Transcripts For CSPAN3 Alissa 20240704

Of outsiders, hothouse kids and branded she is the executive director of the nonprofit the Economic Hardship reporting project. Shes also the author of two books of poetry, thoughts and prayers monetized. She has written for many, including the Washington Post, the New York Times and time. Her honors include an emmy and esp award and a nieman fellowship. Joining alissa in conversation Zephyr Teachout Zephyr Teachout, a law professor and globally renowned a. K. A option expert. She teaches at fordham school. She is the author of three books and has written extensively on inequality, corruption and power. The New York Times. Her the godmother of the modern progressive in new york. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming alyssa and zephyr to the stage. Good evening. Hello, everybody. Well, we are in for a treat. I am so delighted to be able to talk to you this wonderful book you have been a roll recently. I feel like youre everywhere. The New York Times, ams and the atlantic and the Washington Post and npr and i think it really reflects this incredible hunger that people have for understanding the that we understand ourselves. So before we get to the into some of the wonderful storytelling examples in history in the book can you talk a little bit about the moment were in now that you see . Well, i think part of this is i dont want us to lose the lessons that we learned which are like, you, moments of social generosity, Community People talking openly about their, you know, anxiety, depression, which now at record, right for kids, especially also mutual aids cuts, certain kinds of new political alignments, understand being low wage workers. Thats essential. There are so many things about the pandemic. Im not going to say it was positive, but there were sort of steps forward, if you will. And my my worry is were going to lose that. Were already losing it. The end of the eviction moratorium, the narrowing of again, the recertification with snap and welfare rolls, you know, there was there was a moment where things looked like there was a sort of mutual sympathy as darwin say, of people for each right as as embodied subjects. And i want to keep that alive i guess. So thats part of what i think people are responding to. Theyre like, how do we make sense of what weve been through and how do we retain the best knowledges that came from it . You know well, well, youre also poet and believe and have shown your talent in that area. Also your belief that work and images and symbols really central to thriving. So what i hear you talk about in here and in the book is a kind of nice set of new possibilities but the draw of old archetypes. So lets spend a few minutes with these archetypes Horatio Alger story pulling up by your bootstraps the selfmade man. What are a few that know this is great and whats great about the book is youre like, okay, were going to talk about bootstraps lets talk about boots like action boots. This seems to with what is it the workers broadside in 1834 making fun of nimrods id so do i have this right nimrod murphy so we have we have nimrod murphy to blame for this archetypal can you tell us the story of nimrod and the, the kind of joke that started this it was a joke is also used in a a philosopher used it as an example of mental teeth. It was kind of like almost like a pre theory mind kind of thing. Like can you imagine yourself up by your bootstraps . What a ridiculous idea . So it started as an absurdity and i think its one of the things about this country that over time, every absurdity seems to become things that people not only take very seriously but are destructively with. Right . I mean, okay, so in the 19th century, there were all boots. Men had boots. They needed them to work, working, working needed them especially they had to pull them on with these little tabs on the side and if you were really rich, you had someone who could help you put put your boots on and if you were. I. I dont know. I dont know if youre somewhere along that gradient, you might have machine. They had boot machines to help you put on your machines. And then ultimately, if youre working, man, you were struggling to pull on your boots and so that from that came this sentiment of not only pulling them on, but pulling yourself up. I actually tried once i wanted to see it. Yeah. You really cant. Yeah so to that the selfmade man, obviously, i always say that if you think youre selfmade, call your mother. My mother is right there. And then, you know, the Horatio Alger story and that that kind comes to be in the 19 century, early 20th reich really sediments and Horatio Alger if you read his novels its not actually a Horatio Alger story i mean i could i could elaborate if you want. Please. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like so, he wrote like 128 novels and they were they were dreadful theyre theyre like totally out of print. Theyre like, i had to find them in an essay library. I put the top. They have titles like ragged , tony the tramp, paul the peddler, and theyre all these like, you know, wide shouldered men, you know, like not even young men, basically teenagers. And they meet older gentlemen, inevitably and that becomes their the secret, their success. So they actually are kind of its like a marriage. Theyre like its theyre kind of kept boys in a way from these older men and that it also mirrored things in horatio odgers own life he had he was found to have committed pedophilic acts. He had been a minister who was chased out of his ministry in brewster, massachusetts. And you he became a novelist, is like a kind of a like as a way to cover kind of cover up some of these these actual. I think so the Horatio Alger story is the of a lie it at its base his lie but then its also really the story about you know, the the way that older male power intersects with young people is the oldest story in the world. Its not rags to riches. So but over time its rags to riches, but through a very different mechanism than its come to be known right now. Like the little princess, if you those of you who remember that was very popular the seventies. I think its a its a benefactor. The the which is also was a real character in victorian novels. Right the benefactor comes out of, you know, just appears and but this is a little creepier, right, because this is we look at his biography and he had actually adopted these two boys from the bowery and there was a terrible terrible at that time in history, terrible Child Poverty and a lot of homeless kids. He he adopted them. So who knows what would that involved also . But it went to become this story. The Horatio Alger story, and then it became a prize. And its like a prize. Its one that was won by reagan and it was won by a lot of people. And the piece in the atlantic that about this by book, the young woman and i dont know if she here tonight so somebody said she was coming but that it was a its a really good because she was writing about how she won this prize and she came from profound poverty. She had made something of herself in there. In there, you know, genealogy. And so it was like, you know, now this is really fascinating because as your excuse aiding this story and you start with the the joke on the one hand and the first joke from the working mans was making fun of nimrod for inventing patents, saying it, seems like mr. Murphy will now be able to hand himself over the cumberland by the straps of his boots. This is the sort of first bootstrap joke. So theres a joke on the one hand, and then a lie on the other. Its not about its actually a story of the wealthy coming to lift someone up. But theres a third story, which i think you struggle with more because youre more drawn to it its the amherst and thoreau and those who represented and dissent along with severe individualism. Right. So right and so. Yeah. So so can you talk a little bit how you see the role of of emerson and thoreau in particular in building this . Well, you know, so emersons famous book was selfbuilt science through, wrote walden right on walden and i kind of have a lot of fun at their biographies because when he was writing walden even writes about this, he had seats for company like this is i writing this book during the pandemic i was like through the entertaining lately i think this is not right and then and would over to his mothers house to get his laundry done exactly and what with Emerson Emerson is like a more kind of conventional intellectual figure but he got money from his deceased wifes estate to pay for the he depended on services of his wife, second wife lydian, who clean the house top to bottom. And the day she gave birth. And so its a part what i was trying to show in this is that there is dependance at the center and a lot of its around gender too in race, right at the center of a lot of the kind of people who are proclaiming selfreliance in american literature. Letters. Right. And i, i almost i was trying to i some other thing i was saying is i almost felt like i had like a meta literary moment with some of these texts because i was like, god, this is really i cant read this stuff anymore. I used to love emerson, and now im like this is just not not the right message for at least for this moment, you know . Yeah. Yeah, i, i mean, i actually could feel i felt like when i was reading, i could hear struggling through that. And thats what i meant is, you know, theyre drawn to the literary value and the poetic and also, honestly, part of emersons project. He was a you know, it was against conformity and against the traditions of the church and. Right. And it was like a literal free selfreliance, right . Like a literary lack of dependance. I mean, there were different ways of i was reading richardson and all these other on emerson and they theres debates, right. What did emerson actually by selfreliance so but i mean if i was doing a close readings and some of these were quite i mean, i probably need to write that would take time to find the actual passages. Theres shockingly theyre shockingly in different to other people, other peoples condition, like shocking. So so this is the beginning of this this these myths, right . Yeah. And where i mean these are fascinating welltold stories and where do you see that now . Well, silicon valley. Yeah. So you know, you know, one of my friends just made a joke about that. Its like these are tech pros who are now saying, you know hands off my medicare. You know . Right. I mean, you can so theyre its the opposite. Theyre they were claiming complete autonomy or maybe not quite the opposite, claiming autonomy. And yet, obviously dependent on, you know, a bailout. Well, what you end getting to in the book pretty quickly, which seems to you know, you also start with these stories of hearing from people who a lot of selfblame and you are get really in trying to understand the moral system that comes from these stories and so can you describe a little bit and youre not speaking for all people but what you the moral system that these different threads have built that is harmful. Yeah i think its its stigma. Right . Its stigma. Selfblame and. I mean, part it. So i wrote a book called squeeze my previous book squeeze why our families cant afford america. And a lot of these people, i call them the middle precariat, which i meant by that the precarious middle class. Right. The perlmutter crossroads precarity of is middle and thats brain work became gig right thats part of something thats something that has happened increasingly for the academia its a law to be i know accounting to even school schoolteachers right so so i wrote about that and i thought, wow, you know, the thing i keep hearing is people themselves that i have i should have done better. I mean, so ashamed. I, i what what have i done wrong . I thought i did everything right and i to kind of trace that part of why i wanted to trace some of the early texts that created these myths to understand where the where the laceration is coming from for individuals. You know so who is Stephen Lerner not bill white Melvin Lerner. Stephen lerner is a friend of mine. So maybe hes here tonight. Hi, stephen who is stephen. Who is Melvin Lerner . What is the just world of islam . Okay, so the just world theory was a i looked at my friend over there whos obsessed with this particular idea of the just world theory that he coined in the 1960s after he did this experiment, some of the sixties of the milgram set, they were obsessed with electrocution, a bit like giving shocks behind glass. Glass walls and having, you know, whatever that people they were evaluating, responding. So this was a woman, an actor who was being given shocks and they kept increasing the shocks and increasing the shocks but, you know, fictitious like they was just for and the students who were, you know, they were being by Melvin Lerner and his colleagues kept saying, oh, she must have done something wrong. And they sort of thought she must have deserved it and she must have deserved it more and more. The higher the shocks went. And out of that and he did other tests along those lines, he up with this thing called the just world theory is part of how we explain to ourselves why things go well for us and why they go badly. That theres some inherent, deserving this if things go well or or were successful, wealthy, renowned and, there are some inherent you know you know flaw if were not. Yeah so but im trying to understand whether the just world theory is particularly american its particular really connected to these archetypes or is this is this a human bell in Melvin Lerners and in your own understanding theories . Oh, is it . I think there is something human about it. But i also think its enhanced by. So like social conditions and by National Identity and i mean, if you hear the phrase dream, which by the way, is another thing. 1931, is much more community in the it was coined in that time and it was not necessarily describing this like siloed narrative with the family by where the individual by itself toiling for you great riches and success and so that too quite match but now i got off on a tangent which was what i going to come back to this so the just world why is yeah i think theres something natural about it maybe theres something a little natural but then theres something very conditioned about it as well. Yeah. So were going to, were going to come back the today but were going to go to the future for a second because. So if its, if its natural, this sort of just world model, in your view, what are the kinds of types and visions of justice that counteract that and that you want to build up well, so i end with towards the new American Dream. And so and some of these things are i mean, you might think theyre little smaller, bespoke, but some of them are. And and a lot of them are about our mindset about ourselves and the kind of politicians we should be electing. So the new American Dream is a return to this older one. And thats thats a thread i pulling a lot that some of theres some fantastic ideas that were advanced in the past homestead act biggest land giveaway in 1862 the gi bill you know there are plenty of examples and you probably have some like like more regulatory things that the sbb wouldnt have happened if we had maintained them right and so we have to kind of go back to the past to get to the future and part of that is reclaiming this older American Dream more communal . I report on visual aids. I report on workers coops. I report on a budget justice. One of my friends here is a specialist in that which is participatory democracy, participatory budgeting, which sounds but its actually really cool. I even talk about something i call therapy, which is kind of peer to peer therapy, that its social class oriented, which recognizes that a lot of trauma intersects with poverty and kind of adverse societal forces. You know, you know, you cant like they always say in therapy, do the work. Its like, you know, you also have to have you to work. So you have to be able to have a job and then you can do the work. So to way but theres theres a kind of individualist thrust to a lot of traditional therapy. And theres also its obviously hard to access and its incredibly expensive and its not covered by medicaid often a lot of i see someone here who knows about that a lot of my contributors at eat your pr contributors have experiences. So like some this i talked about the other day that new deal for therapy yeah yeah so so i, i was going to ask you about it later but lets do it. The new deal for therapy. What is. Well, i mean, it would be things like this, peer to peer counseling, but it also be Training Programs for, therapists to work especially to work with kids because the constant articles about anxiety and depression, about kids, ive experienced it in my own family. You probably all you know the pandemic was really really hard for kids and i just that that would be a great way to get to establish a kind of cadre of you know put people to work doing something actually substantial and interesting. Thats not a job, you know folk group. Yeah. So mean i, i, i warned you i might ask about this, but throughout the book theres a kind of, im interested in the shadow of the church or of churches, and its a shadow. Its not necessarily engaged directly. At one point you interview two, somebody who works at coop and what happens to me, my hometown hometown and the he says, its like my church, you know, one of several times. And then later you talk about secular faith. And when youre talking sort of collective therapy, certainly a lot of echoes of kind of organized religion and when youre talking about values or a moral system that is less about measuring depending on which organized religion and dogmatic youre talking about is less focus is a way from success and goodness somehow or being connected so did you think about that at all in this is that i i mean im i probably on some unconscious level and i mean the part of me thats interested in religion im in things like you know, communal luxury, which is this idea of by this theory Christian Ross about the amplitude thats possible with through collective experience or leading single who talks about radical happiness. And this is long gone with by my dear departed collaborator Barbara Ehrenreich dancing in the streets. So she wrote a whole book about dancing and music and communal experience as, redemptive and transformative, a way that we could connect people to each other. And so i guess that that kind of like almost like a yeah, i dont know, like, yeah maybe like a or ive also called the lyrical left. So yeah, you know, like when i get through this, this is part of what im trying to get at is that you have vision that is not transactional in the services and not, you know, i think totally disambiguate. In terms of each Different Service being provided, but a collective sort of loose collective is that involve art, joy and also community in the provision of services. Yeah. I mean, absolutely that would be my complete dream. Wed have people at work or coops writing poetry seriously, it sounds absurd, but that would be my thats my utopia. And part of your vision here is that the lyrical our own lyrical vision of ourselves help get us there. Yeah. So you talk have a chapter. I think it thats good. I like that. Yeah. Good. You. I want to then sort of bring that to application and i dont mean im not, were not talking like this is not a book about i hope im not speaking for you this is not a book about here are the particular policies we should have it is a book about imagination, our imaginations of ourselves and whats where a lot of the rubber hits the road is. In your interviews with gig workers how do you see the conversation with vanessa and others that you talk to in the gig economy as connecting to on the one hand these archetype and on the other hand your lyrical future. No, thats a beautiful way to put it because so i talked to a bunch of people who worked at like instacart and lyft and they sort of have become like a shadow social service, especially during the pandemic. And i realized that that that was in fact i have a phrase for that i call it the dystopian social safety net, like things that shouldnt exist, but do. One of my friends here made a film about People Living in parking lots and that that is thats sort of a part of that. But so are people who give bring, you know, through instacart, people who are just, you know, disabled, right up steps and that so many of clients were they were over and again they were specifically asked to come and deliver things to people who should be getting like, you know, disability assistance to get their food right. And that but what was interesting when you thats part of why the reporting is really important because the workers hate their job their job was horribly underpaid. I think she made like 28,000 or something. But she didnt hate it because she had this connection with these consumers that felt i probably youre talking about this kind of secular connectivity. So she just wanted to be seen as essential, not as unskilled, and she wanted to be paid, you know, essential. Yeah. Yeah. So if were then talking to her not as a reporter because you play these different roles, you know, speaking of not being disambiguate it, youre like all of me is here i poetry if you were speaking to her with your vision are the kinds of stories that you want instead of Horatio Alger instead of the bootstrap image. What are the what are the symbols and stories that you want to resonate and be part of a new selfunderstanding. Well i mean i didnt even know about this history of black mutual aides and coops does people know about this . It it just just you. This is her area. But yeah, but dubois wrote about it and they it was incredible i talked to specialists who worked on it and. I was reading accounts of these coops and is because there were Informal Networks that some of these folks could be part of. You know, banks and food. Food, that food cooperatives, that kind of thing. And i felt that was incredible that there was this shadow, you know, i want to see movie on that. But my joke was like, could we make a Hidden Figures about like, you know, its a little, you know, pollyannish maybe. But then the, you know, other stories like, lets recap. So im a big dubois fan and dubois, though, is very besides focused archetype, also very focused on policy. The policies that would enable coops to thrive. Yeah. And the policies that made it hard for coops to thrive because as a practical economic level and when im going to push you a little bit more, though, because theres is the answer then to horatio, pull up by the bootstraps, bootstraps individual stories, collective stories like well, thats part of you know, youre trying to it seems like youre youre part of building new true fairy tales sense. Yeah. And so so the individual cooperative stories or the kinds of stories. Yeah and try to make them as lively as possible. Yeah. And to and to actually not just have a single subject i think is one of the problems of narrative nonfiction. Sometimes you have one character and then that kind puts a lot of pressure. This is just a reporting. It puts a lot of pressure on that person to be everything, to represent every every nuance of something. But i think thats part of why i tried tell these stories, like in the round or like kind of a multiple characters, because i see it as polyphonic and but to try to tell the stories in an enough way so that youre for the polyphony and youre not like, oh my god, so many people, whats their name again . Now, video does that kind of a problem . Nonfiction when you have too many characters. But yeah, but so that thats part of it i think its the polyphony of repertoire. Shrill polyphony. Yeah, right, right you you also talk to some rich folks. Yeah, but theyre all kind of wellmeaning rich folks. I did. I have to say they were there. Yes. Yeah. You call them some class. And talk about you their own efforts on policy. But you also talked to prince, i believe thats where the stephen came from. I matched the stephen from one chapter with a learner from another so what theres you know my one theres one word here. Otherwise its perfect. Elizabeth, theres one word here i took objection to. Both the selfmade man bootstrapping implied the capacity for scrapping but also for domination. These words wormed their way into millions of peoples mind, eventually some how this laudatory. I want to talk about this somehow raise that it right . Yeah no, im just teasing you really. I think its totally appropriate. Well placed somehow. But what you get at certain moments, you say we have no choice, are forced, coerced to the story of the wealthy. Theyre pushing these stories of grit which you have a special allure due to girlboss. Yeah, yeah. That these stories are, you know, basically being forced on us. Is that a fair characterization . I mean, i can almost hear the anger. Yeah. Yes, i dont tell me that these are the stories of our world. So do you. How do you see the role of the class traders and others in changing language . Well, yeah. So the class traders are, you know, groups like patriotic millionaires, solider Resource Generation and and theyre sort of like the new for theyre the forefront. I of kind of like i think radical philanthropy or class traders. The the other phrase i had the transparent rich and what i mean by that is they literally some of them post their tax returns and i found that thrilling you know because yeah i really did like that that is self exposure if. Were asking people to share their stories and their to send, you know that is something that people who are privileged could can do they can show the way that the tax code has benefited them and they can show other other ways in which theyve gotten ahead from privilege. Honestly and that that has a it has a you know, its not that common, though yeah. I mean, part a part of people, i mean, theres lots of really practical reasons why people would not say tax returns. But yeah. About what i see and tell me if this fair is that you have sort of a note and well get to the major note of, you know, how this can change and. The minor note is, though, to invite everyone to be a part of it even if they are are people who have very much benefited from from these now is the major note just join stuff. Yeah i mean is it like whatever you do do it collectively. Well yeah and ive been taught by our organization i see, my colleague over there david and a lot of people who work with us are here actually its called the Economic Hardship reporting project and. One of our contributors is over there. I feel like its really taught me. Something about the possibly idea of collective action. Yeah. I mean, obviously do need the transparent rich to support a nonprofit, right . Its not its not its theyre part of our dependents actually. And i wrote about this the art of dependance actually having good relationships with is also a form of the art of dependency and, you know, relatively honest and non controlling because, you know, philanthropy can be controlling, right . So but i think really taught me something about joining and about not being an author on your and about also the possibility going back into the past again, like the wpa and the writers or organizing and local writer, local reporting and i found i was like oh yeah, this happened before. This happened before. Theres 6600 people who were during the new deal who were like little army of photographers and reporters were being put to work also because there was a gap and there was a gap in telling oral histories. There is a gap in telling the stories of people of color. Zora Neale Hurston came through the that that program i think Richard Wright did i think because like a lot of obviously like walker evans and some of the ones but youre like this is part of what i see is like my collectivist role. And so it is explicitly in this way a very american project. It is a project about out a liberating, recovering, you know, its not just a liberation from, the American Dream. It is a are a new creation of the American Dream. Drawing on as well. So, yeah, thats completely fair. And mean. One of the things that i was excited about was also looking darwin and seeing that theres even a or kind of natural rationale for some of the collectivism. I mean he writes about mutual he doesnt just write about survival fittest and thats like another story thats kind of been talked to suit suit people in power honestly, you know yeah. So i mean im by anthropologists, you know, like the idea that paul taylor, the theologian says is that every political theory has a core anthropology, right. A vision of the human is. So whats yours. Whats my anthropology . Yeah. Like what are human . You know, you you touch on it in various ways. You know, the core of of a vision, a polity depends a vision of the human. Mm. You. Okay . Ill ask her some easy questions. Can you give me an example like for you like. Well, ill give you a very easy. This is so easy. Its just like softball pitch to you. One vision of the human is that humans, naturally selfish. Yeah, i see what youre saying. So what is a human is . Well definitely. I mean, like, what are the things that again, back to darwin as he wrote about and you all interconnected he wrote about ants and and farms and beta bugs birds back so its very beautiful. And obviously the contemporary version is like suzanne and these trees that are connected through their roots dont know the mushrooms that are, you know, communicate eating like. So i think there is like an argument actually for like natural connectivity doesnt mean that were not selfish, but it does mean that were also naturally regulate ourselves on other people. We naturally depend on other people. We naturally mirror other people from birth, you know, and in the Animal Kingdom do as well. So yeah, yeah what is it that you tell your husband all the time, you say in the books, im not revealing any secrets that he needs to go socialize. Yes, thats yeah. When is the first time i looked down . Cspan knows no about you, but. But i think this is is really helpful that your core vision is sociability. Yes, its a core vision of, a fundamental sociability that is denied by our current systems. Is that is that fair . Yeah, its denied. Were isolated. And i think one of the things that this massive level of inequity is it isolates and separates people. It makes people it makes them unable to appreciate each other like to have to fight, to pay for apartments in the city, to to, you know, get your knee looked at when its when its banged up in the, you know, everything is a fight, right . And i think that is is a very active that we yeah, were separated by cap but this particular harsh moment of capitalism right. Yeah well i have a few more questions but i do want make sure i get a chance that you have a room full of absolutely brilliant people. So lets. I want to open it up to questions if you have a question, raise your hand. Well you a mic. I see you. Thank you alissa for this book. Im eating it up like warm soup. I love it. Its so good thank you for this. I. I find it funny how so many people who believe in, you know, picking yourself up by your bootstraps made the American Dream they dont actually know very much about history and then when you tell them you remind hey you remember like the native americans in slavery and they say, well, you know, that was so long ago. You know, we got it. We got to move past that. All right. We got to do that. And and problem is, you know, were still moving people off of their lands by force. Were still segregating people. Were still making laws to overpoliced. But every year on july 4th, we remember 1776. We cant forget that. But theres other but theres other parts. The history that we can forget. Can you talk about american willingness to, revise our own history. We do it every day. Remember, there was this named donald trump who used to tweet history incorrectly every and people were like, my god, hes a genius. Can you talk about why were so willing to revise own history . I mean, honestly, i think its theres 35 illiteracy. I mean, a functional literacy. I, i think a lot of it has to do with education and something as basic as that, that people are receptive propaganda. Right. And but anyway, thats my thats my quick answer. But yeah. What do you think. I mean, i its a very deep question, but i think part of the answer is an answer about why, but a demand for just a Greater Transparency and fullness in our own history, thats not us. Full answer, i think part of what else book is about, though, is and, is that we are there is not there is not a no history moment. So its a what history. Because there will be history. So what is it that we look at and what it that has shaped us. Hi, alyssa enticed zephyr. Thank you so much for this wonderful talk. I had the privilege of like already reading the book. Many. And im curious for you, alyssa, like you mentioned the teen Mental Health crisis and. Im curious how you see these themes about both inequality and this like ethos playing into teens and in adults, but mostly teenagers. Well, yeah. I mean, i think that theres just its hard to access care. I think there are probably i mean, if were back to the collective, there was this unacknowledged collectivity that happened in the pandemic where people parroted more openly with each other right. And i sometimes wonder if that is if theres a sense loss with some of the kids about and its not just the isolation of the pandemic, but it was some of the acts recovery of the pandemic. But thats just a idle thought. Ive had, you know, i want to raise some questions in response to your question, i guess, professor teachout. Um, no, but there i think these questions are quite central. And one which i think also relates to book and to the stories that she was telling just now have to do with meaning and knowing that someone is and not unnecessary in a society. And the other is the degree of actual physical, social isolation that you see in modern. And theres been a lot of good questions recently about this because theres been a significant drop off in the amount of time that teenagers spend with other with friends really quite a radical drop off in the last 15 years. Pilots are like have you you and im so excited about this book i have two questions that i want to ask you. One is about mirroring and the creation of sort isolated identities, fears and how you can have. I want to kind of put this in the context of an anecdote many years ago i was following a group of people that were thinking about, you know, kind of pluralism and safety. And we had a series of conversations around policing and safety and one group of conversations had was with a group of kind, radical, working class, undocumented organizers in queens who were very much saying know they were muslim, they were saying there were there was this challenge where you had these Police Officers who were coming into Community Spaces and tracking everybody and surveilling everybody. And that was the way they understood it. The next hour, we went to meet with Community Affairs officers. Many of whom are people of color. And from the neighborhoods. And there were muslim Police Officers there saying, you know, we belong to the community. We have the Communities Trust and we have access. And we can be there as a source of support and resource. There was this absolute the same experience being perceived in two completely different ways by people who shared the same space. And im curious about your to that and the other kind of anecdote have is years and years ago i was teaching a class on sociology in a community college. Everybody there was working class people of color, mostly immigrant, many refugees. And one day we had this conversation asked, do people who are super wealthy deserve their wealth . Have they earned it . Everyone raised their hand, yes and in the front row was a woman, a black woman from the caribbean, who was a nurse who was working three jobs and going to community and making like 40,000 a year. And said, do you think that she earns her wealth less than this Hedge Fund Manager who is making 30 million a year . And they could not answer that question. So im wondering, where does class consciousness for people who are actually victims . I think this is this is a really important point about the deserving is its not just by people who are privileged. Its held by people who are vulnerable somehow. The people in the people with wealth are more deserving. And i mean, part of its messaging, you know, were being told this constantly like theres a whole kind of aspirational television, film advertising culture, right . Like that. But also, i mean, that i dont know. I mean, i feel like theres a theres not a way to talk about. About your feelings of fragility and your your own hard work and youre not. I mean, imagine these students are being honored for werent being honored for their work. So they just internalized it. Right its sort of thats part of the selfblame ethos. Right . Like if nobody says, well, youve adjunct doing five classes, you know youre really its Pretty Amazing that you did that if it was just like, oh, that this is what you make and you this is how this is where, you know, youre commuting like theres, no, yeah. I mean, i guess that connects the mirroring to youre not being mirrored back any positive sentiment for the hard work that is supposedly at the center of the Horatio Alger story. So obviously hard is not actually rewarded, you know, so in just a follow up in your utopia and i, i know that you are realistic. Im i shouldnt maybe even say utopia in the direction that you want to move in the sort of symbolic systems and moral system that you think that we can move towards, that you think there is opening with around the pandemic. Is it that you think other are. Other things should be seen as deserving . Yeah. Thats a or that deserving itself. The framework that you dont use. I dont know. I to use the framework deserving to some extent mean i think were all we have to feel like theres some yeah theres some measure. It cant just be i mean. Everyone deserves to be loved everyone deserves to be housed. Everyone. Sure. But its also there is there are also things that people can do that more salutary. Like we can say right at the same time, you can still. So before desert you had another part of that question. I think you answered the question. Yes. Do you think she answered the question . Yes. Yeah. So its so in thinking about because as a sort of a poet and a myth maker, its creating alternate myths, an alternate myth of a system of deserving. Yeah. Or. Yeah. Just a part of what i was arguing. The i just wrote a opinion piece in the New York Times was about the art of dependance. That actually, depending on people. Well its a craft and skill so that the reframe is about building good dependance if that makes any sense and its not about removing dependance its its cherishing the ways in which people depend on each other and the way that people depend on you as almost like an object the world like something thats of value. Yeah. Yeah. This is a core issue in corruption, in anticorruption work course its dependance the idea of the sort of fantasy of this independence from what . Not independ without a proposition, preposition its and that a of dependance can obviously be very corrupting. But then theres also really dependencies and necessary dependencies. All right, next question. Hey, heather. Hey, alyssa. Hey, luba. Im really excited to read your book. I havent read it yet. So so my question comes across as ignorant. Im im curious like this vision of mutual aid like what was coming up for me almost personal responsibility, right . I feel like we all live in this dense city and were constantly, you know, bumping into each other. So talking about just there, not being a safety net, i think like what i was asking myself is, is there responsibility that people. Right. So even talking about therapy, right. Not having access to therapy, oftentimes its because therapists dont want to accept medicaid or insurance that doesnt reimburse them at a certain level. Right. So i guess the core, you know, even like landlords, i read part of the reason that rent as unaffordable because i guess their market prices and landlords are choosing to seek the maximum rent so i guess i dont know you know, i dont know if this question has an answer, but i guess the question is like, do we all some sort of responsibility to, i dont know, take it down a notch . You know, like if youre a therapist like, do you have some responsibility to take insurance that may not reimburse you . Well, the betterment of society if youre a landlord and so on. Just curious. Yeah. I mean, i definitely say so, but i think it could be very hard to try hard to contribute. But i love that what you just did is you took back phrase personal responsibility, which often used in other pressing to describe, you know, got to bootstrap. And you just said lets reframe responsibility. You just did that. Its really good as a mutual aid. There you go. Other questions i have. Yeah. Oh, hey, linda, did so my question was, im looking forward to reading the book. So, like, enthralled about everything youre talking about. Im you live in flatbush i do a lot of work around community and im a tenant lawyer and a lot of work around tenant organizing. But im also a dsa member. And so im kind of curious to hear the two of you talking for over an hour without mentioning capitalism or socialism. So im curious about why that is. Ive said, yeah, four times. Yeah, check. Check your notes. No, no, just. But yeah. Oh, no, yeah, definitely. But well i think were not saying partially because i, i hope that this book will reach people who are just dsa. I mean i love that the dca has burgeoned. I know the last i checked it was up to 45,000. Maybe its much higher members and thats part of its potential. Like new American Dream thats forming. But its only part, you know, its going to be were going to need to have all these different ways in which people like some of the ways lubo is just that might be more personal even and also a change political life. I mean and this is i just wrote an op ed in the Washington Post about this like i was really struck by maxwell frost saying that he counts. He just he was elected to congress recently. He was not. Hes 26 years old. And he said, im going to living with friends until i make enough money to rent my apartment. I thought that was very brave and very brilliant of him to do that. And for more politicians to do and to elect more people who do that. Because when you have people in office who dont understand and just fundamentally dont understand the pain of their, you know, citizens, that is its going to produce terrible things. I mean, i like 51 of the house is billionaires, which doesnt mean every millionaire is not to understand how somebody without money lives, but i think theyre less likely to. So anyway, thats so i mean, these maybe sound less than the dsa, but i think really important to start encouraging these kind of figures or the woman who just was elected in Washington State who ran an auto body shop, perez and you know went said i made 34,000 a year you know ive never owned a new car and just like thats incredible well thats an incredible resource actually lets turn the resource. Thats actually a resource. So. I kind of want to end because think we have to wrap up with you talking. You have a sort of really ending this book is a kind of braided book of history and analysis interview shoes and then at the end you really sort of turn to interview yourself and talk about your own sort of like embodied experience in your body, being dependent interdependent and independent and all together. Can you just share a little about that . Yeah. I mean, i its back again to this dancing in the streets, radical happiness embodied, politics. Yeah, maybe what were talking about previously. And so i did that with my own life it was kind of like an inventory like what . Where could i find where could the people in my immediate circle, the people i work with find that how do we how do we reach for that . You know, so thats thats thats where it goes. How do we also fight for all these world things at the same time . Yeah. Well, thank you for a wonderful book. Thank you, everyone, for coming if you havent gotten a copy of bootstrap. We do have signed copies sale at the registers. This is going to be hanging out for just a minute at this table. You can sign some books, personalize books if youd like to get your book personalized, please line up right here again. Thank you guys so much for coming before they go lets give them another round of applause. Im going to. Were very excited to be welcome in Brett Forrest this evening. A little bit about bret. His first book, the lung bomb was followed by the big fix. An intti