The Young Turks - Hostility & Hearbreak

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Negotiators from Russia and Ukraine met again on Monday for another round of talks aimed at finding a way out of the war, even as Russian forces broadened their devastating offensive and the Kremlin insisted that it would not pull back until “all plans” for the invasion are fulfilled. A pregnant woman who was injured when a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was bombed on Wednesday has died, along with her newborn baby, a surgeon who was treating her confirmed on Monday. According to U.S. officials. Russia asked China to give it military equipment and support for the war in Ukraine after President Vladimir. Putin began a full-scale invasion last month. Tucker Carlson is claiming that Ukraine is making bioweapons by citing a Pentagon official who actually said the exact opposite. 82% of U.S. voters believe inflation is fueled by corporations ‘jacking up prices.’ Far-right activist and Idaho gubernatorial candidate Ammon Bundy was arrested for trespassing at a hospital protest. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Okay, so boom, so we're just going to have to go around the globe with it because truth be told everybody and their mama then popped up in the situation and they got their little two cents they want to add. So here we go. So first of all, you already know Yuki and Lurara's out here in the middle of the street, duping it out like Natalie and that from the Bad Girls Club, right? So first things first. You can already tell that Comedy Dick, he is all the way fed up.

All right. At this point, he ain't had no sleep in about 13 days. He'd been out here fighting, taking phone calls, signing documents, doing interviews, loading guns, pulling potatoes, negotiating ceasefires, trolling Big Bang P, like he busy. But Brett had time today, okay? First of all, you had a message for Phee. He, like, great, pee, I don't know what kind of dope you're smoking, but you got the entire country of Yuki messed all the way up, okay? First of all, you was out here talking all that cap about how he was looking for V, I saw the audio on my head. I'm outside. I'm outside and I'm on the front line with it. So where are you at? Now is A.B. Burns Tucker. She's a law student and paralegal and she does videos on TikTok and they've caught a lot of people's attention for a number of reasons. Two main ones though. First, A.B., welcome. Hello, how are you? I'm good. I'm good. So, Amy, one is your background, right? Why you got into this? That's super interesting. The other is, can I keep it real how you talk, right?

And they, some refer to it as the African-American vernacular English, A-A-A-V-E, which I thought was very sophisticated. So, well, tell us about that, right? So it's such a funny question to say, why do you talk like that? I would ask the people on TV, why do they talk like non-humans? But nonetheless, I'll ask it. No worries. So thank you for having me first and foremost. So how I talk. So for me, right, it's good old ebonics. And for me, like, that's my first language. That's the language that, you know, my friends and I would speak or if I was home just being comfortable. Most of us, we would speak like that at home. But I also have an educational background where that's not really like the language of choice, right? And so. So I've sort of adopted being able to speak both languages in order to share information essentially. Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense.

And having seen a lot of your videos, in a sense, you are bilingual, right? So when you speak in the AVE, because I'm hip and cool, I understand 90% of it. But there is, there, I got news for me and people like me. When you call yourself hip and cool, you ain't. Okay. You might not, you know, you know. Exactly. But, but I understand most of it.

But there's like 10% I don't understand. I'm like, wait, what was that way? I got to rewind, okay. But isn't it kind of funny? I'll flip it because I often on the show make fun of like local news anchors that talk like the number of accidents have doubled but so of the number of ambulances and that's a different language right but not one that any other person speaks other than the people on TV right so do they have a prayer like the cable news folks right the CNN's the MSNBC I'm not

even talking about bad guys like Fox News I'm just saying like normal CNN MSNBC like can people relate to them or for young people is that like What are they saying on it? It's so boring, such a, like, you know what I'm saying? Their response is hilarious. So, I mean, the honest truth is like from my comment section, I would say, no, most people aren't relating to it, which is why most people, younger people, right, are not watching the news because they're like, I don't get it. Like, they're using too many words, like, just get to the point, you know. And so I think maybe that was the issue with capturing a younger audiences. They're like, you're not talking to me because you're not talking

like me, you're not even trying to connect with me. And so when I put out information, I do my best to try to like relate to the younger generation, in particular like my generation too, to get us pulled into the scenario. And I think that's what makes it different. And that's why people can appreciate it now because they're like, okay, I feel hurt. Like somebody understands me, you know. And so yeah. Yeah. So A.B., you know, I it's a funny thing to say, but I super relate to you. And the reason I relate to you is because when we started doing this show, we talk like normal human beings.

And that led the snobby so-called broadcasters to assume that we didn't know what we were talking about. Because we didn't wear a tie. And we didn't say, oh, I'm doing it a lot of news tonight, you know. And so, and I think, and there's a little bit of, maybe a lot, I don't know, of racism in their reaction to you because you're obviously really smart and well educated and know all the issues. So there's like this element I feel when news covers you of like, but she knows what he's talking about.

Wait, why is it a butt? Yeah. Do you sense the same thing? Of course. I mean, again, as an African American woman, right, there's always this small aspect of racism that I have to pay attention to. And I think that's what makes me so unique and that normally I am the only black person in the room, right? Which is how I was able to adopt the other language, right?

The proper English language, right? But I think that's what makes what I'm doing so dynamic is that I can still essentially be ghetto and speak ebonics. But like, I do know what I'm talking about. I got two bachelor's, a master's, and I'm working on my law degree. So you can't tell me, right? And I'm not educated. And I don't know how to do research and get accurate. information and even presented accurately, but I think that's what makes it so great is that

now you can no longer allow me to hide in plain sight and think that I'm not as smart and educated as I actually am because to be told, like, look at me, I am, right? Yeah. So I think that's the old lesson of like, don't judge a book by its cover because you don't know what's on inside. Yeah, no, it actually really bothers me to come to think of it. And as you could tell, as I said, it's a little bit personal for me, but if you speak like a real person and you speak Ibonics or whatever you want to call it.

Of course it doesn't mean you don't know what you're talking about. It's a different vernacular, you're dumb news anchors and stuff. Anyway, so I mean, it's so ironic. They're like, oh, are they intelligent? No, idiot, are you intelligent that you can't, you're thrown off by the vernacular instead of the content. So, and it's not just the legal issues that you cover well. I watched your foreign policy ones in Ukraine and stuff. And your point on Zeke's was on point, you know, and it was.

And no, your information's unassailable. No question, right? Yeah. So now, another interesting part of this is why you got in this in the first place. So why did you start making videos? So I started making videos as a way to bring attention to my brother's case. My brother was wrongfully convicted of a murder when he was 15 years old and he was sentenced to 50 years to life. And so he's been incarcerated for the last like 15 years.

And I would see, you know, all these videos going viral of these different wrongful conviction cases. And there were cases like I had either been privy to from school or just because I'm a case junkie, right? Like I just kind of knew what was going on. And so I was like, okay, like maybe if this is helping other people, like maybe. Maybe I can just help my brother, like, maybe somebody will see it and be like, you know what, let me see if I can help them. So that's essentially how it started. And honestly, like, it just grew from there. It's been crazy.

So I haven't seen an update on your brother. What is the situation now? So my brother is still incarcerated, trying to get help to try to bring him home. Obviously, there's a lot of laws in California that have changed recently. And so the conversation now is sort of like, you know, we can probably fight this sentence, right? Fighting a wrongful conviction is extremely difficult. I don't think people realize like how high the standard it is for that. But we can probably fight the sentence due to the change in legislations and things like that.

So at this point, I'm just hoping that we can get a petition in and, you know, get him home and bring him justice. So Amy, what went wrong in that case in your opinion? Why do you think he was wrongfully convicted? Everything went wrong. For one, I think because he was a young black man in a very conservative city. So he was tried in San Bernardino County. It's very conservative out there. And he didn't have a jury of his peers.

We'll start there. But he was convicted based on the testimony of an informant. Essentially, there's no other information, no other evidence to place him at the scene of the crime. There's actually more to say that he was not a part of this crime, but I think as a young black man and even for our family not really being hip, right, to how the justice system really works. Like you grow up all your life as a black person knowing like, you know what, the justice system's not really for us. They'd be disrespecting us and this on the third. But reality doesn't hit home until you're actually sitting in that chair fighting for justice. And I think that's when the reality of how bias our system is, like, hit home for me,

which is why after my brother was convicted, like, I went to law school because I was like, there's no way. Like, y'all pulled out over our eyes, over my family. And like, this is, this is the end of it. Like, no, I need to know how this happened. And so as I am in law school and I learn more, I start to realize like just how structured, intentionally structured, this system is against black people and people of color, but in particular black people. And I definitely believe that that contributed to my brother's conviction, his wrongful conviction. So for folks who aren't familiar with it, why do you say that? Why do you think the system is stacked against you? I mean, it's embedded in our constitution, right? That is the primary

basis of our land and what we base our system off of. But the laws were created in a way where there's a loophole for everything, and it's never in the favor of the defendant. And what I realized going through this process and what I started to notice afterwards is that the defendant always looked like me, but nobody else in the court remembered it. Right. So nine time out of ten, the jury didn't look like me, the bailiff, the judge. And so there's no way for you to be so disconnected to me, but you can tell my story or even receive my story as a black person in a way that would allow me.

me to have justice the way that the book says we should have it. And so I think even with that, like just keeping black people in general, and I hate to like put it that way, but put keeping us out of the loop and out of, um, keeping us ignorant to the biases of the system and how it actually works. I think that contributes greatly to a lot of wrongful convictions, definitely. Right. So, AB, one more thing back on the vernacular. So when I speak Turkish, I can go about a paragraph and sound pretty authentically native because I was.

I came when I was eight and I just struggle with the words sometimes if I go into the second paragraph, right? But people will think if I'm in Turkey, oh, he's Turkish. And then when I speak English, I don't have an accent in English either because, you know, if you come between a certain age as like eight and 12, you don't have an accent in either language. And then when I speak English without an accent, sometimes Turks look at me like, oh, is this guy a phony? Like, wait, which one are you, right? So do you get that because you can speak as you put in ebonics and so-called proper English? For sure, for sure. Look, I almost said for sure, right?

For sure, I definitely do. It's so funny thing, like I went to a restaurant not too long ago and these ladies, like, recognize me from the internet. And so I had a quick conversation with him. And the lady was like, oh, well, you don't like sound how you sound on the internet? And I was like, girl, when I walk away from here right now, how are you going to talk to her? Not the same way you talking to me, right? I'm like, I don't know you. So I'm already trained in condition to I'm talking to a stranger who I don't know. So this is the appropriate language. So I make sure you get me. But to be told, again, I could speak both languages just because I don't have an accent or just because I turn it on and

off, right? Doesn't mean that it's fake or it's phony. It's real. But I just know how to play both sides of the coin. And, you know, we call it code switching, you know, where I'm from. So I have adopted the ability to be able to code switch quite well. But please don't get it twisted, right? Like I still, I still speak high. I speak and I'm with it, whichever way. 100%. Look, I speak in a thousand different contexts. And I don't speak the same way to my friends as I would do, let's say, in a finance meeting, right? I'm not going to go in there and high-five the guys, the bankers and be like, yo, what's-o-what-so, what's-up, right?

Like, whatever stupid thing we say, right? Okay, whatever things that's left over from the 1990s that we still use, I wouldn't use with the bankers. Okay, anyways. All right, A.B. Burns Tucker, everybody check her out. It's at I am legally hype, which is perfect title. at I am legally. All right, A.B., you're awesome.

Thanks for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. No problem. All right, now we're going to talk to two of the giants in the progressive movement. They've got a new plan. Let's hear what that plan is and then talk through about how it can work. Joining me now is Alan Minsky. He's the executive director of Progressive Democrats of America and Harvey J.K.

He's Professor Emeritus of Democracy and Justice at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Alan Harvey, welcome. Thank you to be here. Yeah. So Harvey, you're a fan and a professor of history. And so you guys came up with a plan that relates to FDR, MLK, and others. So tell us what the plan is and how it relates to those folks. Okay, so this is an economic Bill of Rights, a 21st century economic bill of rights.

And it's grounded in, as you were pointing out, an American tradition. The American progressive tradition goes back to the New Deal when FDR began the New Deal with the idea of an economic declaration of rights. And in the course of his presidency set out to cultivate by way of the New Deal the idea that Americans required and had a right to economic security. And in 1943, with this idea in his head, the White House commissioned polls asking Americans what they wanted to see after the war. And roughly speaking, 85% of Americans wanted guaranteed health care, guaranteed employment, and guaranteed aid to students to enable them to go as far as their capacities could take them. Okay, high school, college, graduate school, professional school. The idea was guarantee their ability to pursue all of that. Now, FDR himself passed away in 1945, but this vision, this promise almost that he projected, was not forgotten.

In 1960, the Democratic Party actually built its platform on the promise of pursuing FDR's Economic Bill of Rights. A. Philip Randolph proposed in 19. of freedom budget that followed the outlines of FDRs for freedoms and economic Bill of Rights. And then Martin Luther King Jr., not long before his death by assassination in 1968, issued a call for an economic bill of rights. The point is that it's there, and the majority of Americans have always wanted this. This is not even specifically a Democratic, progressive Democratic left kind of thing. When I said 85% of Americans wanted these things, that included at least 75% of Republicans and 95% of Democrats. And we thought it was time to bring forward that idea because the polls

show that Americans want these very kinds of things, the Democratic Party needs to pursue this kind of vision, needs to lay this out in the midst of a crisis of democracy. The only way to redeem and advanced democracy is not simply to defend it, but to enhance it. Yeah, unfortunately, when we talk about history and we talk about the polling, it does get a little depressing because the American people are super clear. They want a universal health care for decades now. Decade after decade after decade. The Democratic Party has said that they were in favor of it for decade after decade. And yet it still doesn't get done. So obviously there's something massively, massively wrong with our system.

both for the Democratic Party and the media, because it takes you guys to point it out. Like, you know, that's why I love what you guys are doing. You're framing it as, hey, we all like FDR, right? We all like Martin Luther King, right? This is their idea. But the media was like, oh, no, it's radical. No, how could it be radical? That's just, it's absurd.

How could it? So is 85% of the American population radical? Anyways, as you can tell you get worked up about it. Alan, you guys endorse a lot of progressive candidates. So help me understand how this will help. Well, it is the final question in our 22 candidate questionnaire. Do you support this Economic Bill of Rights? And so far, of course, we're not going to be endorsing any candidates that don't check a yes on that.

I think all of us know, and most listeners of TYT know that the political reality we live in today, after the 2015-16 presidential election cycle, I feel there's a lot of ways you can look at the American two-party system. Right now, I think it's very clear, very common sense to people that there are basically three political major trajectories fit jammed inside the two-party system. They're the Trumpian reactionaries on the far right. They're the neoliberal center that runs from the Romney wing of the Republican Party through the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. And then they're the progressives who burst on the scene with the Sanders campaign in 2016. And what we are making this as sort of like a stake right in the ground to say we as progressives support this. We alone stand for and will not tolerate in our coalition, anybody who does not stand for the economic transformation of American society along the lines that the American people want.

And this is a declaration that will anchor that for progressives to make clear the distinction between neoliberals in the center, basically political conservatives, they want to conserve the current economic status quo, the reactionaries on the right, who really are just the complete corruption of Trump's promises that he made to the American public, which is no surprise there in 2015 and 16, because all he did is lower taxes on the wealthy and some minor trade adjustments when he was president with control of both houses of Congress, by the way. And then to the progressives. And this is what we stand for. And we've laid out as succinctly as possible, the economic measures and a clear vision of the economic transformation we want to see in American society and that this is definitional for progressives. Okay. Now that we've established why it's a good idea, let me challenge you on it anyway. So, So look, on the right to comprehensive quality of health care, nobody's going to disagree. The overwhelming majority of the country agrees with us. The only people who don't agree with us are honestly just flat out corrupt. So the politicians and the media that get paid by the drug industries and the health insurance industries,

most things in the world are filled with nuance. This is not. This is black and white. American people have wanted it for timing memorial. It's in every other developed country. Everybody in media that tells you it's too expensive is flat out lying on behalf of corporations and corporations. It's massively deflationary, in fact. It cuts out a huge, right.

We were worried about inflation. Let's get Medicare for all. It'll be a big solution to inflation. Yeah, on issues like that, I'm tired of doing fake debates where we give facts and they give nonsense. Like just absolute nonsense. But there are a couple of things here that people might be curious about. So Harvey, let me ask you about number eight here, because we've got eight on here. The right to recreation and participation in public life.

What do you all mean by that? Well, one could root it in the classic labor vision of the 24 hour day. Eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours for what we will. When FDR was proposing this, he had had a commission, the National Resources Planning Board, they actually had a fascinating word they said the right to adventure imagine that okay the right to adventure i love that i i i almost tried to talk allen into including that word in there but the right to to recreation it's to get out to be able to enjoy yourself you know fDR's vision of an economic bill of rights was actually rooted in the declaration of independence life liberty and the pursuit of

happiness, think of recreation as that additional trajectory towards the pursuit of happiness. So first of all, a lot of funny things in there. You know, when you frame it that way, it is kind of funny that when we say, hey, wouldn't it be nice if you had a right to recreation and to enjoy your life, right? The media generally says, no, you should be miserable. How dare you try to be happy? No, you don't have a right to that. But I assume Harvey, just to finish that thought, you mean to have enough resources and enough protection at work to be able to work eight hours and have enough, you know, resources, et cetera, to be able to enjoy the other. Absolutely. As you will have noted, early on, we say a primary right in this Economic Bill of Rights is the right to a job with a living wage, a living wage. And it's really fundamental to FDR when he signed into law the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933, which had the first federal minimum wage, he actually said, no company should be allowed to operate in the United States that does not pay a living wage. So he was already looking forward to that development. So a living wage would be able to, one would be able to afford life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And especially when you imagine a shared.

collective quality health care in America, and also public education as far as students are capable of pursuing it. It's hard not to enjoy Harvey, because he reminds us of the things that are obvious that we have forgotten because of the brainwashing. It's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's in the founding documents. And now, if you said, hey, there should be a right to adventure, they'd, you know, evacuate. from you from the building in a democratic organization, right?

And they'd be like, oh, that's radical. You can never win. FDR won four elections, four presidential elections. What do you mean you can't win? Let's put this out to the American public and see if they reject it. Right. I think they'll embrace it, right? Yeah, exactly.

Alan, here's another one, though, that I have a question about. Number six, the right to a meaningful endowment of resources at birth and a secure retirement. Secure retirement, I get Social Security clear, right? What do you mean an endowment of resource at birth? Well, we drew on the work of a bunch of people as we developed this. And one was an article from American Prospect in 2018 by three economists, William Darity, Mark Paul, and Derek Hamilton. And one thing that they have championed Hamilton in particular is the idea of baby bonds. Well, okay, leaving aside that particular proposal, the idea is, as everybody knows, in the United States of America.

We are not born into this life with equal opportunities. Some people are the man are born, very few, and the most of us are born with very little. And oftentimes in households in very, very bad, in dire economic situations. So it is along the lines of what was just very popularly put forward, which is, what was it, $300 per child under a certain age and $250 per month per child over a certain age. We just had this in the United States. I think it was tremendously popular. So it would fit in that mold or something along baby bonds. But again, the idea that when people come into this life, they're not born into poverty,

that there is some provision for each child born so that they have the opportunity to not be born into dire social and economic circumstances. Yeah, and by the way, the child tax credit. I want to also add to that somebody very near and dear to your heart and mine. This was an idea that we actually drew upon as well from Thomas Payne. who was the visionary of Social Security. And he had spoken of the need, not only for what we came to know as old age pensions and social security for those to retire. He also said that young people should be afforded a grant of money to enable them to get a start in life. And that that was a fundamental way to combat poverty.

Yeah, the child tax credit was above 70%, I think around 75% in popularity. And so I just gave you the audience. the two of the most controversial ones on the platform. The other eight or the other six are 70, 80, 90 percent in approval rating. And yet we can't get the Democratic Party to do it, let alone the Republican Party. And that's the story's state of affairs right now. But Harvey Kay and Alan Minski are trying to fix it. So thank you guys for the effort.

And thank you for coming on and talk about it. Thank you, Jake. Thank you so much. No problem. Great to be here. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t.

I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.