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
When Wealth Determines Culpability
by Vincent M. Southerland
September 30, 2020
This interview with Vincent M. Southerland, the inaugural Executive Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU Law, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Vincent | I'm the executive director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU School of Law. The center focuses on the past, present, and future of race and inequality in America. We look at how race taints the operation of the criminal legal system and, in turn, taints experiences and outcomes for people in that system. Our work is focused on policy advocacy, research, litigation, and public education; we both expose racial inequality in the criminal legal system and attempt to rectify it in some way.
Before I joined the center, I was a federal public defender. I worked at the NAACP legal defense fund where I handled death penalty cases and cases of youth sentenced to life without parole. I also worked as a state public defender. Most of my career has focused on issues of racial justice in the criminal legal system.
frank | A lot of your work centers around bail system reform. Why do you think it is important to focus on that part of the criminal justice system?
The bail system is a point in our criminal legal system where the harms of the system at large are made readily apparent.
It ignores the presumption of innocence. It perpetuates mass incarceration. It is steeped in racial injustice. It is emblematic of a lot of the problems that we see in our system, and it is a place that is in dire need of reform and reimagination.
The harms of being held in pretrial detention are significant. It is hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around the harm that comes from being plucked out of your life for a day or two. Imagine if you were stuck in jail for weeks or months on end, disconnected from employment, from health care, from your family, from your community, and from all the things that make your life vibrant. How would you go about resolving that if someone came to you and said, just plead guilty, and we will let you out of custody?
It demonstrates the inequities and harms that the criminal justice system imposes on people at a macro level. And to be clear, the pretrial justice system has operated as a coercive tool for decades — the cash bail system forces people to resolve cases by pleading guilty in instances where they otherwise might want to fight the allegations against them. And the connection between race and economic disadvantage adds a layer of injustice to the entire pretrial system.
Anecdotally, how have you seen how the bail system encourages people to plead guilty?
As a public defender, I've had countless cases where an individual was accused of a low-level offense and was essentially told that because of their prior criminal history, because of their personal history, because of barriers and hurdles that they had struggled with in their own lives, it was likely that bail or detention would be requested by a prosecutor, that a judge would likely agree with that request, and they would be required to post some amount of money to avoid pretrial detention. Their alternative was to plead guilty and be able to go home within a few days.
Faced with those options — knowing that you're stuck in jail, knowing you don't have family members who can post a couple of thousand dollars for you, knowing you can't afford to pay a bail bondsman to post bail for you, and knowing that you will potentially be sitting in jails for some indeterminate amount of time while waiting to get your day in court, it becomes very apparent to folks that the easiest and quickest way out of these situations is to plead guilty.
As a public defender, as the person defending them, what do you advocate for in that situation?
You have to strike a really careful balance. You don't want your clients to lie to the court. However, at the same time, you have to understand that people are in an incredibly difficult position, and they need to make the best choice for their lives under the circumstances.
The tradeoff has always troubled me. There were instances where I thought that there was a possibility that this person could fight the case and have a much different outcome, but I knew that fighting the case meant that they would be sitting in jail if they could not afford bail while waiting for that case to be resolved.
It's not unusual or extraordinary that a system founded to control populations is still doing the same work generations after our country's founding. It was nevertheless disappointing and frustrating.
Do people take debt to be able to afford cash bail?
In a way. There are processing fees and extra costs associated with both the bail bondsmen and the courts. You can use a bail bondsman who you pay a percentage of the bail amount and they'll post the rest of the bond for you. Out of what you have given them, they take their own fees. And if you or a family member post bail yourself, the court system also holds onto some percent of that money.
The real challenge with cash bail is that most Americans don’t have enough savings to cover a $1,000 emergency. And the bail process itself poses a challenge. Even if you are able to come up with a couple of thousand dollars, that money belongs to the court until your case is resolved. It takes even more time after the resolution of the case to get that money back.
I'll just speak from my own experience. I had a family member who had to post bail, and his case took the better part of two years to be resolved. After that, it took us another three and a half months to get the money we had posted back. Imagine if you or your family is out of that money for all that time. That is money that can be used to buy food, buy medicine, or to support your kids. That is money that can be used to cover any number of critical expenses that are especially challenging to cover when people are living paycheck to paycheck.
The idea of cash bail is rooted in the assumption that people will only show up to court if they have a financial incentive. Do you think that assumption holds?
The assumption that people will only come back to court if they have some financial skin in the game is one that is belied by the experience of the vast majority of people in the criminal legal system.
In my experience of representing people accused of crimes, they want to live up to their obligations to the court. They want to come back to court and resolve their criminal cases.
And the instrument we are using to ensure appearance — cash bail — is divorced from reality. Because of bias in policing and enforcement patterns, most people who are arrested in misdemeanor cases are not folks of significant means. They are often living at the margins. They are not going to be able to flee a jurisdiction or flee the country. We are talking about people who are living paycheck to paycheck. The reality is that people come to court, and people come back to court, in overwhelming numbers.
If that premise is false, are there other ways that we should be looking at the bail system?
I'm on the board of the Bail Project, which is a national organization that pays bail for people — the goal is to restore meaning to the presumption of innocence and to reinvigorate our pretrial system with some semblance of justice.
The work of the Bail Project has demonstrated that pretrial release with support is what people need. In about 20 jurisdictions across the country, the Bail Project serves as a bail fund for individuals who are accused of crimes — individuals who are facing the possibility that they may join the over half million people who are stuck in jail because they can’t afford to post bail.
Working with local public defenders and community-based organizations, the Bail Project’s bail disruptors post bail for the accused at no cost to them, and provide supportive services like court reminders, rides to court, and other assistance to ensure that they can get back and forth to court. They make sure clients are able to successfully resolve their cases by providing the support that people need in order to abide by whatever conditions of release the court has placed on them. At the end of the case, the bail posted is returned to the Bail Project to be used again for future clients.
We've seen overwhelming success in people coming back to court. And again, these individuals are not posting their own money. They don't have any financial incentive to return, and yet even in those circumstances, they come back to court, repeatedly and successfully. This idea that we need to impose a financial condition on folks has been debunked by the work that bail funds across the country are doing and by the experiences of people every day.
If there is a concern that an individual may pose a flight risk or a threat to public safety — the two things that state bail statutes most often require judges to consider — then we should have a robust hearing that requires the prosecutor to demonstrate why that person should be detained. There are reforms that we can look to, rather than using the blunt instrument of imposing unaffordable cash bail on preemptively detained individuals.