioed because it, it's likes and retweets were, were just totally inundated by people yelling at her about betraying, uh, Bill Clinton and, and Al Franken. Al Franken is the one they're, they're most mad about because I think they just kind of like Al Franken, who was also positioning

himself too. Yeah. And he was, you know, actually early on in the, in the Trump administration, like the first few months there before he resigned, he was, you know, uh, he was conducting himself in a way that seemed like how you probably should conduct yourself in the face of this monstrosity. And he had a pitch. I think it's an incredibly stupid pitch, but it's one that people in the Beltway really responded to, which was Trump is a showman. Trump's, Trump's a, a, a, a reality TV guy. He's impervious to traditional political critiques. You need a comedian to mock him. You need someone to own him with jokes. I remember that pitch actually emerged, uh, during this kind of tiny draft Franken movement for the, for the, uh, Hillary's VP slot. And

the funny thing about that is every single fucking late night show, every television program made fun of Trump nonstop for two years and he's still fucking one. Why do you think Al Franken doing some zingers is going to tip the fucking balance? Uh, the online libs, they, they hate Gillibrand. And it, I mean, it really just, I mean, it does two things. One is, you know, it kind of takes the heat away from Bernie because it gives him another image to yell at. And the other thing is it, I mean, it, it violates whatever nonsense rule that they've invented about not attacking Democrats. That's very true. Uh, but, but, you know, going back to, like, her actual positions, you know, uh, things are coming out from her original congressional run where it's, you know,

like very strong anti-immigrant stuff. The progots, I don't give a shit about the anti-immigrant stuff is pretty disgusting coming from her. When she was picked, uh, by, I believe by Patterson to fill Hillary's seat, you know, she was facing a primary challenge there and she pretty much had to make a deal that, okay, I'm going to be, I'm going to attack closer to what the, the, the, you know, center of the, the New York Democratic party is going to be, which means, and I think everyone just kind of acknowledged that that was what was happening, which means, yeah, yeah, yeah, the, the gun shit, the immigrant, that's all for show. No, no, no. Uh, I'm still going to be, I'm still going to take all the Wall Street. Well, of course, what really matters? Uh, so, uh,

Carson Gillibrand, when her loser, Oh, big time loser. She, the total collective shrug when she announced nothing, no interest, no excitement. I'm going to say she kind of just stammered on, she went on Colbert, of course, all right, stammered. They asked her why you're running for president and it was just God, God in the Bible and life is precious and just, I would like to be president. Yeah, nothing. Uh, I am also going to say loser. I have no idea how she gets any traction whatsoever in this race. Yeah. And as well, the Wall Street stuff is just going to dog her continually. Yeah. Uh, I think that's, you know, I, it's kind of wild to say that something that's very central to our, our gapless political structure, uh, is a sleeper

issue, but I think that is a sleeper issue that's going to rise to prominence. And a lot of people are going to start fighting over where you took your money from. Yeah. Problem is everyone's pretty much guilty of it, except for Bernie, except for Bernard. That's where his value at is. I did not run any bullet points for this one, but Julian Castro, uh, forget about exploratory committee. He's running. He is running and he's in it. He is running on a strong platform of mind currency. He's running on a William Gibson cyberpunk concept where your thoughts are transmitted into some sort of economic unit that you can use to buy nutrient slurry and a silver jumpsuit. What's, what's interesting is, you know, there was that, that whole contra talk about, uh, a

Bernie versus Beto, all that bullshit the other month that we've all forgotten about, thankfully. But I, I feel like Beto's closest, uh, uh, rival is, is Julian Castro from the same state, both kind of were like golden boys of that state, right? Yeah. No, they were the future of the Democratic party. Uh, but once again, I just, I'm not seeing these guys get any traction. I'm not seeing anyone engaging. I'm not seeing them fill, fill rooms or, or make a splash. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but, uh, Castro is probably going to be the only Latino candidate in the field. And as if you saw, uh, Nate Silver's bizarre pentagram analysis, uh, Latinos are one fifth of the party and you have to win three out of the five in order to go to advance the daily,

uh, uh, daily double round. Uh, I honestly think he's running for VP, which she should have done last time because if he was, I kind of think if he'd been Hillary's VP, she would have gone across the finish line considering how few votes was sag of wet mayonnaise. I mean, Kane was, was Kane was the prevent defense of vice presidential picks. Oh God. And as a result, as everyone knows, uh, prevent defense only prevents you from winning. Uh, I just want to say that I am, uh, is it kind of interesting that no one's talking about Tim Kane, the last vice presidential nominee to run this time around? Well, he's not making any moves either. He's not making any, he's, there's no indication that he's interested. And I mean Edwards ran, Lieberman ran, and they

were, I mean, they were like top tier candidates, Lieberman being the front runner for a while. Uh, Kane is not running. That's why he, I guess he, even he understands how bland and just how, how wet fucking a saltine he is, which is so funny when there was that attempt to make him cool for five minutes after he got the nomination. There was that ebook, Tim Kane is your cool stepdad. No. Oh no. Oh no. I purge that. How dare you bring that back? Oh, I remember. Oh God. That's too many brain cells are being used right now. Uh, no, he looks like every single video photo of Tim Kane just looks like he's mentally thinking, smile and nod. You'll get through it. Just smile and nod. No one's going to get mad at you. Yeah. The August Virginia tradition of just tooth whitener,

starched collar, empty suits like a Chuck Robb and Mark Warner. I will say that the one thing that Julian Castro has is a twin brother, which, you know, opens the door to all sorts of interesting hijinks, which I think that's a, that's a wild card he could play. You got assassinated. You just put the brother in there and then no one has to know. Uh, or you have, it's your anniversary with your wife, but on the same night as the big presidential debates. Uh, come on. Yeah. Uh, Julian Castro, winner, loser of the week, loser. Nobody cares. The only Latino running in the, in the, in the, in the, in a time when the number one issue that's galvanizing everybody is immigration and you got nowhere. I love the twin things so much. Love a good twin. And twins, but I'll have

to agree. Loser. Uh, here's one that's gotten everybody crazy. Kamala Harris, Senator Gallifornia, she's running. Did she also do a fucking kitchen thing? Are we all doing that now? Oh, she has not done a kitchen thing yet. That's just, uh, AOC and Liz Warren and of course, Beto. Uh, she's losing the kitchen vote. She is losing the kitchen, uh, Instagram thought vote. Well, the big dog is obviously, uh, her past as a prosecutor attorney general. And, uh, I saw people saying, well, um, you know, it's kind of problematic to refer to her as a cop when she literally said her, uh, I'm the top cop of the state. Well, I mean, and the patent in me makes, has to think it's right there in the law and order title or the law and order opening crawl that there's two,

there's separate, but equal groups to the police who investigate crime and the prosecutors who are the attorneys who prosecute the offenders. So that's, as Richard will said it during our interview with, yeah, they're different, but no, she's a law enforcement, she was a law enforcement officer. And more than that, she was a particularly sort of, uh, cruel and, uh, bloodless one with her argument that, uh, the overcrowding in California prisons, which necessitated a court ordered, uh, uh, release of prison prisoners couldn't shouldn't go forward because they needed them for their labor. That's a cartoonish. That's a little, uh, that's a little are there no work houses, uh, Victorian monster type of mindset there. Well, other people say that she was, uh,

a reformer as attorney general. Well, of course they all say that everyone's, they're working from the inside. It's like what Matthew Lillard's dad says in SLC punk. I didn't sell out. I bought in. Uh, I don't really, like I said, it all swirls together. Anything else about Kamala? No, I think we're still, I think she's in the cut. I think she's waiting for a moment, which I think is, uh, is smart because I honestly think announcing now is a bad move with the shutdown and everything in the, in the wall. You're not going to get any real coverage. I think if you're doing your shit now, if you're putting your name out there now, you're showing a sort of a lack of an intuitive understanding of the new cycle.

So the fact that she hasn't declared yet, uh, yours can probably ask if she's a winner of the week. The fact that she is waiting in the cut makes her a winner in my opinion. Well, I mean, the other thing is I honestly, so far, nobody who's announced has like dominated a new cycle to the extent that this is like an actual real fucking important thing. Right. Uh, because honestly, I, I think all the people who are announcing are people we expected to announce that we've been talking about for the best two fucking years who are going to run. Yeah. No surprises. So this is all just like, well, I, I filled out a form. All right. Big woohoo. Yeah. No surprises yet. No, no, not really. I mean, you can kind of

spend this part of the game of just reading the tea leaves, you know, wait, seeing like, oh, how they've, uh, how they're, they're, they're, they're subtly inching to the left on this or that position or whatever. Wake me up when George Clooney decides to run. Now we're talking. That's some left field shit. That's what I want to see. Uh, Kamala Harris, I'm going to say neither winner nor loser because I immediately forgot everything I read about her. She is in a quantum state. She's Schrodinger's candidate. Okay. Uh, let's get to that uncut shit. Uh, Hawaii, Congress, Tulsi Gavir. Yes. The surfing Congresswoman who is near as I can tell said she'd be running for president because, uh, she panicked being asked on national television. Like, uh, yeah, sure. I'll

do it. Yeah. Uh, that is the biggest head scratcher for sure. I mean, I, I can't imagine why she's running. Yeah. I can't imagine she thinks she's going to win. I mean, I think some people are saying that she's trying to change the conversation about foreign policy to allow for more of, uh, you know, anti imperialists, uh, ideas to enter the main stream of the conversation about pp and poo poo. That's what I said. I see no one a who further show said, you know, read these two New Yorker articles to really understand Tulsi Gavir and my eyes just glazed over. I think I'm just getting old honestly. I mean, my big issue is that I do appreciate somebody running on a foreign policy first platform, considering that's one thing a president actually has a lot of control

over. I mean, a lot of these people are talking about what they're going to do and they know, and everyone knows that they can't, they're not going to be able to do most of it because of the vagaries of the legislative process, but presidents have a lot of unilateral control over foreign policy. So it's good to see somebody being muscularly anti-imperialist. Problem with Tulsi Gavir is that she's not really a left anti-imperialist. She's essentially a paleo con and the thing about paleo con isolationism is that it's totally compatible with the fortress build a wall murder machine approach to world affairs that Trump represents and therefore not an advancement in my but also one like paleo con. She's very pro Israel. No. Yeah, exactly. Yes. So the worst of

both worlds. She's no. She she supports Assad because, uh, for the same reason I think Felix does because, uh, Assad, uh, is fighting against the Sunnis. Right. And he's hot and he's a fucking pog in the thought. Uh, no, I mean, it's, it's, it's, you, you, if you like spend one minute looking into a record, you see that, oh, this isn't, she's not this anti-imperialist hero. This is actually a load of bullshit. She's fine with the mechanized drone war. She's fine with, uh, all of the bloodshed we're doing. She just doesn't like the idea of overthrowing secular regimes, which, yeah, don't do that. But also don't bomb Afghanistan. Don't bomb Yemen. No, she just really likes Assad and the people who really obsessed with her are just tipping their hands this way. You just also

like Assad. Why do I give a shit what you think? I don't care. I'm literally talking to Felix. Felix, stop talking to me about Assad. Stop texting me about Assad. I don't care. I barely know who that is. I am trying to purge all knowledge of Syria from my brain and you are hampering me in this endeavor. Stop sending hot sexy, uh, Osma memes. She is a dime though. Osmo is hot. I don't know who that is. Stop it. It's my sure's life. She's a dime. Stop it. Or I am going to file a complaint with the office of podcasting. The thing is, is that the one of the most encouraging things about Bernie in the last four years is that a guy who dad very little in the way of a foreign policy when he ran in 2016 has developed an idea of an international

uh, cooperative approach to world, uh, world affairs that is, that is the only alternative to a future where, uh, lifeboat ethics and walls and fortresses are the defining characteristics. And if that's what's going to happen, then it doesn't fucking matter who your president is. It doesn't matter. Oh, you got some Medicare for people. It's going to be a nightmare authoritarian regime. Uh, and you're just talking about, you know, whether or not it's got, whether or not Social Security has chained CPI in that world, you know, I, I mean, I think we're making baby steps in that direction, but it's, it's necessarily something that has to happen. It's something good, but it's not going to happen from a freaking Tulsi. I can tell you that much, uh,

the very pro Modi also. Yeah. He's an actual fascist. I mean, I, I honestly, like Trump, who knows, but like Modi, the, the, the BJP in, in India is the closest thing to a, uh, him and Bolsonaro are the closest things to, to, uh, empower fascist regimes in this, in the United, in the world. And then, you know, like, and, you know, we, we talked about Gillibrand expressing contrition for her pro-gun anti-immigrant stances, uh, Tulsi having to come out and say, oh jeez, I'm sorry for all that really gross anti-K shit I was involved with with my dad. It was a, uh, like a community activist of some sort. And I believe a state legislator also wrote that into state being coming a state legislator, who, uh, made his name by being one of those absolute

anti-gay psychos who said, this is going to open the door to marrying dogs and not an acute way. Like, like you get your, your dogs get married and you dress them up like human humans, marrying dogs. I'm still waiting for that, by the way. I thought that was going to be pretty cool when it happened and it hasn't happened yet. I'm kind of, which people are, you know, rightfully upset about that. I mean, to the question, I mean, is, was Tulsi the cat's paw for overbearing parents? I don't know and I don't care, honestly. Yeah, it's just like, I mean, she's not going to win, so it doesn't really matter anyway. But I think her campaign does something very, very useful and very helpful for Bernie, which has leached the attention of the biggest cranks who supported

Bernie for like total nonsensical reasons, but also the, some of the biggest anti-Bernie cranks. Yeah. No, because like the, the other side of the, of the Syria coin is the, is the people who have made their entire life devoted to defending the free Syrian army and for them, they can attack Tulsi all day long. You're like, like cats battering around a catnip toy and then yeah, like the Cassandra Fairbanks, Bernie supporters can also go off and, and batted around too. Wonderful. Win, win, win. And on that, I have to bring this up. Alt U.S. Press Secretary, which is, you remember right after the Trump got inaugurated and all these people pretending to be members of the bureaucracy, yes, rogue. I don't know. Here's

one of them who I don't know insists that they're a member of the bureaucracy profile says, hello, I am the alternative U.S. Press Secretary. That's cool. This is, this is, this is, this is caught. This is model U.N. for adults. Wait a minute. The alternative, what, what? This is Chris Cornell. What is it? What are you talking about? The alternative? Yeah, no, the alternative to that. Hey, that guy that you see on TV is lying. I'm the, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the, yeah, I'm the, I'm the shadow press secretary. Here's what this person is doing. So this person made a go fund me to investigate Tulsi. And here's what it says, Tulsi governed is a pro-Putin, pro-Assad, Hindu nationalist and member of a cult-like organization, the science of identity.

And that's just what we know so far. Gabbard recently announced a run for the presidency. We are going to travel to our district, talk to locals, find out the truth about Tulsi, and report back to the American people. We, every dollar you donate will go to that cause. What the fuck do they think they're going to find? We're good. We are, we are going, your money, every dollar that you give us is going to go to my vacation to. Yeah. No, this is like when Joe Arpaio raised money to go to investigate Obama's birth certificate also in Hawaii. What are you going to do? You're going to find out. Yeah. And she took a dump in the bar area of a TGI Fridays.

And at least some people or some other fellow cranks from Hawaii have replied saying, you know, there, there are people here who can do that. You don't have to come here. They raised 1600 so far, which God bless you, that'll get you the plane ticket. I think maybe. Yeah. That's heartening. That's only that much, frankly. Uh, but, but there is a little drama there a few days ago. The alt press secretary I can't believe the old the, uh, announced to the alt press corps after discussion with alt gov members. It's not a thing. What are you talking about? I have fully transferred control over the investigate Tulsi go fund me to Carol it or

RVA walk. Uh, we have enacted the provision of the alt 25th amendment to transfer my alt authority. I'm imagining these guys all have the goatees like a star track when they were in the mirror dimension. We are the alternative press secretary. We are part of the alternative government like bizarro. We say hello instead of goodbye. We wear shoes on our hands. I gotta say best of luck to you. And it's wonderful. This is the, this is the, the, the fulfillment of my Tulsi thesis. Yeah. Yeah. All the cranks. Yeah. All the, the, the, the, the FSA fucking cranks. Uh, they're going to spend a lot of brain power stopping the Tulsi juggernaut. Stopping a candidacy that is man obviously going nowhere.

Tulsi Gilbert winner or loser? Loser. Not going anywhere. Loser obviously. The alt government is going to take the town. Yeah. Count your blessings Tulsi. You're done for soon. And rounding things out. This is a candidate who's not gotten a lot of attention, but if you read Wikipedia, she shows up in all the articles about the presidential race. This is interesting because I've never heard of this person or no, I think I might have, I think I stalked her books when I worked at parts noble, but I haven't thought about her in the decade. She is, uh, and reading from Wikipedia here, an American spiritual teacher, author, lecturer, entrepreneur and activist. She's published, published 12 books, including four

number one bestsellers in the New York times, Marianne Williamson, who is best known for being on Oprah in the nineties and writing a book called a return to love. This is like board house life spiritualism bullshit. Uh, she wrote, uh, healing, uh, a set of books called a course in miracles. You know, I remember those books reading, reading, uh, all of the books, uh, qualifies you for a miracle AA and healing the soul of America. And here's a, here's a quote from, uh, healing the soul of America. It is a task of our generation to recreate the American polity to awaken from our culture of distraction and reengage the process of democracy with soulfulness and hope. Yes, we see there are problems in the world, but we believe in a universal force that when

activated by the human heart has the power to make all things right, such as the divine authority of love to renew the hearts, renew the nations and ultimately renew the world. Look out, Cory Booker. That's all I got to say. Oh, this is a, this is a powerful platform. Uh, she ran for Congress in 2014 and she was endorsed by Jennifer Granholm, Jesse Ventura, Dennis Kucinich, Alan Grayson, and Van Jones. And Alanis Morissette wrote and performed her campaign theme song entitled today. She lost. She finished fourth out of 16 candidates and got 13% of the, uh, she just got back from a trip to New Hampshire and exploring everyone for the presidency and is pretty much going to announce it this upcoming week. Wow. Go for it, lady. I mean, she wrote a book called A Course in Miracles.

So clearly she's a fan of long shots and this is certainly one. Uh, I found this. Um, so I was like trying to research this, you know, because I want to know about our next president and I found a, uh, like a letter to the editor or no, this is editorial and national telegraph headline, Williamson made good points. Uh, quote, our national challenges are deep, but our political conversation is shallow. She said, my campaign is for people who want to dig deeper into the questions we face as a nation and deeper into finding the answers. This is, this sounds like Ben Sass. Shit. This just sounds like we need a spiritual revival instead of a political change. If I'm out of here, please. Yeah, but I mean, it sounds a little more mystical because that's a

whole deal. Cause I can't, I, the thing is, she starts speaking in tongues at a campaign rally I'm voting for. Yeah. Oh, 100%. I mean, if Bernie drops out, we've got a number two right here. Uh, Marianne Williamson, winner or loser, Matt, you know what? They're the bald, the balls, the hoivos to do that. You have one failed house race and you're under your belt and you're going to be like, you know what, presidency. I say she's a winner even if she never does anything after that. We got a winner. I agree with that. Winner of the week, Marianne Williamson, 46 president of the United States. Get ready for it. With that, I think we're about done. Yeah. It was a good episode.

Great episode. Okay. All right. We will see you in the funny pay. I don't know. We'll see you later. All right. Bye.