The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 2516 - How Gaza Exposed The West’s Moral Rot; NYC’s Left-Wing Uprising w/ Omar El Akkad, Chi Ossé
Episode Date: June 11, 2025It's an Emmajority Wednesday (I know, we're as confused as you are) and we have two great guests for you today. First, we cover Donald Trump's ominous threats to protesters who are upset about ICE rai...ds in Los Angeles and around the country. After that, Emma talks to journalist and author Omar El Akkad about his new book "One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" which reckons with the failure and refusal of the West to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Get Omar's book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/777485/one-day-everyone-will-have-always-been-against-this-by-omar-el-akkad/ And later we're joined by New York City Council member Chi Ossé about Zohran Mamdani's exciting political campaign, the left's momentum in America's biggest city and the how we can fight for affordable housing while protecting vulnerable communities. Follow him on social media, he's always putting out great stuff, and learn more about Zohran Mamdani's campaign and how you can get involved here: https://www.zohranfornyc.com/ In the Fun Half, we check in on the ruptured bromance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Musk is trying to play cute but Trump doesn't seem like he wants to get back together at this point. The White House Press Secretary said they acknowledge Elon's recent statement but that's about it. Lol. Greta Thunberg has been released from Israeli detention, though two of her fellow activists from the flotilla, Thiago Avila and Rema Hassan have apparently been transferred to Israeli prisons where they are in solitary confinement. Greta tells reporters that the very least countries like hers can do now is advocate for an end to the genocide and to recognize Palestine as a state. We're glad she's safe, but Dave Portnoy certainly isn't. He joked about wanting to blow up her ship with a missile, though he's also gotten very touchy about jokes that target Jewish people, while he himself continues to make antisemitic jokes. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase! Check out today's sponsors: • TRUST & WILL: Get 20% off at https://trustandwill.com/MAJORITY • NAKED WINES: To get 6 bottles of wine for $39.99, head to https://NakedWines.com/MAJORITY and use code MAJORITY for both the code and password Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @RussFinkelstein Check out Russ' podcast the New Yorker Political Scene Scene: https://rss.com/podcasts/newyorkerpoliticalscenescene/ Check out Matt’s show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon’s show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com/
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You are listening to a free version of The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
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Please.
The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
It is Wednesday, June 11th, 2025.
My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report.
We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA.
On the program today, Omar Elakad will be with us to talk about his book.
One day, everyone will have always been against this.
Later in the show, New York City Council member Chi Ose joins us to talk about Zoron, broker fee ban,
and the insurgent left here in the city.
Also on the program, last night L.A. imposed a downtown curfew
as Trump pours in Marines and National Guardsmen
for a taxpayer-funded display of force.
Guantanamo Bay is back on the table for migrant detentions
as Trump floats sending 9,000 people,
including people from ally countries like the U.K. and France,
to the infamous torture prison off the shores of our country.
MSNBC reports that ICE is creating tactical units to deploy the five blue cities
being described as an authoritarian power grab over local governments.
A grand jury indicts New Jersey Representative La Monica McIver for protesting at an immigration detention center.
Trump's interim AG
Alina Haba
Unfortunately went to my high school
I'm not going to talk about that
Saying jarul boys
Habba Habba Haba
Abba what are you doing
Inditing a sitting congresswoman
Well
It's because the king said so
The king said so
It's the watchword maybe
Elon Musk apologizes for some
of his attacks on Donald Trump
I know to come
Those come downs can be real tough.
Call on him move.
Okay.
Jeffrey Epstein files.
He said some.
I wonder what side of the ledger that one's on.
Mikey Cheryl handily wins the New Jersey gubernatorial primary.
And the well-funded APEC darling, Josh Gottheimer, barely cracks double digits.
What a joy to see.
The Abundance Democrat.
Yeah.
We're the popularists.
now, baby.
A poll finds that 64% of Israelis
think there's no need for the news
to highlight the suffering of civilians
in Gaza anymore.
Okay.
House Republicans
get queasy as Trump and Russ vote
float illegally clawing back
funding from the last spending bill
already approved by Congress to fund
their tax cuts.
An appeals court
keeps Trump's tariffs in place
for now, as he says he and China have a deal.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard admits she fed classified JFK assassination files into an AI program.
Dozens of workers at the CDC walk out in Atlanta calling on RFK Jr. to resign.
And lastly, that same HHS just cut nearly a thousand suicide hotline services for LGBT.
Hugh Youth. All this and more on today's majority report. It's an emmajority report, actually, on a Wednesday, which you don't typically see, but Sam and I are switching days, because I'm going to be off Thursday and Friday for, you know, that whole wedding thing. Number 13 writes in, correcting me, it seems. Jesus Christ, y'all, the Congresswoman wasn't protesting. She was performing an oversight visit.
Um, apologies.
Some of the articles call it protesting, so it can be a little bit difficult to keep track.
But thanks for the correction regardless.
They're targeting lawmakers who are protesting, too.
So it's just, it's sometimes, yeah.
I mean, it is a good point, though.
The protest gets overapplied.
Melissa Jira Grant had a good piece in the, uh, the new republic about how this isn't
just about protesting ICE.
This is about how we need to stop ICE from doing what they are doing.
in people's communities like taking nine year olds and sending them to honduras like it's disgusting
and it's the resisting it is it's not just about like protesting it and here letting our voices be
heard i'm glad when i hear that uh this is tom homen say this is making it harder for us to take
away people that just want to put in tiles at home depot yeah the community's pissed off at that
that's that's why like they have to say i'm sorry to go off on this but like tom homeman's saying
we're not actually going after criminals and who cares that they don't have records.
Well, DHS has been on Twitter and ICE has been on Twitter the last couple of days saying,
look at all these criminals.
And it's not just that they're here illegally, but they're also doing drug traffic and stuff like that.
Yeah.
I mean, it's insane.
Habo says the two counts that she's being charged with carry a maximum sentence of up to eight years in prison.
I mean, it's just this would not be happening if Donald Trump wasn't inserting his loyalists into these positions of
power in ways that are really breaking convention, honestly.
Speaking of that guy, Donald Trump, who has infected every element of our lives and is constantly
giving us anxiety, I mean, we try to alleviate it a little bit with mockery, but the images
that they're coming out here of this Fort Bragg speech are a bit concerning.
I feel like if you've been paying attention to politics long enough, you'll see why this
is not this is very atypical right um it's not a shock that sometimes in most countries in the
world military personnel sometimes lean right wing um and that's why you can have elements like
in ukraine like the azov battalion that have right wing views but that is often used as like a right
justification here to cut off arms
to Ukraine. It's not necessarily
I think the strongest footing to
put your argument on.
But Trump is
going a step further
and inflaming
the politicization
of our armed services.
Like
maybe I'm
just old fashioned but it doesn't make me feel super
comfortable to see uniform troops cheering
on explicitly political speeches
especially when those speeches
are fascistic in nature and it it there there should be some confidence in our society
that our military is not going to be politicized in this manner and that it's going to put
its oath to the constitution over the political movement of the commander-in-chief at
one point but trump is actively trying to undercut that notion so on saturday it's his
birthday. It's not even the exact alignment of the 250th anniversary, I think, of the U.S. Army,
but they're doing that to celebrate the dear leader at the same time. And he's been ramping up
to this. You've seen tanks rolling into Washington, D.C. for this ostentatious display,
as Trump is justifying cutting grandma's social security access under the auspices of trying to make the
government more efficient and less wasteful, the numbers on this military display are as
wasteful as it gets. And it's just to flatter his ego. Here he is talking about what's happening
in L.A. during this speech at Fort Bragg.
And before going further, I want to say a few words about the situation in Los Angeles, California.
Have you heard of the place where I've deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of
Marines to protect federal law enforcement from the attacks of a vicious and violent mob.
And some of the radical left, they say, oh, that's not nice.
Well, if we didn't do it, there wouldn't be a Los Angeles.
It would be burning today, just like the houses were burning a number of months ago.
Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country
be destroyed by invasion and third world lawlessness here at home, like is happening in
California. As commander-in-chief, I will not let that happen. It's never going to happen.
What you're witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order,
and a national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing
a foreign invasion of our country. We're not going to let that happen. Remember, millions of people
We're allowed to come into our country, totally unchecked and unvetted by stupid people or radical left people or sick people.
Either or.
But regardless, open border policy, the dumbest policy, yet, I would say even dumber than men playing in women's sports.
Transgender for everyone.
Great.
All right.
There.
He's got the through line with that.
Can I just say there's a joke?
Sure.
But there is a joke he makes a little later in that clip where he says, you know, something about, like, I forget what point he makes and he asks if they agree with it.
Flag burning.
Oh, that's what it is.
Making it illegal to up to one year in prison, which he said on the campaign trail to burn the American flag.
This has already been ruled on by the Supreme Court that's a protected free speech expression.
Speaking of the American flag, Emma said all the nice stuff about, you know, how it would be nice to think better of our troops and stuff like that.
Google Fort Bragg and ask yourself if you're surprised by this and ask yourself if maybe the people who say we should be slashing the military and maybe maybe the founding fathers were right about a standing army.
It's not compatible with democracy, which you just saw behind that guy.
And there, let's do three here just to give people a sense of like, this is not a, this is not an invasion.
the National Guardsmen, they don't even have anything to do.
And now police in L.A. are being reassigned to protect the National Guardsmen who are protecting federal buildings that are not under attack.
This is a video taken by Aaron Burnett, or at the very least published by Aaron Burnett of CNN, showing what it actually looks like here.
We'll talk over this a little, but you see the National Guardsmen in riot gear all lined up in a row outside this federal building.
Just kind of standing around.
Burnett's caption says there's no protests here.
They'll pan out a bit, but go ahead not.
Mexico, the guns in Mexico for any so-called invasion, they would come from Amlarica.
right this is actually a point of contention our supreme court unanimously including the liberals
said that our gun manufacturers aren't responsible for say arming the cartels despite marketing
to them the same way they said you know um they're liable for marketing towards sandy hook
right even though the marketing is exact same sort of thing um all you see there is some
explicit language criticizing donald trump spray painted on the buildings i didn't realize
that vandalism was such a national concern
that the national guards have to be sent in.
But the right wing got its marching orders.
This was so, it's so obvious.
Like I wonder who they're actually speaking to directly
if it's a group or if it's someone in the Trump administration
directly.
Stephen Miller.
Directly, it could be.
Matt Walsh, Charlie Kirk,
all tweeting out the same thing at the same time, basically,
yesterday, June 9th, within, I mean, at Walsh and Kirk within an hour of one another.
Just copy paste.
Ban all third world immigration, Matt Walsh says, legal or illegal.
There should be a moratorium on all immigration from the third world.
We've reached our capacity.
We cannot be the world's soup kitchen anymore.
Charlie Kirk.
It's time to ban the world's soup kitchen as if the people here that we're at Home Depot
aren't like building these people's houses.
Yep, for sub-minimum wage.
You know, can that, can we just, we have a little bit of time to play this new segment?
We do, but I just want to highlight, like, how, well, let's do that in a sec.
It's time to ban third world immigration, legal or legal.
It's almost exactly word for word.
He just put it's in front of it.
We've reached our limit and we have huge cultural, blah, blah, blah.
Jack Posobiac, it's time to ban third world immigration, legal or illegal.
Copy paste, copy paste.
This is a coordinated propaganda outfit, and I want to emphasize.
this stuff. With the tech right, which is putting images, the most inflammatory images, including
the burning cars, including the guy standing on the hood that are not at all representative of the rest
of the protests. And that's the worst they can get, by the way. They're putting them to the top
of everybody's feed and they're coordinating with right-wing influencers to manufacture consent
that allows for this authoritarian crackdown. Go ahead, Matt. People are right to be mad. And anything that
you see that seems excessive in the streets is provoked by this absolute lunatic white supremacist
policy that we're seeing and this is a news story just one of many like this tom homin saying actually
they're they're writing because we're taking rapists and drug traffickers is such a heinous smear
against the entire people of los angeles or any of these immigrant communities they're upset because
they're taking their brothers and fathers and sisters and wives and it's let's just play this
An update tonight on a nine-year-old Torrance boy and his father who were deported to Honduras, away from family and friends.
Tonight, they are speaking out. KTLA's Lindsay Peña has more.
Martir Garcia-Lara and his father, Martir Garcia-Banegas, are now back in Honduras after being deported from the U.S. just days ago.
Now, in a small town, the nine-year-old is trying to get used to his new reality.
He says,
I was scared to come here.
I wanted to stay with my brother.
We first told you about Martyr and his father
after members of the Torrance Elementary PTA reached out to KTLA.
Martir has attended classes there since the first grade
and members of the school community were concerned
about what had happened to him and his family.
The pair were detained and separated
after attending an immigration status hearing in downtown L.A.
back in late May.
Federal officials say the father and son had been ordered to return to Honduras back in
2003, but remained.
Martyr's brother Kevin is still in the U.S., though.
He's grown now, but Kevin was with me my whole life.
I want to see my friends again.
I miss all my friends.
The elder, Martyr, saying he had a feeling things would end up this way and believes
They're being cruel to people.
Now, maybe there's people that are listening to this, I hope not,
that think that they would take this standing down.
If people in their lives had them completely severed
from the people they grew up with and loved and sent to a foreign country,
maybe you would accept that standing down.
I basically have a different view of humanity
that you view that as an unjust encroachment,
that you'd send this kid and his dad away from their brother
and friends to start a whole new life
somewhere, what? Because Stephen Miller isn't happy
with the fucking demographics. Because all
in these images here about
the Posobia, Kirk, whatever,
notice the first thing they say,
we have a huge cultural thing.
That's all it is. The educational
stuff, now we can deal with that.
George H.W. Bush knew we can deal with that.
We could educate, even undocumented
kids can be in schools. Housing? Who's
building the housing? Are you kidding me? Financial?
Who do you think? I mean, these are
ridiculous, but it's ultimately because
all these guys are white supremacists
and they're in power right now.
I actually just got this book
and we've had
I believe that we've had this
guest on before
the author of hate monger
Stephen Miller, Donald Trump
and the white nationalist
agenda, Gene Guerrero.
I'm going to read it soon actually
because there's
some backstory to Stephen Miller I feel like
hasn't been discussed enough, including the fact
that he grew up in the L.A. area.
And there were reports in Guerrero's book about how when he was in high school in Santa Monica, he would clash with the students there who were speaking Spanish and he would tell them to speak only English at the time.
His level of resentment towards immigrants, legal immigrants, goes back to his childhood.
This is a very small man motivated by deep racism, anxiety, self and outward hatred.
wherever it begins chicken or the egg situation.
He's been disowned by his family.
And yeah, the vice did a video on that where he's saying, you know, make the, make the, make the,
and everyone knew who the janitors were.
Make the janitors pick up your trash.
Throw it on the ground.
Who cares?
He was disowned by his family in part because he grew up in a Jewish household and the Trump
administration is so anti-Semitic, if I recall.
So this is somebody who has a lot of it.
of cruelty in his heart. But this is why it's so important to back off even the concept of
legal immigration as a framework for analyzing this moment. Because think about the word legal.
Just think about it a little bit more deeply when you're trying to apply it to an action
or a process of legal or illegal immigration. And then when you apply that to a human being
And you put people's humanity within the context of outside of state acceptability, which is illegal, and inside it.
Then the state gets to define who is more human than the other person.
And with a white supremacist fascistic administration in place, we see how this is manifesting in practice.
AOC had a great point on blue sky.
We can end with this.
But I just want to show that, like, there's a way to respond to this that is.
capitulating to the right, like we're seeing from way too many Democrats.
She writes,
it is 100% carrying water for the opposition to participate in this collective delusion
that Democrats, for some reason, need to answer for every teen who throws a rock,
rather than hold the Trump administration accountable for intentionally creating chaos
and breaking the law to stoke violence.
They are in charge.
They are both stoking this violence and exaggerating any violence.
And I'd also say Democrats need to get their cops under control so they don't help provoke these and instigate these things into bigger problems like they've been doing.
It's not just the National Guard being sent in.
It's police departments that, frankly, we haven't brought under control as they need to be.
It's a failure of liberal governance in cities, which is being exploited by the right right now.
But that's in part because liberal governance, obviously preferable to right-wing governance.
but it's had these failures where police departments have completely gone off the rails
and are wagging the tail of Karen Bass as opposed to the other way around.
And it's what makes this race here in New York City so important
because it's time that true left-wing leadership comes back to our cities, not this.
In a moment, we'll be talking to Omar El-Aqad, author of One Day,
everyone will have always been against this.
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off trusting will dot com slash majority this will be down below in the description quick break
and when we come back we'll be joined by omar l akud
You know, I'm going to be able to be.
We are back and we are joined now by Omar Alakad,
award-winning journalist and novelist author of his latest.
One day everyone will have.
always been against this. The title is pretty self-explanatory, but Omar, thanks so much for
coming on the show. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Of course. First of all, I can promise
you that this would be the first, maybe the first one of your only media interviews on this
book that you won't be asked to condemn Hamas. So I think, you know, you're that you're in good
hands here. I had the statement ready. All right, fine. I guess.
we'll make do we'll make do um so you were born in cairo uh your your book kind of interweaves
your personal story coming to the west as a teenager coming to canada where you've you've been in both
worlds right and you can you had like this shift in your world but you have the mental clarity
being an older kid at that point to kind of see some of those differences in coming to the
United States, like, or sorry, to Canada. Just tell us a little bit about that transition,
how your, what your conception of Western values were versus how you experience them when coming
to the United States. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's, it's, I mean, Canada, I keep saying
United States. I mean, I ended up in the U.S. eventually, about 11, 12 years ago. So it's,
it's a bit of a circuitous route, right, because I'm born in Egypt. My dad has to get the
hell out of Egypt when I'm five years old.
And so we moved to Qatar, which, you know, pound for pound is the richest place on earth.
And if you've never been, it's a very relatively surreal lifestyle.
You know, if you're not among the migrant laborer class who are treated like absolute dirt,
if you're sort of middle class and up, it's the easiest life in the world, in large part,
because you're stepping on the necks of the folks who actually sort of built the place.
but if you're not sort of born into a cutary family
you can't stay in Qatar permanently
you're always in a kind of precarious situation
where your visa could be revoked or you know so on and so forth
and so we had planned on that happening
and my dad had decided to start the immigration process to Canada
at the time he couldn't point out Canada on the map
it was just sort of the next destination
because once you leave your home
that's kind of the life you live
you're looking for the next harbor
and the way I thought of Canada specifically
the U.S., the West generally
was as a kind of harbor
to me it wasn't so much a place
as a kind of negation.
When you grow up in a place like Qatar,
everything is censored, for example.
You know, I have these formative memories
of holding up copies of Newsweek to the light
to try and see past the black ink
that the censor had used
to block off whatever was, you know, deemed too dangerous for me to read.
And so my first impression of the West was essentially just a negation of that.
I don't care what this place is, but at least I can go there, and I don't have to deal with this.
And for the most part, that is what it was for me when I first show up to Canada.
You know, I go to the library, and I can ask for any book I want,
and I don't have to worry about the possibility of getting deported if it's the wrong thing.
know, that sort of thing.
And for the majority of my life in this part of the world, that was enough.
I could deal with everything else.
I could deal with the racism.
I could deal with the sort of petty indignities because I had that.
And I think the book, in large part, is about the moment where that tradeoff wasn't
something I could do anymore, where the price I was paying for that became too high for me to bear.
and and that threshold was that crossed in the environment after october seventh i mean what was
that feeling like for you to kind of see we experienced it covering it on the show the immediate
aftermath of the hamas attack was this whole display of this ramp up of what the genocide
was going to look like. And I think we all foresaw that it was going to be a genocidal slaughter.
I don't know if we could have foreseen it being a year and eight months long and us having
basically no idea of being completely in the dark at this point about how many are dead.
I mean, it's in the hundreds of thousands. And yet there's still this Western narrative that
it's oh it's 58 or 60,000 people like
the slaughter that we've seen
it was quite obvious
and that's what the title of your book is
a version of a tweet that you put out that went viral
it was quite obvious in the weeks following
yeah I mean I think for me
the way I've been describing it is
in terms of this break
at least personally for me
I've been describing it the same way that sort of Hemingway's characters went bankrupt,
you know, little by little and then all at once.
I was a journalist for 10 years, and there were things that I saw that
if I was a less cowardly person, would have probably brought me to this break much sooner.
You know, you go to Afghanistan and you see the local soldiers being put on the front lines
of every forward operating base such that if the attack comes, they're the ones who die.
not the NATO soldiers.
You see the hierarchy of human life.
You go to Guantanamo.
You see this ad hoc legal system
in violation of all normal sort of legal modes
designed purely to get these convictions.
And in every case, I was able to compartmentalize
and to say, yes, there's something kind of rotten here,
but it's just this moment,
and it's just this situation, it's unique to this.
And I think what has happened over the last 20 months
is that my ability to compartmentalize has imploded.
You know, I keep coming back to the same three factors
that make this different for me.
And those are sort of intimacy, immediacy, and complicity.
I wake up every morning,
and within moments of the horrible thing happening, I see it.
little kids starving to death, toddlers torn apart by the force of these bombs.
There's an intimacy and there's an immediacy to it that if I was a perfect human being,
probably shouldn't matter, right?
What's wrong is wrong regardless of how immediate or intimate it might be.
But it does matter, that I see it so closely.
And then thirdly, there's the complicity, right?
my tax dollars are doing this, right? I'm killing those kids. That's me. And so it becomes
impossible to ignore in the way that I so successfully ignored these things previously. That's
what's changed for me. And it's not like these currents weren't present before. You don't even
have to look to Afghanistan or to Guantanamo Bay. You can look to Gaza itself. This place has
been an open-air prison for years and years and years, and nobody cared. On October 6th,
of 2020, a report came out
detailing how deadly a year
it was for Palestinian
children. That's never the
starting point of any narrative around
this, but it existed.
And I was able to ignore
it, and that's a function of the kind of human
being I am. That's a function of
the obliviousness that
largely carried me through my existence in the
West and has largely
fallen apart now.
Well, I think, you know,
it's
it's not
moral failing
it's more just
what's engendered in us
as a part of being
in the West
we have an ivory tower
kind of view
of the other parts
of the global south
and the Middle East
that we exploit
but it's
the other part
that's so striking
in your book is like
it's even in the title
when we're talking about
this moral rod
of Western liberalism
which I want to get into even more specifically,
but just the idea that people can't see historical parallels
or feel this immense guilt about being on the wrong side of history,
your analysis of this moment,
can you speak a little bit more about the inconsistency of things like,
you know,
how we speak about the Holocaust and never again?
And then the silence of some of those same people
as this genocide is not being done
we don't read about it the next day in the newspaper
we see it every day on our phone
I think for me to
the best I've been able to answer that kind of question
has to do with the sort of reward and punishment equilibrium
with respect to something like
the suffering of the Palestinian people
certainly where I live
I live out on the West Coast, I think this is true of most of the United States, if not the
Western world at large. There is essentially no consequence to pretending none of this is
happening. I wake up every day and I open my computer and I see evidence of the worst things
human beings can do to one another. And then I go about my day and it's as though none of this
is happening. You know, and there's emails that need to be replied to and there's bills that
need to be paid, and there are Zoom meetings that need to drag on endlessly, and you need to do
the stuff.
And in fact, not only is there no consequence for the vast majority of the people that I'm around
at any given moment to thinking about any of this, there's an immense punishment waiting if you
do think about this too much, and if you do talk about this too much.
I mean, I was on tour for this book for two and a half months, and at virtually every event,
somebody would come up to me afterwards and say
this is the first space
where I've been able to sit with this
where I've been able to think about this
because if I talk about this at work I might get fired
if I talk about this with my friends
they might stop being my friends
and it's not you know they're not there at this event
because they love me or they love the book they don't care about any of that
it's just a place where you can feel like you're not losing your mind
and so I think a lot of this makes perfect sense
if you have conditioned yourself to believe that Palestinians are not sufficiently human?
And what else do you're good?
How has that conditioning made itself manifest in the West?
I mean, there's a lot of discussion about anti-Semitism in this country.
Anti-Jewish hate is a real thing,
but a great majority of the instances that are cited are protests against Zionism and
the genocide. And I can name dozens of think pieces that I've seen just in the last month on
that very topic. And yet Islamophobia, which, you know, even in the word, right, it sounds like
you're afraid of spiders. But Islamophobia is the most pernicious and widespread bigotry
in our country right now. And it crosses traditional political lines.
where when we're talking about Western liberalism, there's this kind of hollowness of performing virtue and doing so in basically an explicitly domestic context about groups that have been marginalized historically in this country.
But when that looks outward and expands to the consequences of capitalism and imperialism of which the Gaza genocide is both, why can't.
Why is that analysis failing and why is it in the end so racist in outcome with so many of these people who would bulk at that idea if it was applied to black people, here domestically, Latino people, et cetera?
I mean, there's a couple of things that come to mind.
First and foremost, I mean, we live in an incredibly anti-Semitic part of the world.
The current administration is rife with raging anti-Semites.
I mean, I know that it's sort of been buried under God knows how many scandals and outrages now,
but it wasn't that long ago that we were sitting around trying to discern whether one of the central figures in this administration was actually making a Nazi salute or not.
I mean, this isn't subtle stuff.
I think that is separate from a patently disingenuous effort to conflate criticism of a state that is currently engaged in an act of genocide with anti-Jewish.
hatred. I think that is a patently bad faith effort. But it doesn't change the fact that we do
live in an incredibly anti-Semitic part of the world. I think with respect to Islamophobia,
one of the reasons that it has essentially no effect is because it can have no effect. The consequences
of this country or this part of the world genuinely caring about anti-Muslim or anti-Arab hatred
are too immense to ponder
because the second we decide
that these human beings of which I am one
are sufficiently human
such as to warrant actual response to this hatred.
We're not just contending with the random stuff
that's like yelled at me every now and then on the street.
We're not just contending with angry comments on Twitter
from Freedom Eagle 1776 at Hotmail or whatever, right?
We are contending with wholesale sports.
water, right? Which is happening right now. And how do you go about sort of admitting to yourself
that this is the consequence of the thing you've allowed to fester? I think just at a societal level,
at a governmental level, once you start thinking of these human beings as being sufficiently
human to warrant condemnation, the thing you have to condemn is so overwhelming and so all-encompassing
and so all-inditing as to essentially require something much, much bigger than a statement of
apology or, you know, some declaration of regret or something.
And so I think that's part of it.
And honestly, part of it is proximity to whiteness.
Yes.
Like, you know, I know full well that I get very different reactions depending on whether the first
thing someone hears about me is this accent or whether they read my name first.
those are two entirely different human beings
primarily because this accent has a proximity to whiteness
and this name doesn't
and I know I have to live with that
that's the calculus of my existence in this part of the world
and that's not going to change overnight
let's this is a good way
I think to transition to this poll
I saw curious about your take on this Omar
yesterday Harat's the Israeli paper
posted a rober
about this study that was conducted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
So this is done by the university.
This, the Zionists will say, ah, are so liberals, right?
Nope, they're just reposting what the study found, reporting on it, and you can't count
on other Israeli media to do that.
So 64% of Israelis see no need for more reporting on Gaza's suffering is what the poll found.
Now, we should say that this includes Arab Israelis in this total.
So in terms of Jewish Israelis, it's higher than 64% who see no need to cover Gaza's suffering anymore.
If we could go to the paragraph, according to the survey conducted by Dr. Boaz Sharkey and Lee Aldar,
64% of Israelis believe that the local media is reporting on Gaza has been balanced,
and there is no need to present a broader picture.
regarding the situation of Gaza's civilians.
89% of the people that support the Nanyahu government have that view.
But the other question is, if we could scroll down a little bit more here, this is good.
41% of all respondents said that the news on Israel's two mainstream commercial stations, channels 12 and 13, are biased in favor of the population of Gaza.
So that is the plurality opinion.
But scroll down even more, because that's insane, but there's even more.
okay here we go um actually no down a little bit more thank you here it is another question asked in the
a chord poll was to what extent respondents agreed with the statement that there are no innocent
people in gaza 64 percent agreed with it to a large extent describing their agreement as between
four and six on a scale in which one is total this agreement and six is complete agreement so this
is the top 50th percentile in terms of strength of response.
64% agree with the statement.
There are no innocent people in Gaza.
And then the last piece of the poll that I think is important is on the, here, this
paragraph.
When it comes to Israelis' views of foreign media outlets, which for the purposes of
the polling referred to CNN and the BBC, 69% of respondents said they were biased in
favor of Palestinians in Gaza.
even when asked about Fox News, which is identified with the American right wing, half of those
polled and 67% of voters for coalition parties said it was biased in favor of Gazans.
I just want people to sit with that for just a second.
69% of overall Israelis think CNN and BBC's coverage and here in the United States
were intimately aware with CNN's coverage and Dana Bash and Jake Tapper pushing the pro-Israel narrative over and over
and over again.
69% of Israelis think they're biased in favor of Palestinians
and half of Israelis think Fox News
is biased in favor of Palestinians.
What do you make of those numbers?
What does it say about the West
and Israeli society's role in it?
I mean,
honestly, there's something refreshing about it
because there isn't this sort of
attempt to hide behind a narrative that clearly has no connection with reality.
One of the ironic things about that study is that if you were to
try to essentially write a news story about that
and run it in most of these Western publications that are considered
too biased in favor of Palestinians,
you either wouldn't get it on the air or you'd get fired for it.
It would be considered too inflammatory.
And this is true of a lot of stuff that runs in Israel.
media and runs plainly without any real controversy that would be considered far too controversial
to run to run in the Western world.
I mean, one way to think about this is imagine living in Israeli society right now and not
holding those views.
How incredibly frustrating an experience that must be.
this is
this is essentially a viewpoint that is in line with the reality of what is happening
obviously in the most overt way over the last 20 months
but also over the last 70 plus years
the non-existence of the Palestinian people
is central to a particular narrative of Israeli life
and again if that sounds controversial fine
but it's in line with the reality of the situation.
It's an ethno state maintained by violence and domination,
and a majority of Israeli society wants the violence and domination
to continue to maintain the ethnic purity of the state.
And I mean, look, if all this stuff makes your viewers or your listeners uncomfortable, fine.
Ignore Israel entirely.
Name me one colonial outposts in history that was able to maintain,
its colonial narrative, while simultaneously maintaining a narrative in which the indigenous population
that had to be displaced or eradicated was of equal value.
Their lives were of equal value.
It doesn't exist.
It certainly does not exist in the United States.
It only exists in hindsight.
It only exists one or two hundred years later when, you know, the Obama administration
can issue this declaration saying, sorry about all the genocide.
And, you know, my book is titled what is titled for a reason.
reason, right? Because we're going to get around to that place. We're not there yet. And so, to me, you know, first of all, this isn't the first poll of its kind. This is obviously sort of incredibly heightened because of the moment we're in. But there's a very long history of these kinds of opinions being in place. And they sort of have to be, right? There's no way somebody can imply that a situation in which quite literally millions of
Palestinians live in open-air prisons, where every movement is subjected to control by the Israeli
military, where they have to carry different ID cards and travel down different roads and
take different buses, there's no way somebody can imply that that is an equal landscape
from which to build peace. That just doesn't exist. And I think, honestly, it's sort of refreshing
to just see that statement outright, instead of hearing some State Department spokesperson
person. Talk to me about the desire for equal peace and equal justice as all the while my tax
money is funding, this incredible glaring asymmetry. And this is why it has to come from the
outside, like it had to do in South Africa and in Rhodesia. And the differences, I think,
in those instances are, one, the level of militarization and bombing is not anywhere close. But
two, white people were definitely demographic minorities.
The anxiety, too, within Israel is the idea that it's more like 50-50 if you were to
incorporate Palestinians into official statehood, not just under occupation and control
and as third-class citizens that they're now slaughtering.
So I guess that's a good way, I think, for us to wrap.
rap here
what
what we're in this place right now
the Mamdani campaign in here in New York
is very exciting and he went on TV and he talked about
when being asked about his views about Israel
he they said do you believe as a Jewish state that
you you support it he said he supports it as a state of equal
rights and this is I think a really important
divergence from liberalism, which has been maintaining this two-state solution myth for
longer than my lifetime. And it's so untenable at this point, but our politicians on the
national level have completely not caught up to it. Can you speak about the contradiction of
liberalism's support for Israel as an ethno state, especially when you compare it to like
the multicultural values
these same people
espoused domestically?
Yeah, I think
there's something
patently exhausting
about trying to maintain
a sort of liberal approach to this
because you essentially have to take
every other value
that you claim to espouse
in every other case
and carve out a little exception for it.
You know, segregation is wrong,
except in this case where it's good and necessary.
Apartheid is wrong,
except in this case where it's good and necessary.
The sort of visceral, emotional and psychological reaction you feel
when you hear about people being forced to take only certain roads,
for example, has to be set aside.
And over time, that is damaging, right?
And I think what you're seeing,
right now is, at least for the first time in my lifetime, an actual political consequence
to this kind of incredibly disjointed mode of liberalism in which you hold on very vocally
to a certain set of views and principles, except in one case. If you had told me, you know,
two years ago, that the suffering of the Palestinian people would factor in any way
in the results of a U.S. presidential election,
I would have thought you were out of your mind.
And now it can be argued that at least to a certain extent
this factored in the last presidential election.
That means something.
There is someone who, you know, maybe he doesn't win,
but has a serious shot at becoming mayor
of maybe the most important city in the country
who is finally calling out this glaring hypocrisy.
Again, if you told me that two years ago,
I would have thought you're out of your mind.
And so what you're watching, I think, is a level of change.
But politics, particularly sort of federal politics in this country, is a trailing metric.
It takes a very long time to catch up with what the population is thinking, what people are demanding.
And so as sort of heartened as I am by just seeing the most basic acknowledgement and the most rudimentary changes,
It is depressing in the sense that I think of, you know, how many bodies between this moment and when we reach political calculus that acknowledges it, something is changing.
It's just changing very, very slowly.
And the Israelis are counting on that.
It's why they're killing every journalist that they can find.
It's the deadliest conflict.
I hate calling it that, but that's the metrics used for journalists in history.
And they've killed all the record keepers.
They've killed them.
And so we don't, we won't, they want to use this period of darkness, both
journalistically and in terms of Gaza's capacity to count the dead and their hospital capacity
to kill as many as they can in this period of time where they're doing it in somewhat secret.
I mean, look, the moment a U.S. presidential administration makes the phone call and lets it be known
that there's actual consequences to any of this
and that it needs to stop, it will stop.
I mean, fundamentally, this has happened in the past.
This happened under Reagan very famously.
None of this happens without my tax money, none of it.
And the second a solution is imposed by the United States,
and I use the word imposed very deliberately here,
it will come to fruition.
But we have had administration after administration year after year, decade after decade of some White House or State Department spokesperson coming up to the podium and saying, we're so flustered and frustrated.
We don't know what to do.
They won't listen to us.
And it's patently nonsense.
And everybody knows it's nonsense.
Everybody knows that the second that there are actual consequences and there's actual pressure to not engage.
in what is effectively wholesale slaughter, that will all come to an end.
It's just a matter of waiting on whether there's enough domestic political pressure
such that enough politicians make the calculation that it is in their favor
or in their personal interest to consider Palestinians human.
We're effectively waiting on that date.
Every other argument is an attempt to employ a level of pragmatism
and political calculus onto something that, at least to my mind,
is this clear or moral issue as has existed in my lifetime.
Absolutely.
Well, everybody should read one day, everyone will have always been against this.
It's a beautiful book.
Omar, thanks so much for your time.
Today, we'll put a link to your book below wherever people are listening to or watching this.
Thanks so much.
And at majority.com.
Thank you.
Thanks.
All right, folks, quick.
Oh, quick break. And when we come back, we will be joined by Chiosay, city councilman here in New York.
Thank you.
We are back, and we are joined now by Chiosay, New York City Council member representing Bedstuy and Crown Heights in Brooklyn.
He's also been campaigning with memorial candidate Zoran Mamdani.
of June 24th, a Democratic primary. Early voting starts June 14th. I will be early voting
next week. I cannot wait. Chee, thanks so much for coming on the show. Oh, my God. Thank you so
much for having me on. I'm so glad to see you because I've been sending around your videos
to family and friends. For people that don't follow you on social media, you've been doing this
series of why shit doesn't work or what's it called? Exactly. Yeah, why it's, can you
explain that? And this is just, you're a kind of this younger generation of Democrat that actually
knows how they use social media. And they seem to all be coming out in New York. So pride for us, I guess.
Yeah. I mean, I've been, I'm a child of the internet, right? And the second language that I speak
after English is the language of the internet. And I utilize this tool of social media
within my job as being a city council member. This arose a couple of years ago. We're
the New York City RENK Guidelines Board, which is a board that's appointed by whoever the mayor is,
was voting to, you know, increase New Yorkers' rents from 8 to 16%, which was completely outrageous, you know.
And I arrived at a hearing, at a Rink Guidelines Board hearing to protest against what the board was proposing.
And there were about 16 people, you know, in the audience that were, you know, advocating for the rents to be lower.
So I took to my phone, you know, spoke to TikTok, spoke to Instagram Reels, like edited a really short video, telling people to pay attention to the RGB, tell them to show up to the next hearing, and the video went viral.
People were saying that they were going to bring their friends, and, you know, at this next hearing, you know, instead of 16 people at first hearing, over a thousand people showed up.
And we were interviewing people on the line, and they were like, we came here because of your videos.
We came here because of your videos.
And at the end of that RGB vote, instead of it being from 8 to 16%, it was 1.2 to I think about 2.5.
So ever since then, I've been utilizing short form media, not only as a tool for entertainment, but as a tool for political organizing, which helped me pass a bill recently that would ban force broker fees in New York City.
And then also just it helps me get my values out there that incorporates a lot of people into the political process who have been disengaged.
prior to that?
That is, it's encouraging because we just had a Taylor Lorenzo on like two weeks ago just about
her thesis is that since the pandemic, the bridge between the internet world and the real world
in terms of political communication, I mean, they've come together.
And I think there are a lot of Democrats who are behind on the technical aspects, but also
the messaging, which is the more important thing, right?
This is when we're talking about policy and housing is so important here in New York City.
We'll get to like the the Mamdani campaign, his proposals, some of the abundant stuff in just a sec.
But you mentioned the broker's fee ban, which takes into, takes effect today.
Can you explain what broker's fees are here in New York City and why this is such a big deal that as of today, a judge denied the request from this real estate board to stop.
the stoppage of broker's fees being offset onto the prospective tenant. How does that work and
why is it so important that New York City got rid of it? Of course. So prior to today, if you were
a prospective tenant in New York City and you're looking for an apartment, whether through word of
mouth, on street easy, maybe from a friend, you are consistently finding that you are being forced
to pay this broker fee that ranges from 10 to 15% of your annual rent to a broker that your
landlord hired. And whenever you showed up to a listing, either sometimes the broker wasn't
there, either the broker was rude, you know, very unprofessional. And this is, I just say my
personal experience is that I've had proposed broker's fees of like $7,000 to $8,000. And
they, the broker calls you to give you the code to let you in so you can.
can see the apartment yourself and then they want $7,000, $8,000.
Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous and that's not an isolated story, right?
We've heard this from thousands of New Yorkers.
And we as New Yorkers prior to this bill just took that as, you know, a fact, you know,
when we were spending thousands of dollars to someone that we've never met, right?
Or just gave us a code to a lockbox.
So a couple of years ago, I introduced this bill called the Fair Act,
which would require that whoever hires a broker within the city of New York would pay the broker fee.
And the real estate lobby was pissed about this because they wanted to force tenants to pay a broker fee.
They spent a lot of money and lobbying against the bill.
They defeated it once, you know, when there was another council member who was blocking it from moving forward in the legislative process.
But again, we were utilizing social media, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and telling people online to,
call their council members, to call the speaker's office, to show up to city council hearings
and advocate on behalf of this bill. And this was attempted in the past to prevent, you know,
broker fees from being forced onto tenants. But we were able to be so successful because we
dominated the communication strategy about what this bill was trying to do. We were telling
people simply that in what other transactions do you hire something and order something
and then force the other person to pay for it.
And we got the bill passed last November.
The bill goes into effect today.
The real estate industry of New York is pissed off,
but we successfully beat them in that pursuit.
And we're going to save New Yorkers thousands of dollars.
We're putting more bargaining power into the hands of tenants.
You know, we're showing, you know, this lobby that's been able to squash tenants' rights
over the past couple of years that we're here to fight and we're here to fight in a different
way. Can you explain that to people how this elimination of forced brokers fees on the tenant
will put downward pressure on rental prices? Because I think if the default is going to be,
okay, well, the brokers have to make money some way. That means that's just going to get baked into
people's rent. Yeah. So, you know, I think that's bullshit when the real estate lobby says that
it's going to be baked into, you know, people's rents.
And also the fact that the Real Estate Board of New York is now concerned about increasing rents is completely outrageous.
44% of the housing stock in New York City, that's nearly 50% is rent stabilized.
So it would be illegal for landlords or brokers to bake the fee into the rent in those cases.
In addition to that, you know, rents are set by market forces, not by what landlords could charge.
You know, if your landlord could raise your rent, they would have done so yesterday.
And in addition to that, you know, this will put a downward pressure on rents because it gives tenants more bargaining power when it comes to their renegotiating of their lease.
You know, instead of having to pay a broker fee and moving into a new apartment, they won't have to pay a fee.
The landlord would have to pay a fee to replace them as a tenant.
And that would put a downward pressure on the rents in the city.
It's exciting and also showing, I think, a little bit some more.
results. And I'm wondering what your take is on this of really since 2018. It feels like there
has been an effort and a successful effort to replace so many of these Democrats that were do
nothing or corrupt or complicit with Andrew Cuomo up in Albany with the IDC. Basically for
people that don't know, they were Democrats that had D next their name so people would vote for
them and they caucus independently with the Republicans and Cuomo kind of gave them a bunch of
gifts and favors because it helped kill progressive legislation. We're now at this point right now
where like the city is primed for a progressive mayor because the city council, there's a bunch
of you guys there that are doing great work like this. Like with your endorsement of Zoron and
this left wing almost insurgent movement in the city, do you see this as a really exciting
opportunity for the city council to finally not have an acrimonious relationship with a mayor
and one that could finally change the tides of high prices and everything here in New York.
Absolutely. And just to hammer and uplift one of the points that you made, I don't even think
it's about progressivism. I think it's about economic populism, right? We are really, many of us
within the council are putting forward, you know, legislation that is tangibly helping
the lives of New Yorkers.
And we've seen that in the past session in terms of the passing of this bill,
and it will definitely yield way for Zoron to be elected as the next mayor of New York City.
It would be so amazing to have a mayor that is not embarrassing and destructive to the city
of New York like Eric Adams is.
It's been really rough over the past four years, trying to navigate the corruption that
exists on the other side of City Hall. And I think New Yorkers deserve a mayor that will work with
the city council who are doing some really amazing things around making the city more affordable,
like the bill that I recently passed. When we're, housing is is so central to national conversations
around the Democratic Party right now. It's never been more unaffordable to buy a home or rent one.
Rent is now, I think, crossed the average threshold, if I remember reading it nationally, around one-third of people's income, which is supposed to be the high watermark for what you're paying on housing when you're budgeting for yourself.
And that's just like it's baked into the cake at this point in terms of people's cost of living.
We're seeing a record of credit card debt.
There's a lot of people that are just putting it on the card.
And we're in a really precarious economic situation right now.
There's a very well-funded centrist movement nationally within the Democratic Party called abundance
that says a lot of this is the problem of zoning and zoning deregulation, which Zoron's campaign includes.
But it kind of leaves out some of the other things that are commodifying our housing and gouging it to such a degree.
What's been your take on this national conversation about rent and housing and how it looks
like in practice on the city council here in New York?
Yeah.
You know, I think that's a really good question.
And I try to stay out of, you know, those quarrels that exist online.
You know, I've always said that my response to our housing crisis and an affordability crisis
within the city is yes and when it comes to housing, right?
And I think sometimes people get stuck with one type of solution over the other.
But I think there are a myriad of ways that we as legislators, as people who work for the government, can address our housing crisis.
Yes, we need a rent freeze.
Yes, we need social housing.
Yes, we need good cause eviction.
And yes, we need to build more homes, right?
New York City has a vacancy rate at 1.4%.
We're seeing still thousands and thousands of people come from around the country and around the world.
you know, seeking new jobs in the city, which puts a pressure on our housing market, right?
It's very competitive to find a home.
Listen, I represent beds dying Crown Heights, which are, you know, it's a predominantly black
community still, but it's seeing a lot of displacement and gentrification over the past 10 years.
I saw the largest displacement of black people in my community compared to any other community
in the city.
And it's because folks who are moving here, you know, working, you know, on Wall Street or in tech
jobs are competing for the same homes as people who are working for the MTA and other city jobs.
So the only way, in one of the many ways that we can address, you know, that specific issue is to
build more homes. And, you know, that is some market rate homes. That's affordable homes.
That's low income homes. I do believe the answer to our housing crisis is yes. And I think sometimes
people can get stuck in, you know, one camp or another camp and, you know, be very passionate about
their beliefs there. But we have to be creative in many different ways in order to
solve what's what's happening with the affordability crisis.
You mentioned gentrification, and it's really important, I think, to talk about this more
because I feel like five, ten years ago, when that word was thrown around, it was usually
like, yeah, it's kind of sometimes using our social cultural context to talk about, oh, like
white people moving in, taking away people's
home. Sometimes it was a bit of it like a joke
or
but for people on the ground, it's something that
people are experiencing in real time.
But it's not
like a fight between
tenants. It shouldn't be, right?
And I think that was how it was
framed maybe 10 years ago.
But now there's this understanding that
like what's driving it
is those same people can't
afford homes where they used to be.
And so they've got to go
to areas and push other people out
and real estate developers
and landlords capitalize on that
because they can make more money
with people that they're willing to pay
maybe $500 more a month
than the person that was already living there.
So like how do you as a politician
make the gentrification conversation
politically productive?
Yeah, I think my response
for the past couple of years now
is I think it's easy to get taught up with the color of gentrification being white or black,
but I do believe the true color is green, right?
Green in terms of the unaffordability crisis that's happening across the country that's pushing people,
you know, out of some states, maybe coming to another, you know, developers and sometimes landlords
who get greedy and hurt people with rising rents and displacement.
I believe that New York City has been a city for all people.
I believe that those who grown up in the city should be able to stay,
but I also do believe that we should make room for more people by building homes.
And I do believe that in order for us to address, you know, this issue of this placement,
you know, it's not, I don't want to create quarrels with one type of group and another type of group.
I again want to create space for everyone.
I think that's very hard for people to grasp sometimes.
I think displacement and gentrification is a very emotional, you know,
as someone who's grown up in Brooklyn,
I've seen, you know, my community change immensely.
But as someone who's now in a position of power and is learning more about how we can
address this problem, you know, instead of, we can't create a ban in New York City to prevent
people from coming here.
That will never happen.
We just need to make more space for those who do want to come here.
Vacancy tax.
Is that the kind of thing that the city council is looking into?
The city council isn't currently looking into it,
but I'm such an advocate for vacancy tax.
I do believe we need a vacancy tax,
especially on some of the warehouse departments that exist within the city.
I hope that under the next Momdani mayorship,
that is something that we could work together on, a pier-to-taire tax, you know, for some of the oligarchs
that own, you know, large, large homes and apartment buildings within our district are also taxed as well.
But that's something that I'm an advocate for.
I don't think the council's working on that right now, though.
All right, well, we'll put a pin in that one.
Lastly, just because you've mentioned the Mamadani campaign, you endorsed, you've been campaigning with him,
your assessment of the race now that we're just days away from early voting and less than
two weeks away from election day. Yeah, Zoron can win. I do believe that we still need a robust
ranked choice voting strategy in terms of ranking five candidates and not ranking Cuomo in order
for us to get there. I'm really excited about some of these polls that we've been seeing
in this race, you know, looking neck and neck.
Also, something that's not accounted for within these polls is that, in my personal experience,
there are so many friends of mine who are changing their registration to New York City
to vote in their first elections, so many young people who are not accounted for within
this polling, who are actually deeply excited about this movement that Zoran and his team have
created during this campaign.
I think there's going to be a lot of people that have currently,
been unaccounted for that are going to show up in droves in these days of boating. So I'm feeling
cautiously optimistic. You know, I think Cuomo, you know, he's he's a political juggernaut in many
ways. But, you know, Zoron and even some of these other candidates have really put up, mainly
Zoron, I've really put up a really great fight, you know, in terms of how this race is getting
turn out. So I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm feeling hopeful. They're reaching a lot of people
who've never been reached before. And I think that that's what's going to get them past the finish
line. True last question here is because of the success, regardless of the outcome and
ranks over on one, rank all five, don't rank Cuomo, getting that out there. But the city
campaign matching system, to me, I feel like this has been such an unmitting.
success. And when we're talking about campaign finance reform, I feel like there should be
efforts to expand, honestly, our matching system here in New York City. Do you see that as possible
if Zoran wins this campaign? And honestly, this should be taken more nationally matching systems
for campaigns because it removes the incentive for Cuomo to say like, hey, Dordash, give me a million
dollars or whatever. I mean, I love our matching funds system. We'd love to see it expanded,
not only within New York City, but across the country, especially in some of these congressional
races, love to see for there to be a matching funds program so that folks can compete in races
where APAC is funneling or any, you know, any PAC is funneling a lot of money into the race.
So I really hope to see this program expanded. I'm not sure.
how the CFB or where their head is at in terms of expanding the program,
that is sometimes a bit out of, you know, our control or my control as as as
fair enough, but I would love to see it expanded.
It's definitely helped me get elected in 2021.
It's still helping me in my reelection race right now.
And we'll hopefully be one of the big reasons that we beat Cuomo on June 24th.
All right.
Well, from your mouth to God's ears,
How can people support your re-election effort, Chi,
and also just, you know, some of the work that you're doing over at the city council?
Absolutely.
So if you live in bedside and crown heights, please vote for me.
Early voting starts on June 14th election days on June 24th.
Right now, the best way that you could help me is going to Zoron's campaign and volunteering
while also, you know, spreading what great people of the working families party have been saying.
and that's ranking all five candidates and not ranking Andrew Cuomo.
I love the city, what hate for Cuomo to destroy it.
Again, and I really do believe a better future is within reach if we keep them away from City Hall.
Well, I really appreciate your time today.
Thanks so much.
Chiosay, New York City Council member representing bedside Crown Heights.
We'll put a link to the canvassing and all that you're talking about down below
wherever people are listening to are watching this.
Thanks so much.
Appreciate it.
Of course.
All right, with that, we're going to wrap up the free part of the show.
Head into the fun part of the show where we will take your calls, read your I.M's.
Getting a good amount of I.M.s in.
I don't know why I'm doing the Trump voice.
Matt was happening on Left Reckoning.
Yeah, Left Reckon, we had a big show last night.
Steven Semler on talking about the big,
beautiful bill and the amount of money that, oh, just so happens that when troops started coming
home from Iraq, our police department started getting militarized in a way that's easily
viewable in graphs, kind of like all the left was saying the entire time I've been sort of
conscious of politics. It's weird how all this stuff has just come true, including the
Nazi stuff about demographic anxiety. So yeah, good show last night. And two nation writers on
talking about the new edition of The Nation Magazine, which is 160 years old.
And, I mean, that's a long publication history for anything, like, even outside the United States.
I don't know how many things have been publishing that long, but interesting discussion there.
So they did, they have writers from all 50 states talking about this, this United States of America.
So check that out, patreon.com, so it's left reckoning.
All right, folks.
also wanted to congratulate
since I won't be here tomorrow
but I don't think he will be here
either because
he's got better things to do
our friend Matt Binder
is now a father of three
that's what it means to be a mighty man of that
oh yeah baby
really really exciting news for our friend
we will give him a show far
in celebration
Congrats Matt Binder.
Also check out our merch
Shop.com.com.
You can get those trucker hats
including the baby blue
which is available for pre-order.
We've also brought back the Vergonia
and if you want to be a part of the max left
you can get your max left
t-shirt shop.
Dot Majority Report Radio.com.
All right guys.
in the fun half.
Okay, Emma, please.
Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking in the majority report.
Wait, what?
Look, Sam is unpopular.
I do deserve a vacation at Disney World.
So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.
It is Thursday.
I think you need to take over for Sam.
That's good.
Sir, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause you right there.
Wait, what?
You can't encourage Emma to live like this.
And I'll tell you why.
So it's offered a tour?
sushi and poker with the boys
twerk
sushi and poker with the boys
was offered a twer
yeah sushi and poker with the boys
what?
Twirling sushi and poker
Tim's upset
Twirling sushi and poker with the boys
was offered a twirl
sushi and
that's what we call the bids
Twirl
sushi and poker with the boys
Right
We're gonna get demonetized
I just think that what you did to Tim Poole
thought was mean.
Free speech.
That's not what we're about here.
Look at how sad he's become now.
You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible.
I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here.
Twerk.
Ugh.
Sushi and poker with the boys.
Oh my God.
Wow.
Sushi.
I'm sorry.
I'm losing my fucking mind.
Someone's offered a twirp.
Yeah.
Sushi and poker with the boys.
Logic.
Twerp.
Sushi and poker with the boys.
Boy, boy, boy.
I think I'm like a little kid.
I think I'm like a little kid.
A little kid.
I think I'm like a kid twerk.
I think I'm like a little kid.
Add this debate seven thousand times.
A little kid.
I think I'm like a little kid.
A little kid.
I think I'm like a fucking liar.
Some people just don't understand.
So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S.
should be providing me with a wife and kids.
That's not what we're talking about here.
It's not a fun job.
That's a real thing.
That's a real thing.
Willie Walker.
That's a real thing.
That's a real thing.
Thank you, real thing.
Joe Logan has that offered it to a word.
That's a real thing.
Or that's the twer.
A real thing.
That's a real thing.
That's a real thing.
Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again.
Offered it.
That's a real thing.
That's a poker with the boy.
I think he might be blown out of proportion.
Real thing.
That's a poker with the boys.
Offered it.
That's a real thing.
That's got poker.
Let's go Joe.
Twirl.
Sushi and poker with the boy.
Take an easy thing.
Shushi and poker.
Things have really gotten out of hands.
Sushi and poker
with the boys
delusional
You don't have a clue as to what's going on
Live YouTube
Sam has like the weight of the world on the shoulders
Hoggers! Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore
It was so much
easier when the majority report
was just you
We're happy
Let's change the subject
Rangers and Nick's going right
Now shut up
Don't want people saying reckless things on your program
That's one of the most difficult
parts about this show
This is a pro-killing podcast
I'm thinking maybe it's time
We bury the hatchet.
Left is best.
Trump.
Violet twir?
Don't be foolish.
And don't fucking tweet at me
and don't get shit.
The way that is cucked
to all these people.
Love it.
That's where my heart is.
So I wrote my honor's thesis.
About it.
Oh.
She wrote an honest thesis.
I guess I should hand the main mic to you now.
You want to go right on the unformed policy.
We already fund Israel, dude.
Are you against us?
That's a tougher question.
I have an answer.
incredible theme song i bumbler emma viglin absolutely one of my favorite people actually not just in the game like period