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
Othering and its Consequences
by Philip Melendez
August 25, 2020
This interview with Philip Melendez was conducted and condensed by franknews.
My name is Philip Melendez and I am the program manager at Re:Store Justice. I was formerly incarcerated. I served nearly 20 years and I've been home for nearly three years.
Can you tell me more about the work that Re:Store Justice does?
Our focus at Re:Store Justice is to go from proximity to policy.
Before COVID, we did a lot of work inside of prisons. We brought survivors of crime, people who had lost loved ones to violence, district attorneys, legislators, people who just had an interest in criminal justice reform, into the prisons, and held events to give them a different perspective. We want to create a shift in the way people think about prisons, and about the transformation and rehabilitation that can happen on the inside.
How has the work changed since COVID? What have your priorities become?
That work inside has much halted since we can not hold events inside.
Initially, we started helping by donating PPE. We donated masks and gloves to some of the hardest-hit prisons where the outbreak started. We don't know what happened to the supplies, but obviously, with the numbers we are seeing now, it didn't help them enough.
We recently started the Canteen Project, raising money to go directly to prisoners so they use that money in the commissary for food and other hygiene projects. I don’t know if you saw our post the other day, but the food that they are serving, during a pandemic, is abysmal. It’s like a piece of bread and some cornflakes. There is no nutrition, there is no holistic focus on health during a pandemic.
That reminds me of a quote from a previous interview. "The Department of Corrections has never prepared for a health crisis. They have one solution to a health crisis, and that is punishment." Like looking back, can you see mechanisms of that mindset?
Definitely.
I remember once when I was sick, I decided to tough it out and not leave my cell. I remember going to sleep and hoping that I would not die, hoping that I would wake up the next morning. Two or three days later, I was feeling better and asked the nurse for some lozenges. They asked what I had had and took my temperature.
It was just barely a high temperature, but they sent me to the hold, which is the same as solitary confinement. I had to sit in a solitary cell for a couple of days. And they stripped me of everything. They took all my belongings, which are everything when you are inside of the prison especially if you have pictures of loved ones.
So is that the standard approach? You get sick, you get put in an isolated cell?
Yeah.
If there's something more severe, like Coronavirus, or if you needed surgery or if you were having a heart attack, they simply can't help you. As the quote said, they don't have anything in place. It's not a hospital. They can hold you until the helicopter comes. If people get stabbed, they don't get care. Hopefully, the helicopter gets there soon enough, and they'll do what they can, but they're just not prepared or, I don't think, educated enough to handle any major medical issues.
How has this crisis has forced us to look at the intersection between public health and prisons?
Public health concerns are very much intertwined with what happens in prison. And that is not something that people ever really even gave a second thought before this crisis. But it is real.
The spread is all on the prison staff - 100%. The guards, the kitchen staff, the maintenance staff, it's all on them. Once they bring a virus in and an outbreak starts, it's impossible to socially distance inside. Prisons are like incubators, and they are run like incubators - everything from food distribution, cross-contamination between cells, the cramped spaces, the terrible ventilation. All of it. And then prison staff comes in and out, every day, all over the state, and spreads it to their families, and it goes on and on.
Our organization has been very active in talking about the San Quentin outbreak.
What are you asking for during this pandemic?
The specific asks for San Quentin are to cut the population by 50%. The prison itself is overcapacity. Buildings made to house 400 people, house 800. The cells themselves are 4X10. They were originally one-man cells but they added bunks in these spaces. I used to be able to reach out and have both hands touching each wall. The windows are welded shut and the ventilation is horrible. Based on these horrific conditions, we have asked that San Quentin reduce the population to have a hope at social distancing.
We want mass releases, and we don’t want there to be a distinction between release for violent and nonviolent offenders. We think that that is a horrible distinction that deems some people deserving and others not deserving. It's not considerate of data on recidivism rates, it doesn't consider violence as situational rather than indicative of a person's being.
Our organization has been very much involved with San Quentin. We have a team of seven, and three of us are formerly incarcerated and spent time together at San Quentin. We left a lot of good friends behind. A lot of people who have committed horrible crimes in their past, but have made very huge shifts in their personality and became people that we are very fond of and love.
Do you see prisons effectively implementing rehabilitative programs?
San Quentin has been known as the “Ivy League school” of rehabilitation. I have been told that I have the “San Quentin privilege" largely because of where we are situated in Marin. We have all these very affluent, very progressive communities, and people around us.
But San Quentin is an anomaly.
But during my time in San Quentin, I learned a lot. I learned that I have emotions. I learned that I was taught toxic masculinity and to hide my emotions. I learned that I was hurt. I learned that I had traumas. I was a really sensitive kid. I realized that I went above and beyond to prove that I did belong.
I unpacked all of that during my time at San Quentin, but the way that the system is set up right now is just stupid. You are going to wait for us to kill somebody, to teach us how to not kill somebody, to teach us how to be okay with ourselves? That is backward.
How do you think we should be thinking about crime as a society?
As situational. Poverty is one of the biggest drivers of crime. Crime not indicative of people's culture - that is one of the most ignorant and racist things that I hear. And the ethos of, “oh just pick your up by the bootstraps” is ridiculous. How can we pick ourselves up by our bootstraps when we have nothing, when we have all these disadvantages.
There are human needs at the root of crime - and not just physical needs, emotional needs are critical. Safety, security, and self-esteem are essential. Maslow's hierarchy is real.
Otherization is a big thing as well. It stems from a natural fear - we don't trust outsiders. It sets the stage for xenophobia and tribalism, things that are being stoked on a national scale. But it also happens on a micro-scale- within gangs for example. In gangs, we almost always have derogatory terms for the opposition. We reduce them from a person to a thing. We do all that we can to dehumanize people so that we can then cause harm.
How do you see that same mindset playing out within the courts?
And I said, “Well, sir, you know, that is murderer logic.” That is a little something I learned from anger management class - our tendency to objectify and dehumanize people allows us to harm them. He was just speechless.
With law enforcement in general, there is a societal disconnect. The general mindset is that these people who come in are criminals, that our job, in the courts, is to uphold law and order, and we are righteous in our job. But in giving themselves that righteousness, they are implicitly saying to the people in front of them, you are not righteous. We are all humans, but with this mindset, they take away people's humanity and people's dignity. The courts lead to so many injustices, under the guise of the pursuit of justice.
Many district attorneys that we work with come in with those biases, but when they see the humanity of the folks, their whole psyche is messed up. The goal of our programs is to have people in the system see the personhood of the people behind bars, and it works. I have had district attorneys themselves tell me, "I don't know how I'm going to do my job again." They work in an assembly line of sorts. They'll get a case, see gruesome photos, hear a horrible story, give conviction, move on, and never see what happens in the aftermath.
How do we make sure that this shift in our collective psyche is carried out beyond this moment?
I mean, that's the big question of 2020. It ties together the Coronavirus outbreak, and the Black Lives Matter protests. These things are intertwined and this moment has exposed a lot of people to the horrors of the criminal justice system.
I hope we can keep these conversations going and keep the pressure on lawmakers. We need to keep the family members and advocates emboldened and passionate. We also need to continue to combat these negative narratives and this idea that everyone behind bars is a monster, that they are dangerous, and that we can’t let them back out into society.
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