Rev Left Radio - Gentrification and Policing

Episode Date: April 28, 2017

D'Shawn Cunningham is a long time activist and current city council candidate for Omaha's District 3. Brett sits down with him to discuss the nuances and complexities of gentrification, including who it benefits and how to organize against it. They also discuss its relationship to policing and D'Shawn's activism around police reform.    A fascinating episode on two topics that D'Shawn is uniquely qualified to speak about.   Follow us on: https://www.facebook.com/RevLeftRadio/ Twitter @RevLeftRadio or contact the dudes at Revolutionary Left Radio via email [e-mail]   Please take the time to rate and leave a review on iTunes! This will help expand our overall reach.   Thank You for your support and feedback!

I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs game. Shut up! Will you shut up? Now we see the violence inheriting the system. Shut up! Come and see the violence inheriting the system! Hell yeah, I would. Almost confess to her Marxist's use. Very nice words, but happens to be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, fuck, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. They're smashing the Starbucks windows. They're smashing the Starbucks windows. garbage windows right now. This is complete anarchy. God, those communists are amazing. Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. Coming to you today from a sewer

system underneath a recently gentrified neighborhood. And with me today is longtime activist and current candidate for city council in Omaha's District 3, Deshawn Cunningham. Why don't you introduce yourself and say a few things about your background? Hey, everybody that's listening.

This is Deshawn. I have been a long-time activist on issues here in Omaha, particularly with issues of police brutality. I've done a lot of work on that for years. I've also been a big supporter of environmental causes in regards to climate change. I've been very active against the Keystone Excel pipeline. I've also done a lot of work in areas of tenant issues, getting people's landlord issues resolved, repairs made that they might not have been able to make so I stay pretty busy in town right now I am currently running for city council in Omaha because right now I feel a lot of the way

that our city is ran economically is based off of a lot of very corporate heavy interest groups and those don't benefit the working people it's not unique to Omaha it's a problem that happens everywhere when we talk about gentrification, but it's a way that the corporate elites that run these cities pass it off as progress. So that's one of the things I'm really concerned about in this race is keeping our neighborhoods affordable and not having them be commodities for investors and things like that. Yeah, and actually New York Times recently did an article, I did an article like two days ago about in Omaha's Heath Mello versus Gene Stothert. and you know heath mellow playing himself up as progressive and he even had uh bernie sanders

come out a couple days ago and stump for him do a little speech for him do you think there's a big difference between these two candidates because a lot of when when you really dive into their platforms they both seem like tax breaks for corporations and they basically have the same sort of platform so is there really any difference in your opinion in my opinion no because while Democrats might have a few notches in their belt when it comes to social issues in Omaha, like passing the non-discrimination housing ordinance, that wasn't done as a way of saying, oh, you know, we should really do something about this. It was the people that lived the problem, making it a party issue. But when we talk about the economic side of it,

there really is very little difference between Republicans and Democrats in Omaha at the city level. Absolutely. And I just want it to be known. Like, I think the first time I met you, I was thinking about this today, back in Occupy, I was a teenager, and you were organizing some Occupy events, weren't you? Now I feel old. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually where I got my first start with definitely leftist things. I had a lot of people don't even know this, but I did a lot of right-wing corporate work, because I was Republican for a lot of years. So as far as, you know, being able to like when i say there's no functional difference between the democrat and republican parties you know it's i say that having been a republican and i'm currently a democrat

for the purpose of this race but there really hasn't been much difference i've noticed when it comes to issues affecting people with taxes and things like that they're both very like i said corporate heavy. So Occupy was my first foray into leftist type organizing and actions. And I can't say I'm glad I did it. Yeah, I think it's a turning point for a lot of people. It's kind of a recurring thing. A lot of people that have been on in the past have said that Occupy was a turning point. So you'd say that on your personal progression that you were like moving from Republican to Democrat and then Occupy kind of pushed you even further to the left. Yeah. And I, and I even when I was doing Occupy I mean technically I was still registered as Republican but the work I did was very much not Republican it was all very much outside of party politics Occupy in particular was to me I think the first time the nation in mass kind of called the problem and it was the wealth inequality and when you had hundreds of people coming together and all these cities

across the country trying to figure out what the problem was it was kind of like that telephone game like everybody had the answer of you know economic inequality what kind of fractured it and not that it was a bad fracturing it was necessary but what fractured it was everybody wanted to have their approach to how to fix the one problem and that just comes from immaturity with a lot of organizers from not having done a lot of it and like to me it was very new so it was a big huge crash course in media in policy in street organizing and i don't think we've really had something like occupy since it's happened i would say the closest things have been probably standing rock and some of the black lives matter movements but even those were symptomatic issues

of what occupy was saying was the general problem which goes back to the wealth inequality corporate interests being the rule of the land so yeah and i i often think of it as you know it was it was one of the first times um in decades that we came together and started bringing up the issues of class because for a long time like you know especially in the 80s and 90s after reagan and in clinton's third way you know um sort of center right um politics you know for a long time the questions of class and class politics weren't really present at the grassroots level i mean It's always present in the capital of the system as the ruling class is oppressing, you know, the lower classes. But that was a break in a lot of people's minds.

I mean, you had libertarians, you had liberals, you had socialists at the Occupy movement, and we're all kind of trying to figure out how to move forward. And in my opinion, that laid the groundwork for the Bernie Sanders campaign later down the line. Because that put class into the minds of a lot of people, and that got passed down. Younger people coming up were kind of born into that. you know they came they came to their political maturity after the recession and it kind of laid the groundwork for Bernie Sanders and now I think you're seeing a surge and an interest in the left you know millennials when they're pulled they continually show favor to socialism over capital

those sorts of things can all be traced back in my opinion to the Occupy movement so very much that's very interesting but the three topics we really want to cover today because I think you specifically are extremely well versed on these three topics and they're so so important to, I think, everybody, activists and organizers all over the country and honestly the world, is gentrification, policing, and organizing. So let's just go ahead and dive into gentrification. Do you have any, you know, beginning remarks you want to say about gentrification? Or what is it, I guess? Maybe that's the best way of the way. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people know, but, you know, even then for those that don't, gentrification is basically

the process by where neighborhoods are invested. invested in heavily with private and public funds and it's often to the detriment of the people that are already living in those neighborhoods and a lot of the times I call gentrification recolonization because if you think about it from our neighborhoods being okay this is my neighborhood this is where I'm indigenous to so you have these land barons just like it was in 1800s coming through saying well we want this we want this we're going to say we're going to live up to these agreements when it comes to your housing, things like tenant landlord agreements like that, they're not lived up to landlords routinely rent out of compliance either to too many people or they rent unfit

dwellings, and they're happy to do that, and they will act like they're cutting you a break, but when it gets to the city level, there are programs that are heavily skewed towards developers taking these properties and making them investment portfolio properties. You know, and it's not just a Omaha phenomenon. Originally, gentrification was also called Manhattanization. And what that started from, and a lot of people don't know this, that started from Donald Trump and his father in the late 70s and 80s in New York. They went to the legislature and lobbied for these sets of bills that would become the framework of what all gentrification is across the country

and the idea of it was taking taxpayer money and giving it to private entities, something like a Trump or an urban village, and turning low-income or supposedly derelict in Omaha, we call it blighted properties or areas, and taking these investments. And the idea is that they take this money and then invest it, and then other people will naturally invest in the area. It will become desirable.

And sometimes that happens, but when it does happen, it drastically raises the property rates, and that goes back to that Trumpism. The idea of using taxpayer money for luxury-style housing is incredibly detrimental. But when you're looking at it from the perspective of a city councilman, you know, it's attractive to think, oh, I have this developer that wants to spend $2 million, If we give him $1 million, that frees up him to invest more. Well, no, that doesn't free him up. That makes us as taxpayers liable for those refunds. And a big tool of gentrification in Omaha is TIF, tax increment financing,

and that's basically a refund that is given to these developers of whatever their project might be. And it's over 15 years. So for 15 years, these places are getting tax refunds. and not having to pay their taxes, but the adjacent properties around them, their taxes will go up. So that's just another subsidy that you can be next to all these clusters of TIF projects. It's like something like a Midtown Crossing, which is a big luxury apartment development here in Omaha. You know, I lived across the street from there for many years. We had a slum lord, but our rent still went up.

So that's the kind of negative effect that doesn't get addressed at a city level in things like city elections, because the perspective is so skewed. We're from Omaha. You know, this isn't anyplace special. You know, we're always trying to act like we're not Lincoln or Des Moines. You know, we're not Chicago. We're not Denver. So it's like they prey upon that insecurity we have.

Like, oh, well, you want Omaha to be good. If you build a big shopping mall, if you build all these expensive, you'll be just like Denver. You'll be just like Chicago. That's the mindset we've been conditioned to, and that goes back to not just TIF and, luxury apartments, they've been used for things like stadiums. You know, when we built the Quest Center about in the early 2000s and the First National Bank

Tower, that was when you really started to see TIF be used in a way to present Omaha as this city of the future, progressive-type place. And the reality of it is a lot of these projects we have sit vacant for a long time. It's not people from Omaha moving in. It's people from coastal areas, wealthier areas, that are having this be their second and third home. So when I talk about recolonization, that's what I mean. It's not, you know, like I said, we've been here, and it's not necessarily even people from Omaha moving into these places. It's people, like I said, from other areas with more money, but we're attracting people from exclusively one class to live in these dwellings that have traditionally been in low-income neighborhoods.

So when you have high-income residences next to low-income, that creates not just cultural clashes. There's also statistics that show when these areas are gentrified. Part of it is the police play a big function in that of extra policing those areas because you have people that aren't familiar with the culture of an area. Say they may hear some people outside on the street being loud. You see them every day. You know, they're just loud. But somebody that might see them, oh, it's a minority. Oh, shit, you know, call the police.

that's what part of the gentrification process is, is that destabilizing cultural effect, not just the destabilizing economic effect of having things like higher rents and higher property taxes. And it's a very, it's simple, but it's still a complex issue because most people don't think of their tax money being spent this way. You know, a lot of people focus on national elections and things like that. the city council of wherever city you live in has a more direct day-to-day effect on the decisions of your life than any president or things like that so if you buy cigarettes or a pack of gum

your tax money is going to these projects to give tax refunds to these developers and another thing they're finding is when these loans are up after 15 years the ideas that these properties have generated enough areas next to them that are also paying property taxes so what seeing here the Royal Stadium in Sarpie County that was another TIF project it's outside of Omaha but it was built under their same idea oh we're gonna have all this development all this and now they're filing you know the areas around there filing for bankruptcy so that's exactly what's gonna happen to Omaha you know we started a lot of these loans in the late 90s early

2000s and so some of these projects are gonna start to come have their taxes do and they're not reaching those revenue generating levels so that's one problem, but in that 15 years since those initial projects, we've drastically increased the number of projects. So 15 years from now, up to this point, we've spent, we're going to spend $350 million pretty much for exclusive luxury apartments, and those are, that's public money being spent for private developer projects. So $350 million can buy a lot.

That's a whole other Quest Center. That was about how much that costed. When you look at investing things, like a million dollars could go to a community garden or something and have drastic improvements for a community versus, oh, well, you get to live by somebody with more money than you now. Or community health care clinics or pumping money into education and orthodox. I mean, anything. So we're technically, by the TIF sort of format, you know, the people of Omaha are subsidizing

developers and basically subsidizing their profit. Is that a good way to think about it? Yes. It's subsidizing their profit because they always want to say the people that are proponents of TIF, they always want to say, oh, well, this is an economic development tool. And originally when the laws for TIF were written in the late 90s at the Nebraska legislature, it was written for small business owners. So now say Brett's mechanic shop needed a loan to get a new building. You know, maybe you might not be able to get a loan at the bank. So TIF was something that was intended for small businesses, but now we're not seeing it being used for small businesses.

It's pretty much, like I said, high-end retail developers, big box developers. In Omaha, we gave $2.5 million in TIF to Walmart, the most profitable company in the world. Wow. And there's no way that Walmart can say, well, we have a disadvantage. So how are they getting this money? You know, it's being used as a way to guarantee development. there's often a lot of political ties that come to these things come with these projects you know overall it's not true economic development it's of and in fact you know that goes back

to the trump model a lot of these developments that trump builds aren't necessarily profitable in the classic sense is in that they're long-term revenue generating entities he increasingly relies on public subsidy for his companies and other corporate types have figured out how to duplicate this model through a number of ventures, be it real estate, construction, retail. So the expectation now is if you build any type of development in Nebraska, oh, well, yeah, the public would subsidize it immediately. Okay, well, if we have $350 million to spend, you know, on stores and apartments, then it does beg the question, well, why don't we reinvest that money back in other ways?

And that goes back to, you know, the corporate interests of the country being manifest at our municipal level. So it's going to take a lot of work to even get people used to the idea that economic development and progress in your neighborhood isn't being next to the new luxury development. It's being in something affordable, being in an area with good schools, health care, access to food. Public transportation. Public transportation, that's a huge thing we're lacking in Omaha. So from the developer's perspective, we can see the incentive of profit. From the politicians perspective you might have touched on it and maybe it's obvious to you but you know for some of us it might be a little more difficult to see you know their constituents aren't being you

know their conditions aren't being improved necessarily so from the perspective of the city councilman or the mayor what's the what's the incentive on their part to to continue this sort of rotten you know situation well particularly in my race the incumbent here his biggest donors have been the largest recipients of tax increment financing. And I'm sure if you look at the politicians in the area where these projects are going on, you'll find a lot of the similar interests. And I talk about that a lot because, okay, Midtown Crossing, you know, that's something similar to like a KC Live type district, if you're familiar with that. These are touted as bringing new people into the area and things like, what is that concert, jazz on the green.

You know, they say, oh, this is improving the neighborhood. Well, okay, let's look at that. The world operates on paper and legal documents. Legally, the benefactors of all that stuff would be the owners, in this case, Mutual of Omaha, who owns the property where Midtown Crossing is and owns that park. Turner Park? Yeah. So the on-paper benefit is for the corporate area.

We may see a informal social benefit with occasional concerts. But that is not a quality of life improvement the same as something like a school or health care or transit. So that we're being sold this bill of goods like, this is progress. This is great. No, you know, it's kind of, to me, reminds me of like, you know, eat the chitlins. You know, it's just as, no, no, I don't want that part. You know, I, you know. It's force feeding you shit.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so from the perspective of the people being pushed out, you know, what happens, like if you could just take a, a random. person whose neighborhood is being gentrified, you know, what does, you know, let's say that's a family member or a single mom with a few kids, what happens to her when this gentrification process starts in her neighborhood? Right now there's very little in the way of tenants who are being removed from these areas. In fact, there's a project on 38th in Davenport that was started a few years ago and all the residents. It was

three big apartment row buildings and all the residents were evicted on Christmas because the developer or the owner sold to another developer and had everyone evicted. So, you know, these people, you know, if they're getting evicted on Christmas, there's really not much else. Some people can go to shelters and things like that. Some people would move in with friends for a while, but ultimately as far as when it comes to where do these people resettle and when we're talking about the amount of properties we're gentrifying with public money it is creating a vacuum of where are these people supposed to go traditionally midtown Omaha where I would represent has been one of the most renter centric transient not in like homeless transient but a lot of people coming and going it's there's two colleges in the area so that's been the makeup of the area has been younger people and long-term renters in the service industry in that area. So now what you're seeing instead of it being these areas like that, they're starting to become single-family homes again,

something almost more suburban in function than urban in function. And when these people are displaced, a lot of them are choosing to move outside of Omaha for more opportunities. If they move to other parts of Omaha and they have to choose on price, you know there's not a lot of cheaper parts of omaha there's things like north omaha but then you know that's not everybody's going to want to move up there from midtown so it's really creating a net loss of people in these areas forced migration you know it's almost like that and the concept of of recolonization i think is is really an interesting way to look at it because that's

that's really what happens and you know to me that's you know that's violence to i mean to force people out of their homes on Christmas? I mean, what sort of, like, depravity is that just for the benefit of, you know, some politician's career and some other, you know, developers' profit? I mean, I mean, that's truly disgusting. And it's a microcosm of how the capitalist system is ran on a global scale, you know? You gentification is that on a minute scale. And even, you know, to, okay, well, what would be a global example of TIF? You know, I was kind of telling you a few days before this, these TIF loans are similar to how these microloans operate in third world countries because they always say, well, this is, again, an indigenous population. They're maybe not

as industrial as the capitalists would want them to be. So they get their, pick their people out, oh, you know, we want to help. We want to bring in all this development. We want to bring in this money. You guys will be doing great. And what happens in these third world countries where they do that and they don't have industries that they want to share in with the indigenous populations if it's something like mining mineral extraction that would be very profitable they don't include the people in that unless it's manual labor but what you see them when they start putting these loans into these urban areas it creates service industry employment and some people are just happy to

have jobs but when you look at something like a service sector job and the benefits and employment opportunities that that provides versus something like a doctor or an engineer or a teacher or you know a mechanic it's not equal to the quality of life being in those service industry jobs that exist to serve capital and the capitalist class management class that comes in and operates and really sees the on-paper benefit of these things and not just the intangible social feel-good fuzzy feelings from them we serve them drinks and food exactly we're supposed to be you have a job yeah smile exactly that's absolutely i mean that gets my heart pumping man that pisses me the fuck off um so before we turn

transition to the next topic, what do you think is a way to fight that? Is there any way that I know like maybe, you know, tenants can organize in this apartment or that apartment? Is there anything that you think that people in a community that understand what you say and are fired up by what you say? What would you recommend as a way of organizing against this? I know, it's difficult. That's a difficult question. And it is because, you know, the easiest thing would, you know, what they tell us, you know, just buy your own place. Well, you know, until people have the ability to do that. A big thing I advocate for is starting tenant rights groups because in a lot of cities, there is either no protections or the protections that are there are used so little

that people just don't even think to use them. So it goes back to the kind of, which kind of transitions to our next topic, the police issues when it came to making complaints. So few people would be willing to come forward and make complaints, but once those first few do, that creates the snowball effect for everyone. So at this point, I would suggest wherever you are, read your tenant landlord acts, what rights do you have, are there not any, and start from the ground up, you know, get your neighbors involved, get your friends, maybe that you guys have the same landlord in different areas. So there's, but the best way to do it is as a group because individuals can get picked off but when it's done at a group level it's harder to ignore and you know repairs and

things like that can be made what we can do what I want to do with one of the things I'm running on is right now there's a landlord advisory group and so basically the all the landlords in town get a special meeting with the mayor the city council to discuss their issues well why isn't there a tenant advisory board so that's one thing I want to create here is to have that board for people to go to, particularly when it comes to renting from slum lords and things like that, because when we're also talking about TIF, there's also a huge incentive for slum lords to be slum lords and run their properties into the ground, and then there's all these programs that they can go do with the city and turn around

and have that project be the new gentrified house or apartment building. These slum lords are very smart, too. They're on the low end of the developer scale, but they're still in that classification. of people who are in line to profit off of these bills and things that are passed and the money spent. Yeah, and I think what you said is absolutely important.

And I think that, well, there is a local group here and IWWGDC have talked about this trying to get this off the ground. But, you know, if you're in your community, organizing groups and then advertising as like if you do have a slumlord, if a landlord is refusing to fix your water or whatever, a group like people can organize and then offer their services to come up because all we have

is numbers we don't have money we don't have power we have our numbers you know if your landlord's treating you like shit well this group will come and walk with you to your landlord confront your landlord say we need these fixes done or we're going to be back here tomorrow we're going to make your life a living hell and then on the on a little higher level like what you're doing personally is is running for office in local politics it's not always the prettiest thing you know it's not the most glamorous thing. A lot of people are like, well, we just want the revolution now. Well, you know, you can't have everything you want.

You've got to put in the fucking work. In lieu of revolution. Yeah, in lieu of pending revolution. But you're putting your mouth where your money is. You're running for local office to try to address some of these issues. And whether or not you end up winning this election, you're putting very important topics into the discussion. And anybody can do that. I mean, you're not a rich guy, but you managed to run for local office.

Yeah. And I've noticed since I've been running in this. race you used to never hear about tiff and since i've been in making it an issue i've seen world herald stories oh tiff is great i've seen news stories oh tiff it's wonderful you know the guy i'm running against oh tiff it's so great nobody used to even talk about it you know i'm sure a lot of these people are like what are they talking about you know but the fact that the people that are for it are having to come out and be vocal supporters of it it makes it that much harder for them to deny their complacency when it comes to okay well who's actually profiting from this

exactly so that's what I'm happy to see is you know win or lose people are starting to find out about this issue and that gives us a chance to keep the momentum going beyond a four-year election cycle and there's a funny parallel to occupy because you know we brought class language into the national dialogue before you never talk about class but even people that defended the you know the status quo of class domination in our current society they had to start defending themselves and what you're saying is people are starting to have to defend TIF well just making them get it back on their toes and having to defend it is a big breakthrough and I didn't even know what TIF is you introduce me into the concept and now we're sitting here in this podcast informing hundreds

thousands of other people about it so I mean that's a good start so that's really important I hope people you know whenever community you live in these things are relevant to you you know whatever city you live in this is probably happening in some part of your city and you can you can learn from this and you can fight it. So let's go to our next topic. I want to transition to policing. Now, you have had a very long history as an organizer and activist for police reform. Can you just maybe tell the audience what your history is in organizing for police reform? Very briefly, like I said, I started with Occupy in 2011, and one of the main issues that we had be in our Occupy was issues of police brutality. In my life, you know, I'm from North Omaha. I'm

very familiar with how the police operate negatively. I've been fortunate enough to not be physically victimized, but when it comes to things like economic victimization through tickets, I've paid thousands of dollars just to be able to drive around. And, you know, like I said, Unfortunately, I remained not having assaults and am still alive, so I wondered what does it take to make a complaint against the police? Because originally, when the encounter that got me really thinking about it, I was a photographer for many, many years. So I was downtown taking pictures of the buildings, and if you've never seen me, I'm very tall and brown. So, you know, some people, that's kind of frightening. even though you're a big sweetheart

so you know I'm downtown taking pictures and security guard comes up to me you can't take pictures here I know my rights it's a public sidewalk we're calling the police call the police so the police show up and basically start trying to enforce corporate policy on the sidewalk

so I was like okay let me actually like what does it take to make a complaint against the police officer because I was like this is affecting my livelihood you know I have to be able to take pictures especially in a downtown setting, you know, what am I supposed to do here if I get hassled again? So at that time, that happened in 2011 just before Occupy, and also before Occupy, and in between this incident, there was a video that was released here in Omaha of a man being beaten 12 to 1 outside a hospital,

and he was unarmed, he did nothing to provoke the police, and they just set upon him and heavily assaulted him. And not only that, they attempted to charge him with felony assault of an officer. So I got hooked up with him and other people that were supporting him at the time. And it was a lot of very, very milk toast, like appeaser type things

as far as organizing efforts of how to get police reform. Because in Omaha, before 2006, We had one individual police auditor, and she actually did her job very well. She found what we would all expect. Many instances of racially motivated accounts, instances of violence, overcharging, charging when there was no crime. So since she did her job well, she was fired, and they eliminated the position. So from 2006 to 2011, there was no police oversight. and that was when I got involved in the efforts.

And at the time, you know, I felt, you know, this isn't like another city department, like, you know, the library, you get a paper cut, you know. They can kill people and get away with it. They have a social monopoly on violence. Exactly. And to me, it was like, if people aren't willing to go that extra mile when it's this severe, you know, when are we going to be?

And I met with, actually, the guy I'm running against, came to a town hall where there were dozens and dozens of mostly black victims of police abuse and we're sitting here telling him these sad stories and I'm just kind of watching him and he's just sitting there not feeling unmoved I'm like what the fuck is wrong with you like you know these people are sitting here telling you all these horrible stories we're an angry mob if any of us does something we get in trouble we go to jail you're the one in power that can do something what are you going to do basically he did nothing so that was 2011 2013 we had another video surface of police attacking people black men unprovoked and running into a house and

destroying cameras that were being used to record it fortunately there was cameras recording from other angles that did record it so when that incident happened I was like no this isn't the time to you know have these appeasement moments beg this council that's when we started being civilly disobedient and that's what it took to get what form sorry to cut you out what form did that civil disobedience take we staged a big sit-in at city hall and the city council office and at the time that was really unprecedented for Omaha you know right now we're kind of used to see in a couple hundred couple thousand people at rallies now five, six years ago, it was ten people in front of the courthouse holding signs

saying, you know, no police brutality. And this is also in the days before Ferguson, too. So. And before BLM. Before BLM, yeah, before a lot of this stuff happened, we had this in Omaha, we had to deal with it. And when I talked about civil disobedience, we also, we had a new police chief that came in at the time. We interrupted his inauguration. We went in and did a mic check in front of his family in front of his buddies, you know, in front of the mayor, you know, when we let them know, you're a new chief, we're not going to do this again. What are you going to do about it? Good. Set in the tone. Exactly. And in a way, he's actually been very responsive to these issues. I would say more so than any mayor, anybody on our city council, the prosecutor's office.

These were all people we included in our direct actions that we said, this is, you have a part to playing this as a councilman as a mayor as a police chief da-da-da-da this is what we want you to do so when we were willing to take that step and stand up you know we got results from it and so for the first time in 2014 that was when we had a new police review board it's not perfect but since that board has been implemented reports of police assaulting people randomly and things like that have gone down by I want to say like 30%, which is unprecedented, and especially for a big city like Omaha. And then also in 2014, and I was the one that wrote the proposal for the review board that we're using. Originally, I wanted it to be an elected position and kind of be like a, there's seven city council districts.

Okay, so one representative from each district came up with a schedule. I also, this was at the time, this happened at the previous election. So the budget was up, you know, I said there's money in the budget that we could start funding cameras. There was about $2 million I felt could be used for that. A year later, we started to see that. So from 2014 to now, we do have a review board. We have about a quarter of our officers that have cameras, and they were put in the northeast precinct first, which is North Omaha, the largest predominantly black part of town.

The one that needs it the most. That was, exactly, and that was even what the old auditor said, because, you know, they always say, well, not all police officers are bad. So statistically, you know, it was about one and four that they were finding in Omaha were problematic. Omaha has four police precincts, which one do you think is having the problems, the one with all the black people? So that has been a big deterrent for officers, but in my time of doing police organizing, I have noticed in Omaha that we are seeing more shooting deaths from officers, even though random street violence has gone down. And that, I feel, has been a result of, one, black people being at the forefront of this movement with police issues and saying,

you know, you're not going to do this to our people. And that's been good. But as it's, you know, like I said, this all happened in Omaha pre-Ferguson and Black Lives Matter. So when those things started to happen, and the fact, I even remember we were at the Mike Brown rally on Black Friday, and I remember I watched that video not too long ago, and I said back in 2014, what you're going to see happen in Omaha, now that the black community has stood up and said, we're not going to take this anymore, you're going to see the victims start to be more white people. And that's exactly what has happened. You're seeing particularly white males from South Omaha be part of these drug. sting operations and end up dead and most people don't have sympathy for drug users but you know having been doing this it's like the pattern is very obvious these people are very low-level users or offenders they usually it's reported in the news that they were with someone else usually an informant and these people end up dead

so yeah it's great that you guys aren't whoop and everyone's ass in the street anymore but why are we having more people end up dead as a result of your policy on drugs. So now I feel, you know, getting those other fights out of the way, it gives us a chance to be like, okay, how do we police a community? You know, and one thing that really struck with me in the work I did was the group I started in Omaha to deal with these police issues was called FTP. We all know what it means. Yeah, I know what it says. Well, you need your organization what? For the people. But, you know, but that was kind of how we operated it.

It was, you know, like, so we were, like I said, we were very confrontational, but we were also offering solutions. But I remember a personal moment for me where it's like, okay, well, where do we be rhetorical versus effective? There was a five-year-old girl in North Omaha name was Peyton Benson. She was shot at her breakfast table from a stray bullet that happened at a shooting blocks away. so at the time there were members of the community that knew or felt they had a good idea of who it was that was shooting based on some videos that had been put out from the police department that were from the area and we had a big meeting about it and said I remember asking other people in the group I said okay well what if we don't bring this to the police you know like I said being rhetorical we don't need the police and they said well you know then we just never say anything about it so it's just like okay there's a five-year-old girl that's been murdered yeah you know okay let's go to the police this time so i remember it was

very you know perspective changing for me to be like okay you know we don't have the ability to go and apprehend murderers right you know we might be able to detain a rapist but you know we can't jail them we can't people like child molesters there are bad people in society and there has to be a way to deal with those people so I think even in if we came up with a utopia there would still be all right you protect the people you make the bread you know like yeah so to me it became okay well what does this job truly entail and when we talk about police being the first line of defense capital, that's very true. Most of the police department of any city operates as a revenue generator. So when the main function of a protect and serve supposedly group is actually

revenue generation, they don't protect and serve. So at this point, I feel one of the things that I would want to do in office to kind of get this movement to the next level is requiring police officers to live in the areas they patrol because right now most police officers that police inner city neighborhoods not just in Omaha they don't live in those inner city neighborhoods they go back home at night to the suburban areas it's honestly it's a form of community invasion and occupation exactly that's certainly what it feels like if you're Poor black person in North Omaha. Exactly.

And white West Omaha cops are coming out and pointing guns at you. Mm-hmm. So I feel if we can actually have the police be integrated into our neighborhoods as the catcher of bad guys, whatever proper word would be, you know, that would be fine. But having them be these revenue generators and being security guards for capital. that's where all the problem lies with police departments because they can't live up to a public service function being for profit right yeah that's absolutely true and and I was actually just thinking about this the other day because there are someone on the left that say we don't need police and that and their idea is basically I've said it honestly and I've said it as well and their idea being the community can police itself and everything like that and I'm saying okay I'll go with I'll go with that for for quite a while like that's true to an extent now if you if you uproot let's say we you know we somehow managed to uproot capitalism you know robberies and and and crimes of theft and end the war on drugs you know crimes about drug use and drug selling those are all decreased so you know by

by turning it into an egalitarian society we could reduce crime 60 70 percent but as you said earlier there's still going to be those assholes they're still going to be child molesters They're still going to be rapists. There's still going to be crimes of passion, domestic violence. How do we address that? We're going to need some force that is professional. That's not just me get a call at 2 in the morning. I have to wake up and meet up with my neighbors and go handle this guy.

It has to be more systematic than that. And so then the question becomes, how do you make a police force accountable to the people? And I think as you've implied and I think you support this idea, have the police come from the communities in which they live? and then they will be accountable inherently to their neighbors because they don't get to leave that neighborhood and go home, you know, drive 20 minutes to the suburbs. You have to go home and park your cruiser in the car next to the people

that you were dealing with earlier today. And then create democratic community boards of citizens that are elected that have real teeth, real legal power, that can hold police accountable for misuses. And so the justice system and the prosecutor and the police department, these are all cozy relationships. They know each other. You know? And that has to end. And so I think if you have community policing, you have

democratically accountable and elected boards of citizens with real legal power to hold police accountable, and you have an economic system, which is not split between those who have and those who have not, but is more egalitarian and gives people things that they don't want to risk with crime. Because if you have a life, if you have a direction, if you have employment and health care and education and a future you know you you don't the the impulse to commit crime is deeply the incentivized oh incredibly and when we talk about you know I always think it's funny when because I actually watched an old campaign video of my opponent and he said well I'm gonna crack down on the gangs in Omaha and it's just like come on you know that's not the

problem you know the and this is another thing too you know these advocating for videos and things like that I've had other people tell me well that just sounds like the police state 2.0 I can see that too so you know there's the issue is complex but like I said even if we had a utopia there would still be a function of you know policing in whatever society you know however restrictive or free you would want to be somebody's going to be the heavy so but with that you know i've always like i've talked to the chief it's like i feel it's the police's job to catch the foul like there was another video of a man being shot by the police

that was released and in fact we have we've had two shootings recently and in one of them the family had expressed concerns about well you know if there was video because the news had said there was video well why not just released the video and when i spoke with the chief about that he said well we can't uh jeopardize the investigation and then just last week we had a man get shot and they released the video so to me it's just like okay well didn't you just say like a month or two ago that would jeopardize the investigation so that's where accountability comes from is whether you have a review board or not people need to watch the police you know i've gone out and taped them filmed them for years things like that before occupy started and you know

just because of my own encounters with them. It's like if I saw them, oh, I'm stopping and watching. I know how this can get out of hand. And even in Omaha, before we had the review board and things like that, I remember one time I was driving through North Omaha and saw a guy get pulled over. And by the time I had drove around and pulled back, there were already three or four people at each corner that were out there with their phones. I'm like, sweet.

So the culture itself is changing. So eventually I would like to even see it get to the idea of that, yes, cameras will be good, but the idea should be that it is the citizen that has the benefit of a doubt in instances where they're injured or killed versus the police officer. And I know some people may not necessarily agree with that. You know, I have relatives that are in law enforcement, so I do consider their feelings and perspective in it. And at the end of it, it still comes down to it is a dangerous job. You chose to do it. You need to do it the best way possible.

And by having things like oversight, that's not asking for the moon. That's just asking for human decency. And some people even think that's too much. Yeah, you're right. So, but as far as other things I've seen with that issue of police accountability and police brutality, even nationally, they like to say, you know, oh, it's all these black people causing the problems. It's mostly white males that have been killing police officers and bigger numbers over the last two years. And in fact, there was also a shooting here in Nebraska in Cass County, a rural area south of Omaha, of an unarmed white man that was in his 20s, got very little press coverage. And I even remember people saying when there were these instances of white men being killed, well, where's our rally?

you know so that was one instance like I said you know it was one one oppressed community did get results now I feel it's about linking up with all oppressed communities because policing in a poor black community will look like over policing policing in a migrant community will look like ice policing policing in rural white communities uh is that officer that's like okay that's the long hair guy tattoos he's probably spoken weed you know let's follow them around all weekend Which I am. I'm a long-in-haired guy with tattoos. I didn't want to say you.

But that's the thing. If I'm not around, you know, you're the one to pick on at that point. So we have to link those struggles with people that probably even have different ideologies at the very least and probably even have conflicting views on race. And like I said, it has been shifting to the problem community becoming the poor white community. And with that, I think you're going to see a lot more. more of the ideas we've held about crime being a minority inner city problem you're going to see it be looked at through a more humane lens unfortunately right because you know they're

quicker to see themselves in the you know their own community but that gives people like us an opportunity to say you know this would happen if you were in omaha too you know this would happen if you were in plathsmith or you know whatever little town it's that function of police being class protectors being revenue generators so even though we all have police we're going to have different manifestations of the crimes of the police so it's not always going to be the same method but it's going to be the same effect right yeah and absolutely agree with that and i think it's so important to understand the class dynamic at play and then i think it's important for people like you know i'm a white man well i need to show up at black lives matter and i have personally but i mean

telling other white men out there, if you care about these issues, it's going to eventually knock on your door. So solidarity is so important. You have to show up when, you know, that dude in North Omaha, that black guy in North Omaha gets shot, show up at his protest and try to inculcate this sense of, we're all in this together. I care about your struggles, although they're different than mine, right? As a white man, I don't have the exact same obstacles that you as a person of color have when facing the police certainly I'm at an inherent advantage just because of the color of my skin but that doesn't also mean that I'm totally protected from police brutality either I've been the victim of police brutality I've seen my family members be the victims of

police brutality and so this is why just um doing almost like a liberal identity politics thing where it's like well you know when when the white people when this happens they don't care but when this happens they do and all that stuff is just unhelpful yeah and especially like me in particular, you know, I'm black, white, and native. So, you know, I look at the, I look in the issues through all those lenses. And I've, you know, like I said, we started our work pre-Ferguson, pre-BLM. And at the time when all those things were going on, we didn't really have anything to work on here. We were kind of coming off of a victory. So I kind of had a lot of time to just sit back. I went to Ferguson for a day just to kind of, mostly I went

down there just help with supplies but just kind of even walking around and seeing how quickly it can become something like that again anywhere it's like okay how what what is the essence of these problems beyond skin color you know even somewhat beyond class it comes down to the people that we're picking to be police officers a lot of them are returning back from combat zones so a lot of police departments require ex-military activities so when you're it goes back to you know again back to brings back the class if you're only hiring one class of police officers ex-military people they're gonna behave like military people in a community and that's not what we want

that's why we want to have people that are known and trusted and respected in a community somebody like you know an Omaha like a Robert Wagner, you know, in other cities, they used to have things like a, I think it was like the brown brace that went around and watched, protect neighborhoods, things like the Black Panthers. Yeah. So no matter what you do, you know, I know I'm talking about running for office, things like review boards and like that, what I found, especially with the police issue, and I feel

it holds true in other issues as well is always do the most ground up guerrilla tactic you can do. Because ultimately, when you're dealing with oppressed and powerless communities, in this case, North Omaha, that was the only option we had. What broke the story wasn't some person on a review board or a council member. It was the neighbor with a camera that made a huge difference that day. So always film them. Always make them know you're there. And it doesn't even always have to be something organized like a Black Panthers or.

like how FTP was, you know, it can just be, oh, hey, I'm going to do this on my own, or me and my few friends are going to do it, let people know you're doing it. But just the idea of them knowing that somebody's always looking over their shoulder, that's going to be what ultimately modifies their behavior. Things like review boards and cameras, those also modify, but the hope with those is that we lead to punishing the behavior, having prosecutions. So it's a two-fold strategy. do what we can to modify it informally

through our power structures that way and then if we have the ability through formal power structures then yes that's when we see you know it's not just modifying it it's completely changing it from its inception absolutely absolutely

I think that's extremely important so now we're going to transition to the last leg of our conversation we cover gentrification we covered policing both deeply related concepts like you were saying earlier, you know, those two things come into play with one another. And then this comes into play, which we've already been addressing, but maybe we can get into more specifically, is organizing.

So I guess I would ask, start off by saying, how long have you been organizing and what got you into organizing? I know I kind of talked, you know, about me being a Republican organizer for a while, but even before that, my mom growing up was always very politically active. She was a very active big GOP organizer. She used to help. They don't have it anymore, but they used to have these things called March for Jesus.

Life chain. My mom was very active in those. They were like the Choose Life things that you would see. Christian conservative movement? Yeah. Like I said, I don't think they've really had them lately. Probably big in the 80s? Yeah, 80s, early 90s.

I know there's like pictures of me and my brothers as kids, like with our little choose life banners thrust upon. We're just like, you know, clueless. But so I mean, I've always been around politics from a very early age, but, you know, it's definitely been a change in what I grew up with and worked on to what I'm doing now. I was actually invited to join the Democratic Party by some people who are unhappy with how the party's going. And I've been independent for a lot of years, but running in this race as a Democrat, I did want to do it to bring up differences in how we organize versus what we just saw happen with the last election, having somebody that would have been a good candidate being chosen in favor of, you know, somebody who's just as bad as any Republican. You're referring to Bernie versus Hillary?

Yes. And so, you know, seeing being around politics for all these years, at this point, it's just like, I kind of don't know what else to do. You know, I've seen what the level of effort that goes into right-wing organizing and how well-funded it is, just organized from the bottom up. And in fact, you know, I was telling some people from friends of ours that we know mutually, one benefit I feel the right has over us is. is they all go to church every week and see each other and be friendly and do a community where, you know, we don't have church. So we have kind of somewhat of a disadvantage when it comes to organizing because we're always starting at zero where somebody can go to one of these churches and start out at 10. It's very alluring. It's very geared towards making you think you're a part of all these big groups and institutions.

and they're really using you, like, as tokens, you know? And especially, like, when I got older, it's like, oh, my God, we were the poor black kids that, you know, like, oh, you know, they don't need welfare. They're mom's Republican. You know, like, it's just like a lot of stuff came really obvious to me after a while. And so, you know, like I said, I've never been a Democrat until a few months ago with entering this race. And I remember talking to some of my Democrat friends saying, you know, seeing how this party operates up close, it's like, do you guys want to lose? you know, it's like, you know, because I'm, you know, having looked at these things from a Republican perspective, they're very, this is what the fuck we're doing. There's no deviation, March step, you know, and when it comes, and again, we're talking about party organizing, but when it comes down to organizing at a grassroots level, that is where there's, there's really no course on how to do it.

you just have to do it. You know, you're going to make a lot of mistakes doing it, but look at them as growing opportunities. So there's been, I mean, there's been times where I've definitely thought, you know, okay, this isn't going to amount to anything, but it's that persistence over time that leads to results. and like I said you know back when we used to try to have a rally for police oversight or police anything it'd be the same 10 people now you know like I said we've both been to rallies

with hundreds and thousands of people and you know I kind of now I'm looking at it I'm like where were you all before you but you know like I said that's a that's not the way to look at it look at it is like oh wow they're finally getting it you know so conditions are changing people exactly

but it starts from somebody at that ground level probably as like an individual saying you know what I see this problem for what it is this is what I'm going to do do it and I think one of like you were touching on earlier is there is a disadvantage on the left generally in that we are very fractured and we have so many different tendencies

I mean you have liberals you have progressives but then you get to the left and you have anarchist and Marxists I'm a Trotsky's I'm a Leninist I'm a Stalinist It goes on for like it's an infinite line of different It's like hurting cats But on the right it's like You know there's like simple

Premises that they have That they can rally millions of people around And that's that is their advantage But it's also their disadvantage Because I mean they're just kind of maintaining the status quo And to be progressive to be revolutionary Is to start to think outside the box And it's harder to get those sorts of people

On the same tip but I totally agree that it's about doing it just getting your hands dirty and moving forward and as for the point about going to church what we've tried to do here and me and you have attended these is these people assemblies. They're not perfect, we're still working out the kinks, but it's this attempt to,

it's not just let's meet up and talk politics, but now every other people's assembly we have is a social, you know, a potluck or let's go out and do this or let's just go have fun, let's go on a bowling night. Right. That builds community. Yeah. So now I feel this is where we have the moment to say, okay, what is our surroundings going to be like? Che Guevara always used to say, I wish I could be in America because you would be in the belly of the beast.

So I feel like us, maybe that's the only thing we can be American exceptional about. Like, we have to fix this. You know, it's nobody else is going to be able to do it. So that's kind of where I see it is, you know, it's not just. this romantic idea of oh we want to change things no if we change this country we do change the world and it's a big country so i think that's where we're going to see you know going back to occupy when i met with people from around the country that had done it as well it was creepy because we all had almost word for word the exact same experiences like we could the human condition

is that similar everywhere so to me that was kind of a that okay you know like that hundredth monkey like if the one the one monkey figures it out then the other ones start doing it I feel like that's what's been going on is that since Occupy we've had all these little experiments in democracy and organizing

whatever you want to call it and now because of things like Black Lives Matter Standing Rock other movements around the country that have gained national significance Fight for 15 stuff like that? Yeah fight for 15 we haven't had that here as much

but yeah all these things have been as a result of people fine-tuning and refining their social mechanics. Yeah, that's absolutely wonderful. And yeah, just to kind of sum that up, you know, you have occupied that fizzled out, but it gave us the conversation of class. You had the Bernie Sanders candidacy wasn't perfect. There's critiques of it. But, I mean, for the first time, you got somebody identifying as a socialist running for, I mean,

president, that's a crazy accomplishment. since Eugene Debs has never happened. And now you have more and more people getting involved. Millennials preferring socialism over capitalism. So it's this long march. And you have to build off everything that came before you. So thank you so much for coming on. And to everybody out there listening, take this to heart.

You know, this is somebody who's dedicated his life to organizing, to fighting back. We all need to get out there. We all need to organize. We all need to be activists. Get to know your neighbors. Form little groups. Whatever you can do. And just be a part of this historical.

momentum none of us are going to be able to make things happen like as far as like let's just implement our ideas perfectly it's not how it is like you said we got to be mechanics get down underneath the car and start twisting bolts you know so thank you so much for coming on to Sean it's really been a pleasure to have you on there's a lot to learn from you so thanks for having me on I really appreciate it all right everybody out there see you next time Thank you.