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
We Saw The Limits
by Dr. Sandro Galea
April 2, 2020
This interview with Dr. Sandro Galea, a professor and Dean of Boston University School of Public Health, was conducted and condensed by frank news. Follow him on Twitter: @sandrogalea.
We spoke with a doctor [Dr. Michael Brumage] earlier this week working in West Virginia – he described what was happening now as evidence of a societal failing and undervaluing of public health.
I couldn’t agree more.
When we say public health, what do we mean?
I think we mean two things here. I think we mean the functional, operational mechanics of the public health infrastructure. By that I mean how city, state, and federal agencies work and interact together – and have suffered from decades of underinvestment.
The second part of it is public health is about health, and the health of the world around us. It's about your health and how that might help our health collectively. And it's about creating a world that generates health to build a world where we have safe housing, good schools, clean air, drinkable water, livable wages, fair economies, gender equity. These are all forces that ultimately drive health. And we have deprioritized these forces because we have focused our health thinking on a very individualized biomedical approach. This failure shows our disengagement and disinvestment from public health at both these levels, both the more mechanical core functions of public health, and the creating a healthier world aspect of public health.
Right. We need to look beyond healthcare and healthcare institutions.
Exactly.
You mentioned the coordination between hospitals, state, local, and national. How is responsibility managed and tasked both in and out of crisis? How do you help those in charge at every level?
Collectively, we need to keep reinforcing the messages of public health. Public health should be about all of us paying close attention to the foundations that generate health.
I think the way to do that is by being clear about the message. This is not a one off pandemic. There will be other pandemics. The only thing we don't know is when and where, but there will be others. There have been others in the past, and there will be others in the future. If this is not a wake up call for us to create a healthier world, I'm not sure what it is.
What do we know for sure we need to do to take care of the most vulnerable populations?
There's a lot to do for the care of a lot of our most vulnerable populations. We need to make sure we are paying attention to the homeless, to the low income populations, those who have unreliable sources of income, those who are in prison, and our immigrant population. And each population requires different solutions. The health equity approach means not doing the same thing for everybody, but actually paying particular attention to what needs to be done for those who are most vulnerable.
Right. This virus has made it exceedingly clear that we are only as healthy as our least healthy populations or people.
Exactly. I think that this teaches us that there is no such thing as health for one, without health for all. Health ultimately is a public good, whether we like it or not. Seeing health as a private commodity, as something that you can buy and sell, fails. Because what you can buy is healthcare, and healthcare can only help us if we're already sick. We need to move to a health system, not the sick care system. To do that, we need to invest in the infrastructure that builds health.
Do you think that the stimulus bill that was just passed does what it needs to do?
I think it's a good first step. It has provisions for individuals, for small businesses to keep people employed, and for unemployment insurance. A lot of these provisions will depend on how they're implemented. However, the stimulus bill doesn't at all affect those who are living on the margins. For example, the unemployment insurance does not affect those who do not file tax returns. Twenty percent of Americans don't file tax returns. It doesn’t do anything for you if you're an immigrant living in this country and you're undocumented. I understand why that is the case from a political perspective, but we should be clear that this is a first step. It’s a good first step from where we need to be, but it’s a first step.
I mean, 3.3 million people filed for unemployment yesterday. That was an extraordinary order of magnitude, higher than the highest at the peak of unemployment during The Great Recession. This shows that the people who are losing their jobs are low income people who already had no savings. These are people who were already living on the margins, and these will be the people who are going to be affected hardest by this.
I read something you wrote recently that addressed the mental health component of all of this. You wrote, “first it's important to disseminate accurate up to date information on COVID19 to counter the misinformation that can lead to undue fear.” What pieces of information right now are critical? Beyond what I feel is necessary, I’m also consuming a lot of information that might not be. When is it enough?
I think it's important to try to keep yourself informed, but I also think there's been a lot of information, much of it inaccurate.
People need to be sure they are listening to sources they trust, and sources that are reliable. It is up to the individual in some respects to identify sources that they consider to be reliable. But I would encourage people to, as much as possible, not filter through information, to go to sources whose biases they understand, and who they think are reliable and who are trying to help educate the public through a combination of science and reason, with a very clear moral purpose to generate health for all.
Do you have recommendations on an individual level for mitigating the difficult mental health components that come with this?
Yes, absolutely. I think that, number one, people need to stay connected in this time of physically and socially distancing as much as possible. People need to maintain a community of their friends, their loved ones, and their workplaces. Number two, people need to be educated and realize that symptoms of depression and anxiety are common at a time like this. We need to be educated and aware of the challenges that those symptoms can pose. Number three, people need to be able to go to a health provider to get help if their symptoms start to impair their ability to get on with their life. Number four, I think people need to maintain healthy routines. People need to continue to exercise, to continue to maintain daily routines.
You spend your life in public health, do you see a way out of this? I think a lot of the anxiety is that it's all indefinite.
I mean, by the grace of God we will emerge from this and we will survive. I think that the key question is how we deal with the long term consequences of this. The long term consequences are going to be very much consequences of the economic slowdown and the people who are affected by that. Number two, how do we make sure that when the next pandemic hits, and it's good to remember that there will be a next pandemic, right? There will be. The question will be have we learned our lesson and built a world that's better able to handle a crisis.
I would go back to these two pillars that spoke about at the beginning of this interview. One is the, the actual public health mechanics of dealing with the pandmeic. And number two is creating a world that is resilient that has the pieces in place so that we are healthier. Those are the questions.
Right. And you're hopeful?
I prefer optimism. I think optimism is a form of resistance in the face of dark times. So yes, I am optimistic.