interviews
Labor and the White House
by Dave Weigel
March 31, 2021
This interview with Dave Weigel, national reporter covering politics for the Washington Post, was conducted and condensed by franknews and Payday Report.
DW | The White House's involvement in the Amazon union drive was a big surprise. I mean, we know where it could have originated, the union talked to the White House; they have kind of an open door with Biden that they didn't have with Trump. We know that Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’ campaign chairman, and his group, Perfect Union, got involved. So, there was public pressure.
The fact that the White House and the president released that video was a big deal to people. And, he made this decision to get involved very early on in his presidency. It was within his first 50 days. He decided to do what hadn't been done before and give a message in support of the union. It was a very careful message. The new labor secretary, Marty Walsh, when asked specifically about Amazon, responded in more general tones.
But, no matter what happens, if you are in for a penny, you are in for a pound.
A lot of previous presidents, including Barack Obama, said a lot less about these union drives and, in doing so, limited their own exposure. If the drive didn't work, people didn't say that the president supported something that didn't work. The fact that Biden made a statement, early on, when it wasn't clear how this was going to go, is a real political statement of what they thought was important.
frank | How do you think his background plays a role in this?
He's always leaned in really hard and identified with workers in the same way he's tried to identify with different civil rights movements. Joe Biden has always wanted to be seen as the kind of person who is coming from Scranton, who has lived through the sixties, and who wants to jump to the front of the march if there is a struggle happening.
He frames everything in terms of fairness. He's not as natural as other members of the party in talking about this. When Bernie Sanders talks about this, for example, he talks about greed, he names CEOs, he says nobody deserves that much money, he talks about a maximum wage and how there should be no billionaires at all. Biden doesn't go that far. Biden has never gone after Jeff Bezos. He's never gone after individual heads of companies the way that Sanders does. He does this sort of a "Hey man, these guys are under assault, somebody needs to stick up for them."
That is something that he has always wanted to be part of his brand. Even when he was voting for trade deals like NAFTA as a Senator, he was never really comfortable. He had the same ideological mindset as a lot of the Democrats in the eighties and the nineties. He did it because he saw that that was the way things were moving and he voted strategically. But, the stuff that fired him up was when he could side with workers. It is the same thing with the projects he took on under Obama when he was Vice President.
During the Democratic primary, he didn't get the same amount of labor support that Hillary Clinton did, but, Sanders didn't get it either. There wasn't the same sort of a landslide of labor to get in early and say, this is our candidate. Instead, they were demanding more of the candidates.
I would cover presidential primary events with the Teamsters in Cedar Rapids or the Building Trades in DC and you would kind of look to the level of applause as an indicator. The interesting thing is that at those events Sanders would lay out the things he did and what he wanted to pass. Biden would go on at length about non-compete clauses and about wage theft and things like that. It was less, "I have studied all of the papers on this and I've decided this is my policy," and more of "this seems unfair and I'm against this thing."
I think the Democratic Party is increasingly understanding what labor can mean for them strategically.
Republicans have gotten kind of tangled up on labor. They have done better with union households, but they are basically the party of deregulation still. They've never really moved on the labor part of their messaging. That makes it easier for Biden to compete for these workers. When it comes down to it, Republicans want “right-to-work." Josh Hawley, who branded himself as a working-class candidate, for example, supports a national right-to-work.
Biden was very concerned with winning back more union households. Union workers were saying, “Democrats had the presidency for 16 years. What do they do for us?” Biden didn't have all the answers that labor wanted, but he was making a lot of specific promises about how he was going to act. He talked about infrastructure spending and about how he was going to run the NLRB and how he was going to approach employers. It was less than Sanders did, but that's way more than Democrats had done in the past.
I mean, the McCain/Romney era Republicans had no appeal to the sort of voters who voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump. Biden only peeled back maybe 10% of them depending on where you're talking about, but it has made life easier for Democrats.
This fight has in large part been framed in the context of continuing a battle for civil rights. Do you see Biden lean into that messaging?
Biden did not really lean to the racial justice aspect or the civil rights legacy aspect of this labor fight. When the congressional delegation here came down a couple of weeks before the vote, they were much more explicit. Someone like Jamal Bowman or Cori Bush is much more comfortable saying that than Biden. That is the thing about Biden. He basically sets boundaries. He says what his position is and backs off and lets the action happen without his constant commentary. It's very different than Trump in that way too. And that's different than the Sanders position. And it's different than what Warren said her position would be as president.
Can you give us context on how or why you started covering this story?
I started covering the Amazon drive because of the president and members of Congress intervening. I mean, labor decided to get involved months before, but the fact that Democrats were getting involved was new. It has been interesting to monitor their investment in this over other Democratic Party causes.
There's a little bit of intervention from the Democrats, but not, I'd say equal to what Amazon is doing. They are not the advertisements on TV. We all know the Democratic party is kind of involved, but it is not the same political project that I've seen in other places.
There are two stories that kind of were happening at the same time; they have merged, but not completely. One is this labor drive, which is smaller than most drives that have succeeded. It is not overwhelming. You don't see labor signs everywhere you go. But, on the other hand, the level of national involvement is kind of new.
Had Biden said nothing, there would have been a story, but it wouldn't involve the White House, it wouldn't involve the Democratic Party, and it might not involve the PRO Act.
And I think that's going to change because of this.
New interview w/ @daveweigel @PaydayReport
— frank news (@FrankNewsUS) April 6, 2021
"The White House's involvement with the Amazon drive was a big surprise ... Previous presidents, Obama comes to mind, said a lot less. The fact that Biden did that early on is a political statement of what they thought was important." pic.twitter.com/MwYlmqE4xQ
That was a big decision Biden made to be a part of this.
Right. And that political story is interesting. The story here is much more independent. A lot of the people who've come in to help canvas are from smaller groups. You have Black Lives Matter and DSA groups from the area, but you don't have the Democratic Party getting involved in a huge way. I think that is something that people will revisit after the vote.
Should the Democratic Party, like most left parties in the world, be very involved with labor? Should they always take the side of labor?
Most social democratic parties are labor parties and they build up from there. Their coalition includes labor unions. In the British Labour Party, for example, labor has a role in electing the leadership. That is not the case here. That's the conversation I think they're going to start having when this votes over. For example, if there are, and the union says there are, hundreds of people around the country calling them saying, "Hey, I have some questions about what I can do at my fulfillment center in my town," that will be a question for Democrats.
And if Amazon wins, do you get spooked? Amazon has been very punchy in their PR. They might say that a bunch of elite Democrats stood with the union and the workers stood with Amazon. That is very comfortable turf for Amazon to be on, and that leaves a big question open for Democrats. If the union succeeds, throw all of that out the window. I think the lesson that everyone would take in that case would be that if it takes less than a three-minute video from the president to get momentum for something like this, then we should keep doing that. As we talk, I don't know the answer to that question. I think that is something that is going to be answered when the votes are in.
interviews
Cancel It
by Jonathan Elwell
February 22, 2021
This interview with Jonathan Elwell, a participant in The Debt Collective's 100-day debt strike, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Jonathan | My name's Jonathan. I grew up in South Florida and now live in Brattleboro, Vermont. I work for a restorative justice organization that helps people address harm and conflict and assist folks as they transition back into the community after being incarcerated. I'm on strike with the Debt Collective.
When I was looking at colleges, I had a pretty open mind. I basically just thought I would go to as good of a school as I can and figure out some niche that works for me. I ended up going to a four-year private college in Minnesota. I graduated in 2019, with $22,000 of debt. My parents have about the same amount in loans taken out in their name. In total it is about $45,000 of debt.
I had followed the Debt Collective's work for a few years. Early on in my college experience, I got really concerned about and interested in climate change. The more I learned about climate change, the more I realized what was inhibiting effective action came down to our economic systems and to capitalism and to colonialism. In thinking about economic systems and how we can change them, I thought that the Debt Collective had a really compelling analysis of why we are in these relationships.
When I heard about the strike, I was very supportive, but I wasn't quite sure if there was a place for me in it. I felt like I had chosen to go to a private four-year university. I knew that there were cheaper options. But, after a couple of conversations with folks, I realized that there's something really important about my participation in the strike because we have reached a moment where student debt strikes are no longer focused only on predatory for-profit colleges.
The only way that tuition at a private college can balloon to the extent that it has is the same reason that predatory for-profit colleges can even exist — the defunding of public education. I think there is something really important about this strike about the whole system.
frank | The focus of their first strike was targeted specifically towards for-profit colleges, correct?
Yeah, the first strike was focused on the Corinthian college system, a for-profit college system.
So what does this 100-day strike look like and what are its goals?
Ultimately, as 100 people, we are not possessing material leverage that's going to compel the federal government. But, we believe that we can use our stories and bring attention to this cause in a way that makes the argument and the necessity of this action really clear. We can put pressure on legislators to be vocal about this, and to put pressure on Biden, ourselves. We can get people talking about and thinking about student debt, and debt in general, in a really different way.
How should we be thinking about debt?
This is a moment where yes, we want to accomplish one clear policy goal, but it also is about promoting a different way of thinking that we think is really crucial for this movement and for economic justice movements going forward.
What does the organizing look like?
The organizing looks really different than it would if we were not in a pandemic, which is true of anything these days. Of course, it is a lot of social media, but we are also trying to do some direct actions. I actually just had a conversation earlier today with staffers of my representative in Congress talking about what we're doing and how we could potentially collaborate and what we might ask from legislators. We are planning things like banner drops, dropping legislative materials at people's offices, and thinking of creative ways to connect with people.
Have you seen any movement from legislators from this campaign?
I don't know if folks like Chuck Schumer really had student debt on their radar at all before the pandemic. Now, he is calling for $50,000 of cancellation. Again, that's not what the Debt Collective is calling for — we want complete cancellation — but it's a huge step. To have moved the needle that drastically is really important. You can look all the way back to Occupy when people were first starting to float the idea of student debt cancellation, and people basically just got laughed away. The center has definitely moved on on this issue, which is really exciting and we hope to move it even further.
It is more clear now than ever that the federal government has the money to fund programs. The money is there, it is about the political power to make them fund the programs we want. For too long, that's been corporations, that's been Wall Street. This is a moment where we are trying to shift the power.
How do you understand this movement in the broader history of anti-poverty movements?
Thinking broadly about carrying on the legacy of previous anti-poverty movements, I think what's really clear here is that there is no single issue that you can focus on as part of an anti-poverty movement. Poverty is systemic. It is clear that the way to deal with this exploitation is collective power, collective power we haven't had in this country as workers.
It is clear that traditional unions in the workplace are still crucial, but workplaces and people are so divided, and we have so many different identities and pieces of ourselves, that it's hard to pull that into a more conventional labor movement.
Building a model of a union where people work together and strike collectively, if need be, to stop the craziness can be really effective. I mean, look what some people on a subreddit can do. Imagine what a mass debt strike could do. Game Stop craziness. Of course, right now we are just a few students, but think about what striking on mortgage payments could look like. The power is there. The potential is huge.
Looking at the 1968 Poor People's Campaign, the specific demands were higher wages and better housing. Maybe there is no silver bullet for poverty, but, wages and housing are a good, broad-based start, and some of the pushback for college debt cancellation is that it is focusing on an elite subsect of people.
Yeah, I definitely hear that and I think there are a couple of different responses. One, this has economic benefits for everyone. This means that there is more money staying in communities, being used beyond servicing debt. The impacts are immediate and widespread.
The other part is that a large majority of student debt is held by people who did not graduate college. In Vermont, 50% of borrowers who still hold debt over the age of 26, have less than a bachelor's degree. Either just community college or no degree at all. And often those are the people who are hit the hardest by economic collapse. I think that's an important point.
But, I also think that that is why it is so crucial to make it clear that this is an abolitionist movement. This is not about debt forgiveness or debt relief, which plays into the tropes of, "Oh, you poor debtor. You've made a mistake. You've been irresponsible." No. This is about abolition. This is about not just canceling the debt, but abolishing the systems and the conditions that force us into debt in the first place, and that profit off that debt.
By abolishing people's debt, we open up so much more space. For me personally, I would have so much more time and energy to commit to my community, to the causes that matter to me, to building a more just world. I think there's so much transformative potential when we see debt as a mechanism of social control and that by canceling this debt, we free people from that and free people to pursue whatever is important to them.
Something we talked about a lot in our month focused on debt was the element of shame, and how that's so controlling. Anti-poverty movements feel like the antithesis of that. It is literally people coming together saying, I am poor, I am struggling, listen to my demands.
In this age of exacerbated finance capitalism to retake power is so humanizing because other struggles people see are very public and external and people don't see other people struggling with debt, even though a million people default on their student loans every year. There are 45 million student debtors in this country. All of those people are struggling with it. To make these struggles public is so humanizing.
People truly believe that their irresponsibility or lack of effort is the cause of their problems. They internalize it and don’t talk about it. But when they understand these problems to be products of a racist, patriarchal, misogynist system, that shame goes away and it becomes possible to reassert what we deserve as people.
And I think that is what is potentially really transformative about what the Debt Collective is doing. By pushing back on the conventional wisdom of how we understand these things we can get so much more. We are in debt because of policy failures that require collective action and structural solutions. That’s why we strike.