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
If You Don't Do Politics, Politics is Going to Do You
by LaKeshia Myers
October 29, 2020
This interview with Wisconsin State Representative LaKeshia Myers was conducted and condensed by franknews.
LaKeshia | I'm State Representative LaKeshia Myers from the 12th assembly district in Wisconsin. My district encompasses the far Northwest corner of the city of Milwaukee and a small portion of the city of Wauwatosa.
frank | What concerns do you have in the days moving into this election — in terms of the area that you live in and that you represent?
Not in my area. I'm more concerned about other districts where, in the past, there have been efforts to sway the vote by distributing false information. People would put up signs in the central city of Milwaukee saying to vote the day after the election. Fake notices would be sent to people's mailboxes that their vote wouldn't count for one reason or another. We've seen those things in the past, but I've not heard of anything happening this particular election cycle.
In fact, turnout has been very good at the early voting locations across the city. There is an early voting location in my district, and I've helped many constituents apply for and turn in absentee ballots. We have secure drop boxes that are located at each of the public libraries. I've seen people take advantage of those capabilities.
In addition, we have done large scale campaigns and worked with other organizations to ensure that individuals know how to fill out their ballot, that they have a witness, that they know where to drop off your ballot, and that they know how to track their ballots online. All of these things have been going on for months.
There was some contention surrounding the Wisconsin elections during the primary, and around the decision to keep voting in person despite the threat of COVID. Do you feel like the state learned from that and do you feel like the changes were significant enough moving into the general election?
I think the state did learn from that experience. I also think that they received such backlash that they would dare not repeat that again.
That is ridiculous. That fell squarely on the shoulders of our city election commissioner and the mayor of the city. And at the state level, there was the bantering back and forth about whether to cancel the election or to postpone it. It was going to take an act of the legislature to postpone the election, yet the individuals in leadership in the state legislature refused to act on it.
As a result, when the election came in April, we had to do whatever we could to keep people in line in those five polling locations. I was there, I witnessed it. I was out there handing out cheeseburgers so people would stay in line because they had been there for hours. I had so many elders in the community that contacted me saying I have never missed an election, but I am too afraid to vote this time. There were people who couldn't find the correct polling location. The actual city election website would tell them they needed to go to one location, and when they arrived at that location, poll workers would send them to another.
A recent Supreme Court decision said that ballots received after election day in Wisconsin would not be counted despite the date of their mail-in. What do you think about that?
I disagree with the decision. Especially with everything that's going on with the postal service. Ballots that were postmarked by election day should be accepted. If people are trying to get their ballot in on time, who is to say that with more postal resources or employees the ballots wouldn’t have gotten there before election day?
Are there other policies specific to Wisconsin, or even to Milwaukee, that try to limit the ability to vote?
Absolutely there are other policies. The Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty challenged the elections process in the state of Wisconsin and wanted to throw people off the voter rolls.
There were elected officials, Black elected officials, whose names were on that list. The County Executive's name was on the list. Board members' names were on that list. These are people who we know to vote in every election, but yet they were going to be tossed off the voter rolls when they released that list.
Hillary Clinton was pretty vocal about feeling like her loss in Wisconsin was due to voter suppression in 2016. Do you think that's a fair accusation?
I do think that is a valid assessment from Secretary Clinton. That was part of it, but it wasn’t the only part of it. The fact that she did not come to Wisconsin still plays heavily in my mind as a campaign error. I would have expected that she would mandate that from her campaign. I know they work off of metrics and polling a lot of the time, but, in my opinion, boutique politics still works.
There was also a massive misinformation campaign in Wisconsin. We saw Black radio, Latino radio, and newspapers, oversaturated with hit pieces on Clinton. Whether that was from Russia or from domestic strife, I don’t know, but it had a huge impact. That was a concerted effort to limit the number of people who voted. If you look at the numbers, you see that there was a huge under vote — meaning people would vote for local and statewide offices, but would not for a president.
In Milwaukee, the Black vote dipped about 19% from 2012 to 2016. Causality is a hard thing to nail down in politics. It is hard to say that it was ads that they heard on the radio or targeted ads or disinterest in the candidate themselves. Do you feel like there's a difference in momentum, especially among the Black community in Milwaukee, in this election — compared to 2016?
I have seen a lot of postings about how much the Black vote dropped, especially in the city of Milwaukee and other swing states like Michigan. But when you talk about Milwaukee or Wisconsin, it was way more than just the African-American population that impacted the outcome. We were a part of it, but when you look at 6 million people living in the state of Wisconsin, African-Americans only make up 7% of the total state's population, and Latinos only make up another 6% of that population. Altogether we are less than 14% of the state's population. I think it is important to understand the larger demographics of these states.
But going back to your question, I think there was disinterest in the candidates in 2016. But I think that has totally changed this year because people understand what is at stake. People understand what it looks like to have a volatile person as president.
We are the number one manufacturers of cheese. We are the number one manufacturer of cranberries. A lot of farmers have lost their farm due to the volatile trade decisions coming from the president.
Milwaukee used to be known as the "Machine Shop of the World." The policies that have shrunk our manufacturing base have been in the works for the last 40 years — people are working two jobs and still don't have the ability to make ends meet. And now there are even more people in that situation. People are out of work and we are still tying healthcare to employment. Wisconsin refused to take Medicare expansion. These policy decisions are becoming a lot more real to a lot of people now.
If you were to ask most working-class people or middle-class people, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” The answer would be no, and it would probably be an emphatic no. I think that matters. And I think people have realized that they cannot sit at home and that it is not enough to vote third party. I think a lot of people will participate in this election. I'm expecting in-person turnout to still be high on November 3rd in Wisconsin.
Do you think this tangible feeling of policy you’re describing is at a rare high because COVID is so widespread?
Absolutely. The one blessing with COVID is the fact that everybody can see exactly how policy impacts their life. When you have a large scale pandemic like this, you get to see the priorities of your government in action. You get to see really up close and personal where we are.
Of course, there is still vitriolic rhetoric that exists to heighten people's fears. When Donald Trump says that he is “here for suburban housewives," that is a dog whistle meant to stir up racial animosities. But I think these circumstances are offering people the opportunity to get out and vote from the economic perspective.
The fact that our minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation is asinine. The fact that you are still paying people $7.25 is ridiculous when a gallon of milk costs $3. Does a person really have to work for half an hour to pay for a gallon of milk?
People are able to understand policy in terms of dollars and cents. We no longer have the ability to say, "Oh, I don't want to be engaged in politics", because right now, if you don't do politics, politics is going to do you.
COVID has grounded the way government impacts our lives.
Exactly. I mean, look at the way this has been handled. We are still arguing about whether or not to wear masks. We never activated the Defense Production Act to the extent that it needed to be enacted. Mom and pop skilled nursing facilities in my district were competing with major hospitals for PPE at exorbitant prices. The public was being lied to for months on end.
And on top of all of that, when people in April went to go protest at the Capital with guns and no masks, they were allowed to do so freely. Not one ticket was given. On the other hand, we have had protesters who have been out for over a hundred nights straight protesting police misconduct, and these people are being taken to jail. The federal government is says, "lock them up." The president is saying that we need to have “law and order.” I'm not that old, but I have read enough history books to know that that was what Richard Nixon said and to know that he used it as a racist dog whistle. I think people have had enough. This is not going to be the way in which this country proceeds. I think that this election is going to surprise a lot of people.